The round battery is detachable. Used as a bike puller or toddler stroller puller, or even as a suitcase puller.
Also if a bike controller is inside as well, its the easiest EBike kit available.-- pashute, Nov 05 2014 Wheelstick with external motor and battery http://www.yankodes...c-wheel-on-a-stick/ [pashute, Nov 05 2014] Copenhagen Wheel https://www.superpedestrian.com/ [pocmloc, Nov 05 2014] Competition Car Suspension: A Practical Handbook by Allan Staniforth. http://www.amazon.c...d=1361138211&sr=8-1with string computer for racing car suspension design, wot I read as a yoof [not_morrison_rm, Nov 06 2014] Unsprung mass …
One of the cardinal principles of ground-contact vehicle design is to mimimize the unsprung mass; that part of the system outside the influence of the suspension.
On vehicles with pneumatic tyres, the unsprung mass is low because the tyre itself is a deformable suspension element.
The smaller the unsprung mass in proportion to the total mass of the vehicle, the better the ride. Look at F1 cars; big tyres, lightweight alloy hubs, tiny thin (but very strong and stiff) suspension arms.
Adding mass to a hub is a Bad Thing.
[-] for bad physics.-- 8th of 7, Nov 05 2014 Not just a better ride 8th, better fuel economy and acceleration.-- DIYMatt, Nov 05 2014 8th, solid point, but the F1 example is way off. Wheel/tyre sizes are fixed by stagnant regulations. Pretty much every other motor sport runs bigger wheels, it allows bigger brakes for a start. The size and nature of the tyre as a spring is problematic to designers and the engineers who have to set the car up according to conditions. The sheer volume of gas in there is why they whine about tyre temps constantly. When Adrian Newey designed the no-limits car for Gran Turismo 5 (X2012?) it has noticably bigger wheels than a standard F1 car.
As for the idea, nah. There's only 3 components in a ebike kit anyway. Battery, motor and controller. You WANT the battery to be detachable so you can take it inside to charge, and if the whole thing is easy to remove, it'll get stolen easier. What ebikes need is a cleverer brake arrangement. The disk brakes I see seem like a wasted opportunity for some clever ABS regenerative set up.-- bs0u0155, Nov 05 2014 The main problem with regenerative braking is that it's not possible to dump the energy back into the battery in such a short time without damaging it. There needs to be a supercapacitor to act as a buffer, and a charge controller- all of which add bulk, mass, and cost for relatively small benefit.
We cited F1 because the suspension is typically open to view. A motorbike might be a better analogy. Only the wheels themselves, the lower part of the forks, and the swingarm are unsprung mass.-- 8th of 7, Nov 06 2014 Oddly reminiscent of the F1 regenerative system, via ratchet. To slow the F1 car, a roller is pressed against the tyre, the rotation is fed into elevating the driver and seat upwards. When wishing to accelerate again, the ratchet is released, the roller reapplied, and the driver and seat drops down again.
Obviously the controls would be run by wifi. Would also be handy for looking over the other cars.
NB Having spent 20 minutes working out how to encrypt stuff in an online database, and then 4 hours and 8 minutes working out to decrypt it again, I'm allowed to talk crap for the whole day, as an alternative to committing mass murder.-- not_morrison_rm, Nov 06 2014 heh, of course that leaves you at a stop... your feet dangling impotently 8 inches from the ground shortly before you topple from an artificially lofty position onto the ground.-- bs0u0155, Nov 06 2014 Normal bicycles don't have suspension, save for the rider's limbs, and luggage is usually mounted on the unsprung frame, so really I don't see the problem. Also on the Copenhagen Wheel (linked, which completely bakes this idea) the battery is both integrated into the hub, and removable.-- pocmloc, Nov 06 2014 In the copenhagen wheel you have to buy their whole thing. A round battery turns any hub wheel into a Copenhagen wheel. And in my experience, and as seen in the wheelstick example (I have two EBikes, one with hub motor in front and one in back) the extra battery weight will only be for the benefit.
Here's my [-] for 8th's quoting physics problems that in fact do not apply here. The hub motor (in particular for a front wheel) is purposefully made heavy in order for it to do its job. The extra weight could be sheered off and replaced with the battery, making the whole bike lighter!!-- pashute, Nov 06 2014 Here's a [+] to offset technically irrelevant ramblings about F1, suspensions, and the like. Tuners <rolls eyes>.-- the porpoise, Nov 06 2014 Allan Staniforth link, inventor of string "computer" for suspension jommetry design-- not_morrison_rm, Nov 06 2014 hardly applicable to bicycles. Especially ones with a hub motor.-- pashute, Nov 11 2014 random, halfbakery