"Thinking Outside the Four-Wheeled Box" ebikes.ca |
We had a great time at the 2008 VEVA REV! show last weekend and were glad to see many familiar names and faces. For those who missed it and those who want more, we are going to be hosting a Car Free Vehicle Show this coming Sunday on June 15th. The event will take place from 4pm onwards and we will have the whole block of Main St. between 15th and 16th for people to demonstrate and test ride all kinds of electric and pedal powered vehicles. This is an opportunity for us in the ebike community to show to the rest of Vancouver what a getting around in a less car-dependant future might look like. We'll be bringing a nice fleet of electric rides including the recently built cargo trike, side-by-side tandem, and self balancing skateboards shown below.
In addition though, we want any and everyone in the area who was built their own ebike contraption to come out as well and demonstrate to the public what these things can do. There are so many innovative and unique vehicles that we've seen our customers build and this will be a perfect opportunity for us to get together and showcase this technology. You can come by any time in the afternoon and stay as long as you like. However, there is also a need for formal volunteers who will help out to man the barricades on all the side streets and explain to oncoming traffic what is going on, so if you have interest in helping out at this level then please drop us a line as soon as possible.
The store is open again and we are picking up the shipments of eZee kits, NiCad batteries, and rear Crystalyte motors over the next couple days. But because of our heavy involvement in preparing and organizing the event this Sunday we will probably not start taking online orders and shipping these goods until after the weekend. When they are showing up as available in our store site then that is the cue that we are ready for orders.
We know it may have been frustrating for customers trying to order complete ebike systems from us over the past few months. Things are available then suddenly sold out, and there might be the right motor but no controller, or the right controller but no suitable battery, can't these guys just get it right and keep things in stock? Well, the answer is yes and no. With some items like battery packs it can often take up to 6 months from when we place an order to when it is received and fully tested, and it is hard to know just where things will stand so far in the future with all the recent advances in battery chemistries and the volatile pricing of raw materials. We will do our best with dependable standby's like the venerable NiCad batteries to keep them in stock from now on, though newer stuff like the lithium iron phophates packs may come and go on a case by case basis until the technology is sound.
However, for other items like the Crystalyte motors and controllers, we have reached a point where if we sold any more we would not be able to offer the same level of support and troubleshooting service to our customers that we are comitted to providing. Rather than getting stretched thin, we are only ordering as many of these parts per month as we are comfortable selling. The troubleshooting section of our website was recently updated to include a list of all the more common problems we've encountered with the Crystalyte product line, and it should help explain why we aren't planning to increase our volume even though the demand for these is quite strong.
June is Bike Month here in Vancouver, a time where we can celebrate that cycling is catching on in ways that few people would have imagined 10 years ago. We are participitating in many events throughout the city and would love to see some of you in the ebike community take part as well. These include the VEVA REV! show on June 7th, the Car Free Day on June 15th which has now expanded to include Main Street. We'll be giving the monthly VEVA talk on the 22nd and holding the first electric bicycle conversion workshop in at the new Pedal Depot facility in the last week of June. More information on all of these activities has been put on the events page.
We will be shutting down the online store site for a short while until our new shipments of battery packs and hub motors arrive in early June and we have a full inventory of parts again. There are exceptions if you want a motor type that we have in stock (e.g. 20" 405, 20" 5203, 16"404) or for the purchase of CycleAnalysts. Otherwise though, it will be best to just hold tight. We don't take advanced payments or preorders on parts until we actually have them on hand and ready to ship.
For your information, here is the current estimated arrival time for most of the sold out items, but be aware that unexpected delays can be expected. We will make an announcement and list them on our store page again once they are available.
Our eZee kits have now been modified with basically every small improvement that we sought. The major changes:
After some paperwork adventures we were able to get the first Crystalyte shipment of the season at the end of March and have updated inventory on the store page accordingly. The missing product photos and details will get filled in when we have time. Some points of note:
Pedal First Controllers: We are now replenishing the supply of sensorless motor controllers, and have a new model on hand with IRFB4110 mosfets for operation up to 72V as well. These controllers without the hall sensor dependency are much more robust in wet or high exposure environments, where the Crystalyte Immediate Start systems have proven somewhat vulnerable. Highly recommended if you don't absolutely need assistance from zero speed.
Lower Cutoff Voltage: For maximum flexibility we are gradually standardizing all of our motor controllers to have the built-in low voltage cutoff set to 20V, to enable operation with 24V battery packs. Anyone wanting a higher cutoff voltage can readily program in a custom value of their choosing with the CycleAnalyst. The only controllers we have on stock that still have a 30V cutoff are the 36V 20A and the 72V 48A start immediate controllers.
More CycleAnalyst Compatibility: Both the DC and the sensorless pedal-first controllers have the connector port for Direct Plug-in CycleAnalysts. The sensorless controllers can still pick up the speed readings from the hub, even without the hall sensors. However, the DC motor controller has no information about the wheel speed. For these units, we have made a new model of the CycleAnalyst, CA-DPS, which has the 6-pin port for direct attachment to a motor controller, but which also uses a speedometer sensor and spoke magnet for conventional speed detection from a wheel. This model is also useful for people using brushless controllers with geared or mid-drive motor arrangements.
Rear DC Motors: There is now a rear DC motor option that fits in a conventional 135mm dropout spacing and is dished appropriately to accommodate a 7 speed freewheel. We've long felt that the he brushed DC motor systems are of great value and are pleased to have a more complete line to offer. Although the torque is a bit less than the 400 series brushless hubs, they have minimal cogging drag and excellent reliability.
Those who come by and visit our shop space in Vancouver will certainly notice a lot of changes lately. We've managed to expand into one of the adjacent rooms and have taken the opportunity to do some wholesale renovations of area. New flooring, new paint, and when we are done there will be a whole new electronics development lab as well.
As mentioned in the last web update, we did receive the shipment of 4C rated LiFePO4 battery packs. However, we have not put them up for sale yet because our testing has shown a few issues that we wanted to resolve. For those who don't care about juicy battery details, feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.
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Last year we sampled a number of LiFePO4 battery manufacturers looking to find one that delivered appreciable discharge currents yet also came in a finished looking and robust package. The one that we settled with not only met these requirements, it also came with a fairly advanced switched capacitor cell-balancing battery management system (BMS). This BMS did cell balancing splendidly, but it had the defect that it would continue to bleed a small amount of current from the cells even after the pack was flat and the BMS had cutout. If the battery was drained flat and then stored for several months, the BMS itself could actually end up discharging the cells all the way to zero volts and causing permanent damage.
These were at our request replaced with a new BMS circuit that would have virtually no quiescent current, causing some of the original delays to the shipment. As a downside though, it turns out that the rate of cell balancing with this new BMS is many orders of magnitude less than with the prior circuit. When we began testing the packs from this shipment we were typically only getting between 10 to 11.5 amp-hours out of them, due to the cells not being balanced. By opening up the packs and individually discharging those cells that are more charged than the rest of the pack, and topping up those cells that are running low, we've been able in almost every case to restore a full 12 amp-hours of available capacity. The images below shows a case in point.
The original pack as we received it was only delivering 8 amp-hours. You can see that there is not a very pronounced roll-off in the cell voltage before it shuts off, indicating that it was just 1 or 2 cells at a low state of charge causing the BMS to cutout. After opening the pack up we identified a single cell that was low, charged it up independently from the others in the pack, and afterwards it tested out perfectly. Most of the time it isn't so simple, and there are several cells both low and high that need to be adjusted and a few testing iterations before the capacity to reaches 12Ah.
So what next?
We have been going through all the batteries one by one in this manner and ensuring that each pack is balanced and delivers its rated capacity, and then re-sealing them. However, we still have some reservation about selling these until we are confident that the cells won't gradually go out of balance again in your hands. Ideally the amount of cell balancing by the BMS at the end of the charge cycle is sufficient to counter any natural deviations in cell leakage currents and BMS sense currents, and then this will be so. There are naturally a lot of tests going on at our end and a lot of back and forth with the manufacturer to get to the bottom of it, and we may decide in the end to replace the BMS circuits across the board.
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Can I buy one?
The answer is yes, but only if you read the above paragraphs and fully understand and accept the implications. There is a small but finite possibility that the battery over time might go out of balance resulting in a reduced usable capacity, and you may have to open up and either service individual cells or replace the BMS circuit down the road if this is the case. We have a slow but steady stream of 24V, 36V, and 48V packs that are coming off the end of the testing/balancing cycle.
Update Apr 14th - Our final testing of the BMS shows that it does do cell balancing at an acceptable rate at the end of the charge cycle, and packs that are out of balance do slowly get better each time the packs is used and then recharged. The only situation we can forsee where the batteries could drift out of balance again is if they are stored for prolonged periods of time without use.
We were hoping to have received fairly large batch of eZee kits by now. At the time we placed the order we decided to pay extra for an upgraded and lighter weight Sanyo brand battery pack that would have a 12 month warranty. Unfortunately, there have been mistakes made on the ratings of the BMS circuits that came with these packs from Sanyo as well, and so eZee has had to return them to be fixed. The latest date for shipping is Apr 22nd, which would put the order here in the middle of May. Given that everything is ready except for the batteries, we are looking at the feasibility of having a small number of kits air-shipped this without batteries to at least provide an option for those who have been waiting, or who were counting on using a different type of battery pack anyway.
We try to give an honest forecast on when we expect new items to show up, sometimes we get it right but usually there are wrenches thrown in our plans. Lets start with the good news:
Our long-awaited shipment of 12Ah LiFePO4 batteries has arrived and was unpacked this last week. These include 24V, 36V, and 48V configurations all in a tidy and well packaged rectangular layout. We will need another week to rewire all the charging and discharge connector leads, as well as to begin the discharge testing of each pack before sale. Expect them to be posted to our online store around March 26th.
Most of the "Sold Out" signs on our store site will disappear once the next boatload of goods from Crystalyte comes in. There are going to be some new additions with this order as well, including 72V pedal first controllers, spare axles to convert between front and rear hubs, and more of the famous 4110 mosfet 50A motor controllers. Although the ship is scheduled to arrive any day, due to logistical reasons we won't be able to pick it up until March 25th.
The first large batch of eZee conversion kits is completed but still sitting at the manufacturing warehouse, awaiting for a final inspection that all of the customizations and small changes were done correctly. We will have an accurate arrival time estimate when they have shipped, but at this stage it is looking like a few weeks into April.
02/14/2008 - Who would have guessed that this January 2008 would be our busiest month to date! We certainly didn't, and are running out of stock in a lot of categories. Either ebikers are an active winter riding crowd, or most of our customers come from California, or a bit of both. We are basically out of rear hub motors and 72V motor controllers. Unfortunately for reasons largely out of our control, the next shipment of Crystalyte parts has faced delays and won't get here until around the second week of March.
After a few weeks of fast paced development the next version of the Cycle Analyst code has been released for beta testers. This brings out features such as a serial output stream for data logging and on-the-fly adjustment of the current or speed limits via a potentiometer or other signal source. For more details, see this thread on the endless-sphere forum.
We are now completely sold out of the trial shipment of eZee hub motor kits. The response from those early adopters has been resoundingly positive and we appreciate all the feedback that has come back this way. Our next shipment with several changes and improvements is scheduled to arrive in mid-March. So hold tight all those who were slow on the draw, mid-March isn't that far away and we will ensure to maintain steady stock of these kits throughout the 2008 cycling season.
We have received and already quality control tested the new batch of NiMH batteries from Nexcell, including '2D' cell 24V and 36V packs, and 'F' cell 36V and 48V batteries. For the first time in our testing history, every single battery in this shipment passed QC. The '2D' packs discharged to at least 19Ah with no cell reversals, and every 'F' cell battery put out a solid 12.5-13Ah without a single early reversal. The 2D packs have doubled up fuse holders in parallel to better handle 40-50A currents. These are available for purchase now.
There are a few other new items added to our store site. We've got two new sizes of black heatshrink, including 20cm wide which fits snugly on smaller 8Ah NiMH batteries, and a large 28cm tube that can even stretch over our triangular layout packs. There are 70oC thermal switches useful for overcharge protection for people building or repairing battery packs, and rolls of self-adhesive silicone tape for effective sealing and waterproofing of exposed electrical connections.
It was with sad news that we heard Sheldon Brown had passed away on Feb 3rd of this year. For anyone who has even casually searched the internet for technical information on bicycle systems, from seemingly obvious compatibility questions that no one seems to answer (like "can you use an 8 speed shifter with a 7 speed freewheel") to obscure details on internally geared hubs, Sheldon Brown's website would turn up like a resource beacon in a World Wide Web that is increasingly dominated by marketing and commercialism.
When we finally found a manufacturer of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries that met our requirements for an ebike-ready battery pack last fall, we fairly promptly placed a large order. The original expected arrival was at the beginning of January, but that has faced several holdups, and due to paperwork delays overseas it missed the last boat before the Chinese New Years holidays. We will post details only after they arrive, and from now on we will be following our earlier practice of not mentioning pending orders of new products until they have arrived and been tested to meet our specs. Sorry to all those who had their hopes up for these batteries to be in by now.
You would think looking at the projects page that we haven't built an ebike in 3 years, or from the troubleshooting page that the only thing to check is the throttle and hall effect signals on a motor controller. Fortunately, the winter season tends to encourage staying indoors, so the ball has started rolling on web updates again. The Events page has seen some new additions and be prepared to see projects like the following featured soon enough:
11/23/2007 - There's always a lot going on at our ebike shop that doesn't get posted on this website, so it's time now to get you up to speed on the action and summarize a few of the highlights:
Throughout the year we have been sampling hub motors from a variety of different manufacturers aside from Crystalyte in an effort to continue offering the latest and best electric bicycle conversion parts. One of motors that stood well apart from the pack is a new 400 watt geared hub motor from the eZee bike company. Our first large shipment arrived last week and the system is available now as part of a complete kit package with a 37V 10Ah lithium battery pack.
Let mosfet failures in 72V Crystalyte controllers be a thing of the past! We sent Crystalyte a batch of IRFB4110 mosfets to incorporate into a custom run of 72V motor controllers capable of 40A and even 50A current levels. These mosfet transistors have 1/3rd the ON resistance of the original 4710's used in previous 72V controllers and so are far more tolerant of the large motor currents in high voltage setups. As well, the stock 72V controllers now use IRFB4310 mosfets, which have over 40% less internal resistance than the original transistors.
January Update - The modified 72V controllers sold out in no time. Our next batch isn't due to arrive until March as well. However, the stock 72V 40A controllers with the IRFB4310 mosfets have been holding up just fine with most 72V arrangements, so unless you really need 50 amps, then the standard 72V controller should be fine. We have modified the Low Voltage Cutout on these to 27V, and have also added a waterproof conformal coating to the circuitboards as well.
One source of frustration with the hub motor disk brake setups has been that the threaded disk adapters have a bolt hole pattern that doesn't match the standard for disk rotors here in North America. If you wanted a larger size rotor or a specific disc you were flat out of luck. Well, we have now had a local CNC machinist produce a custom batch of threaded adapter plates with an industry standard 44mm Bolt Center Diameter (BCD). These can be screwed onto any threaded side cover, or even bolted directly to non-threaded side covers, to bring disk brake compatibility to your vehicle.
The feedback from customers using our higher rate NiCad batteries from Elegance has been quite positive, and we are now offering these as loose tabbed cells for people wishing to build their own custom battery packs. This way it is possible to arrange the cells in any desired layout to fit the geometry of your particular vehicle. We stock Thermistors, wide heatshrink tubing, and appropriate charge and discharge connectors for those doing a custom battery build.
As well, we are also offering some high capacity R/C grade Lithium Polymer cells, battery management system (BMS) circuits, and lithium chargers, for those who want to build the lightest pack possible. These cells are less than half the weight of an equivalent energy A123 battery, and are also capable of impressive charge and discharge currents. The 6Ah cell is rated for 36 amps, and the 4Ah cell can handle up to 60A.
We have a number of spare hub motors that we have decided not to stock for various reasons and have them available for clearance. These include small geared hub motors from Tongxin, the slightly more powerful geared hubs from elebike, and finally the latest 500W direct drive hubs that are sold by Golden Island Machinery.
January Update - The front Tongxin motors have sold out. All that we have remaining are two rear units, they have 135mm axles but the motor is centered, so at most you can fit a 3 to 5 speed freewheel.
The Hub Motor Dynamometer was upgraded over the summer to produce load torques of up to 40 Nm and has been busy characterizing a variety of different hubs. At the moment we have added the 500 Watt motors from Golden Island Machinery, as well as the very similar looking motor being touted by FalconEV. Expect to see additional geared motors put up on our motor simulator in the near future once the model is refined to include mechanical gearing losses.
With the normalization of Nickel prices and the desire for larger and large capacity batteries, we decided to resume carrying the popular and dependable 2D NiMH battery packs from Nexcell. Our order was placed in September and has been delayed several times but is expected to arrive either in late December or early January.
January Update - The shipment has arrived. Please see the store site for the selection of 24V and 36V 18Ah NiMH packs, as well as the 36V and 48V 13Ah batteries.
There is no end of discussion in the electric vehicle world about recent innovations in lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery technology. The promises of charge cycles measured in the thousands, high inherent safety, and general tolerance to abuse are appealing. Indeed many of our customers have been running their ebikes off A123 cells pulled from DeWalt packs and similar.
Unfortunately most of the larger capacity LiFePO4 batteries from China are poorly built, with tangles of wires and low C-rate performance. However, there is one manufacturer we have been beta testing for the past 2 months that actually delivers, with 4C discharge currents and tidy and robust pack builds. We placed a large order for these in early Oct 2007 and are expecting arrival in January Feb 20th 2008. Price will be approximately $900 for 48V 12Ah, and $700 for 36V 12Ah.
We've conned two more idealistic youths to join our little operation in Vancouver. Alison Corrall (UBC Eng Phys, 2005) is on board to initially design and produce custom bags, enclosures, and mounting hardware for ebike battery packs, while Mark Stephens (UBC Electrical, 2007) is designing a series of DC-DC based ebike lighting systems and keeping the Cycle Analyst production line flowing. |
Homepage of the Pedal-Electric Revolution? Someday soon I hope. In the meantime, I'll try to make this the most informative and content-rich ebike site on the web. There's the scent of change in the air, and if you've made it here you've probably smelt it too. The site is here to encourage you, whether an avid inventor or average joe, to take on electric bicycle and other Personal Electric Vehicle projects.
So read on, get inspired, ride a PEV and become a pioneer and trailblazer in an area that has been stagnant for so long, human transportation. The timing couldn't be better, and the planet couldn't need it more.