There’s an ebike boom coming

[KFhunter]

What's the mpg of these ebikes if you are using a Honda 2200 to recharge them?

It's like an 8 hr charge time for a 500Ah battery

honda 2200 will charge for 8 hrs on a single gallon of gas..so 20mpg? on an ebike?  (if you're charging one battery fully drained)

under hunting conditions I highly doubt you'd get 40 miles on a battery (guessing 20 miles)  but if you ran multiple batteries and only discharged to 50% you could charge 2 at once for 4 hours. 
The 2200 Honda could charge a bunch of them at once, the more batteries you charge at 5 amps the more your "fuel economy" would be on each bike. 

What really needs to happen is solid state batteries in the ebikes, then you could use far more of the Honda's capacity and charge in a small fraction of the time, your MPG would go way up, and your battery would last far longer. 

5amp charging on current ebikes means the genny is just idling along wasting a 90% of its fuel

[millerwheeler]

The hate just makes me laugh!

Agreed think half the people hate cause they don’t have the money  to buy one

[fishngamereaper]

You E-bike guys can laugh now, just wait till you get passed up by the E-drone guys....you know its coming.  You'll be ashamed to be so 2020.

[Shoofly09]

time and a place for everything.....    I have two road bicycles, one with 5k miles and one with 7k miles.   I still ride them for exercise, but not all rides are about getting exercise.

I bought a rad rover electric fat tire bike last year and i love it.    Quick trips to the store, take it when going to buddies house to have a few beers and not worry about DUI.    My work commute is 9 miles, I can get to work almost as quickly on ebike as car in traffic, and not work up a sweat getting there.

never used it for hunting, just not the way I hunt or access property. 

[Special T]

if you are trying to get out more but your woman kids whatever arnt willing to  work as hard as you and e bikes facilitate that....... an incentive not to exercise? 

I dont want to make any assumptions about you. Nor do i care if you use an E bike for hunting or otherwise...

Have you been both been fit and Fat? (Not at the same time) have you ever been a part of changing your and or Others lifestyle around?

I personally think e bikes could help more in predator control than anything else. I find more deer nearnpeooles houses than deep in the woods. I personally feel an e bike could help more with calli g cats and shooting bears.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[huntnphool]

 Years ago I remember seeing posted signs in the Methow at closed gates saying “No Mechanized Vehicles” which clearly included bikes.

 I’m wondering how long until we see those signs again?

 Bone, Bigmacc, do you remember those?

[duckmen1]

I don't think people hate the e bike ..I think people hate the e bike when it's used in no motorized access area's...

I agree with that for sure.  I think the tickets for riding anything in closed areas need to be higher, make it hurt.

Bingo. E bikes are great for many purposes for many areas and many different types of people. But they are not made for individuals to trust pass with a motorized bike in a closed area for motorized access. That is the only part that gets the hate.

[trophyhunt]

750 watt and lower isn’t considered “motorized “ , that’s according to the federal law.  Having an ebike, I’ll go w that if it gets me behind gates with work trucks driving down them. For the record , I’m not talking about trespassing, I don’t do that.

[CP]

What's the mpg of these ebikes if you are using a Honda 2200 to recharge them?

It's like an 8 hr charge time for a 500Ah battery

honda 2200 will charge for 8 hrs on a single gallon of gas..so 20mpg? on an ebike?  (if you're charging one battery fully drained)

under hunting conditions I highly doubt you'd get 40 miles on a battery (guessing 20 miles)  but if you ran multiple batteries and only discharged to 50% you could charge 2 at once for 4 hours. 
The 2200 Honda could charge a bunch of them at once, the more batteries you charge at 5 amps the more your "fuel economy" would be on each bike. 

What really needs to happen is solid state batteries in the ebikes, then you could use far more of the Honda's capacity and charge in a small fraction of the time, your MPG would go way up, and your battery would last far longer. 

5amp charging on current ebikes means the genny is just idling along wasting a 90% of its fuel

Interesting question, the engineer in me had to calculate an answer, at least my best SWAG.

Honda claims .12 gph producing 1800 watts (that’s a good generator).  My Rad mini came with a 672wh battery and I get about 25 miles on that, loaded down, gravel roads, pedaling in “fat American” mode.  Actually, I weigh 225lbs but I’m 6’4”, not exactly fat but I’ll accept lazy.

But there is a 5amp fuse in the battery’s charge circuit so I can’t use that full 1800 watts.  I have a 4amp charger, 4amps @ 54volts = 216 watts.  Let’s go with that.  Since we are wasting most the generator’s capacity, we don’t have to worry about the charger efficiency.

Full charge in 3.1 hours using about .37 gallons of gas.  67 mpg –
If we had more batteries and more chargers we could do much better. 

Anyone want to check my math?

PS - There are 33.7 kilowatt hours in a gallon of gas.  That would charge that battery 50 times if we could achieve 100% efficiency.

[KFhunter]

I'm not sure how you're getting a full charge in 3h, what is your baseline battery depletion rate?

[CP]

I'm not sure how you're getting a full charge in 3h, what is your baseline battery depletion rate?

Charge time = battery capacity(watt hours)/charge power(watts) = 672wh/216w = 3.1hrs

It will actually be less, you can't deplete the battery all the way, but the charge rate slows down as the battery gets near 100%.  It's my best guess.

[kselkhunter]

Ebikes typically have 8Ah to 30Ah batteries.  And are usually either 36V or 48V.  So we're talking 288 Wh to 1440Wh, with the typical around 672Wh.  Chargers are usually either 2 amps or 5 amps.  At 5 amps, a 48V charger will typically charge a dead 14Ah battery (the most common) in about  3 hours.  But the battery is not usually fully dead, so less than 3 hours.

[KFhunter]

That's actually better than I thought.  Figured at 4w charge it would take about 8h to charge a 500wh battery from "dead"

Its still old tech batteries, the solid state about to hit the market in a year or so will allow much higher wattage charging, using up that honda 2200 genny.  I don't know what the capacity of solid state vs lithium but expect double or more, and a fraction of the charge time.

Should also have far more charge cycles while maintaining 80% capacity of new.

I'll keep burning gas until then.

[KFhunter]

It would be lunacy to buy an electric vehicle now!  The Ford Lighting is going to be a huge flop, outdated before it even hits the floor.

[kselkhunter]

EVs with solid state batteries won't arrive in production cars until around 2030. 


I'm considering a DIY ebike by converting my old mountain bike with one of the DIY kits.  Not sure if I'm going for crank or wheel hub on the motor. But planning on doing a larger capacity LifePo4 battery on the rack over the rear wheel.   Can get them up to 50Ah capacity....which for my use I'd never need to charge it in the field....but probably will go for 25Ah as a better cost/weight trade-off.