This bike booster will probably come in at less than half the cost but the Bimotal kit is another option that doesn't have the tire wear issue, offers better performance, and the form factor is much nicer.
Wow, $2k? You could get a decent ebike for that money. And the installation doesn't look any easier than a hub motor... Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike. I think of friction drives as being aimed at budget-conscious commuters, not serious mountain bikers.
I was shocked by the price, too. I mean a motor and a battery can't be so expensive, especially such a "small" battery (300Wh).
That being said, having driven electric bikes for a while, here in France they're ridiculously limited in speed and power. 25km/h limit on flat land usually makes sense (except on long straight lines), but when you get climbing even slightly you get down to ~10km/h and have to provide more effort. I guess that's where the 750/1250W 70Nm unrestrained motor comes in handy, and if you live in a place with lots of small hills the choice is either that kind of motor or a car, not the 1000€-total Decathlon/Carrefour electric bike.
I have a heap of ebikes, all 250w and 25km/h limited. A Bosch performance line motor on a MTB going up a steep hill is effortless compared to a budget shimano motor where it can barely make it up no matter how much effort you put in to pedalling. Torque makes a big difference.
In my experience the issue is one of torque, not of power. Most cheaper electric bicycles (including most Decathlon models) have a hub-mounted motor which cannot deliver power effectively at low speeds -> it stops assisting when you most need it. For hilly terrain you need a motor that's mounted on the crankshaft so that it can take advantage of the gears.
To compare: a tour de france runner outputs 400-500W on mountain climbs while keeping up to 20-25km/h. So a 500W motor (plus 100W power output from yourself) should be enough for smaller climbs!
My Koga has an Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission, which frees me from thinking about shifting, so I can pay more attention to riding safely and effortlessly.
DonHopkins 44 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]
Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission (never manually shift again, accelerate while continuously shifting under load), with a carbon fiber belt drive (maintainance free, silent, never get grease on your pants or hands again), and Bosch Performance Line mid-motor (strong zippy performance from the geniuses who paid a €90 million fine for Dieselgate), plus GPS tracker with "recovery service" (required for insurance).
It's a dream bike, optimized for comfort and city riding, but Koga is not available in the US, though.
Here's an American bike that has similar features (not as nice as the high-end Koga Evia Pro Automatic though), the Harley Davidson Rush/CTY (step through model is easiest to mount/unmount/ride):
The Enviolo Automatic also come in a heavy duty version paired with high performance motors for bakfiets (cargo bikes), for 3-4 children, big dogs, and groceries:
Fair, they're ideal for city bikes, stop-and-go traffic, and the flat Dutch landscape where they're produced, where the biggest "mountains" you encounter are the bridges over canals. Their city model has 310%, trekking 380%, and the new utility hub has 400% gear range, which you can use on a normal bike, bakfiets, or speed pedelec.
Bimotal is removable after the installation: the motor and battery can both be taken off in under 30 seconds and you're left with just the cables and a specialized brake disc. I'd say that's its main differentiator. It is definitely more for premium bikes though and even then isn't for everyone.
As a mountain biker I don’t see the appeal of this. Yes, this rather expensive solution could transform my nice bike into a shitty e-bike, but the point of having a nice bike is to avoid a shitty experience.
A proper e-bike needs to be designed as an e-bike from the beginning.
That made me question who this is for. Looks like it's only for racing bikes that have taken off the rear mudguard. And those bikes are typically used to exercise..
Which makes me wonder about the cleaning after it rained..
Only commuter and bikepacking bikes have mudguards, almost nobody puts one on a mountain bike or a proper road bike, regardless of whether they’re electrified. This looks like it’s more for these “sporty” categories of bikes.
Only because there are so many targets to steal from. And by Asia you mean China, where E bikes are rarely very fancy and often the size of a moped (except for the ride shares, which are still bricks and GPS tracked). And judging by the noise level at the hotel I stayed at in Chengdu a couple of weeks ago, they definitely come with theft alarms.
Do they work with mountain bikes? As stupid as this sounds I like mountain biking but I don’t have stamina to climb up hills and then keep doing for a long time. I have an electric bike but designed for road
I'd be quite worried about breaking it in the not unlikely event of a crash, additionally it looks like it could quite significantly limit how low you could put your seat down on a mountain bike, so that would get in the way. Even if you got your seat down, it would add a significant amount of height above the tyre so you mighn't be able to move your arse far enough back to shift your weight property. It's also adding nearly 4kg weight relatively high up which probably isn't the end of the world but would be better if it wasn't so high up.
It says on the website it will fit hardtails but not full sus, and that it isn't recommended on knobby tyres due to performance which isn't ideal either.
I could be wrong on all of this but those are just the concerns coming to mind as another mountain biker.
Yeah. I don’t see weather or theft addressed in this design.
I recall a wheel-mounted rotor system from a few years back that did address theft, tire-wear, and weather, but it suffered from far too little torque and very limited battery life.
It looks like their solution is to make it easy enough to install and remove you take it with you. My thought would be security bolts so the pool of thieves is at least limited to people with the right bolt head. Also it has a big battery built in so
That's right, people steal bikes because they are inherently evil and want to make baby Jesus cry.
I think it's ok to define "survive" as an addict who needs (<-also loosely defined) a fix.
You don't generally commit serious white collar crime, tax fraud or do crypto grifts to survive. For petty street crime, I don't really see any other motivation.
> Theft is solved by making society better, not worse.
Phew, good to hear. Here I thought it would be a hard and complex problem, with lots of unknown unknowns, difficult political compromises, a generation-spanning efforts and many potential solutions with uncertain outcomes, partially contradicting each other.
Instead, we just have to make society better. So, what's step 1?
Step 1 could be not turning the world into a an Orwellian nightmare and outlawing mass surveillance, from both government and private corporations.
And if you are still worried about theft in the mean time, you could try looking at wage thefts which has a value greater than all other forms of theft combined.
Cameras don't solve crimes, Flock or otherwise, unless the cops consider the crime serious. It is almost universal that cops don't consider bike theft serious. This is beginning to change in a few cities but not most.
From what I can tell, they are mostly fully occupied with dealing with emergency situations and domestic violence calls. There isn’t the resources allocated to searching for bikes. Especially when there often isn’t much to go off.
Making the search process easier makes locating stolen stuff becomes more of an office job that’s cheaper to do so the math works out better.
There's usually a fairly small number of criminals in the population and they have short careers. Otherwise, the whole enterprise of society wouldn't be viable.
So once you take them off the streets for a couple of years, or decades for the more hardened ones, it's fine. It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods.
"It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods" is probably the most naive thing I've ever heard.
I also think you have no idea how much it costs per prisoner per year.
I also think you have no idea how much harder it is for someone to get a job, housing, a partner, etc after they have a conviction. Or how much whatever life they had falls apart, which includes partners, friends, family. And guess what happens when you strip away all of someone's social connections? They lose that safety net, and are now dependent upon whatever society as whole provides. And in the US we have people saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" non-ironically, not realizing the whole fucking point of that phrase is that recovering from poverty in the US is extremely difficult.
That money is better spent on helping people who are not able to afford basic necessities, because that is why a lot of people commit property crime.
I suggest you actually open up some studies on this subject because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Or just open up a chart reflecting the economy over the decades and compare it with property crime rates.
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by both headcount and percentage of the population. How's that working for us? We have one of the higher property and violent crime rates among developed nations. Far higher than nations where criminals are imprisoned for rehabilitation, not to punish. Things like giving them a cell that looks like a bedroom, not pen in an animal shelter.
Police here don’t even care to help if your car is stolen and you have GPS on it. Cameras and jail do nothing to help protect your property if the police refuse to work.
Aside from the fact that there's little to no actual evidence (not funded by flock cherry-picking, and doing a lot of extremely thin correlation/causation nonsense...
No, it's actually solved by providing social safety net programs and managing the economy to have entry level accessible jobs that pay a living wage. People steal because they run out of other options. The cost of flock contracts would be far better spent on food pantries, job counseling, emergency housing...
There is nearly zero correlation between the number of police and the amount of crime.
They will still steal your seat, lights, wheel, and any other bit they can get.
Sure you can use all number of locks, security bolts, and stripping the bike down yourself every time you leave it, but it’s sucks. You’d rather public spaces just be safe.
I just got a new bike for my son (he's going to secondary school and needs a better bike), and was surprised to see how many kids' bikes came without fenders. What's up with that? Who wants a serious bike without fenders?
Of course most bikes still come with fenders, but that's also a major limitation for this device: you've got to remove your rear fender. Maybe this device acts somewhat as a fender, but the site says you can't use it in heavy rain, exactly when you need that fender the most.
Being cynical I would say it is yet another way to upsell.
Here in Germany if you want to get a cheaper bicycle, other than flea markets, usually they make you mount the pedals yourself, doesn't have fenders, lights might also be missing, depending on the offer.
Are you looking at performance road bikes? Fenders and lights are removed for weight savings, and for pedals there are multiple clip-in systems, you are supposed to install the pedals that match your chosen system.
If, however, they are doing that for commuter bikes...
I guess that’s the reason you don’t understand why bikes are sold without these things. €400 gets you a very, very, very low-end new bike, like just one step above “unsafe to ride”.
You often don’t get pedals on new bikes because you have your favorite pedals that work for you and anything that’s included with the bike goes straight to the bin, because it’s useless trash. You don’t get fenders, because you don’t usually use those on any kind of sporty bike. They’re heavy, they don’t usually work that well, they are often hard to use in bikes with suspension with longer travel or and they can rattle or simply break and fall off if you ride hard. You don’t get lights and reflective elements, because they’re heavy plastic crap that breaks and falls off. If you often ride at night, you probably own some kind of night gear, high powered LEDs, reflective stickers or spokes…
And obviously once that is the norm for “bikes” in general, then why not save a few cents on supermarket bikes.
Personally I also don't see the niche they serve. If I'm going far away I take a train or a car. I pretty much exclusively use my bike to ride to a nearby grocery store or do other close-by errands. If I'm doing short errands like this, I really prize being able to get on and off quickly and lock my bike up quickly. A device like this needs to be taken with you when you leave your bike to prevent theft. It's a whole nother step and a lot of extra weight
People who already invested in an expensive traditional bike and want to have the option to add electric support to make trips easier and faster without having to deal with selling their current bike and buying an even more expensive e-bike.
There’s also the fact that many people have bike racks that are fine for traditional bikes but not the additional requirements necessary for some (most?) e-bikes such as weight and strength.
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Just because it doesn’t work for you and your specific worldview doesn’t mean others wouldn’t see value in it.
When I read your comment before the article I thought it was some sort of complicated contraption in multiple parts. Instead it seems pretty compact and easy to disengage. I’m not sure what you’re missing in terms of a niche either. Anyone who just wants to ride with less effort but use their existing bike?
Looks like you can't have a passenger anymore either. I like to have my kid on the backseat of my e-bike.
I'm not in the market for this, but I am in the market for making my cargo bike electric. Having to slow down at a traffic light and then start from zero absolutely sucks. It goes very slow, it is rough, and you won't have time. I'd use it just for that specific use-case.
Conversion kits that add a front hub motor are relatively affordable and easy to install. Should work with most cargo bikes if you can find one that's compatible with your wheel size. Something like: https://swytchbike.com/
I had a gas powered goped that worked that way years ago. Had all those problems but it was fun. The second you hit any water the drive shaft would just spin against the tire.
I remember back in the 90s some guys at my school fitted a whipper snipper motor to a 12” kiddy bike with a friction drive (I think it was a skateboard wheel fitted to the output shaft).
Go ahead, sit down with a piece of paper and try to design it in a way that doesn’t prevent shifting, doesn’t skip under load, doesn’t require you to use a longer chain, works with rear suspension and doesn’t interfere with your legs.
Chain moves side to side with gear changes, and adding extra chain tension with an extra drive sprocket could make the deraileur angry. Also, chain-tube geometry varies a lot. Not impossible, just more complicated than it might seem.
I ride an all-original 1970s steel-frame road bike, which seems like a prime candidate for this sort of product. I'm certain no sprocket-based design would fit it. I'd buy one of these if there was any way to lock it up.
A smartphone app to change motor speed, really? Not even talking about your motor getting hacked (with the S in IOT standing for security and all), getting out a fragile device that captures all your attention while biking is really dangerous for you and the device.
So they say there's a button on the thing itself which is not so much more practical. If they insist on wireless controls, the cost of a waterproof battery-powered button to stick on the handlebars sounds worth it.
The strange part is that they already have wireless communication in the system, so adding a simple handlebar remote doesn't seem like a huge engineering leap
Throttled motors on ebikes are terribly unsafe, compared to pedal assist central motors. I just got rear-ended by an illegally hot-rodded fat bike with a throttle, when the asshole lost control of his bike after hitting my rear wheel trying to pass at illegally high speed without bothering to ring his bell, and he flipped over and spilled onto the bike path.
I was fine, but surprised he so carelessly and thoughtlessly sneaked up on me and tried to pass when I was already going fast downhill off of a bridge over a canal, on my legal eBike with 25 kph maximum assist.
Pedaling makes you pay attention and gives you direct control over the speed, and the assist drops out once you're going >25 kph. The asshole who hit me from behind probably didn't have time to find the throttle with his hand, and was never really in control of his bike or paying much attention up to when he freaked out and hit me.
To be clear, when i said we need controls on the handlebars, i was talking about an "assist level setting" like you have on the app, not a throttle. I had this on all my electric bikes: a button and a small LCD to indicate assist level 0-3.
Although in my experience when your bike/cargo is heavily loaded, a throttle is nice to get running, especially when stopped at a red light going uphill. Borrowed one like this and it was really useful. But i agree with your sentiment i see many people with throttled bikes going really fast and careless.
This drives me mad as well. Electric bikes should be limited to 25kph and non throttled in Europe, yet half the bikes I see are both, and drive recklessly.
The other day I was passed by one which kept up with the cars on the main road, which has a speed limit of 80km/h. Most cars don't go full speed there, but will reach at least 60km/h . On it were two young boys without helmets. It's insane.
Ouch, love to see a great product like this. However, hate to see that bike theft wasn’t discussed at all.
“Easy installation” with two screws seems like a benefit to customers except when they come back to their parked bike only to find their expensive mod also had a hidden feature: “easy uninstallation”.
That is the same for most bicycle parts that you can remove with a small multitool and optionally a cable cutter yet most thieves just grub the whole bike as it is more convenient and it provides the getaway vehicle.
This is an inherently inefficient design, where that inefficiency means increased 1) battery use and 2) tire wear.
From a cyclist’s perspective, this is fundamentally a stopgap product for “curious” customers dipping their toes into e-bikes. I don’t say that necessarily to criticize it. There’s a place for a product that someone can put on any old bike and see if they want to buy a more expensive long-term solution. But that doesn’t make it a product I’d recommend.
The tire wear problem is significant enough that there are heat resistant tires specifically for this type of drum application (designed for old-style indoor trainers, not for use on the road), because use on a drum will cause premature wear for normal road tires.
it's also likely mildly more dangerous than a standard ebike, as ebikes typically overprovision their brakes. A customer putting this on a standard bike (especially a disc brake bike) might have less stopping power than they want on an ebike.
Why “especially a disc brake bike”? They’re the most reliable and resilient system so far, especially compared to rim brakes (V-brakes or cantilevers).
The requirement for better brakes is more a myth. Yes an e-bike is heavier but the rider + bike pair is not significantly heavier so e-bikes don't really need better brakes as most of them aren't going significantly faster than regular "muscular bikes", especially the legal ones that have an assistance speed limit. Rider weight makes a much bigger difference yet bike brands don't insist on speccing more powerful brakes on bigger riders.
As an experienced mountain biker I’d love if the downvoters could engage with the comment. I agree with it. A proper legal e-bike, especially when clamped to 25 km/h or a similar limit, doesn’t really need that much stopping power than a comparable regular bike. Maybe the sum of all the factors (often less experienced riders, slightly more speed in some situations, slightly higher weight) warrants going to a bigger rotor diameter or a different brake pads compound, which is how it’s usually done. But it’s still nothing compared to speccing cargo bike brakes or tandem brakes, there you really have to account for the weight and go all the way to like 200mm rotors and four-pot calipers.
I wouldn't worry about it in this application, because the added weight and power is so minimal. Also: many of the cheap ebikes ($1000-1500 range) have absolutely terrible, underprovisioned brakes.
Nothing Tokyo specific about that, biking in the rain is dangerous and generally sucky. I have good all weather gear, but I still end up with wet shoes/socks and muddy spray up my back and legs (yes, I have a mudguard, but it's not 100% effective).
I kind of like this. Not because it's necessarily the best way to electrify a bike, but because it's removable enough that your bike can still just be... a bike
It looks like you have to remove your rear fender thought. I would rather just use the rye bread engine a little more, than not being able to bike on wet roads (or being sprayed with mud).
It seems to me this is a product for almost no one. Inefficient delivery of power, bulky, "smart" detection in stead of reliable operation and most importantly, the only target market I could imagine cannot use it. Not sure about other places and climates, but over here, most bicycles have fenders.
Bicycles without fenders are typically used for specific recreational activities and those sure as heck do not want this clumsy thing attached.. If they want any form of electrical assistance they would want it a lot more sleek and efficient.
Other than that, it reminds me of the Spartamet, a Dutch piece of tech from 1985 which added a small combustion engine to an otherwise regular city bike.
If the road is even little bit wet like after rain or morning mist, the dirt from the road ends up in your backside without fenders unless you drive very slowly.
Find a bicycle without mudguards and ride very slowly, or just ride on clean roads on a sunny days.
Solex got used much longer than post WWII, the engine is very easy to service. I had one when I was 15, and most of my friends did as well. Everyone in the village had either a "solex" or an old "mobilette".
I actually bought one of these and love it. My road bike is indistinguishable from any other normal road bike with the exception of it being much easier to get around now.
From experience I can say that it seems like a lot more common sense to simply replace the front wheel of your bike with a wheel containing an electric motor, rather than attaching whatever Asus is selling to your bike.
It says it has a wireless cadence sensor. With that said, torque sensors were an improvement over cadence sensors.
To elaborate a bit, friends of mine have had bikes with both cadence and torque sensors. And I've tried their bikes out. Agreeing with one friend, the bike with the cadence sensor seems to decide how fast it wants to go.
The bike with the torque sensor behaves a lot more like what you're used to from riding a conventional bike. After all, the control input to a conventional bike is torque.
> the bike with the cadence sensor seems to decide how fast it wants to go
Well yes, because there’s no other input. It’s an on/off switch, the bike just knows that you’re pedaling. Usually there are multiple power levels you can switch between with a button, and those decide roughly how much of a push you get from the motor, but the power curves are all “hardcoded”. It doesn’t feel great for active riding, but it’s adequate for commuter bikes. Torque sensors are actually kind of expensive on their own.
> The bike with the torque sensor behaves a lot more like what you're used to from riding a conventional bike
I agree, but would like to point out that sometimes this might not be what you want. I had a bike with a front motor and a cadence sensor that I used for my commute for a few years, and was very happy with the motor just pulling me along while I lazily pushed the pedals with ~zero torque, barely enough to let the bike know I'm there. Basically like pressing a throttle. If all you want is to get from A to B comfortably, I've found this to be superior to a torque sensor, and it was also dirt cheap.
*“VéloSoleX is a moped, or motorised bicycle, usually just referred to as 'Solex', […] originally created during World War II and mass-produced between 1946 and 1988, came in various iterations, while keeping the same concept of a motor with a roller resting on the front wheel of a bicycle”*
This powers the back wheel, though. I think that’s better for propulsion but it seems you’re giving up carrying stuff or a child on the back of the bicycle. Can’t even have a rack there with this contraption.
That might be the easiest ebike retrofit/conversion I've ever seen. I have concerns about the grip in wet conditions but this looks like a great way to get that ebike I've wanted and not put my perfectly good frame to waste.
Similar friction drives have existed for a while. The battery is very small compared to a regular ebike (typically they start at about 300wh.) Also, IIRC the friction drive is not very efficient.
I think the number of people who want to use something like this when it's icy out is pretty small. You'd want studded tires, for instance... and it's generally those who are really committed who ride in those conditions. This looks more like 'dipping a toe in the eBike water'.
I saw. Most entry-level ebikes have at least 10ah * 36v batteries; a few lightweight models have 7ah. So this has about half the battery capacity of the cheapest ebikes.
A couple other people here mentioned that theft is an issue. That's yet another reason why folding bikes seemed like the best use case for this. Not as good as a folding bike that's made for being an E bike, but if you've already got a good folding bike and a bit more zip on your commute is what you need, this seems like a interesting product.
If I'm carrying around a giant battery I ought to be able to charge my devices from it, but it is silent on that front.
The design doesn't work if you have a mud guard or pannier rack. Also unclear how easily it is detached. Do I have to take it off everytime to prevent casual thievery? How do I take it off to charge inside? Does it have anti-theft bricking?
I'm struggling to understand who the target market is.
Hah, my dad made something like this for me when I was a kid using a weed eater engine, with a makeshift lever as a clutch to engage/disengage it. This looks about as makeshift, I wouldn't trust it for serious use.
All these sites have hype about AI features like AI Chat. however I use the chat, and it wastes about 3-10 seconds just to load, then I ask for the price, and it fails to understand even the page we were on (edit: "I don't understand what product you're referring to, please tell me the product"). Then I literally paste the page's product from the page into the chat, and it finally wastes my time more and sends a whole essay blob about why it can't tell me the price.
Is this what investors sell to the board about how they are using AI for greater efficiency? Just to waste consumers time even more?
I just bought a Boost conversion kit from the UK and am excited to install it in a couple weeks. If anyone has installed this kit would appreciate a comment on the experience.
(I'm in the US and have been unimpressed with the kits available here. The Boost one looks compact and well designed).
This would be great to add to my 9 year old's bike. We couldn't do long bike tours anymore because he would stop biking after 100m, telling is he is completely exhausted and must go home. I was looking for something like this!
It feels like a great product but targeted at a surprisingly transient customer base.
The cycling guys won't buy it, they want the watts from their legs.
The commuters will just get an ebike eventually.
The getting started crowd will eventually become one of these 2 or stop riding a bike altogether. Since I didn't see how much this cost, if it cost as much as a commuter bike, I really don't know who would buy something like this.
10 km Sports and 50 km Eco range is a no go. Plus they explicitly deny carbon fiber bikes, bikes with suspension, and tire choice is rather limited. You could've invested in a decent trekking bike with a standard motor instead, at least you get that hind wheel storage space free.
Haha, I like all these adapter designs though my favourite was the Copenhagen Wheel[0]. I saw someone ride one near Mission and S Van Ness and loved it. Sleek device. This particular one in the OP is definitely built for safe societies, right? Definitely not for the North American market, haha!
Basically, the Copenhagen Wheel moved all the complexity of setting up a hub motor drive system - motor, battery, controller, sensors, computer - into the hub shell itself.
Which made it seem neat and clean, but meant it had serious reliability issues, couldn't handle wet conditions[], wasn't really repairable, and was expensive compared to more reliable alternatives with better battery life, etc.
Psst, you can escape an asterisk [*] with a backslash.
Hub gears work quite well though don't they? In particular respect of being sealed and protected from the weather. Unclear why there's an opposite effect for this wheel.
I see. The way I spoke made it seem like I was talking about the Copenhagen wheel with the phrase “this particular one”. I was talking about the OP device. Obviously since Mission and SVN is in the US I would have assumed it was not the CW but I can see that I was unclear so I have clarified. The Copenhagen wheel is pretty integrated. This one is a thumb screw and off you run with a valuable battery. I wouldn’t buy it here and I bike every day in the city.
People who don’t bicycle in North America won’t quite get it. It’s not exactly Taiwan. Theft is rampant and it’s societally sanctioned in most major cities.
I see winter version of this. You need custom roller with holes for a particular stud pattern. So there is no slipping and no tire wear. And maybe the roller is made of metal so the snow does not stick to it.
I absolutely would not give up my double panniers and rack. I put a small Tom Bihn Bag "Daylight Backpack" with my laptop in one, and the bike charger and food and other junk in the other, empty my pockets into the zipper bag, and then I'm totally unencumbered for riding and have unlimited distance since I can plug in and charge the battery if it gets low. Riding with a backpack on my back or even stuff in my pockets is a drag. The panniers are also great for grocery and other shopping.
Me: when's the bike booster available to purchase?
ASUS AI: For the most accurate and up-to-date product release information, we recommend following our Facebook and Instagram channels. We share all our launch announcements there first, along with exciting product previews.
Hilarious advice given both Meta products are notorious for not showing everything from the accounts you follow.
some bike vendor told me that the biggest problem with regular to ebike conversion was that regular bike frames were not strong enough to support the additional forces that the electric bike imposed. And it was why the ebikes were much heavier than regular bikes.
Does anyone know if that’s true and if that applies to conversions like this one?
It's less of an issue for this device. The reason is that the motor is further from the axle than a hub motor would be. Thus, there's less force on the frame for a given amount of torque.
Depends on the bike and motor combo. Something like a mountain bike from the last 20 years would be fine, but I wouldn’t try and put one on like a road bike from the 70s or something. Basically anything that’s well built sturdy steel is going to be ok with the common sub kilowatt motors, but there are like crazy ones that will output considerably more power than that.
Also that’s going to be more applicable with a mid drive or a hub motor than something like this.
In the USA, there are more than 52 jurisdictions not including towns and cities and counties, but most (not all) states think of ebikes as being slightly restricted bicycles rather than motorcycles, as long as:
- they have functional pedals (otherwise it's a motorcycle of some kind)
- they require pedal assist at all times and have some kind of power or speed limitation (anyone can use this, or at least it is least restricted)
- they have pedal assist available and have a different, higher power or speed limitation (usually reserved for 16+ or something similar)
- they have a power or speed limitation that makes them suitable for adults only but doesn't require a driver's license or inspection
There are efforts to regularize these, and also efforts to make things more chaotic. For example, New Jersey decided that all ebikes require a new ebike license and vehicle registration. Across the river in New York, no ebikes require a license or registration, and may be operated on any street which has a 30mph speed limit or less... but cities are allowed to make their own rules.
California's laws are mostly regarded by bicyclists as being sensible, at least in every discussion I've seen that didn't feature a twelve year old trying to convince his parents to buy him a 70mph electric motorcycle. See https://thecyclistchoice.com/resources/california-ebike-laws...
In most jurisdictions it's only a motorcycle if it can exceed a certain speed or has a motor over a certain power in kilowatts. Or some combination of both.
There's no restriction on manufacturing e-bikes anywhere that I know of, as long as they obey the speed/power limits. (That's why it says 500W "peak" power - the continuous power limit in the UK at least is 250W but manufacturers just make the "peak" last for a very long time.)
If I bought this I might want a brake upgrade. Even though it probably provides only about 150W (I always assume ebike power ratings are inflated), the extra weight alone warrants disc brakes IMHO.
When I see obvious out of shape ebikers passing me uphill while barely moving their legs, I’m assuming that the power rating of their ebike is about right and the torque curve might be weird to stay legal.
I agree that rim brakes on an e-bike is extra bad.
i have a folding cycle and a fat bike. my only two devices still analog and keep me reasonably fit. i dont wanna e-bike them. but if i wanna long distance, this could be nice.
These would be great for many places that have storage restrictions on e-bikes, but not normal bikes. So you can easily detach and bring with you before storing it.
Anything for the world to actually avoid the health benefits of riding a bike. What is wrong with a standard human powered bike? I expect a global obesity epidemic in 10 years as people begin buying/building WALL-E-style beds.
People with knee problems, areas with hills. An ebike is still active movement; sure you're not getting any cardio, but it's immeasurably better than driving. If this (or any ebike) is a thing that gets someone on a bike that otherwise wouldn't be on a bike, it is a good thing. For some it might be a stepping stone, for others it allows them to ride where they can't/won't ride at all.
"Physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists."
E-bikes make people who aren't fit enough to ride muscle powered bikes to start doing moderate exercise on local trips they would used cars for before.
Found the person who lives in Kansas. Sometimes I just want to ride to work without having to deal with that 2km hill on the way. And my bike is still human-powered, with electric assist. Do you not know how e-bikes work, perhaps?
I suspect not. Even though ebikes are common now, I often hear this comment. Ebikes assist your pedaling; they don't pedal for you. (Well some can pedal for you but you learn quickly that if you let the motor do all the work you'll run the battery down and then you will have to do all the work pedaling a 65-lb bicycle home.)
Lots of people seem to think if a motor is present, then the motor is doing all the work. Ebikes are not motorcycles. What the motor actually does is make the hills less steep and less long. It's a lowpass filter for terrain.
Friction drive e-bike conversions were popular years ago.
They generally:
* Wear tires surprisingly quickly
* Absolutely suck in any form of weather or terrain condition (dirt, rain, etc.)
* Have ~20% less efficiency than any other drive form.
But, they are easy, and they do work.
This bike booster will probably come in at less than half the cost but the Bimotal kit is another option that doesn't have the tire wear issue, offers better performance, and the form factor is much nicer.
https://bimotal.com/products/elevate
Wow, $2k? You could get a decent ebike for that money. And the installation doesn't look any easier than a hub motor... Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike. I think of friction drives as being aimed at budget-conscious commuters, not serious mountain bikers.
$2k makes sense only if the bike underneath it is valuable enough that you specifically want to keep riding that bike
I was shocked by the price, too. I mean a motor and a battery can't be so expensive, especially such a "small" battery (300Wh).
That being said, having driven electric bikes for a while, here in France they're ridiculously limited in speed and power. 25km/h limit on flat land usually makes sense (except on long straight lines), but when you get climbing even slightly you get down to ~10km/h and have to provide more effort. I guess that's where the 750/1250W 70Nm unrestrained motor comes in handy, and if you live in a place with lots of small hills the choice is either that kind of motor or a car, not the 1000€-total Decathlon/Carrefour electric bike.
I have a heap of ebikes, all 250w and 25km/h limited. A Bosch performance line motor on a MTB going up a steep hill is effortless compared to a budget shimano motor where it can barely make it up no matter how much effort you put in to pedalling. Torque makes a big difference.
In my experience the issue is one of torque, not of power. Most cheaper electric bicycles (including most Decathlon models) have a hub-mounted motor which cannot deliver power effectively at low speeds -> it stops assisting when you most need it. For hilly terrain you need a motor that's mounted on the crankshaft so that it can take advantage of the gears.
To compare: a tour de france runner outputs 400-500W on mountain climbs while keeping up to 20-25km/h. So a 500W motor (plus 100W power output from yourself) should be enough for smaller climbs!
My Koga has an Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission, which frees me from thinking about shifting, so I can pay more attention to riding safely and effortlessly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48761621
DonHopkins 44 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]
Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission (never manually shift again, accelerate while continuously shifting under load), with a carbon fiber belt drive (maintainance free, silent, never get grease on your pants or hands again), and Bosch Performance Line mid-motor (strong zippy performance from the geniuses who paid a €90 million fine for Dieselgate), plus GPS tracker with "recovery service" (required for insurance).
https://enviolo.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQrgKBQrkag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xY2S-9gjHI
https://www.koga.com/en/enviolo-gear-hub
https://www.koga.com/en/bikes/e-bikes/evia-pro-automatic?fra...
It's a dream bike, optimized for comfort and city riding, but Koga is not available in the US, though.
Here's an American bike that has similar features (not as nice as the high-end Koga Evia Pro Automatic though), the Harley Davidson Rush/CTY (step through model is easiest to mount/unmount/ride):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SjN8RN9g7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoX9S5UhETE
https://serial1.nl/
The Enviolo Automatic also come in a heavy duty version paired with high performance motors for bakfiets (cargo bikes), for 3-4 children, big dogs, and groceries:
https://batavus.com/en-nl/products/fier-3-bbfn3
https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-pays-90-million-euro-fine-over-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Edit:
Fair, they're ideal for city bikes, stop-and-go traffic, and the flat Dutch landscape where they're produced, where the biggest "mountains" you encounter are the bridges over canals. Their city model has 310%, trekking 380%, and the new utility hub has 400% gear range, which you can use on a normal bike, bakfiets, or speed pedelec.
https://enviolo.com/news/enviolo-launches-the-utility-hub/
> Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike
How nice should one's bike be that you'd rather turn it into a mediocre ebike for the price of buying a good ebike?
Extrordinarily nice! AAH! HA HA! HA HA! AAH! GERONIMO! HA HA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg_1LOYLPsM
You can get a nice ebike for that money if you're even slightly patient in waiting for a sale to hit.
Bimotal is removable after the installation: the motor and battery can both be taken off in under 30 seconds and you're left with just the cables and a specialized brake disc. I'd say that's its main differentiator. It is definitely more for premium bikes though and even then isn't for everyone.
As a mountain biker I don’t see the appeal of this. Yes, this rather expensive solution could transform my nice bike into a shitty e-bike, but the point of having a nice bike is to avoid a shitty experience.
A proper e-bike needs to be designed as an e-bike from the beginning.
I made one in 1985 for my 10 speed bike, it was pretty fun for a while. I was in my early teens at the time.
Also:
* you cannot install them on bikes with a rear rack. Here most city bikes have them.
That made me question who this is for. Looks like it's only for racing bikes that have taken off the rear mudguard. And those bikes are typically used to exercise..
Which makes me wonder about the cleaning after it rained..
Nobody who rides a road bike would be seen dead with something like this. There are proper road ebikes for that.
Only commuter and bikepacking bikes have mudguards, almost nobody puts one on a mountain bike or a proper road bike, regardless of whether they’re electrified. This looks like it’s more for these “sporty” categories of bikes.
Wet-weather performance in particular seems like the thing I'd want to see independently tested
And, don't forget: easy to steal off even a well-secured bicycle.
That's not a problem in Asia.
Only because there are so many targets to steal from. And by Asia you mean China, where E bikes are rarely very fancy and often the size of a moped (except for the ride shares, which are still bricks and GPS tracked). And judging by the noise level at the hotel I stayed at in Chengdu a couple of weeks ago, they definitely come with theft alarms.
Bike theft common in Japan
Do they work with mountain bikes? As stupid as this sounds I like mountain biking but I don’t have stamina to climb up hills and then keep doing for a long time. I have an electric bike but designed for road
I'd be quite worried about breaking it in the not unlikely event of a crash, additionally it looks like it could quite significantly limit how low you could put your seat down on a mountain bike, so that would get in the way. Even if you got your seat down, it would add a significant amount of height above the tyre so you mighn't be able to move your arse far enough back to shift your weight property. It's also adding nearly 4kg weight relatively high up which probably isn't the end of the world but would be better if it wasn't so high up.
It says on the website it will fit hardtails but not full sus, and that it isn't recommended on knobby tyres due to performance which isn't ideal either.
I could be wrong on all of this but those are just the concerns coming to mind as another mountain biker.
Yeah. I don’t see weather or theft addressed in this design.
I recall a wheel-mounted rotor system from a few years back that did address theft, tire-wear, and weather, but it suffered from far too little torque and very limited battery life.
It looks like their solution is to make it easy enough to install and remove you take it with you. My thought would be security bolts so the pool of thieves is at least limited to people with the right bolt head. Also it has a big battery built in so
Thieves will just take the whole bike.
Tbh solving this is one of the actual use cases for things like flock cameras.
Simply bolting things down harder is still defeated by a battery powered grinder.
Theft is solved by making society better, not worse. Make people not want or reliant upon crime to survive.
No one relies on bike theft to "survive".
No one goes around stealing bikes just because they want to do bad things.
What are you basing that on?
That's right, people steal bikes because they are inherently evil and want to make baby Jesus cry.
I think it's ok to define "survive" as an addict who needs (<-also loosely defined) a fix.
You don't generally commit serious white collar crime, tax fraud or do crypto grifts to survive. For petty street crime, I don't really see any other motivation.
> Theft is solved by making society better, not worse.
Phew, good to hear. Here I thought it would be a hard and complex problem, with lots of unknown unknowns, difficult political compromises, a generation-spanning efforts and many potential solutions with uncertain outcomes, partially contradicting each other.
Instead, we just have to make society better. So, what's step 1?
Step 1 could be not turning the world into a an Orwellian nightmare and outlawing mass surveillance, from both government and private corporations.
And if you are still worried about theft in the mean time, you could try looking at wage thefts which has a value greater than all other forms of theft combined.
Cameras don't solve crimes, Flock or otherwise, unless the cops consider the crime serious. It is almost universal that cops don't consider bike theft serious. This is beginning to change in a few cities but not most.
From what I can tell, they are mostly fully occupied with dealing with emergency situations and domestic violence calls. There isn’t the resources allocated to searching for bikes. Especially when there often isn’t much to go off.
Making the search process easier makes locating stolen stuff becomes more of an office job that’s cheaper to do so the math works out better.
It's actually solved by putting thieves in prison (by the help of flock cameras).
Is it though? Does prison work as a deterrence to others?
There's usually a fairly small number of criminals in the population and they have short careers. Otherwise, the whole enterprise of society wouldn't be viable.
So once you take them off the streets for a couple of years, or decades for the more hardened ones, it's fine. It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods.
Do you have any kind of education in this area? Because that doesn’t sound like the little that I’ve read about sociology and psychology.
On one hand, you’re breaking existing networks; on the other hand you are establishing a social club for new ones.
That person is insanely naive - either very young, or very lacking in life experience and worldly knowledge.
"It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods" is probably the most naive thing I've ever heard.
I also think you have no idea how much it costs per prisoner per year.
I also think you have no idea how much harder it is for someone to get a job, housing, a partner, etc after they have a conviction. Or how much whatever life they had falls apart, which includes partners, friends, family. And guess what happens when you strip away all of someone's social connections? They lose that safety net, and are now dependent upon whatever society as whole provides. And in the US we have people saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" non-ironically, not realizing the whole fucking point of that phrase is that recovering from poverty in the US is extremely difficult.
That money is better spent on helping people who are not able to afford basic necessities, because that is why a lot of people commit property crime.
I suggest you actually open up some studies on this subject because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Or just open up a chart reflecting the economy over the decades and compare it with property crime rates.
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by both headcount and percentage of the population. How's that working for us? We have one of the higher property and violent crime rates among developed nations. Far higher than nations where criminals are imprisoned for rehabilitation, not to punish. Things like giving them a cell that looks like a bedroom, not pen in an animal shelter.
The idea is that it lowers the number of thieves.
Police here don’t even care to help if your car is stolen and you have GPS on it. Cameras and jail do nothing to help protect your property if the police refuse to work.
Where I live that’s a win win for thieves. Earn money stealing a bike, have a roof over your head and free food.
Aside from the fact that there's little to no actual evidence (not funded by flock cherry-picking, and doing a lot of extremely thin correlation/causation nonsense...
No, it's actually solved by providing social safety net programs and managing the economy to have entry level accessible jobs that pay a living wage. People steal because they run out of other options. The cost of flock contracts would be far better spent on food pantries, job counseling, emergency housing...
There is nearly zero correlation between the number of police and the amount of crime.
But Google's AI told me that Flock cameras are full of gold, so I steal those instead of bikes!
https://www.techspot.com/news/113381-google-ai-told-people-f...
AngryData> No one goes around stealing bikes just because they want to do bad things.
But people go around stealing Flock cameras because they want to do good things.
You don’t gotta be impossible to steal from, you just gotta be more annoying to steal from than the next guy.
Well said by somebody who's very obviously never used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation ;)
They will still steal your seat, lights, wheel, and any other bit they can get.
Sure you can use all number of locks, security bolts, and stripping the bike down yourself every time you leave it, but it’s sucks. You’d rather public spaces just be safe.
Just follow the old Eve online adage - don't fly what you can't afford to lose.
If there's lot of theft and you can't store bike at a secure place - have a cheap bike.
Can't use with mud guards
These sorts of seat mounted mud guards would work: https://ass-savers.com/ (yes, the URL is funny and seems a risky click)
And WTF is it about mud guards now?
When i was young all bicycles came with mud guard (then called "fenders") front and rear. Now they seem to be anathema.
Every bike I rode w/o fenders put a stripe of mud up my back!
I just got a new bike for my son (he's going to secondary school and needs a better bike), and was surprised to see how many kids' bikes came without fenders. What's up with that? Who wants a serious bike without fenders?
Of course most bikes still come with fenders, but that's also a major limitation for this device: you've got to remove your rear fender. Maybe this device acts somewhat as a fender, but the site says you can't use it in heavy rain, exactly when you need that fender the most.
Being cynical I would say it is yet another way to upsell.
Here in Germany if you want to get a cheaper bicycle, other than flea markets, usually they make you mount the pedals yourself, doesn't have fenders, lights might also be missing, depending on the offer.
Are you looking at performance road bikes? Fenders and lights are removed for weight savings, and for pedals there are multiple clip-in systems, you are supposed to install the pedals that match your chosen system.
If, however, they are doing that for commuter bikes...
Regular city bikes.
This is the approach if you go offers on regular supermarkets that also sell bicycles.
Personally I am never going to give more than 400 euros tops, for a new bicycle, it is either that or not much beyond 100 euros at a flea market.
Getting the bicycle stolen or worse, revenge damage when they fail to steal it, is not worth more than that.
I guess that’s the reason you don’t understand why bikes are sold without these things. €400 gets you a very, very, very low-end new bike, like just one step above “unsafe to ride”.
You often don’t get pedals on new bikes because you have your favorite pedals that work for you and anything that’s included with the bike goes straight to the bin, because it’s useless trash. You don’t get fenders, because you don’t usually use those on any kind of sporty bike. They’re heavy, they don’t usually work that well, they are often hard to use in bikes with suspension with longer travel or and they can rattle or simply break and fall off if you ride hard. You don’t get lights and reflective elements, because they’re heavy plastic crap that breaks and falls off. If you often ride at night, you probably own some kind of night gear, high powered LEDs, reflective stickers or spokes…
And obviously once that is the norm for “bikes” in general, then why not save a few cents on supermarket bikes.
Personally I also don't see the niche they serve. If I'm going far away I take a train or a car. I pretty much exclusively use my bike to ride to a nearby grocery store or do other close-by errands. If I'm doing short errands like this, I really prize being able to get on and off quickly and lock my bike up quickly. A device like this needs to be taken with you when you leave your bike to prevent theft. It's a whole nother step and a lot of extra weight
Are you elderly, differently able, live in extremely hilly or hot terrain, or only willing to bike if it’s half the current effort?
That plus “already has a bike” is a massive market.
People who already invested in an expensive traditional bike and want to have the option to add electric support to make trips easier and faster without having to deal with selling their current bike and buying an even more expensive e-bike.
There’s also the fact that many people have bike racks that are fine for traditional bikes but not the additional requirements necessary for some (most?) e-bikes such as weight and strength.
—-
Just because it doesn’t work for you and your specific worldview doesn’t mean others wouldn’t see value in it.
When I read your comment before the article I thought it was some sort of complicated contraption in multiple parts. Instead it seems pretty compact and easy to disengage. I’m not sure what you’re missing in terms of a niche either. Anyone who just wants to ride with less effort but use their existing bike?
Looks like you can't have a passenger anymore either. I like to have my kid on the backseat of my e-bike.
I'm not in the market for this, but I am in the market for making my cargo bike electric. Having to slow down at a traffic light and then start from zero absolutely sucks. It goes very slow, it is rough, and you won't have time. I'd use it just for that specific use-case.
If it’s for a chill cargo bike, just get a hub motor kit. It’s the proper solution, there are tons of them and they are cheap and durable.
Conversion kits that add a front hub motor are relatively affordable and easy to install. Should work with most cargo bikes if you can find one that's compatible with your wheel size. Something like: https://swytchbike.com/
Front mount or trailer for kid could work, but this seems inferior to your ebike.
Are there any mechanically coupled solutions that can be field installed by the owner?
Swytch Bike is one. Hub motor.
I had a gas powered goped that worked that way years ago. Had all those problems but it was fun. The second you hit any water the drive shaft would just spin against the tire.
I remember back in the 90s some guys at my school fitted a whipper snipper motor to a 12” kiddy bike with a friction drive (I think it was a skateboard wheel fitted to the output shaft).
They could have made basically the same thing except with a sprocket to help drive the chain.
Go ahead, sit down with a piece of paper and try to design it in a way that doesn’t prevent shifting, doesn’t skip under load, doesn’t require you to use a longer chain, works with rear suspension and doesn’t interfere with your legs.
Chain moves side to side with gear changes, and adding extra chain tension with an extra drive sprocket could make the deraileur angry. Also, chain-tube geometry varies a lot. Not impossible, just more complicated than it might seem.
I ride an all-original 1970s steel-frame road bike, which seems like a prime candidate for this sort of product. I'm certain no sprocket-based design would fit it. I'd buy one of these if there was any way to lock it up.
Tires wear out super fast. It's hard to say there is a market for this other than the uninformed.
A smartphone app to change motor speed, really? Not even talking about your motor getting hacked (with the S in IOT standing for security and all), getting out a fragile device that captures all your attention while biking is really dangerous for you and the device.
So they say there's a button on the thing itself which is not so much more practical. If they insist on wireless controls, the cost of a waterproof battery-powered button to stick on the handlebars sounds worth it.
The strange part is that they already have wireless communication in the system, so adding a simple handlebar remote doesn't seem like a huge engineering leap
Throttled motors on ebikes are terribly unsafe, compared to pedal assist central motors. I just got rear-ended by an illegally hot-rodded fat bike with a throttle, when the asshole lost control of his bike after hitting my rear wheel trying to pass at illegally high speed without bothering to ring his bell, and he flipped over and spilled onto the bike path.
I was fine, but surprised he so carelessly and thoughtlessly sneaked up on me and tried to pass when I was already going fast downhill off of a bridge over a canal, on my legal eBike with 25 kph maximum assist.
Pedaling makes you pay attention and gives you direct control over the speed, and the assist drops out once you're going >25 kph. The asshole who hit me from behind probably didn't have time to find the throttle with his hand, and was never really in control of his bike or paying much attention up to when he freaked out and hit me.
What to do about fatbikes endangering our safety?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/1knza1c/what_t...
Fatbikes in the Netherlands 2026: What You Actually Need to Know
https://bikefair.org/blog/fatbikes-netherlands-guide-2026
To be clear, when i said we need controls on the handlebars, i was talking about an "assist level setting" like you have on the app, not a throttle. I had this on all my electric bikes: a button and a small LCD to indicate assist level 0-3.
Although in my experience when your bike/cargo is heavily loaded, a throttle is nice to get running, especially when stopped at a red light going uphill. Borrowed one like this and it was really useful. But i agree with your sentiment i see many people with throttled bikes going really fast and careless.
This drives me mad as well. Electric bikes should be limited to 25kph and non throttled in Europe, yet half the bikes I see are both, and drive recklessly.
The other day I was passed by one which kept up with the cars on the main road, which has a speed limit of 80km/h. Most cars don't go full speed there, but will reach at least 60km/h . On it were two young boys without helmets. It's insane.
Clive Sinclair designed one of these in the 90s. It actually sold reasonably well, but was limited by the available battery technology of the period.
https://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/vehicles/zeta.htm
Yes my grandfather had one. It worked well on flat terrain. I think it used a motorcycle battery so batteries were easy to find and charge.
Ouch, love to see a great product like this. However, hate to see that bike theft wasn’t discussed at all.
“Easy installation” with two screws seems like a benefit to customers except when they come back to their parked bike only to find their expensive mod also had a hidden feature: “easy uninstallation”.
That is the same for most bicycle parts that you can remove with a small multitool and optionally a cable cutter yet most thieves just grub the whole bike as it is more convenient and it provides the getaway vehicle.
Most bicycle parts don’t cost thousands of dollars though
You don't even need to unscrew the motor : simply pull one-handed the seat release lever, and leave with both the seat and the motor attached.
pitlock pit stoppers?
https://www.pitlock.de/en/set-sichert-2-innensechskantschrau...
They could ship it with a pair of those bolts where the heads break off during installation
In addition to the theft concerns, it's also not a great product.
in addition, it also has not a great name... the word Oxis in Greek means "sharp", not agile. you can look for "οξύς"
for the non bikers, to help us understand, whats wrong with it?
This is an inherently inefficient design, where that inefficiency means increased 1) battery use and 2) tire wear.
From a cyclist’s perspective, this is fundamentally a stopgap product for “curious” customers dipping their toes into e-bikes. I don’t say that necessarily to criticize it. There’s a place for a product that someone can put on any old bike and see if they want to buy a more expensive long-term solution. But that doesn’t make it a product I’d recommend.
The tire wear problem is significant enough that there are heat resistant tires specifically for this type of drum application (designed for old-style indoor trainers, not for use on the road), because use on a drum will cause premature wear for normal road tires.
it's also likely mildly more dangerous than a standard ebike, as ebikes typically overprovision their brakes. A customer putting this on a standard bike (especially a disc brake bike) might have less stopping power than they want on an ebike.
Why “especially a disc brake bike”? They’re the most reliable and resilient system so far, especially compared to rim brakes (V-brakes or cantilevers).
The requirement for better brakes is more a myth. Yes an e-bike is heavier but the rider + bike pair is not significantly heavier so e-bikes don't really need better brakes as most of them aren't going significantly faster than regular "muscular bikes", especially the legal ones that have an assistance speed limit. Rider weight makes a much bigger difference yet bike brands don't insist on speccing more powerful brakes on bigger riders.
As an experienced mountain biker I’d love if the downvoters could engage with the comment. I agree with it. A proper legal e-bike, especially when clamped to 25 km/h or a similar limit, doesn’t really need that much stopping power than a comparable regular bike. Maybe the sum of all the factors (often less experienced riders, slightly more speed in some situations, slightly higher weight) warrants going to a bigger rotor diameter or a different brake pads compound, which is how it’s usually done. But it’s still nothing compared to speccing cargo bike brakes or tandem brakes, there you really have to account for the weight and go all the way to like 200mm rotors and four-pot calipers.
I wouldn't worry about it in this application, because the added weight and power is so minimal. Also: many of the cheap ebikes ($1000-1500 range) have absolutely terrible, underprovisioned brakes.
only real worry I'd have is a scenario like
1. someone has a cheap disc brake bike for pleasure rides (mostly in the sun)
2. they get something like this for commuting or whatever
3. now they're on their disc brake bike most days (including when it rains), going faster than they're used to
it's not the end of the world, but it also doesn't seem great
Destroys tires, very limited range/power due to poor power delivery from motor to tire. Parasitic drag when coasting or battery is dead.
Limited power delivery, horrible in the rain, prevents using fenders
Rain is an interesting thing, because the number of bikers in Tokyo goes down maybe by 60% or more the second it rains. I kinda avoid as well.
Nothing Tokyo specific about that, biking in the rain is dangerous and generally sucky. I have good all weather gear, but I still end up with wet shoes/socks and muddy spray up my back and legs (yes, I have a mudguard, but it's not 100% effective).
Would you need a fender with it there?
Yes, without a fender my rear wheel throws mud all over my back. This is not the right shape to serve as a mud shield
It’s directly above the wheel. I just use an ass saver and while that’s way inferior to your setup, it reduces the volume thrown up a lot.
They aren’t reliable or efficient.
This product is for people who live in safe neighborhoods and bike a lot, aka not the average American.
Where do you live where people bike a lot and yet bike theft isn't common?
I kind of like this. Not because it's necessarily the best way to electrify a bike, but because it's removable enough that your bike can still just be... a bike
It looks like you have to remove your rear fender thought. I would rather just use the rye bread engine a little more, than not being able to bike on wet roads (or being sprayed with mud).
It seems to me this is a product for almost no one. Inefficient delivery of power, bulky, "smart" detection in stead of reliable operation and most importantly, the only target market I could imagine cannot use it. Not sure about other places and climates, but over here, most bicycles have fenders.
Bicycles without fenders are typically used for specific recreational activities and those sure as heck do not want this clumsy thing attached.. If they want any form of electrical assistance they would want it a lot more sleek and efficient.
Other than that, it reminds me of the Spartamet, a Dutch piece of tech from 1985 which added a small combustion engine to an otherwise regular city bike.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartamet
I can see one audience: someone with a bike they already like who only occasionally needs assistance and wants the whole thing removable
If the road is even little bit wet like after rain or morning mist, the dirt from the road ends up in your backside without fenders unless you drive very slowly.
Find a bicycle without mudguards and ride very slowly, or just ride on clean roads on a sunny days.
When it's wet, the engine will have less traction too.
Funny, a modern version of WWII era technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9loSoleX
Solex got used much longer than post WWII, the engine is very easy to service. I had one when I was 15, and most of my friends did as well. Everyone in the village had either a "solex" or an old "mobilette".
If I ever convert my bike to electric, I'll probably go with this https://www.swytchbike.com/
I actually bought one of these and love it. My road bike is indistinguishable from any other normal road bike with the exception of it being much easier to get around now.
From experience I can say that it seems like a lot more common sense to simply replace the front wheel of your bike with a wheel containing an electric motor, rather than attaching whatever Asus is selling to your bike.
It is decoupled from drivetrain. So, without torque sensor, how does it know when the rider wants to speed up vs. slow down?
It says it has a wireless cadence sensor. With that said, torque sensors were an improvement over cadence sensors.
To elaborate a bit, friends of mine have had bikes with both cadence and torque sensors. And I've tried their bikes out. Agreeing with one friend, the bike with the cadence sensor seems to decide how fast it wants to go.
The bike with the torque sensor behaves a lot more like what you're used to from riding a conventional bike. After all, the control input to a conventional bike is torque.
> the bike with the cadence sensor seems to decide how fast it wants to go
Well yes, because there’s no other input. It’s an on/off switch, the bike just knows that you’re pedaling. Usually there are multiple power levels you can switch between with a button, and those decide roughly how much of a push you get from the motor, but the power curves are all “hardcoded”. It doesn’t feel great for active riding, but it’s adequate for commuter bikes. Torque sensors are actually kind of expensive on their own.
> The bike with the torque sensor behaves a lot more like what you're used to from riding a conventional bike
I agree, but would like to point out that sometimes this might not be what you want. I had a bike with a front motor and a cadence sensor that I used for my commute for a few years, and was very happy with the motor just pulling me along while I lazily pushed the pedals with ~zero torque, barely enough to let the bike know I'm there. Basically like pressing a throttle. If all you want is to get from A to B comfortably, I've found this to be superior to a torque sensor, and it was also dirt cheap.
I remember those from 50 years ago. Back then it was a small petrol engine typically mounted on the front tyre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9loSoleX
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9loSoleX:
*“VéloSoleX is a moped, or motorised bicycle, usually just referred to as 'Solex', […] originally created during World War II and mass-produced between 1946 and 1988, came in various iterations, while keeping the same concept of a motor with a roller resting on the front wheel of a bicycle”*
This powers the back wheel, though. I think that’s better for propulsion but it seems you’re giving up carrying stuff or a child on the back of the bicycle. Can’t even have a rack there with this contraption.
I have to say, this looks really well designed and easy to use, I want one! But why Asus? I really want to know how they landed on this.
ASUS does make power banks, and the vast majority of the cost of any ebike is in the battery.
> I really want to know how they landed on this.
RAM prices.
That might be the easiest ebike retrofit/conversion I've ever seen. I have concerns about the grip in wet conditions but this looks like a great way to get that ebike I've wanted and not put my perfectly good frame to waste.
Similar friction drives have existed for a while. The battery is very small compared to a regular ebike (typically they start at about 300wh.) Also, IIRC the friction drive is not very efficient.
Like when wet. Or icy or both.
I think the number of people who want to use something like this when it's icy out is pretty small. You'd want studded tires, for instance... and it's generally those who are really committed who ride in those conditions. This looks more like 'dipping a toe in the eBike water'.
Looks more like a "hill assist device" to me.
This one is 158 Wh
I saw. Most entry-level ebikes have at least 10ah * 36v batteries; a few lightweight models have 7ah. So this has about half the battery capacity of the cheapest ebikes.
Given the size of it and the significantly less weight it adds to the bicycle, I'd say half capacity is pretty fantastic.
(Of course, "capacity" is misleading, as this will be less efficient than a real e-bike.)
Get a Bafang kit or a hub motor replacement rear wheel instead. At least those systems work well.
I mean I agree but those aren't zero-skill install like this.
Bafang isn't, sure, but a hub motor is relatively easy. I guess hub front motor is even easier than hub rear.
Have a look at Bafang or Tongsheng kits
A couple other people here mentioned that theft is an issue. That's yet another reason why folding bikes seemed like the best use case for this. Not as good as a folding bike that's made for being an E bike, but if you've already got a good folding bike and a bit more zip on your commute is what you need, this seems like a interesting product.
If I'm carrying around a giant battery I ought to be able to charge my devices from it, but it is silent on that front.
The design doesn't work if you have a mud guard or pannier rack. Also unclear how easily it is detached. Do I have to take it off everytime to prevent casual thievery? How do I take it off to charge inside? Does it have anti-theft bricking?
I'm struggling to understand who the target market is.
"How do I take it off to charge inside?"
It has a removable battery so it seems the mechanism is designed to be left on the bike.
And if I go into a shop am I compelled to remove the battery, or is it locked? Is there a key or an app to release the battery?
Hah, my dad made something like this for me when I was a kid using a weed eater engine, with a makeshift lever as a clutch to engage/disengage it. This looks about as makeshift, I wouldn't trust it for serious use.
disappointed to see no tire brand listed as a partner or sponsor
Everyone is hating but this is a hack and you love to see it.
No price. This is just sensing the market, i doubt the have anything other than a dirty PoC
All these sites have hype about AI features like AI Chat. however I use the chat, and it wastes about 3-10 seconds just to load, then I ask for the price, and it fails to understand even the page we were on (edit: "I don't understand what product you're referring to, please tell me the product"). Then I literally paste the page's product from the page into the chat, and it finally wastes my time more and sends a whole essay blob about why it can't tell me the price.
Is this what investors sell to the board about how they are using AI for greater efficiency? Just to waste consumers time even more?
It's fashionable and it takes strong leadership to avoid fashionable things even when they make absolutely no sense
I just bought a Boost conversion kit from the UK and am excited to install it in a couple weeks. If anyone has installed this kit would appreciate a comment on the experience.
(I'm in the US and have been unimpressed with the kits available here. The Boost one looks compact and well designed).
would be better if there is an option for manual wired buttons to engage/disengage the booster positioned on the handlebars
This would be great to add to my 9 year old's bike. We couldn't do long bike tours anymore because he would stop biking after 100m, telling is he is completely exhausted and must go home. I was looking for something like this!
A follow-me tandem (which couples a kids bike to your bike) is a much better solution than giving a 9yo a poorly controlled motor.
No it's not, it teaches the child dependence on the adult instead of giving the child agency.
But a 9 year old is dependant on their parents ...?
...yes? The child bicycling their own bike, vs being attached to the parents bike is a tiny bit of independence to grant a child at that age.
It feels like a great product but targeted at a surprisingly transient customer base.
The cycling guys won't buy it, they want the watts from their legs.
The commuters will just get an ebike eventually.
The getting started crowd will eventually become one of these 2 or stop riding a bike altogether. Since I didn't see how much this cost, if it cost as much as a commuter bike, I really don't know who would buy something like this.
The web page doesn't seem to load correctly in the Safari browser for macOS 26. Seems like something they might want to fix.
10 km Sports and 50 km Eco range is a no go. Plus they explicitly deny carbon fiber bikes, bikes with suspension, and tire choice is rather limited. You could've invested in a decent trekking bike with a standard motor instead, at least you get that hind wheel storage space free.
They should turn it into a phone lan gaming platform with dedicated games. That would make it instantly awesome.
Similar things are on amazon today 300-500. Not worth it imho. If you are going to keep it on, convert your bike with middrive or hub motor once.
> Motor Power 250W (Rated) / 500W (Peak)
A 4090's TDP!
Fenders, anyone
Haha, I like all these adapter designs though my favourite was the Copenhagen Wheel[0]. I saw someone ride one near Mission and S Van Ness and loved it. Sleek device. This particular one in the OP is definitely built for safe societies, right? Definitely not for the North American market, haha!
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Wheel
Basically, the Copenhagen Wheel moved all the complexity of setting up a hub motor drive system - motor, battery, controller, sensors, computer - into the hub shell itself.
Which made it seem neat and clean, but meant it had serious reliability issues, couldn't handle wet conditions[], wasn't really repairable, and was expensive compared to more reliable alternatives with better battery life, etc.
[] The manufacturer apparently stated that "[...bad bearings] can occur when the Wheel is repeatedly exposed to wet conditions. Due to the nature of the problem, this cannot be repaired": https://forums.electricbikereview.com/threads/known-issues-p...
Psst, you can escape an asterisk [*] with a backslash.
Hub gears work quite well though don't they? In particular respect of being sealed and protected from the weather. Unclear why there's an opposite effect for this wheel.
It went on sale in the US before the EU. Did you even skim the wiki page you linked?
I see. The way I spoke made it seem like I was talking about the Copenhagen wheel with the phrase “this particular one”. I was talking about the OP device. Obviously since Mission and SVN is in the US I would have assumed it was not the CW but I can see that I was unclear so I have clarified. The Copenhagen wheel is pretty integrated. This one is a thumb screw and off you run with a valuable battery. I wouldn’t buy it here and I bike every day in the city.
People who don’t bicycle in North America won’t quite get it. It’s not exactly Taiwan. Theft is rampant and it’s societally sanctioned in most major cities.
I see winter version of this. You need custom roller with holes for a particular stud pattern. So there is no slipping and no tire wear. And maybe the roller is made of metal so the snow does not stick to it.
I absolutely would not give up my double panniers and rack. I put a small Tom Bihn Bag "Daylight Backpack" with my laptop in one, and the bike charger and food and other junk in the other, empty my pockets into the zipper bag, and then I'm totally unencumbered for riding and have unlimited distance since I can plug in and charge the battery if it gets low. Riding with a backpack on my back or even stuff in my pockets is a drag. The panniers are also great for grocery and other shopping.
https://www.tombihn.com/products/daylight-backpack
Am I missing something or that thing can be trivially stolen?
Bicycles in general can be trivially stolen.
FUD. Cars in general can be trivially stolen if you don't lock them. Lock your bike and it can't be trivially stolen.
The problem here is this device can be easily removed even from a locked bike, and it itself cannot be easily locked to the bike.
So ah, can we buy it? What's the price? Not seeing unless ad blockers are hiding something.
According to articles like this one[0], they haven't shared pricing yet - so I guess it can't be bought quite yet.
[0]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/outdoors/asus-made-an-e-bike-c...
No price. No order form. No delivery date. Vaporware.
Come on, ASUS. You're a real company, not some kickstarter scam.
Their AI bot is just as grim
Me: when's the bike booster available to purchase?
ASUS AI: For the most accurate and up-to-date product release information, we recommend following our Facebook and Instagram channels. We share all our launch announcements there first, along with exciting product previews.
Hilarious advice given both Meta products are notorious for not showing everything from the accounts you follow.
some bike vendor told me that the biggest problem with regular to ebike conversion was that regular bike frames were not strong enough to support the additional forces that the electric bike imposed. And it was why the ebikes were much heavier than regular bikes.
Does anyone know if that’s true and if that applies to conversions like this one?
It's less of an issue for this device. The reason is that the motor is further from the axle than a hub motor would be. Thus, there's less force on the frame for a given amount of torque.
A lot of extra force when slowing down from faster speeds though, no matter where the motor is added.
Not a lot of extra force.
About 5% more weight you need to slow down (80kg rider + 10kg bike + 4kg motor + battery)
Depends on the bike and motor combo. Something like a mountain bike from the last 20 years would be fine, but I wouldn’t try and put one on like a road bike from the 70s or something. Basically anything that’s well built sturdy steel is going to be ok with the common sub kilowatt motors, but there are like crazy ones that will output considerably more power than that.
Also that’s going to be more applicable with a mid drive or a hub motor than something like this.
Interesting point. That might be the only thing this thing has going for it self. The angle of force is perfect even for the most fragile frame.
Weight
3.7 kg (including battery)
How do these things work legally? Wouldn't the bolt on process count as manufacturing or modifying a motorcycle, depending on where you are?
In the USA, there are more than 52 jurisdictions not including towns and cities and counties, but most (not all) states think of ebikes as being slightly restricted bicycles rather than motorcycles, as long as:
- they have functional pedals (otherwise it's a motorcycle of some kind)
- they require pedal assist at all times and have some kind of power or speed limitation (anyone can use this, or at least it is least restricted)
- they have pedal assist available and have a different, higher power or speed limitation (usually reserved for 16+ or something similar)
- they have a power or speed limitation that makes them suitable for adults only but doesn't require a driver's license or inspection
There are efforts to regularize these, and also efforts to make things more chaotic. For example, New Jersey decided that all ebikes require a new ebike license and vehicle registration. Across the river in New York, no ebikes require a license or registration, and may be operated on any street which has a 30mph speed limit or less... but cities are allowed to make their own rules.
California's laws are mostly regarded by bicyclists as being sensible, at least in every discussion I've seen that didn't feature a twelve year old trying to convince his parents to buy him a 70mph electric motorcycle. See https://thecyclistchoice.com/resources/california-ebike-laws...
They should require insurance at least. An ebike can cause serious injury to a pedestrian.
So can a regular bike. Human powered bikes regularly blow past me when I'm doing the 15mph speed limits on the bike paths.
That’s the same as a pushbike right?
So can a non-ebike. A couple of hundred pounds hitting you at 15-20mph is gonna suck no matter how it's powered.
Poor people commute on e-bikes. Think twice before making laws that raise the cost and give cops a reason to hassle people.
In most jurisdictions it's only a motorcycle if it can exceed a certain speed or has a motor over a certain power in kilowatts. Or some combination of both.
recent news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89nyk4pz74o
There's no restriction on manufacturing e-bikes anywhere that I know of, as long as they obey the speed/power limits. (That's why it says 500W "peak" power - the continuous power limit in the UK at least is 250W but manufacturers just make the "peak" last for a very long time.)
If I bought this I might want a brake upgrade. Even though it probably provides only about 150W (I always assume ebike power ratings are inflated), the extra weight alone warrants disc brakes IMHO.
When I see obvious out of shape ebikers passing me uphill while barely moving their legs, I’m assuming that the power rating of their ebike is about right and the torque curve might be weird to stay legal.
I agree that rim brakes on an e-bike is extra bad.
They aint new. I had one that was driven by a honda gx35 4 stroke
there was another company named "bee" something that did these (gas as well 2 stroke)
and many early scooters, conversions, that all followed the friction style
I love bicycle tech. Almost everything was invented in the 1890s, and every couple of decades someone tries another old idea.
https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/tour/cyclemotors-motorcycl...
> Almost everything was invented in the 1890s, and every couple of decades someone tries another old idea.
What about wireless shifting systems like Di2?
> wireless shifting systems like Di2
Is it really wireless?
The SRAM one is.
SRAM Automatix. ;-)
i have a folding cycle and a fat bike. my only two devices still analog and keep me reasonably fit. i dont wanna e-bike them. but if i wanna long distance, this could be nice.
It only gives a boost for 50km.
lol. A friction drive in current year?
These suck, just buy an e-bike they are awesome.
These would be great for many places that have storage restrictions on e-bikes, but not normal bikes. So you can easily detach and bring with you before storing it.
The idea of being able to quickly switch a bike back and forth between a regular one and an e-bike seems cool. They lost me at the "smart" though...
any particular one you recommend in usa
my costco has magnum melody
Pretty nice bike. I bought a Evelo with a belt drive and a automatic CVT transmission that is really nice to ride.
Anything for the world to actually avoid the health benefits of riding a bike. What is wrong with a standard human powered bike? I expect a global obesity epidemic in 10 years as people begin buying/building WALL-E-style beds.
People with knee problems, areas with hills. An ebike is still active movement; sure you're not getting any cardio, but it's immeasurably better than driving. If this (or any ebike) is a thing that gets someone on a bike that otherwise wouldn't be on a bike, it is a good thing. For some it might be a stepping stone, for others it allows them to ride where they can't/won't ride at all.
I also noticed that some people who used to pedal switched to e-bikes due to laziness.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019821...
"Physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists."
E-bikes make people who aren't fit enough to ride muscle powered bikes to start doing moderate exercise on local trips they would used cars for before.
Found the person who lives in Kansas. Sometimes I just want to ride to work without having to deal with that 2km hill on the way. And my bike is still human-powered, with electric assist. Do you not know how e-bikes work, perhaps?
Signed, former Cat 2 road racer
> Do you not know how e-bikes work, perhaps?
I suspect not. Even though ebikes are common now, I often hear this comment. Ebikes assist your pedaling; they don't pedal for you. (Well some can pedal for you but you learn quickly that if you let the motor do all the work you'll run the battery down and then you will have to do all the work pedaling a 65-lb bicycle home.)
Lots of people seem to think if a motor is present, then the motor is doing all the work. Ebikes are not motorcycles. What the motor actually does is make the hills less steep and less long. It's a lowpass filter for terrain.
Indeed not all of the work, only most of it.