this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility

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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!

"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.

micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"

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Since gasoline because unusable after awhile, most cars will become obstacles and block up roads.

So we of course want something that can zip around the roads!

The main advantages I see are:

  1. Peddle when out of juice

  2. Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery

  3. The batteries can reasonably be charged by solar panels that a lot of houses have.

  4. Gets around all the blocked roads.

  5. Generally easier to repair.

  6. The distance travelled on a full battery is absurd

I don't expect any movies to put their heroes on an eBike, but they should!

IDK just thought you'd appreciate my dumb thought XD Any other reasons why during an apocalypse you should find an ebike?

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)
  1. Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery

This is generally not a thing.

  1. Generally easier to repair.

Generally no. DIY ebikes from good components are easier to repair but not without spare parts. Good luck with that during an apocalypse. Cheap factory ebikes as well as expensive factory bikes with mid drives aren't repairable. Finding parts is a problem with the former (today, not in an apocalypse), the other can only be repaired by authorised shops due to parts and DRM.

As others mentioned, batteries may not last too long depending on the make and chemistry. A LFP based DIY would likely last the longest. You have to keep a few spares of all parts - controller, motor, computer, and a spare battery.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is generally not a thing.

Regen is a fairly common feature in ebikes. It doesn't work while you ride, other than as a brake going down hills, but as most are hub drive if you lift the rear wheel off the ground you could use the bike as a generator and charge the battery by pedalling.

However, it would in no way be energy (food) efficient compared to just using a bicycle due to the losses, but if you needed it for emergencies or for powering something else, it could be used.

[–] magiccupcake@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

It's not a common feature.

It doesn't make as much sense to do on an bike, mainly because regenerative breaking requires more expensive electronics and stresses the battery more.

My family has 7 ebikes, all different models and none has regen.

[–] pc486@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's not common, but it does make sense to do! No, not in charging the battery but in braking. Regen slows down the bike without wearing down your brake pads, which is extra important with a heavy bike. I cannot even manage 900 miles without changing my longtail's pads. I have yet to replace the pads on my regenerating e-trike.

The extra 20% range is nice but I'm more happy about the money and hassle I've saved in not replacing brake pads.

[–] magiccupcake@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You can't slow down with regen without putting the energy somewhere, and that's the point of brakes, they convert kinetic energy into thermal to slow you down.

The point of regen is to not waste the energy and put most of it back into a battery. At the scale of an ebikes, the additional components electronics, battery thermal management, and so on for regen are more expensive than just adding 20% more battery.

Unless you wanted to make an expensive, super efficient or very light ebike, it just doesn't make sense at the moment.

That will not likely always be true if we ever use different battery chemistry and the cost of regen electronics goes down.

[–] pc486@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I agree it doesn't make sense to pick regen for extending range. Just buy a bigger battery if that's the biggest issue, say a rarely used bike but long ranged when needed.

To me it's the brake pads that add up. Replacing two pairs of pads every few hundred miles is way more expensive than the system and any additional battery wear. $500 isn't that many sets of pads.

Considering I don't charge my batteries much beyond 80%, yeah, there's plenty of room to put that extra energy early in the ride. I'd rather charge a battery than to grind pads into dust.

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[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 31 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I like ebikes, but I lean towards the comments promoting plain ol bicycles as the optimal option. Simply put, a bicycle's only requirement is a reasonably-flat surface. If nature had provided roads, it's entirely possible for evolution to have devised wheeled creatures. For the same energy consumption, a human moves roughly four times faster or farther on a bicycle. That's a lot of advantage for zero extra energy.

But getting back to objective requirements, the other thing working in the bicycle's favor is the sheer number of them today: over one billion across the entire Earth, with around 100 million produced per year. If a world calamity happened right now and society collapsed, the estimated 60 million horses would become a luxury, not a utility, where 8 billion people vie for resources.

Obviously, much like a game of Catan, the horses and bicycles of the world are not evenly distributed. So if you're going to acquire something solely to put in the bunker for a doomsday scenario, I'd suggest not putting a horse in there; they won't like the dark.

[–] IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Bro thinks he's going to build a microcontroller for his battery while hiding in a hole 🤣

Regular ol Tony Stark.

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 3 points 3 months ago

Not sure what you're smoking but there's already plug-in PV systems.

[–] Longpork3@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You dont need a charge controller. They're more of a safety and battery longevity feature.

If you just need to get enough juice into this thing to outrun the next horde of zombies, any dc voltage source a couple of volts jigher than the nominal charge of the battery can do in a pinch. Cracking the pack open and charging individual cells is also an option if you can't find one with a high enough voltage.

I absolutely dont recommend this under normal circumstances, but electrics are far easier to repair from scrap than combustion engines.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

That's an impressive way to turn lipo type batteries into bombs. Lithium batteries require you to control the current, not the voltage. If you give them too much voltage, without current limiting, they will draw in as much as your supply will give. This will rapidly destroy the cells, resulting in them discharging via heat.

The plus side is that most decent batteries have circuitry to protect against exactly that. Many also have the charge controller embedded. This massively improves their safety, but not all batteries have this built-in.

[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The batteries will wear out eventually and lose capacity. Even if you have an unlimited stock of spares, the cell chemistry will eventually break down a few years after they left the factory.

[–] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I agree that bicycles generally are the vehicle of choice for a post-apocalypse scenario, but I'm not convinced an eBike specifically would be the ideal choice.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Horses can carry more than bicycles, are faster over short distances, better off road, require no spare parts, and run on grass.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

require no spare parts

IIRC a horse with a broken leg is not self-repairing but beyond repair.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Any vehicle that's beyond repair is beyond repair.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 5 points 3 months ago

The threshold to reach there is different. I can replace my bicycle rim and tyre when it's mangled, i can't replace horse leg when it's broken.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What I'm saying is that horses with broken legs - and they break relatively easily - never heal fully, hence people shooting racehorses after they fall even once.

Not that I don't think it is cruel, mind you.

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[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

But you can still use the parts on other cars...

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

Horses, however, have high "emissions", in a manner of speaking. :)

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[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Batteries are only good for about 5 years.

[–] ericbomb@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I mean do you have a vehicle suggestion that lasts longer than 5 years?

[–] superkret@feddit.org 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago
[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's an interesting idea and have some merit to it, but it can never outbest and outlast a normal bicycle. Still, it's significantly better than a car or motorcycle and depend on what sort of apocalypse we're talking about.

2)Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery

To actually charge the battery you need a voltage higher than the battery itself, and to charge the battery using the motor you will need something with regenerative braking, and to crank these motor you need higher energy than you normally do and put in to overcome the resistance in order to generate enough power to charge the battery. Even with regen braking in normal situation, i don't think it's enough to charge the battery. You'll be pedalling a significantly heavier bike in the end because of all that resistance.

3)The batteries can reasonably be charged by solar panels that a lot of houses have.

This is the true benefit of ebike, but you have to be in an apocalypse in a place with plenty of solar panel.

5)Generally easier to repair.

Compared to car or motorbike, yeah, but compared to a normal bicycle, there's a challenge if the electronics are fried or when battery need replacing.

The distance travelled on a full battery is absurd

This is true on eco mode, and depend on battery capacity, which affect the weight

[–] Praxinoscope@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Basically no ebikes charge from pedaling or have regenerative breaking

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[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Dude what, no, pedalling doesn't charge the battery on any single ebike I've heard of: https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/do-electric-bikes-charge-when-you-pedal/

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That would be horrible lol. Maybe if it were configurable. 1% slow down to charge it in a few days would be kinda cool.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

IRL or in the apocalypse? I mean in either case you have to not be using power while it charges. A dead e-bike is way more work than a regular bike. There would also inherently be a fair bit of loss in the mechanical>electrical>mechanical conversion.

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Yea it would be like riding a bike with way more resistance. Maybe ok as muscle training, but not useful as transportation.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nah. No offense, but give me a Surly Trucker over any e-bike. If I was not so messed up with my back, I'd still be good for 200 miles plus in one day on a couple of Snickers bars. Even in my rough shape, I can manage 30 miles daily as is and ~50 with consequences after.

Even without roads, I'm nearly as fast on a carbon 29'er hardtail like a Cannondale Flash and if I was in shape, I would want to cut my own trails anyways.

I'd probably look for a way to move to a makeshift belt drive and single speed. I could probably rig up rubber belts from cars and stuff for far longer than I'll be able to source chains. I'd eventually be able to do a leather belt drive to stay running for awhile. The hard part will be what to do about wheels in the long term. Wooden rims were standard long before aluminum. I bet I could still salvage enough heavy canvas, glue, and scrap rubber to make my own tubulars. Yeah, I think I could be riding for many decades.

How are you at reverse engineering circuits and rewinding motors? I've wound my own transformers before, but a stator is a whole different beast, especially with brushless. That ~30 mile range, battery lifespan, and monstrous dead weight without power would drive me mad.

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[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think you misspelled "Bikes" in your title.

[–] ericbomb@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Guess the concern is maybe in the apocalypse might not have a ton of food, but having a solar setup should be pretty easy.

But either way, need more bike riders in apocalypse movies!

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[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Ebike is another way to refer to electric bicycles. It's the new transportation mode people are absolutely loving as an option for city living. This is due to the emphasis of cities becoming walkable to reduce their impact on climate change.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

They know, they're saying ebikes would suck in the apocalypse. I agree. They're too heavy and the batteries don't last long enough to be useful without power access. If you had that kind of power access an emoto would be better.

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[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

I'm going out on foot. You can get into, out of, over or under, just about anything. And I don't want to draw attention whizzing down the road.

Also want to be able to hide quickly and you can't just bop off the road and into the woods dragging a bike. Even left on the road, that's a clue someone is near.

[–] tilefan@lemm.ee 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

honestly it depends on how long the apocalypse is. the batteries are eventually going to go to shit, I think I'd rather have a flex fuel bike that can run on vegetable oil or pure ethanol, the latter of which which should either be abundant or easy to make in any apocalyptic situation.

I feel like I could keep a small engine running pretty much indefinitely.

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A Honda 50cc engine will run longer than you

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 months ago

Then let me tell you about the perfect apocalypse vehicle I already have, a Honda CT110. These were only sold in the US from 1980-86, but over here in Australia (and in NZ as well) our national post carrier used them as their main delivery vehicles, so Honda kept making them until 2013. Nothing ever changed though. It's got a kickstarter and the headlight's powered straight off the stator, so if the battery dies it'll still keep going. I once ran it on two-stroke mix because I ran out of fuel, it's had "right at the back of the shed" vintage petrol too and ran great. It also uses the same spark plug that basically all Honda small engines use, so there's a million of them around I could tax. It is literally just a bored-out lawnmower engine with a gearbox bolted on 😅

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[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 months ago
[–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

In general, yeah. And if it has a decent cargo setup or a trailer you can leave the solar panels out to charge small things while traveling.

On the down side, you’re relatively slow.

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[–] Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In a non-nuclear apocalypse, I think they'd work wonderfully for a while. Some especially well built varieties might last long enough for people to figure out how to make new ones.

For a movie or in a book, I think they'd work best for a mad dash to safety immediately after the collapse of civilization. Whizzing past gridlocked cars on the way out of town, running out of charge half a mile short of the top of a mountain pass, recharging just enough on regen braking down the other side to make it to the destination for the night.

After a few years, any working electric bikes would be highly prized. Bikes drawing power from trailers of lead acid batteries and then diy batteries would be attempted to various degrees of success. Plain bicycles and walking would be the normal ways of getting wherever one might want to go.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Personally, I would probably just stick with a regular bicycle: I don't have enough solar panels to even come close to powering my ebike nor do I have a method to transfer the power. Electricity would probably be reserved for navigation devices if available, lights, etc.

A bicycle will never lose power and if you have a dynamo you can even use it to generate power. In an apocalypse type scenario, that seems pretty ideal unless you're exceptionally well provisioned and have a good understanding of electrical engineering.

[–] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sure, but something will fail within 5 years that likely you will not be able to fix.

Just get a bike. Attach a batter motor to it if you want, but have it be mainly mechanical bike. Also the battery is a consumable, remember that.

Source: I have been preparing for nuclear devastation since the mid 70s.

Electrics are a fun idea but unless it is basic enough you can fix it with random parts, it is not viable long term if society collapses.

Honestly, a horse is probably the best, or several horses for preference.

[–] TerraRoot@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

I half remember reading a post apocalyptic book, space aliens ruined physics or something, steam pressure wouldn't even work! anyway shortly after the fall they were wearing full plate armour and battle charging the enemy on bicycles...

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