When considering an electric bike conversion kit, there are a few paths you can take, both of which help solve the transportation problems city-dwellers or city-workers experience.
The main idea with electric bikes is they help to solve the “last mile” problem, where commuters get to their destination city and still have to get to work. They want to get to work on time, but avoid public transportation. The obvious choice is the bicycle, but how do you get to work on time without arriving completely soaked in sweat. Enter the electric bike. The first option, of course, is the expensive option, a purpose-built electric bike, which can cost upwards of $3,000. Second, you could opt for bike-sharing programs that offer electric bikes, perhaps the cheapest option, but somewhat less convenient.
If riders already have a bicycle, however, some of them already costing upwards of $1,000, maybe the best option would be an electric bike conversion kit. As it turns out, many people are turning to this option to ease transportation sweat, while still enjoying an outdoors ride. We’ve covered a couple of conversion options, running from the DIY to the ready-made. Some electric bikes are quite heavy, such as the IKEA FOLKVÄNLIG, which weighs in at some 60 lb. A conversion shouldn’t really add a whole lot of weight to a bike. My 1995 Giant ATX 760 weighs just 20 lb, for example, and that’s not even a high-end bike.
Those tiny little motors are part of the prototype Velogical VELO Speeder, which are attached to the rear frame. The two motors are surprisingly powerful, 600 W and 40 Nm of torque, applied directly to the rear wheel’s rim. The two motors weigh just 1.6 kg, and the 92 Wh battery pack is light enough to pack a spare for electrically-assisted pedaling beyond the 12 km capacity. The entire electric bike conversion kit could be the lightest on the market when it is finally released.
Image © Velogical Engineering
