Sunday, August 23, 2009

Hub motors in bicycles

Hub Motors:
Common to all direct drive hub motors is that they are always mechanically engaged. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because it makes regenerative braking possible. All direct drive hub motors can be made to do regen whether they are equiped to do so or not. Both the BionX and TidalForce both have sophisticated controllers which allow varied braking energy to be stored back in the battery, while most of the Chinese kits like Crystalyte, Golden Island, and Wilderness Energy need 3rd party controllers to do so. Always engaged is a bad because it means that you are always overcoming the rolling resistance of the motor even when you are not using it. Depending on the symmetry and quality of the motor, this additional drag torque can range from imperceptible to feeling like you are always riding with a flat.
Huh, yeah. The Bionx has regenerative braking, which means it is a motor of this type (direct-drive as opposed to geared).

Thursday, August 20, 2009

My new consulting career

I have this plan to become an E-mail consultant. It's a bit late because nobody uses e-mail anymore -- it's all tweeting and texting and what-not.

But it would have been grand. I already had titles for two of the chapters of my flagship powerpoint presentation.

  • Effective subject line composition (subtitled Subject: hi)
  • Top-posting: why I'm right and you're very probably wrong.