micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: 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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I recently bought an eBike after maybe 10 years of not bicycling bc I moved to an area that is radically unfriendly for bikes and had the thought that I could pretty easily pull a small center-balanced trailer with a 50lb LiFePo4 battery and two 200W solar panels arranged in an alpine frame above it.
Add a MPPT controller and some cables, and my thought was, perhaps it could essentially make a "one to stock, one to rock" scenario with the bike batteries — one is in use to go like 30 miles, then you swap the charged one in and get 30 more miles. These eBike batteries aren't the biggest, they should be able to charge pretty quickly. My gut says you could get between 2-3 free battery charges per day like this.
Does anyone have any insight on this? Feels like it could be a good way to bring bicycle touring back onto the menu.
There's a few people doing that on YouTube but I can't remember their names.
There's a lot to unpack here. Might I suggest you make a new post in this community for this solar-powered ebike+trailer endeavor? That'll also garner more input than as a comment on a post about a commercially-available ebike.
Fair enough. Just more of an idle thought over coffee.
I have a solar bike trailer that I use as a charging station. It has a 200W Allpowers 36V solar panel and an Elejoy boost charge controller. In good sun it puts out over 3 amps to charge my 48V, 20 aH bike battery, which is about the same as my 120V plug in charger does. If you angle it toward the sun you can get 25% to 50% more power than a flat top configuration. I can pull the trailer behind the ebike, but I don't do that much because it is more fun to ride without a trailer. I would estimate that the 200W solar panel would add 25 miles to a daily ride. My battery does 25 miles, so it could have a 50 mile range in a day, but then you would have an empty battery and would have to charge it the next day. That is with zero pedaling, any pedaling energy would be added to that range. When my bike is charged up, I connect the solar panel to a microinverter (balcony power) and it adds power to my 120VAC house system on the grid, to reduce my electric bill.
Man, that's so cool. Thanks for sharing. You've given me the idea to just charge my eBike using my solar generator (DJI Power 1000 w/ two 200W panel sets).
Pulling a battery on a trailer is going to be a pretty big pain in the ass and limit both where you can go and where you can park. For bike packing it might make sense but for urban travel in an area without bike infrastructure, I suspect it will be more trouble than it is worth.
A pain in the ass for sure, but it isn't really out of the ordinary if, for example, you were riding a bicycle from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via the Great Allegheny Passage. You'd already be pulling your camping gear; the folks I know who did the GAP on pedal power did so with almost 100lbs in gear split across one trailer and three bikes' worth of pannier bags.