This is absolutely brilliant, simple and elegant. An absolute game changer. I've been building and modifying geared hub motors for about 17 years, and I'm annoyed I didn't think of it- and it's a perfect example of how powerful it is to believe that a beautiful and elegant solution exists somewhere in design space, and if you look hard enough you'll find it. Everything has not been invented.
Exactly, those original gems may be harder to find but they are still out there waiting for someone to see the light in just the right way. What's coolest is that Alon had never even seen a ridden a geared hub motor before coming up with this, let alone opened and serviced one. It's like being an outsider to the space was almost an advantage.
I thank all the legacy ebike innovators, such as Grin Technologies. But it often takes an ignorance of what can't be done (IE a fresh pair of eyes), to make truly breakthrough innovations.... Thank you, Alon Goldman @ChargeBike. And thx to Justin @Grin Technologies for recognizing its game changing nature and for helping to bring it to a production stage of development. I look forward to seeing it developed in a myriad of ebike applications.
No, it's terrible. You have no brakes. The braking force can only be force of the motor. You are essentially turning the motor into the brake. That's fine 99% of the time. How about panic stops?
If you don't know, you don't know. If you do know and understand, this is truly epic in its simplicity and its genius, not to mention it is something we want and need!
@@Cineenvenordquist Grin has nearly 20 years of e-bike design, testing and sales. Their build quality is top tier. You pay more for Canadian durability.
@@sammiller6631 moot point at this point.. this cuntree stifles innovations these days.. just like it suffocates it's tax slaves under the weight of our corpulent "government" tapeworms.
This should also nearly eliminate brake locking, making this the first practical concept of ABS I’ve seen for e-bikes. If the gear teeth are made of durable enough material this is going to make big waves in the market
might even work on full sized cars for rim/tire-motors or all-wheel-drive motorcycle's and also done right might give more gearing as the brake-pad act's like a CVT*
Bosch has an ABS, apparently it works pretty well. Also allows you to operate both brakes with the same lever, because you no longer need to modulate braking power per wheel.
The benefits of this astounding innovation are MUCH more than just regen. The reduced load on the torque arm for example. But also the big reduction in brake wear. About a year ago I started regularly riding in an area where there are steep hills, and live at the top of a hill. I am leaning on the brakes hard all the way downhill, and buying pads every four months or so. This would not only let me offload the brake wear to the motor, but also it would let me vary my downhill speed on the fly so I could either go down faster, or just apply less regen on a hill segment where the slope of the hill is less, so I can maintain whatever speed I think is comfortable at the moment. I see this as not just a now-we-got-regen feature but a head-and-shoulders general improvement of hub motor technology.
At 77 and been involved with several start-ups, all I can say is you have a REAL WINNER on your hands and you will have no problem finding the funding for your project. My only problem, I see, is the plastic gears. DON'T USE THEM !
@@sammiller6631 I'd take a lot of convincing that plastic gears would be strong enough. (You know that any cordless drill that's desighed to last has metal, not plastic gears, don't you?)
As he’s explaining the basics of how this works, and the realization hits you….the guy they show having that realization on camera perfectly captures it. Just a “oh. Oh my god obviously, lol what?!” That is so unintuitive but simultaneously the most intuitive thing ever once you get it. Amazing.
Love this solution. As a mechanical engineer and Ebike enthusiast, good job! Justin I met you many years ago at a makerfaire. So glad there are people like you in the industry who care about the technology itself and not simply profits.
I'm not a huge fan of hub motors, yet watched through and am amazed at the awesome engineering that improves and simplifies. I am sure this will bring improvements to electric cars as well
Why? I despise front wheel hub motors. Due to the awful riding characteristics it creates. But rear hub is usually very low maintenance simple and long lasting. Also the other parts tend to last longer (chain cassettes and in this case the brakes)
Cars, well... Don't Cars use direct drive motors and I can't imagine adding a gearset is the way to keep something quiet and reliable for several hundred thousand miles/km.
For people like me who are cyclists who also love electrified things (bikes/scooters/cars), it is downright ASTOUNDING how beneficial (and surprisingly simple) this new invention is. Best of both worlds with freewheeling eliminating motor drag, but we still get regen braking - Amazing!!!
This will be a great product once people understand it. I have a geared GMAC for better low speed torque, with locked clutch version for regen. The regen braking has been great, but I do feel the drag the rest of the time pedaling at higher cruising speeds. The quality of Grin products is top notch. Adding Freegen would be amazing. The smaller diameter and lighter Shengyi, combined with just 200-300 Wh of Ligo+ would be perfect for gravel and road bikes, adding just about 5kg. I just want a ultralight setup to get me up hills and regen brake, without the weight of most ebikes.
I thought it was possible to have the motor controller trickle current to the hub to eliminate the sensation of drag, or do you still have some feedback?
@@jpsuperstar Yes, but I haven't tried because I don't want to use the few watts of power to eliminate the drag, which seems more with gear hub. I'm pedaling 95% of the time, with motor only for hills and quick passes, and a tiny 360Wh battery. I have a knobby mountain bike tires and accepted the drag as a workout. Freegen seems like the simpler and ideal solution, especially for the road and gravel bikes.
@@jpsuperstar Hey guys. It's not only the efficiency issue- it's HOW you use the brakes that is also a gamechanger- until now, if you were using the current Grin regen products, you'd have to work the braking yourself, meaning you have to apply the throttle to set the braking amount, and you also have to pay attention not to press hard on the brakes because if you pass the point of engagement, the braking would be mechanical. You need to keep it just so that the on/off sensor detected it but it's not working yet (same as lightly touching the brake pedal in your car and the brake light would turn on even before an actual force point has been reached). With our solution, you simply brake NORMALLY. No extra buttons, sensors or getting used to a specific method. And in all cases, you'd get the (nearly) optimum possible regen
I'm consistently getting 10% and more on my daily flat city rides. About the revenge of the hub, enjoy it while it lasts, we are working on a very cool solution for mid-drives as well...
Very interesting design, I have a few questions :) 1) Do I understand correctly that if the planetary gear fails the brakes will not work? 2) What is the maximum braking power? Is it limited by the power of the electric motor / recuperation system? I would be interested in a comparison with a typical disc brake system.
Correct that this requires the gears to work. Fortunately planetary gear failure is much less common than people make it out to be, but there is a reason to have them even further over engineered in this usage case. The braking power in watts is actually a function of the bicycle speed more than anything else. At high speeds it's easy to pull 1-1.5 kW of regen if you are slowing down fast, while at low speeds the same braking force can be just a few 100 watts or even negative watts (ie you are pulling energy OUT of the battery, not putting it in). What matters in a comparison is the torque, and with a largish geared motor as shown in this video that torque can exceed 100 Nm, which is around the point where the rear tire starts to skid.
You'd still have front brake which provides the majority of braking power. Maybe invest in good anti-lock fronts. Most people riding bikes have low quality brakes all around if you think about it.
I've moved away from the gmac because changing planet gears every 1,000km is too expensive at $100+ per gearset. One planet gearset did last 2,000km, but that was the longest. And this is all 'easy' pavement bike-path riding at 30-40 km/h. So far the all-axle motor has been very good. Only slightly heavier, but no gears to fail, cools better, and is quiet.
It looks to me that if the regen electronics or the planet gear box fails, the wheel will freewheel. If the battery is full an you go downhill, then the electronics must shunt the current to get any braking. I wouldn't trust this on the front wheel.
@@ryan0io I don't know exactly what Radpower is using, but my BF's bike has an amazing 6,000km and is still going strong. I hope my (non-radpower) gears last that long, but we will see... Mine are currently at 1,004km.
There is even a trick to use a similar concept with mid-drive ebikes, but it's got a bit more mechanical trickery and custom parts required. What's so elegant about the hub motor solution is it's a painless drop-in fit of a front or rear wheel hub.
@@GrinTechnologies With two different rear wheel kits i noticed my rear wheel would not sit 'true' in the dropouts and even carefull adjustment wouldnt help because the axle torques and creeps out of the dropouts in a un-symetrical way causing the wheel to lean drive side at the top and non-drive side at the chaistays. e, and i asked you about this years ago and you said, "i havent seen that happen before" which to me is BS. It is easy to replicate. This was a big reason i had to take the rear wheel kit off my bike (135 QR mounted). Two different bicycles using two different motors with your tourque arms(x2) on the second bike. and the biggest hurdle for wheel hub motors aside from this isnt regenerative braking but rather internal gears so the motor can be used most effectively going uphill or downhill. and also li-ion is a distasteful battery tech if only for the fire concerns while LiFe leaves a user wanting more after such a weight penalty. Honestly having a quiet gasoline middrive could be realized for less money, with a small catylitic converter it would run very clean. The motor could be made in titainium given how small it would need to be,, could last forever and not be destroyed by rain or need silicone conformal coating + weepholes. Oh.... and there are no oil-fill ports on any of these ebikes yet they have gears that turn for alledgedly years. makes no sence.
Great vid. Simply amazing and genius! All the best on the developments...it sounds like a game changer. How much range improvement will this regen provide?
Electric kick scooters are just regen-capable eBikes without pedals… and I’ve never seen a freewheeling model. When your battery is low and you can’t fall back to pedals it’s even more annoying that the regen-capable hub motor quickly saps away any momentum you’ve built up from kicking. Get it into an even smaller hub motor and I think this will be just as well-received in the world of kick scooters.
Yeah, it's the solution to a problem I didn't know existed until I started looking at the market. Also, this is an ABS braking system too, as far as I can tell - you can't stall the wheel if you set up the maximum regen, and the system is reading the wheel rotation. Hence it could be front wheel drive.
CONGRATS! You have long been looking for "THE HOLY GRAIL OF REGEN SYSTEMS" and this looks like it! When my E-CELLS Super Monarch Crown BAFANG motors (yes, front AND rear hub motors) wear out I'll replace them with GRIN hub motors with FREEGEN. That's because my bike uses two 52 volt batteries (20 Ah and 15 Ah) and any regen is very helpful. I assume I will need a GRIN controller and display screen.
Not wanting to sound like a big head or such but it’s a real treat to have such a neat solution layed out & the clip of you getting it was a nice touch.
Amazing. Also, an important property of rear wheel braking is avoiding locking up the rear wheel causing a skid. Could this system also provide the illusive ABS system?
In a way yes, it could reduce the regen on the rear wheel if it sees that it has suddenly stopped spinning. In that case it is no longer sensing and modulating the braking force based on the rider's squeeze of the lever, but since the rider is applying more force than the system can use that doesn't really matter. Once they relax on the grips, then the disc rotor would start to slip again and the normal control mode would automatically kick in.
Very cool. I've been running a direct drive rear for over 15,000 miles now and as my needs have changed from lots of daily miles to more frequent short trips in a hilly area, this looks like a great replacement ... or an nice excuse to fiddle with the bike. :^)
This is both a fantastic product idea, including all the lovely advantages in the details, and an excellent video about. I never had an E-bike, but I will immediately buy this hub when it comes out - regenerative breaking is for me an absolute must-have for an electric vehicle, and this is clearly the way to do it. I hope it will be in a robust form factor that's strong enough for mountainbiking or at least gravel riding!
This is brilliant! Couple this with a supercapacitor to absorb and release the regen energy efficiently (batteries are a bit sluggish in this respect) and you can significantly reduce the battery size as well!
Even huge supercaps are no match for basic li-ion batteries in terms of actual capacity. And now with modern 21700 cells (a single cell) handling 200A pulse currents I see no problem doing even high power regen with a tiny 10S 1P battery.
@@bigshnitzeljesse just to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting replacing batteries with super caps, but to act as a buffer between the engine and battery to rapidly and efficiently absorb and release the energy from braking, which tends to be a relatively short pulse, for which capacitors are better suited to handle.
Utter engineering elegance! Brilliant minds making real progress. Might have to investigate putting this into the Dual Motor electric cargo bike, Cyclopes!
My rolling- gen system. I have introduced a button (inline with the brake sensor) into my regen-braking, using the variable regen braking system within the grin controller. What I have done is mounted a handlebar on-off button and set my adjustable regen to activate on the minimum setting which hardly even stops the bike on flat ground let alone going down hills, if I want more braking power of course I use the accelerator/ throttle to increase the regen-braking as normal however using the minimum setting going down any hill gives me more regen charging apart from regen stop braking. If this button is introduced to stop the internal brake within the Freegen brake then you could recharge going down hills like I do with the standard GMAC. If like Justin has said that you reclaim about 10 - 15% for regen stop braking how much do you think you can regen charge going down hills ???? I plan my bike rides to go down hill in both directions if possible.
Hey Nathan and glad you liked it! In principle this tech could be used on a next Gen electric unicycle hub for long distance touring, where you use the motor for help on the up hills and disc modulated regen on the downhills, and have it freewheel with no drag riding on the flats. Not a big market, but one that is always ticking in the back of my mind :-)
I would buy this solution tomorrow! I have been doing bike touring around Europe for the past months and there’s currently no good way to recharge devices or a battery pack using your bike. Dynamos are just an outdated solution. I looked into electric bikes with regen ability but quickly encountered the regen/freewheel problem you mentioned in the video. This tech would be absolutely game-changing for those who need a little bit of the advantages of an e-bike (like regen braking) without sacrificing having a bike that you can push yourself up the hill.
They introduce constant drag and won’t charge a phone, much better to have something that takes advantage of my excess gravitational potential energy getting wasted through my brake pads!
Yeah this is a use case it would really shine at. You can easily pull a kw or more when going down hills and store all of that on a battery bank for you devices with no downside to your ride experience. It would just need to be a battery with a very high C rated cell. I do think you would still be tempted to use the motor a little to help on the up hills too though. I mean you have it right there!
Kind of a perfect application for those new super capacitors that released lately, coupled with a decent battery you might be able to get lots of regen even on small descents
The braking/regen solution here is fantastic. I hope Alon is patent pending on this. When are you hoping to be able to have production motors available? Will there be freegen adapter kits to existing motors? Complete motors with regen or are you partnering with OEMs on the solution?
my 21 speed Giant Rincon Se, , its a classic! I converted into an electric with your spokes and a 26 inch Velocity Cliffhanger rim is the best 2.5 inch E- bike build EVER! I have gone though 3 other rims! this one feels like night and say! I wish I had used the normal 13gram in. I used the 14 the other time sand think being stiffer make them more suceptible to breaking?. But Love your show! keep up the great work!
I like the fact RUclips put this video up in the stack - even though already watched, Because its such an Epic Revolution of design and fairly simple. Regen is always on my mind everytime heading down steep hill into village. At least brake pads warn others, that I'm on the edge of overheat. Cheers
This is an absolutely amazing brakethrough! (yes I misspelled that on purpose, I'm very sorry) Congrats all around, I'm wildly impressed. Really hope the whole ebike industry takes this seriously; I want more regeneration-capable ebikes. Now it has me wondering, is there a way to make this have ABS? I guess that might require a finer-resolution wheel-speed sensor, but otherwise couldn't it back off the regen anytime it detects a locked wheel?
Obviously you don't hear the rear end in your vehicle, because gears are not square straight cut, they're angle cut to smoothly engage with more than one tooth engaged as they mesh. So major upgrade to these geared hubs have to be made, and they'll last ten times longer. Helical cut gears are the answer to wear and noise. Costing 4 times more. And I suspect a select few are done this way. Cheers
That is a staggering elegant solution. As someone who has been driving a Tesla since 2015 and riding a Zero SRF for 5 years the regen is one of the most satisfying aspects, Im also an E bike builder and a mountain biker, this invention ticks all the boxes for me. One question do I have the full rear braking capability such that i can lock the rear wheel at an instant to a level such I can promote a slide? The only reason I term it that way is trying to understand have I lost that level of braking with this system I think I have but maybe Im not grasping the reaction between full on fast brake application and the motors ability to resist 100%.
This is so elegant, just beautiful. I forgot to ask in the QA because I arrived late : to work around the large bearing/weather sealing issue, would using centerlock discs help reduce bearing size ? Or is centerlock proprietary and to be avoided in this case ?
This is a really good idea that we will look into! The diameter of a centerlock system is certainly less than the 44mm BCD pattern of an ISO disc and could help with this concern for sure by allowing a smaller bearing over the carrier. Thanks for the comment.
In general yes, assuming that the motor controller has the same phase amp limit for forwards thrust as regen thrust which is usually the case. You can easily know how much torque you get for a given phase current. If you know the Kv of the motor in RPM/V, then the Kt of the motor is 9.6 / Kv. So a motor that spins at 7 rpm/V has a Ki of 9.6 / 7= 1.37 Nm/A. If you have 40A of phase current, it will create 40 * 1.37 = 55 Nm of torque. This holds true up until the point of 2nd order effects like magnetic saturation.
This is so awesome excited for more updates! My one concern about this is that its all on the front wheel, how is the experience of using your front break so much more often? Also what's the turn over force with so much more more breaking on the front wheel from the regenerative breaking? Edit: I just noticed in the video they have the hub motor in the rear of the bike, would love to know more about front wheel vs back wheel details.
Hi Louis, for 95% of the braking you do on a bike it should make no difference at all if you use the front, the rear, or both, as the forces are so low compared to the tire traction that it's just irrelevant which wheel it is. This is especially true with regen, where you tend to brake with less force over longer periods to get better energy recapture. It's only rapid emergency braking or braking on loose ground that you need to be mindful of front and rear brake distribution to prevent wheel skidding. Freegen has the ability to automatically detect and stop wheel skidding so it has an advantage there.
great idea, only concern is running disc brakes at high tourque/low speed. The heat difference between the rotor in contact and the rotor not in contact with the pads might cause warping, also pad glazing. Disc pads are meant for high speed high tourque. i could see these having issues with brake noise.
That's one of the things that only firsthand experimentation will help us better understand. In general glazing happens from disc pads getting too hot, and since the frictional energy dissipation with a low speed rotor is way less than a high speed rotor, the heat will similarly be way less with this system too. The expectation is that the pads will last much much longer and provide more dependable braking than with a conventional setup, but the proof will be in the pudding once we get a lot more on the road and have ways to quantify this.
@@GrinTechnologiesAs a bike mechanic I can confirm clean brakes way more often squealing on small bikes, kids bikes and on casual riders' front brakes because they barely use them. Even if broken in they will start screaming due to little use. On bikes glazing due to overheating seems not to be an issue. However as a hub manufacturer you have near zero control of what will be installed on actual bikes if you use standard disc mounting. You can make a specification but bike manufacturers will just override it to get to their price point.
Almost shocking how simple this is......... but that makes it such a great idea.... I get the idea of breaking while the battery is at 100%. This allows for flexibility in battery capacity. Add more battery when you go for a ride in the mountains, use less when short and flat ride :-) It is a pity you need a sensor on the brake arm to use this system. Would have been great if it could do without. Shimano or Bosch should adopt you guys or at least use your technology in their systems.
Exactly, that's what makes this invention particularly special. Amazing that with 7 billion people on the planet there are still some simple solutions like this lurking in the background waiting for someone to have the right AHA moment!
Oh, and you CAN use it without any sensor on the brake arm, as long as you don't throttle and brake at the same time, and one of the demo bikes setups at eurobike runs this way too. When the motor isn't being driven, the disc rotor spins and would stop spinning once the brakes are squeezed which the control system can pick up on and then engage regen to hit the slip ratio. But while you are throttling, the disc rotor isn't turning, and so there's now way in that scenario to know that the rider has pressed the brakes.
@@GrinTechnologies I think it is normal behaviour on a normal bike not to throttle when breaking. That why I think this could be a nice self-contained frontwheel system for existing (e-)bike. Maybe even with the battery inside the wheel, like the Copenhagen wheel did.
This just screams for a small frontwheel that you can use to transform a normal bike into an e-bike within minutes, keeping the existing diskbrake, no extra torque-arm, click on the battery, strap on a controller and off you go, without extra drag but with regen when you break and some help when you accelerate again. No need for a big battery, but if you want you can, depending on how far you want to go.
Great video. I'm curious, what was the book you showed in the first part of the video. I'm an old retired M.E. and would like to read it...thanks...kunk
My first electric bike was a Hasa lookalike Mountain bike with a Canadian BionX 250-Watt hub motor in a 26" back wheel I imported from Canada to Australia. The motor controller and a torque sensor were in the hub. It came with magnets and Hall-effect sensors I mounted so that when I pulled on the hydraulic brake levers the hub motor switched to regenerate mode which was confidence inspiring when negotiating some very steep local tarmac descents. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have a torque sensor instead of a cadence sensor until I got on a friend's bike with a 750 Watt Bafang hub motor & cadence sensor to switch power to the motor!!! Bafang hub motors were primitive, just a motor with no regenerative braking or torque sensor built in and an external controller. For my next MTB conversion, I used a Chinese crank motor with a Torque sensor on the crank shaft and controller built into the motor housing. You don't get regenerative braking with a crank motor, but the motor has the advantage of applying its torque through the bikes 11 speed gear train, helps heaps when going up steep hills, so I didn't miss having regenerative braking. A torque sensor to control motor power is essential, but regenerative braking on a bike is not necessary. Crank motors are the new must have because you can easily remove both wheels to change a tyre/tire. If you use Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres you won't need to change them, which is a good thing because they have steel wire beads!
@@azertyQ Maybe. The patent people allow very small inventive steps. The Toyota hybrid uses a 2nd electric motor to drive the planet frame. This uses a brake. That'll almost certainly be enough to declare it a new invention. It would be better for the world if this wasn't patented, just something all manufacturers can use. But not better for Alon.
Correct! There is some close similarity and Alon mentioned that was part of what sparked him to think along this line. In the toyota though it's an ICE and electric motor gouped together through the epicyclic gears, while here it's a disc brake and a motor, and the control mode is totally different since they are trying to control and optimize very different things.
I've only used 2 hub motors from 2014. Grin Tech, wow! I am putting 2 hubs on my huge tire ridged bike! I've been mid drive my whole life but on a ridged bike the hub motor really doesn't make a difference, unless you like trials, wheelies or up steep hills.
I like the simplicity of no torque arms, and variable regen. But I also don't mind if when not pedaling instead of freewheeling, the optimal regen to stop rate were applied. Basically, a knobby fat tire ebike with freewheel still slows down significantly as you cut power due to wheels. Even more at low pressure. Range extension and brake wear is manageable through this predictable and intuitive slow down during coasting. Faster trip times are possible with shorter "coast" times that apply regen. Basically freewheel is not at all necessary. Still, a nice thing about this system would be low heat, where motor is not generating heat 100% of the time.
Yes, we get a few people who like and want "engine braking" like this and it's actually a setting in the Phaserunner / Baserunner controller suite for those who do. Unfortunately that won't work with a freegen setup as the brakes need to be used, so if it's a feature someone wants it needs to be a more classic regen capable hub.
Amazing. How does it react if you drag the brake under power? This is done when maneuvering at very slow speed like for super tight turns in a parking lot. You drag the brake while applying a small amount of throttle to reduce wheel end torque for better control.
The freegen motor cannot power and brake simultaneously and that's not a use case we've ever heard of someone wanting on an ebike. But if you did want to do this, just use the mechanical brakes on the other wheel not the freegen motor wheel
Well done to you Justin for giving two random dudes the time to explain their idea. Looks great! Is there an issue with keeping dirt out given that you have to expose the carriers which would normally be nicely hidden away inside the motor case? Also can you lock the back wheel for all important skid turns to impress your friends?!
Oh the planet carrier is brought out via ball bearing, so it's got the full bearing seal on it and no worry about dirt ingress. But sealing that larger bearing against water is a bit of a concenr that we addressed in the Q&A video you can also watch. As for skidding the back wheel, come to Eurobike next week and give it a spin yourself!
@@GrinTechnologies thanks for the answers. I'd love to come to Eurobike but I'm in New Zealand and only fly to visit family or for emergencies. One day :)
You could in principle link up the backwards chain movement via a freewheeling idler pulley to tug on the disk calipers with a simple lever arm. It would be a humourous mechanical hack, and one that would work any regular disk brake bike to give you coaster brakes too!
Its like orchestra!! A marvel! So happy!! Also---When can we pre-order, you need funding right??? Also, Imagine what you can do with more wheels!! like a recumbent bicycle. Thanks you
Fabulous. And I have a question. Is there a reason it wouldn't work on both wheels? Is it because regen doesn't work well a 0 mph? A two wheel drive sounds a little like a race bike.
You can stop right down to 0mph fine but it makes sense to have one fully mechanical brake as your backup. If you want a 2wd for power, you can do that and have freegen with one motor but a conventional 2nd motor
great idea! Now to produce some for the market to test….can one produce an affordable product? Challenges for debris and water egress? cheers from northern BC
I'm going to have to change my 15 year position on regen on ebikes. Formerly "It's just not worth the complexity and the few downsides." but now it seems that the benefits will outweigh the costs. This also make fix the only thing that I HATE about cheap mechanical disk brakes - not that they don't work, but all of the maintenance adjustments, and having to manually adjust the inside pad. Especially on the rear tire with a hub motor. But THIS solution would work just as well with cheap mechanical/wire disk systems, AND would mean the pads could last almost forever...which means the maintenance frequency would be significantly less. Could the savings on brakes even account for the upgrade to this system, cost wise?
Engineering brainwaves like that, are exactly what trigger my endorphins. It's always such a great feeling of achievement, and I'm certain he felt that same joy.
Great. Wonderful. Brilliant. Congratulations! Next question: If there's an electrical malfunction/failure, seems to me you'd lose the brakes. So what's the backup contingency for that? OOPS. Spoke too soon. 10:34 addresses that. II didn't know shorting the controller would do that. What if it burns something out so it can't be shorted though? Is that a possibility?
This is absolutely brilliant, simple and elegant. An absolute game changer.
I've been building and modifying geared hub motors for about 17 years, and I'm annoyed I didn't think of it- and it's a perfect example of how powerful it is to believe that a beautiful and elegant solution exists somewhere in design space, and if you look hard enough you'll find it. Everything has not been invented.
Exactly, those original gems may be harder to find but they are still out there waiting for someone to see the light in just the right way. What's coolest is that Alon had never even seen a ridden a geared hub motor before coming up with this, let alone opened and serviced one. It's like being an outsider to the space was almost an advantage.
This is really touching, thanks ❤
I thank all the legacy ebike innovators, such as Grin Technologies. But it often takes an ignorance of what can't be done (IE a fresh pair of eyes), to make truly breakthrough innovations.... Thank you, Alon Goldman @ChargeBike. And thx to Justin @Grin Technologies for recognizing its game changing nature and for helping to bring it to a production stage of development.
I look forward to seeing it developed in a myriad of ebike applications.
Thanks, @therhubarb, it is touching to finally meet the people who understand the beauty of it, as we do.
No, it's terrible. You have no brakes. The braking force can only be force of the motor. You are essentially turning the motor into the brake. That's fine 99% of the time. How about panic stops?
If you don't know, you don't know. If you do know and understand, this is truly epic in its simplicity and its genius, not to mention it is something we want and need!
Nah, I haven't much seen the build or gear durability etc.
Would have been invented in 'murica if the tax slave colony wasn't so enslavy!
@@Cineenvenordquist Grin has nearly 20 years of e-bike design, testing and sales. Their build quality is top tier. You pay more for Canadian durability.
@@andretokayuk8100 Why would it be invented in America?
@@sammiller6631 moot point at this point.. this cuntree stifles innovations these days.. just like it suffocates it's tax slaves under the weight of our corpulent "government" tapeworms.
This should also nearly eliminate brake locking, making this the first practical concept of ABS I’ve seen for e-bikes. If the gear teeth are made of durable enough material this is going to make big waves in the market
might even work on full sized cars for rim/tire-motors or all-wheel-drive motorcycle's and also done right might give more gearing as the brake-pad act's like a CVT*
Bosch has an ABS, apparently it works pretty well. Also allows you to operate both brakes with the same lever, because you no longer need to modulate braking power per wheel.
The benefits of this astounding innovation are MUCH more than just regen. The reduced load on the torque arm for example. But also the big reduction in brake wear. About a year ago I started regularly riding in an area where there are steep hills, and live at the top of a hill. I am leaning on the brakes hard all the way downhill, and buying pads every four months or so. This would not only let me offload the brake wear to the motor, but also it would let me vary my downhill speed on the fly so I could either go down faster, or just apply less regen on a hill segment where the slope of the hill is less, so I can maintain whatever speed I think is comfortable at the moment. I see this as not just a now-we-got-regen feature but a head-and-shoulders general improvement of hub motor technology.
At 77 and been involved with several start-ups, all I can say is you have a REAL WINNER on your hands and you will have no problem finding the funding for your project. My only problem, I see, is the plastic gears. DON'T USE THEM !
Metal gears in ebike motors are annoying loud. Why use them?
@sammiller6631 at 77, he might be thinking plastic is Bakelite?
@@sammiller6631 I'd take a lot of convincing that plastic gears would be strong enough. (You know that any cordless drill that's desighed to last has metal, not plastic gears, don't you?)
@@johnbb99 Do cordless drills have the same torque levels as e-bikes? Or do bicycles spin at much slower rates than drills?
@@bigshnitzeljesse The world has come a long way since Bakelite.
I am _flabbergasted_ by how elegant a solution this is. Downright _gobsmacked,_ positively _agog._ Damn, this is going to change things!
Internet Award for the use of the word "agog". After both "flabbergasted" and "gobsmacked" it was entirely unexpected. Well done!
Someone's been having a little too much fun in their thesaurus
Well, as impressive as I am with the tech, this comment gets the win 🥇
But you lose the ability to use the conventional rear brake. A bit of a downside to this system.
@@mandrakejake Yes not huge one considering saved brake pads, but anyway, we just cannot lock the rear wheel?
As he’s explaining the basics of how this works, and the realization hits you….the guy they show having that realization on camera perfectly captures it. Just a “oh. Oh my god obviously, lol what?!” That is so unintuitive but simultaneously the most intuitive thing ever once you get it. Amazing.
Love this solution. As a mechanical engineer and Ebike enthusiast, good job! Justin I met you many years ago at a makerfaire. So glad there are people like you in the industry who care about the technology itself and not simply profits.
Congratulations everyone. Can't wait to see this project move forward. And would love to see more videos on this.
I'm not a huge fan of hub motors, yet watched through and am amazed at the awesome engineering that improves and simplifies.
I am sure this will bring improvements to electric cars as well
Why?
I despise front wheel hub motors.
Due to the awful riding characteristics it creates.
But rear hub is usually very low maintenance simple and long lasting.
Also the other parts tend to last longer (chain cassettes and in this case the brakes)
Cars, well... Don't Cars use direct drive motors and I can't imagine adding a gearset is the way to keep something quiet and reliable for several hundred thousand miles/km.
For people like me who are cyclists who also love electrified things (bikes/scooters/cars), it is downright ASTOUNDING how beneficial (and surprisingly simple) this new invention is. Best of both worlds with freewheeling eliminating motor drag, but we still get regen braking - Amazing!!!
This will be a great product once people understand it. I have a geared GMAC for better low speed torque, with locked clutch version for regen. The regen braking has been great, but I do feel the drag the rest of the time pedaling at higher cruising speeds. The quality of Grin products is top notch. Adding Freegen would be amazing. The smaller diameter and lighter Shengyi, combined with just 200-300 Wh of Ligo+ would be perfect for gravel and road bikes, adding just about 5kg. I just want a ultralight setup to get me up hills and regen brake, without the weight of most ebikes.
I thought it was possible to have the motor controller trickle current to the hub to eliminate the sensation of drag, or do you still have some feedback?
@@jpsuperstar Yes, but I haven't tried because I don't want to use the few watts of power to eliminate the drag, which seems more with gear hub. I'm pedaling 95% of the time, with motor only for hills and quick passes, and a tiny 360Wh battery. I have a knobby mountain bike tires and accepted the drag as a workout. Freegen seems like the simpler and ideal solution, especially for the road and gravel bikes.
@@jpsuperstar Hey guys. It's not only the efficiency issue- it's HOW you use the brakes that is also a gamechanger- until now, if you were using the current Grin regen products, you'd have to work the braking yourself, meaning you have to apply the throttle to set the braking amount, and you also have to pay attention not to press hard on the brakes because if you pass the point of engagement, the braking would be mechanical. You need to keep it just so that the on/off sensor detected it but it's not working yet (same as lightly touching the brake pedal in your car and the brake light would turn on even before an actual force point has been reached). With our solution, you simply brake NORMALLY. No extra buttons, sensors or getting used to a specific method. And in all cases, you'd get the (nearly) optimum possible regen
@@Michael_Charge very cool ! ;)
the revenge of the hub motor. awesome. I'm really really curious to real world efficiency numbers
I'm consistently getting 10% and more on my daily flat city rides. About the revenge of the hub, enjoy it while it lasts, we are working on a very cool solution for mid-drives as well...
Awesome and super thanks! ...and totally awesome that you're all working on this together.
Smart idea, particularly for cargo bikes! I guess you could always fit an additional V-Brake if ever needed. Well Done!
No need,you have the friction brake on the front wheel anyway.
Very interesting design, I have a few questions :)
1) Do I understand correctly that if the planetary gear fails the brakes will not work?
2) What is the maximum braking power? Is it limited by the power of the electric motor / recuperation system? I would be interested in a comparison with a typical disc brake system.
Correct that this requires the gears to work. Fortunately planetary gear failure is much less common than people make it out to be, but there is a reason to have them even further over engineered in this usage case.
The braking power in watts is actually a function of the bicycle speed more than anything else. At high speeds it's easy to pull 1-1.5 kW of regen if you are slowing down fast, while at low speeds the same braking force can be just a few 100 watts or even negative watts (ie you are pulling energy OUT of the battery, not putting it in). What matters in a comparison is the torque, and with a largish geared motor as shown in this video that torque can exceed 100 Nm, which is around the point where the rear tire starts to skid.
You'd still have front brake which provides the majority of braking power. Maybe invest in good anti-lock fronts. Most people riding bikes have low quality brakes all around if you think about it.
I've moved away from the gmac because changing planet gears every 1,000km is too expensive at $100+ per gearset. One planet gearset did last 2,000km, but that was the longest. And this is all 'easy' pavement bike-path riding at 30-40 km/h.
So far the all-axle motor has been very good. Only slightly heavier, but no gears to fail, cools better, and is quiet.
It looks to me that if the regen electronics or the planet gear box fails, the wheel will freewheel. If the battery is full an you go downhill, then the electronics must shunt the current to get any braking. I wouldn't trust this on the front wheel.
@@ryan0io I don't know exactly what Radpower is using, but my BF's bike has an amazing 6,000km and is still going strong. I hope my (non-radpower) gears last that long, but we will see... Mine are currently at 1,004km.
OMG. This is so so cool. Revolutionary, even for mid-drives
There is even a trick to use a similar concept with mid-drive ebikes, but it's got a bit more mechanical trickery and custom parts required. What's so elegant about the hub motor solution is it's a painless drop-in fit of a front or rear wheel hub.
@@GrinTechnologiescan you share more?
True. So true.
Buh, when there's a will, there a way. Only a matter of time now.
@@GrinTechnologies With two different rear wheel kits i noticed my rear wheel would not sit 'true' in the dropouts and even carefull adjustment wouldnt help because the axle torques and creeps out of the dropouts in a un-symetrical way causing the wheel to lean drive side at the top and non-drive side at the chaistays. e, and i asked you about this years ago and you said, "i havent seen that happen before" which to me is BS. It is easy to replicate.
This was a big reason i had to take the rear wheel kit off my bike (135 QR mounted). Two different bicycles using two different motors with your tourque arms(x2) on the second bike.
and the biggest hurdle for wheel hub motors aside from this isnt regenerative braking but rather internal gears so the motor can be used most effectively going uphill or downhill.
and also li-ion is a distasteful battery tech if only for the fire concerns while LiFe leaves a user wanting more after such a weight penalty.
Honestly having a quiet gasoline middrive could be realized for less money, with a small catylitic converter it would run very clean. The motor could be made in titainium given how small it would need to be,, could last forever and not be destroyed by rain or need silicone conformal coating + weepholes.
Oh.... and there are no oil-fill ports on any of these ebikes yet they have gears that turn for alledgedly years. makes no sence.
magnificent!, thank you for making this video. it's very helpful for my final year project for mechanical engineering.
This is so elegant I'm aghast at the fact no one had tried it before!
So glad to see you guys cover this! I was ecstatic when I saw their booth at Eurobike.
This will revolutionize. Glad to be alive to see this happen.
Great vid. Simply amazing and genius! All the best on the developments...it sounds like a game changer. How much range improvement will this regen provide?
Brilliant work. Congrats on this new development; looking forward to having this new motor available soon!
This is some of the best engineering I’ve seen in a while in its elegance
Electric kick scooters are just regen-capable eBikes without pedals… and I’ve never seen a freewheeling model. When your battery is low and you can’t fall back to pedals it’s even more annoying that the regen-capable hub motor quickly saps away any momentum you’ve built up from kicking. Get it into an even smaller hub motor and I think this will be just as well-received in the world of kick scooters.
Yeah, it's the solution to a problem I didn't know existed until I started looking at the market.
Also, this is an ABS braking system too, as far as I can tell - you can't stall the wheel if you set up the maximum regen, and the system is reading the wheel rotation. Hence it could be front wheel drive.
You can turn off the scooter and kick off. Try man
CONGRATS! You have long been looking for "THE HOLY GRAIL OF REGEN SYSTEMS" and this looks like it!
When my E-CELLS Super Monarch Crown BAFANG motors (yes, front AND rear hub motors) wear out I'll replace them with GRIN hub motors with FREEGEN. That's because my bike uses two 52 volt batteries (20 Ah and 15 Ah) and any regen is very helpful.
I assume I will need a GRIN controller and display screen.
What a great piece of engineering, thankyou for sharing this new idea
Not wanting to sound like a big head or such but it’s a real treat to have such a neat solution layed out & the clip of you getting it was a nice touch.
Totally Brilliant !!! I am glad to see that Grin tech decided to be involved in teh dev of this product. It will be a succes no doubt!
Amazing. Also, an important property of rear wheel braking is avoiding locking up the rear wheel causing a skid. Could this system also provide the illusive ABS system?
In a way yes, it could reduce the regen on the rear wheel if it sees that it has suddenly stopped spinning. In that case it is no longer sensing and modulating the braking force based on the rider's squeeze of the lever, but since the rider is applying more force than the system can use that doesn't really matter. Once they relax on the grips, then the disc rotor would start to slip again and the normal control mode would automatically kick in.
Very cool. I've been running a direct drive rear for over 15,000 miles now and as my needs have changed from lots of daily miles to more frequent short trips in a hilly area, this looks like a great replacement ... or an nice excuse to fiddle with the bike. :^)
This is both a fantastic product idea, including all the lovely advantages in the details, and an excellent video about. I never had an E-bike, but I will immediately buy this hub when it comes out - regenerative breaking is for me an absolute must-have for an electric vehicle, and this is clearly the way to do it.
I hope it will be in a robust form factor that's strong enough for mountainbiking or at least gravel riding!
Simple control of a complex problem. Well done!
Amazing sytem! This is a very clever idea, which will be very interesting to see where this idea leads. Great work.
This is brilliant! Couple this with a supercapacitor to absorb and release the regen energy efficiently (batteries are a bit sluggish in this respect) and you can significantly reduce the battery size as well!
Or, at least, retain the energy long enough to be absorbed. 👍
Even huge supercaps are no match for basic li-ion batteries in terms of actual capacity. And now with modern 21700 cells (a single cell) handling 200A pulse currents I see no problem doing even high power regen with a tiny 10S 1P battery.
As another mentioned, supercapacitors don't hold much energy for size/weight practicality on bikes. Some batteries charge incredibly fast now.
@@bigshnitzeljesse just to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting replacing batteries with super caps, but to act as a buffer between the engine and battery to rapidly and efficiently absorb and release the energy from braking, which tends to be a relatively short pulse, for which capacitors are better suited to handle.
Now that’s smart too
Utter engineering elegance! Brilliant minds making real progress. Might have to investigate putting this into the Dual Motor electric cargo bike, Cyclopes!
These guys went to the right person to develop and bring this to market, Justin is the Man!
Just bought my spokes from you guys! THANKS! Love you guys!! your AWESOME!!!
Amazing tech and Grin values on full display. Perfect partnership and a win for everyone!
My rolling- gen system. I have introduced a button (inline with the brake sensor) into my regen-braking, using the variable regen braking system within the grin controller. What I have done is mounted a handlebar on-off button and set my adjustable regen to activate on the minimum setting which hardly even stops the bike on flat ground let alone going down hills, if I want more braking power of course I use the accelerator/ throttle to increase the regen-braking as normal however using the minimum setting going down any hill gives me more regen charging apart from regen stop braking. If this button is introduced to stop the internal brake within the Freegen brake then you could recharge going down hills like I do with the standard GMAC. If like Justin has said that you reclaim about 10 - 15% for regen stop braking how much do you think you can regen charge going down hills ???? I plan my bike rides to go down hill in both directions if possible.
Amazing! Thanks for that, such a clear explanation. Justin, you're the man!
Hey Nathan and glad you liked it! In principle this tech could be used on a next Gen electric unicycle hub for long distance touring, where you use the motor for help on the up hills and disc modulated regen on the downhills, and have it freewheel with no drag riding on the flats. Not a big market, but one that is always ticking in the back of my mind :-)
@@GrinTechnologies That would be amazing!!
I would buy this solution tomorrow! I have been doing bike touring around Europe for the past months and there’s currently no good way to recharge devices or a battery pack using your bike. Dynamos are just an outdated solution. I looked into electric bikes with regen ability but quickly encountered the regen/freewheel problem you mentioned in the video. This tech would be absolutely game-changing for those who need a little bit of the advantages of an e-bike (like regen braking) without sacrificing having a bike that you can push yourself up the hill.
What's wrong with dynamos? They work well for the task they're designed for.
They introduce constant drag and won’t charge a phone, much better to have something that takes advantage of my excess gravitational potential energy getting wasted through my brake pads!
Yeah this is a use case it would really shine at. You can easily pull a kw or more when going down hills and store all of that on a battery bank for you devices with no downside to your ride experience. It would just need to be a battery with a very high C rated cell.
I do think you would still be tempted to use the motor a little to help on the up hills too though. I mean you have it right there!
Kind of a perfect application for those new super capacitors that released lately, coupled with a decent battery you might be able to get lots of regen even on small descents
Yes, I really think a modest bank of supercapacitors, could recapture a _lot_ more of that power, than high-C cells will.
This is going to be a game changer! Can't wait for a product!
Yep. It really is its own new category.
It’s been 12 hours - they’ll already be being built and sold on Ali…😊
@@freeforester1717 right?
@@freeforester1717 Stuff bought on Ali tends to fall apart right after you get it.
wow, absolutely brilliant, simple and elegant.
This is fucking phenomenal. Nothing is this elegant
Your mom is pretty elegant..
The braking/regen solution here is fantastic. I hope Alon is patent pending on this. When are you hoping to be able to have production motors available? Will there be freegen adapter kits to existing motors? Complete motors with regen or are you partnering with OEMs on the solution?
excellent development, and work done by all parties involved!
my 21 speed Giant Rincon Se, , its a classic! I converted into an electric with your spokes and a 26 inch Velocity Cliffhanger rim is the best 2.5 inch E- bike build EVER! I have gone though 3 other rims! this one feels like night and say! I wish I had used the normal 13gram in. I used the 14 the other time sand think being stiffer make them more suceptible to breaking?. But Love your show! keep up the great work!
Amazingly Brilliant! Thank you for sharing this video. Greetings from Madang, Papua New Guinea.
Amazing step forward! Congrats. We look forward to buying and riding some of these.
Please make this available for retro fitting to tadpole trikes! I would purchase one in an instant!
I like the fact RUclips put this video up in the stack - even though already watched,
Because its such an Epic Revolution of design and fairly simple.
Regen is always on my mind everytime heading down steep hill into village. At least brake pads warn others, that I'm on the edge of overheat.
Cheers
Beautifully elegant and solid!
This is an absolutely amazing brakethrough! (yes I misspelled that on purpose, I'm very sorry) Congrats all around, I'm wildly impressed. Really hope the whole ebike industry takes this seriously; I want more regeneration-capable ebikes.
Now it has me wondering, is there a way to make this have ABS? I guess that might require a finer-resolution wheel-speed sensor, but otherwise couldn't it back off the regen anytime it detects a locked wheel?
Obviously you don't hear the rear end in your vehicle, because gears are not square straight cut, they're angle cut to smoothly engage with more than one tooth engaged as they mesh.
So major upgrade to these geared hubs have to be made, and they'll last ten times longer. Helical cut gears are the answer to wear and noise. Costing 4 times more.
And I suspect a select few are done this way.
Cheers
That is a staggering elegant solution. As someone who has been driving a Tesla since 2015 and riding a Zero SRF for 5 years the regen is one of the most satisfying aspects, Im also an E bike builder and a mountain biker, this invention ticks all the boxes for me.
One question do I have the full rear braking capability such that i can lock the rear wheel at an instant to a level such I can promote a slide? The only reason I term it that way is trying to understand have I lost that level of braking with this system I think I have but maybe Im not grasping the reaction between full on fast brake application and the motors ability to resist 100%.
This is exactly the type of engineering I would expect from Grin. Amazing
what regen efficiency %?
This is so elegant, just beautiful. I forgot to ask in the QA because I arrived late : to work around the large bearing/weather sealing issue, would using centerlock discs help reduce bearing size ? Or is centerlock proprietary and to be avoided in this case ?
This is a really good idea that we will look into! The diameter of a centerlock system is certainly less than the 44mm BCD pattern of an ISO disc and could help with this concern for sure by allowing a smaller bearing over the carrier. Thanks for the comment.
@@GrinTechnologies I suppose that external spline lock rings for the centerlock are to be preferred to give plenty of space for the axle.
Whats the maximum regenerative braking torque? Assuming the geared hub motor has 40Nm of propulsion torque, will it have 40Nm of regenerative torque?
In general yes, assuming that the motor controller has the same phase amp limit for forwards thrust as regen thrust which is usually the case.
You can easily know how much torque you get for a given phase current. If you know the Kv of the motor in RPM/V, then the Kt of the motor is 9.6 / Kv. So a motor that spins at 7 rpm/V has a Ki of 9.6 / 7= 1.37 Nm/A.
If you have 40A of phase current, it will create 40 * 1.37 = 55 Nm of torque. This holds true up until the point of 2nd order effects like magnetic saturation.
This is so awesome excited for more updates! My one concern about this is that its all on the front wheel, how is the experience of using your front break so much more often? Also what's the turn over force with so much more more breaking on the front wheel from the regenerative breaking?
Edit: I just noticed in the video they have the hub motor in the rear of the bike, would love to know more about front wheel vs back wheel details.
Hi Louis, for 95% of the braking you do on a bike it should make no difference at all if you use the front, the rear, or both, as the forces are so low compared to the tire traction that it's just irrelevant which wheel it is. This is especially true with regen, where you tend to brake with less force over longer periods to get better energy recapture. It's only rapid emergency braking or braking on loose ground that you need to be mindful of front and rear brake distribution to prevent wheel skidding. Freegen has the ability to automatically detect and stop wheel skidding so it has an advantage there.
great idea, only concern is running disc brakes at high tourque/low speed. The heat difference between the rotor in contact and the rotor not in contact with the pads might cause warping, also pad glazing.
Disc pads are meant for high speed high tourque. i could see these having issues with brake noise.
That's one of the things that only firsthand experimentation will help us better understand. In general glazing happens from disc pads getting too hot, and since the frictional energy dissipation with a low speed rotor is way less than a high speed rotor, the heat will similarly be way less with this system too.
The expectation is that the pads will last much much longer and provide more dependable braking than with a conventional setup, but the proof will be in the pudding once we get a lot more on the road and have ways to quantify this.
@@GrinTechnologiesAs a bike mechanic I can confirm clean brakes way more often squealing on small bikes, kids bikes and on casual riders' front brakes because they barely use them. Even if broken in they will start screaming due to little use. On bikes glazing due to overheating seems not to be an issue.
However as a hub manufacturer you have near zero control of what will be installed on actual bikes if you use standard disc mounting. You can make a specification but bike manufacturers will just override it to get to their price point.
This is SO COOL... thank you for sharing this innovation
Almost shocking how simple this is......... but that makes it such a great idea....
I get the idea of breaking while the battery is at 100%. This allows for flexibility in battery capacity.
Add more battery when you go for a ride in the mountains, use less when short and flat ride :-)
It is a pity you need a sensor on the brake arm to use this system. Would have been great if it could do without.
Shimano or Bosch should adopt you guys or at least use your technology in their systems.
Exactly, that's what makes this invention particularly special. Amazing that with 7 billion people on the planet there are still some simple solutions like this lurking in the background waiting for someone to have the right AHA moment!
Oh, and you CAN use it without any sensor on the brake arm, as long as you don't throttle and brake at the same time, and one of the demo bikes setups at eurobike runs this way too. When the motor isn't being driven, the disc rotor spins and would stop spinning once the brakes are squeezed which the control system can pick up on and then engage regen to hit the slip ratio.
But while you are throttling, the disc rotor isn't turning, and so there's now way in that scenario to know that the rider has pressed the brakes.
@@GrinTechnologies I think it is normal behaviour on a normal bike not to throttle when breaking. That why I think this could be a nice self-contained frontwheel system for existing (e-)bike. Maybe even with the battery inside the wheel, like the Copenhagen wheel did.
This just screams for a small frontwheel that you can use to transform a normal bike into an e-bike within minutes, keeping the existing diskbrake, no extra torque-arm, click on the battery, strap on a controller and off you go, without extra drag but with regen when you break and some help when you accelerate again. No need for a big battery, but if you want you can, depending on how far you want to go.
Great video. I'm curious, what was the book you showed in the first part of the video. I'm an old retired M.E. and would like to read it...thanks...kunk
It's like an automotive differential with a motor on one wheel shaft and a brake on the drive shaft? I love this simple but effective concept!
Motor on one shaft, hub on the other shaft and brake on the drive shaft, exactly, that's why I'm referring to it as a "two degrees of freedom system"
@@AlonGoldman-ChargeBike I will buy one, hope to see it on the market soon!
Pretty much how Quaife mechanical lsd works.
These are invented by white males. Can we stop with this?
Holy in the freak! This is going to be big!
It sure has potential to change the ebike landscape a little!
My first electric bike was a Hasa lookalike Mountain bike with a Canadian BionX 250-Watt hub motor in a 26" back wheel I imported from Canada to Australia. The motor controller and a torque sensor were in the hub. It came with magnets and Hall-effect sensors I mounted so that when I pulled on the hydraulic brake levers the hub motor switched to regenerate mode which was confidence inspiring when negotiating some very steep local tarmac descents. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have a torque sensor instead of a cadence sensor until I got on a friend's bike with a 750 Watt Bafang hub motor & cadence sensor to switch power to the motor!!! Bafang hub motors were primitive, just a motor with no regenerative braking or torque sensor built in and an external controller. For my next MTB conversion, I used a Chinese crank motor with a Torque sensor on the crank shaft and controller built into the motor housing. You don't get regenerative braking with a crank motor, but the motor has the advantage of applying its torque through the bikes 11 speed gear train, helps heaps when going up steep hills, so I didn't miss having regenerative braking. A torque sensor to control motor power is essential, but regenerative braking on a bike is not necessary. Crank motors are the new must have because you can easily remove both wheels to change a tyre/tire. If you use Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres you won't need to change them, which is a good thing because they have steel wire beads!
It exactly the Toyota Hybrid transmission adapted to ebike. GENIUS.
Yep
It's true - we had a similar example to work off in a related sphere, and still apparently no-one actually thought to do this before Alon.
@@xxwookey exactly why this should NOT be granted a patent.
@@azertyQ Maybe. The patent people allow very small inventive steps. The Toyota hybrid uses a 2nd electric motor to drive the planet frame. This uses a brake. That'll almost certainly be enough to declare it a new invention.
It would be better for the world if this wasn't patented, just something all manufacturers can use. But not better for Alon.
Aliens can’t hold patents on earth
Elegant simplicity. This is how the Toyota hybrid synergy drive works, yes? I have a Prius and it seems very familiar. Nice shirt btw.
Correct! There is some close similarity and Alon mentioned that was part of what sparked him to think along this line. In the toyota though it's an ICE and electric motor gouped together through the epicyclic gears, while here it's a disc brake and a motor, and the control mode is totally different since they are trying to control and optimize very different things.
Finally! Can't wait to see it🎉
The countdown is on! Thanks for being tuned in.
I've only used 2 hub motors from 2014. Grin Tech, wow! I am putting 2 hubs on my huge tire ridged bike! I've been mid drive my whole life but on a ridged bike the hub motor really doesn't make a difference, unless you like trials, wheelies or up steep hills.
I like the simplicity of no torque arms, and variable regen. But I also don't mind if when not pedaling instead of freewheeling, the optimal regen to stop rate were applied. Basically, a knobby fat tire ebike with freewheel still slows down significantly as you cut power due to wheels. Even more at low pressure. Range extension and brake wear is manageable through this predictable and intuitive slow down during coasting. Faster trip times are possible with shorter "coast" times that apply regen. Basically freewheel is not at all necessary.
Still, a nice thing about this system would be low heat, where motor is not generating heat 100% of the time.
Yes, we get a few people who like and want "engine braking" like this and it's actually a setting in the Phaserunner / Baserunner controller suite for those who do. Unfortunately that won't work with a freegen setup as the brakes need to be used, so if it's a feature someone wants it needs to be a more classic regen capable hub.
Amazing. How does it react if you drag the brake under power?
This is done when maneuvering at very slow speed like for super tight turns in a parking lot. You drag the brake while applying a small amount of throttle to reduce wheel end torque for better control.
The freegen motor cannot power and brake simultaneously and that's not a use case we've ever heard of someone wanting on an ebike. But if you did want to do this, just use the mechanical brakes on the other wheel not the freegen motor wheel
Sounds like this will be a game changer!
Why do people say "game changer"? It's overused.
@@sammiller6631 I think it was started by DARPA
@@sammiller6631 i agree but in this case, it is applicable. this will definitely change the ebike game
That's amazing, looking forward to seeing it in the market!
I have vague suspicions a Tel-Aviv University graduate from Netanya saw some tank differential steering first-hand
Well done to you Justin for giving two random dudes the time to explain their idea. Looks great!
Is there an issue with keeping dirt out given that you have to expose the carriers which would normally be nicely hidden away inside the motor case?
Also can you lock the back wheel for all important skid turns to impress your friends?!
Oh the planet carrier is brought out via ball bearing, so it's got the full bearing seal on it and no worry about dirt ingress. But sealing that larger bearing against water is a bit of a concenr that we addressed in the Q&A video you can also watch.
As for skidding the back wheel, come to Eurobike next week and give it a spin yourself!
@@GrinTechnologies thanks for the answers. I'd love to come to Eurobike but I'm in New Zealand and only fly to visit family or for emergencies. One day :)
I'm glad to see ebike regen advance so far!
Some of this went over my head but this is incredibly impressive.
Honestly i really hope he get’s rich by licensing this. It’s fucking brilliant.
Sounds awesome, good luck. Finding a way to make the back peddle regen work too would be awesome.
You could in principle link up the backwards chain movement via a freewheeling idler pulley to tug on the disk calipers with a simple lever arm. It would be a humourous mechanical hack, and one that would work any regular disk brake bike to give you coaster brakes too!
I'm impressed!
Its like orchestra!! A marvel! So happy!!
Also---When can we pre-order, you need funding right???
Also, Imagine what you can do with more wheels!! like a recumbent bicycle.
Thanks you
impressive AF. KUDOS all around. the elegance of this innovation is astounding.
Fabulous. And I have a question. Is there a reason it wouldn't work on both wheels? Is it because regen doesn't work well a 0 mph?
A two wheel drive sounds a little like a race bike.
You can stop right down to 0mph fine but it makes sense to have one fully mechanical brake as your backup. If you want a 2wd for power, you can do that and have freegen with one motor but a conventional 2nd motor
Stop! I can only thumbs-up the video so much!
Wow. Genius. I have a tadpole recumbent. Am I right in thinking doesn’t have to be put on the driving wheel? What about on the two front wheels?
It can totally work on front wheels too, and that is part of the development plan to do concurrently with rear wheels.
This is what we simply call "good engineering". Love it :)
how wonderful this inventor's mind; a delight to watch
Finally!
great idea! Now to produce some for the market to test….can one produce an affordable product? Challenges for debris and water egress? cheers from northern BC
Elegant and revolutionary!
Smart. One question. Is the regen breaking as strong as just breaking by the disk and disk pads (like in an emergency breaking situation)?
Absolute genius
I'm going to have to change my 15 year position on regen on ebikes. Formerly "It's just not worth the complexity and the few downsides." but now it seems that the benefits will outweigh the costs.
This also make fix the only thing that I HATE about cheap mechanical disk brakes - not that they don't work, but all of the maintenance adjustments, and having to manually adjust the inside pad. Especially on the rear tire with a hub motor. But THIS solution would work just as well with cheap mechanical/wire disk systems, AND would mean the pads could last almost forever...which means the maintenance frequency would be significantly less. Could the savings on brakes even account for the upgrade to this system, cost wise?
Engineering brainwaves like that, are exactly what trigger my endorphins.
It's always such a great feeling of achievement, and I'm certain he felt that same joy.
Great. Wonderful. Brilliant. Congratulations!
Next question: If there's an electrical malfunction/failure, seems to me you'd lose the brakes. So what's the backup contingency for that?
OOPS. Spoke too soon. 10:34 addresses that. II didn't know shorting the controller would do that. What if it burns something out so it can't be shorted though? Is that a possibility?
I wish the premiere wait was not so long.
Me too
What do you mean? It's happening in less than an hour. I'm so excited and curious.
@@zoobiewaLook at how old his comment was. There was like a 5 day lead time on the premiere.
Good luck with this project. It looks extremely promising.
Yeah I'm sorry but you're not going to convince me to disconnect the brake disc from the wheel and rely on a relay.
Maybe for the rear wheel.