so damn cool Mike! This has to be the most advanced trailer and ebike ever built right? The gears in the trailer tube, wow... If you are ever in Slovakia let me know :D That front disc brake rotor seem huge, is that just because of the wheel size or is it really big?
@@JohnKrakatoa Thanks, John. I just discovered an additional advantage of having two separate gearboxes in the trailer. Based on my experience on this tour, I decided I want a little more torque so I ordered a replacement gearbox with a slightly different gearing ratio.
This gentlemen is an absolute legend, not only for his technical prowess but for the time and effort he spends trying to disseminate solar ebike design to the general masses. His website and forum threads are superb sources of information.
Amazing setup, people still give hub motors a hard time for some reason, I was one of the very first people to use a BMC hub motor back in 2004, it's still working great, it's had 2 new rims because I run v brakes mainly but the motor still runs and has done over 40,000 miles and all that time is been run at 1,500 Watts, 50V, not bad for a 250W motor, I wonder how many mid drive setups will last being over powered without new gears, chainrings, chains etc, the best things in engineering terms are always the most simple solution, as Elon says, the best part is no part.
Yep, same for me. I have a 10yo nine continent motor. Done 10's of thousand of km with it. No maintenance at all. The wheel is still straight, and the motor hums gently like day one.
It depends on how you use it. When in the city using a straight up city bike within the 25 km/h limit I would prefer a middrive for it more direct controll. For faster riding (or more watts) outside the city a hub can be a great idea. Just keep an eye on the temperature when going uphill.
I built my own mid drive and I didnt like it...I dont know if i did something wrong, but I could feel when the motor engages and disengages and it made pedalling feel...i dont know rhe right word...not smooth. I rode it for about a year and decided to switch to hub motors...I havent rode with the hub motors yet, waiting on spokes so I can build the wheels cause they sent spokes for the wrong size wheel. I hope the hubs make pedal assist smoother since it is not connected to the crank. I got 48v 500w rear and 48v 250w front. How do you run them at higher wattage than rated? Do you need controllee that allows custom settings? Or if I use a higher amp controller? Also...didnt mention...the mid drive definitely added extra drivetrain noise and I really didnt like it. I am OCD and it drove me nuts...constantly checking everything "just to be sure"...my bikes are as silent as possible, and any added noise just sucks. The quiet hum of an electric motor is not unpleasant.
Fantastic walk around of Mark's solar bike, thanks! It's unbelievable the level of detail of every component he has installed, I couldn't thing of anything that could be missing. For sure it's not built for speed but this was not Mark's objective: especially for him to be able to do the tour of the world!
This is a work of art. I often get stranded when testing new prototypes, but my fat tire still fits in an uber xl. Hopefully all your connections are iron clad.
Thank you. And I hear you. I have not gotten stranded yet but I was able to fit the whole thing in a mid sized sedan with the back seats folded down. Out here in rural America, I figure I can always flag down a pick up truck to get me to the next town if needed.
omg! Its beautiful! And so many details and great ideas... Even if i think that mid drive motors are the way, this built is really impressive. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks, Jorge! Blending form and function was something I really enjoyed doing in the design phase. I made things much harder for myself by hiding most of the wiring and the tilt mechanism.
Growing up in windy Denmark where you can't find a horizon without a windmill in it somewhere, I definitely had ideas of "perpetual motion" like solutions involving putting windmills on a trailer behind me to power my bike. Daily biking as a kid/tween/teen in headwind will do that to you 😂. Minor adjustments to that fantasy turns out to be a solution like in this video, which is very cool. I can't believe how far we've come.
I’m reading this in Sydney, Australia while getting ready to ride to Perth. It makes the world seem so small getting recognized like this. On shorter, local rides I could usually crank up the assist level but over months of touring while relying solely on solar power for electric assist I end up averaging about 14 to 15 mph.
Also, there is a French guy in the hostel here walking around in an Oakland Raiders jersey. When I asked what his deal was, he tells me that he is a big fan of American football and used to play it in Spain. Weird.
@@solarEbike You've actually gotten my gears turning about eBike touring. My 10 year old BionX PL350 finally died on my cargo bike, so I've built my own 1.5 kWh battery and ordered an eBike kit from Grin with plans of doing Mount Diablo and Mount Tam, before testing the limits with Point Reyes and Yosemite. Best of luck in Aussie land - I bet the solar panel is working great in the Outback!
@@benjaminsmith4058 I’m still cooling my heels in Sydney but I seem to have picked the sweet spot between short rainy days of winter and stupid-hot days of peak summer. Good luck with the build. Check out Pinnacles National Park as another possible destination. I made it there from North Oakland in one day but two days is a little more manageable.
5:04 Without the panel, without the bike, even without the wheel, but with the control buttons for on the bike and cables, sounds like a great kit I would order immediately.
Just found that a Burley coho trailer might be ideal for such system. One can remove the fender and use that location to insert two pipes that carry a solar system. If anyone with technical skills could built that for me......
Wow...I just got into hub motors and hearing 30,000km...just awesome. If I get even a tenth of that, I would be happy! Sounds like they last much longer which is so good to hear.
I was glad to see hes using xt60's i was told multiple times xt90's are tge only connectors which can handle ebike voltages . The weight saving on connectors matters .
Very sophisticated mechanical and electronic control systems. I'm impressed with how much gear he can carry without using the trailer for luggage except for that fairly small pack lashed to the main bar. I wonder if you could have the same setup on a conventional ebike rather than a recumbent. Having the crank underneath you instead of in front of the bike might reduce the luggage capacity.
So far so good according to Mark, he finished San Diego to Alaska in September, and just sent word he already completed Australia.. No muggings. Next is Central and South America!
Statorate magnetic coolant $ 20 10ml thanks a solar panel windmill as it rotates it cools the panels = 10%+ more energy 2 things i learnt today browsing E/bike tests videos
I was following Mark's website and keeping track of his location. And after he left Alaska, he stopped posting. I know he is on his world tour, has anyone heard about how he is doing and when in the world he is currently..?
According to his solar ebike thread at endless-sphere, it was SunCat Solar, LLC that assembled the cells and encapsulated them. He did, however, "mount" SunCat Solar's lightweight/flex "laminates" to his own honeycomb sandwich structure. Eindhoven, by the way, generally do not encapsulate the cells themselves. They usually have them done by someone like SunCat Solar. I believe they've used Gochermann Solar and Mito Solar in the past.
I'd love to have some info on the resistive heater used at 8:00. I am using a walmart heating pad to warm a 50amph 248v LIFEPO4 battery but I think it's too warm. like the video says you only need about 10c warming and mine is probablay double that.
I'm surprised by how structurally "minimal" his trailer is. I would have assumed something like that would break right away, but apparently not. (Well except for that one time in the Part 3 video.)
Impressive rig. No much space left for luggage. One can see the sleeping bag in a very poor and exposed location. I think that if I was to do that I would prefer something more like a regular bike that I can unhook from a “solar trailer”.
When do your travels take you through the Twin cities (US, MN)? I'm offering a free meal, all the craft beer you can drink, and access to a garage with access to a fair array of Park tools!
Awesome setup. Any chance for making the front CA-housing available somehow? Does anyone know what kind of brand those recumbent side bags are, would be interested...
I would make the STL file available for people who want to try printing it themselves but it’s not really adjustable to different kinds of bikes, is designed for a discontinued light in front and the wall thickness may not be compatible with extrusion printers, etc. Panniers are Ortlieb recumbent bags.
Incredible bike soo much work. I am jealous of your trip. I been thinking of doing a long Canada/USA tour 6,000+ miles maybe next near year with my solar e-bike. Alex Hofvander and I may do something together. Another great solar ebike builder. Question are you using slow grin motor 7.5 rpm/V? And is it on a 24" or 20" wheel? I been searching for bright rear flasher light too, what make/model you using? Can it direct connect to 48volts?
The motor is the fast winding in a 20” wheel. I’m running 36V LiGo+ batteries for airline transport so the top speed is about 28 mph with a fully charged battery and around 22 mph near the battery‘s low voltage cut off. If I didn’t have the airline transport requirement, I would have gone with a 48V battery and the fast winding.
The red flasher is a Feniex Canon. You can Google it. It only runs on nominal 12V automotive voltage. I was underwhelmed by the choices and pricing of higher voltage ebike accessories so I just got a 60V to 13.8V DC - DC converter and started shopping for automotive and motorcycle accessories. So many more options.
@@solarEbikeYup heard SunTrip US 2022 before was even announced to anybody. I was a ST Europe 2021 participant but decided to drop out near start mainly do to covid None EU citizen covid restrictions were strict and was cases were not getting any better at the time. Think doing own tour with Alex would be more fun then a SunTrip. No rules, check points or entry fees.
@@solarEbike Hmm ok. Well I have Grin DD hub slow windings on a 24" 48volt currently I get about 28mph with full charge same as you. I find on steep hill fully loaded gear etc.. motor struggles if I don't assist heavily. Alex is going have a bigger array and battery. I am upgrading my array and battery match his setup but worried about the extra weight on the hills with the DD hub motor. Alex doing 52v grin motor with belt gear reduction so he will have no issues 24mph max speed about I think. I am going downsize to 20" wheel for more torque but wondering if its going be enough with the extra weight.
The question I want to ask all of these guys: Why not provide a Rohloff (or any sort of multi-speed transmission) for the electric motor, rather than direct-drive from the hub alone? Is the hub motor an "objective" decision, or do they just not want to mess with it?
You can do a mid-drive through a Rohloff just fine and many people do that too. The upside is better efficiency on steep hill climbs, but the downside is no regenerative braking, increased chain and cog wear, and full dependency on the drivetrain for either system (legs or motor) to work. See ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gYCj4asp9pE.html
He is using lithium ion batteries, not NiMH. LiFePO4 batteries are generally a poor choice for ebikes since they're about double the weight of the other lithium chemistries, and these days no longer have an advantage in cycle life either.
@@GrinTechnologies Ah nevermind, just heard nickel metal hydride at 6:42, understand that was just in the past now though. I just guessed he had chosen Ni-Mh for safety reason, that's why I suggested LiFePo4 batteries, but Li-Ion is of course superior (even though LiFePo4 has been getting a lot better, they're closer to 2/3rds capacity of Li-Ion nowadays.
You could charge it with one panel or many panels, it's totally up to you. The more surface are of solar cells the faster it will charge, whether it is one large panel or many small ones. Have a watch of this video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-14yliWlykfg.html In practice, with a 3kWhr battery bank like that, you'd want at least ~800 watts of solar panel to charge it from flat over the course of a day. If you have like a small 100 watt panel, it would take over a week to charge.
If you already have an ebike, you can add a trailer with solar panels and charge controllers for under $1000. The way I approached this project is not exactly budget-conscious. I bought the bike as a frameset-only with no wheels or drivetrain components and that alone was a special order from Germany for $4000.
Not really, as soon as your controller tries to draw more energy than your panels are outputing the controller will switch off. Hence as soon as you ride through a shadow all systems kaput.
If I ever find him laying on the side of the road blown over by a gust of wind or a truck passing I'll stop and see if we can stand that ridiculous ride back up... if he's still alive. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
