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Bicycle racing propells ewheel innovation???


Tilmann

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5 minutes ago, John Eucist said:

Bad "hide-cheating" technology. :P

Very true! Yet, believing in the fairness of competition cycling was a bit of a stretch anyway :rolleyes: 

Without endorsing this "very special" application: the apparent miniaturization and likely weight reduction makes me curious. Also: as the noise caused by any gearbox would be a dead giveaway, such a small direct drive hub motor must develop an unbelievable torque to turn such a large diameter wheel. Hopefully some forensics on this cheating technology goes public. The good thing: they likely didn't apply for a patent ... :lol:

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I found them for sale the other month, they're basically fairly mundane high RPM RC car motors, the complex part is the gearing it had custom made metal gearing with 2 planetary reduction gears in a tube, then it had to have a carbon fiber bike frame built over it. Power to weight ratios is much higher on low torque high RPM motors, so they can't use slow high torque direct drive motors.

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Chatting to my brother, a keen cyclist, about this he was saying it's not only motor technology that the pro-cycling community have so far failed to keep up with it is also modern materials. To prevent dangerously weak bikes there is a lower limit on racing cycle weight. These days that is 2Kg higher than the bike a man in the street can walk into a shop and buy so they have to add weight to racing bikes to be legal. Might as well add that weight in motor and batteries;-)

16 hours ago, Tilmann said:

as the noise caused by any gearbox would be a dead giveaway, such a small direct drive hub motor must develop an unbelievable torque to turn such a large diameter wheel. Hopefully some forensics on this cheating technology goes public. The good thing: they likely didn't apply for a patent ... :lol:

Beautiful helically cut gears as in the video @SlowMo showed won't make a noticeable noise over the bikes own gear train and high torque isn't needed as these motors are designed to give the rider an advantage - not actually drive the bike. Ideally you don't want them working at all from a standstill as that would be a bit of a giveaway. If a racing cyclist can maintain 400W of power then if the motor was only adding 40W they would have a 10% advantage, I suspect it manages a fair bit more than that.

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9 hours ago, Keith said:

If a racing cyclist can maintain 400W of power then if the motor was only adding 40W they would have a 10% advantage, I suspect it manages a fair bit more than that.

I think he says 150W in the vid (0:58).

10 hours ago, OliverH said:

Like this?

 

For the spin at 2:27 it's hard to see any other explanation than that there is a motor in the bike. It's amazing how a whole community can apparently entirely ignore such obvious evidence. 

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