Rim drive motors for roadies wishing light assistance; AWD bike possibilities?

[Andre Jute]

Here's a smaller, lighter electric motor, with a novel drive scheme and lighter batteries available, perhaps of interest to those of you with road bikes and very light assistance requirements. Their netsite is appalling (I can't even copy a photo to show you) and the full spec is missing, but it makes interesting reading nonetheless.

http://www.velogical-engineering.com/velogical-velospeeder.en

If it were cheaper, and didn't require non-standard batteries, I might have bought four and fitted them each side of the front and rear wheels for a decent amount of drive in an all-wheel-drive bike, say for riding offroad on grass and loose dirt.

It's another stillborn project, of course, because a bunch of engineers didn't think to bring in a marketer, as the non-standard voltage required by their motor tells us.

[Danneaux]

...I canlt even copy a photo to show you...

Detailed photos are available on the company's Flickr pages:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/compact-tandem/sets/72157650382078890

Best,

Dan.

[Andre Jute]

Thanks, Dan. Like those Moustache bars near the bottom of the page.

[energyman]

Amazing and so simple ! What will they think of next ?

[Andre Jute]

Amazing and so simple ! What will they think of next ?

Something more efficient than friction-drive, say a hub or bottom bracket motor?

I really doubt whether this rim motor will be much use beyond pretty light flatland requirements. There's a reason that even the petrol motors that lower onto the tyre with a lever went the way of the dodo: friction loses too much of the available power.