I’m probably gonna buy an e-bike soon, mostly as a way to shield myself from fuel shortages in the near future and ensure a certain degree of mobility, probably will use it for occasional sport too. Also there’s juicy subsidies right now so it’s the perfect moment (for context I live in Spain).
Unfortunately, capitalism will capitalism and most e-bikes come with the integrated battery in the chasis, of which I’m 90% certain there’s no standard among manufacturers, and even many of the pedal-type motors run with proprietary wiring and even protocols that only allow certain batteries to be installed.
Given this, I’d like to shield myself from this (and also increase repairability) by purchasing a bike with a normal battery outside the chassis, something like the Zazawork CF29:
These e-bikes feature the non-proprietary generic batteries and hub motors that increase repairability and don’t keep you forced to an ecosystem that you’re not sure will have replacements in 5 years.
However, these batteries are also much easier to steal, and they’re not cheap to replace. I can mitigate this to a degree installing an alarm on the battery, but idk if that’s enough. My use case isn’t the bike sleeping on the street overnight, but rather being able to leave the bike worry-free for some hours during the day if I go to, say, the cinema, or something akin of duration.
What do y’all think?
a lot of these batteries come on sleds. if youre worried about the battery, you can usually remove it and take it with you if youre concerned about the theft. example on amazon
one thing thats kind of annoying is there isnt really much of a standard for displays and motor controllers. i have a display that cracked and rain got in and it stopped working. i cant find the exact same display, so i have to replace the controller as well. (i tried a few similar looking displays that didnt work). probably wont be an issue for you for a couple years, but keep that in mind.
also depending on how comfortable you feel with it, most of these bike batteries are just banks of 18650 batteries, so you can referb the battery (replace cells) yourself if that doesnt scare you.
Taking out the battery is a possibility for sure, and if I’ll be in a building it makes a whole lot of sense. I should definitely consider that. Thanks for the idea!
As for re-celling the batteries, you can look at my other reply, I’d be anxious about it tbh
I wasn’t aware the screen wasn’t a standard, that’s quite annoying…