I’ve done some posting about my electric bike research over the past few weeks. I thought I’d go ahead and offer some more personal detail on the why and how of all that to cap off this week.

Okay. The situation so far. I decided to take a look at electrifying a bike. Initially, I was looking at electric scooters, but they are really expensive and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really want to bike. I’ve tried commuting from my home in Oak Park to my job in the South Loop many times. Before Maxie was born, I was regularly commuting on my bike, until I heard that someone got knocked off their bike by some of the nice young men that have nothing better to do at 9AM on a weekday morning. That kinda freaked me out.

The neighborhoods between my home and work aren’t totally horrible. There is actually a lot of development happening between Oak Park and downtown Chicago. There are some sketchy stretches though, and there is rampant double parking in the bike lanes, clueless drivers and aggressive drivers, glass pretty much everywhere (but hey that’s what teflon tires are for right?), etc, etc. In short, all the little annoyances that can make urban cycling unpleasant are very well represented in West Chicago.

So, my thought was, “what if I can zip through the bad stuff at 25 mph and take the more scenic areas at my leisure?” I think having an electric bike would go along way toward mitigating some of these factors and give me a little more confidence in commuting in.

The other issues that crop up as far as biking convenience, are mostly related to time. Since my daughter, Maxie, was born, I haven’t been commuting because biking cuts into the morning and evening time I get to spend with her.

With an electric bike, I can definitely cut a significant chunk off my commute vs the CTA trains or a straight up bike. On average my train ranges from 30 mins to an hour, with the occasional 2 hour CTA fiasco thrown in. I’m about 9 miles from the office which on a good day is 45 minutes on up to an hour and 15 if the wind isn’t cooperating.

I’d love to cut some time off my commute so I can eke out some more time with Maxie. And I’d really love to get off the train for a while. I need a break from the grind of riding the train and the litter, the smokers and the pee pee. As mentioned above, cycle commuting has it’s own challenges, but I think I’d rather be annoyed while breathing outdoor air in natural light.

So, again the electric bike seems like a good option.

Alright. With that settled, I’ve started to do some research, including adding in some solar. Heck, I’ve been wanting to make a small entré into solar for a while now, and powering an electric bike would be a super cool way to start.

First, the bike. I definitely want a hub motor. A hub motor is a replacement of the middle part of your front tire. The metal part with all the spokes and stuff. Inside the hub is a little motor that turns the wheel. As all the manufacturers point out, you’ll want a bike with strong forks to handle the torque from the motor. Installing the hub motor should be easy if you’ve ever done a tire change. A lead runs from the hub up your front fork to a throttle and a battery pack which sits on the back of your bike. A great place to start looking at the options available is the Electric Bikes site.

Electric Bikes has information on all the flavors of electric transportation including ready made bikes, scooters and go karts. In my case, I was looking for kits to convert a bike of which there are a few choices. Currently, I’m comparing the Go Hub 408 at $575 with a top speed of 19 MPH and the Crystalyte Sparrow Hub at $400 with a top speed of 22 MPH. I’ll report back on which one I end up ordering later.

So, the other piece I’m figuring out is solar charging. I found a cool suggestion for a small system which I talk about in this earlier post. Once I have a handle on which hub and batteries I’m getting, I’ll need to do some figuring on exactly how much solar I need.

That pretty much covers where I am to date. One of these days, the weather will turn to spring in Chicago, and I’ll really be motivated to get this done. Beyond just the personal commuting benefits, I’m also interested to see if I can’t maybe be a trendsetter. With the research I’ve done so far, and personal experience of the deteriorating state of the Chicago Transit System, I’m really suprised I haven’t seen any electric bikes around town.

Look for more updates in coming weeks. And, by all means, if you have opinions or experience with building electric bikes or small solar systems, please let me know in the comments or shoot me an email at people@urbanecoinc.com. Thanks!

[tags]bike commuting, solar, bicycle, urbaneco[/tags]

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 12:33 pm and is filed under transportation, Conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.