E-bike design could be integrated.

[Kudoscycles]

Am off to Eurobike next week and will view all the latest technologies but what surprises me is not one of the big companies has tried to integrate all the elements.
Most current crank ebikes,have the motor,the battery,the gears and the controller all as seperate elements. There seems no reason why all the elements should not be concentrated around the bottom bracket,the controller could be integral with the motor and the gearbox attached to the motor,the batteries in the V directly above the motor or wrapped around it. The output from the gearbox is to a torque level ideal for the terrain. The gearbox could be manual or auto shift.
It needs a company such as Honda to reliably join all the elements together.
TranzX have a 7 speed auto gearbox which is someway towards the overal design.
Too big a project for Kudos to consider but I think it may be the future.
KudosDave

 

[Streethawk]

Hmm, I'm not sure, I race RC cars and the reason we keep space between the motors and controllers is so that they both get plenty of airflow to stay cool. Putting two hot things together isn't a great idea. As for automatic transmissions, haven't we already got better than that with the NuVinci Harmony?

 

[flecc]

For the motor that's something I argued for years ago, illustrating how an e-bike motor only really needs two gears to efficiently cover the range of zero to 15 mph.

But riders need an adequate range of gears to suit the limited cadence range that efficiency and joint health demand. This makes full integration on bike not only unlikely but undesirable, since it means either inefficiency for the rider or excess weight/complexity for the motor.

The best solution to this problem was nearly achieved on the Swizzbee and later the Izip Dolphin, a rear hub unit integration of the motor and rider drive through an variable differential so both ran at near their optimum gearing, but they never achieved the integration of the motor, though designs for that were drawn up.

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US5242335&F=0

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US6286616&F=0
.