Hi, I'm Matteo from Bikee Bike, the company which is launching the Lightest. I'm just here to clarify the details of the system and I'm available to aswer your questions.
As first thing I guess a reply to Kirstin is due for his review. I thank Kirstin because he gave me the opportunity to understand what wasn't clear and to fix it.
About Kirstin post:
So I query "lightest" as GNG do a 1.45, kg from memory. Not that I've used it.
GNG is 1.55kg and there are lighter "motors": that depends where you put the bar for defining an ebike motor. In the specific case, GNG is a RC motor adapted to work on an ebike. You'll certainly know all the problems which come with that solution. Plus, please correct me if I'm wrong, and I might, it seems to me that, when the motor is on, it drags the pedal, and since there's a PAS sensor, I cannot see a way to stop the motor rathern than fighting with the pedals till the motor stalls. You'd forgive us if we didn't count that as an actual ebike motor.
Also I worry about other claims such as the oem. Or retrofit. Hmm its retrofit isn't it really
Why you say that?
And 1.6 kg is the same as a bottle of water. Well yes, same as a 1.5 litre bottle more or less. But the marketing makes it sound like a water bottle for a bike weight which is either 500ml or maybe 750. Never 1.5l. So it obvuscates the fact that it is either three times or twice the weight of a water bottle on bike by comparing against a large supermarket bottle
Sorry, it never crossed my mind that someone who's looking to buy a kit to convert his bike by himself into a pedelec could think that a 500ml water bottle could weight 1.6kg. We'll added the liters of the water bottle on the website. Thanks for that!
Those external jockey/sprocket wheels look like a mainetnece/replacement nightmare to me
Those are manufactured as the Motocross sprockets: hardened steel. You can have good night's sleep.
Next - up to 1000w. So what is it? A legal 250w that can pull peaks? (suspect not). But unclear to me
There are four power versions, the most powerful has continuous power of 1000W and peaks at 1300W.
The legal version is nominal 250W and peaks at 600W.
Finally (for now
price. 500quid for an unproven, untested, who are ya motor with no surety of parts or support or knowledge in forums. That's a lot to ask vs a BBSxxx which
The price of 499 Euro is for the complete kit including the battery. The company is Bikee Bike and we're operating since 2016 manufacturing in Italy a motor which won several awards for that product ( for what that might matters). About seeing support or knowledge in forums: please realize that the support forums where created to fill the gap of a non-existing customer care from chinese companies: if you had a chance, would you ask support to the manufacturer or to someone you don't know which have the system? If the company tells you something it's responsible for what might come up and ready to deal with the consequences with the warranty procedure. If you blow everything because someone told you, then you have to bear all the consequences. So having support forums to me is symptom of bad customer care: those were born when a lot of people struggled to understand the few info in Chinese and decided to put together their effort to understand how to make the systems work.... and I've been there as well.
Next - is also programmable. Is this? Guess not
It is fully programmable! but you don't have to wire it up everytime to your laptop, we have an app by which you can program power level ( limiting for example the maximum power of the 1000W at 250W), setting up the acceleration ramp, program different presets, enable or disable the throttle override, set the operating mode between PAS, Torque sensor or Thottle, activating the RACE mode or get the assist level controlled by your heart beat or simply lock the bike. These features are available with the Superhero pack ( +99 Euro)
Perfect chainline
Keep the same chainline as your original bike. You won't have any problem with bad alignment"
Well this is just pure BS and impossible. It will depend on the bike. Chain lines are not the same on every bike!!!
True, but just changing the spacers between the mounting plate and the motor you can actually shift the motor to the exact position you want with a discrimination of 2mm. So you can keep the same chainline as your original bike.
Next -" Independent drive pinion
Gives you the opportunity to have different transmission ratios between human power and motor power."
What?! So you can choose a PAS power level? Like the most basic hub bike from 15 years ago. Even if you mean it has a torque sensor... Still marketing BS
No, maybe that wasn't clear. On standard construction ebike motors when you pick a chainring, that's used to transmit both human and motor power. So if you're more comfortable with a 36T chainring, you're changing also the motor transmission ratio, lowering it's delivered torque to the wheel and worstening its efficiency. With the Lightest system the two things are separated, so you can choose the chainring you want without influencing the motor's behaviour. Also you can do the opposite: just change the motor sprocket teeth ( getting more speed or torque) without changing your desided cadence. And yes, the motor has torque sensor, but you can make it work in PAS mode or throttle.
Edit - nope seems I cannot stop! I know a guy with a van moof that developed mobile phone connection issues. Which means it's a gamble as to whether the damn thing can move or not. At least most bikes which are less "smart" can be peddled away when the system fails. The van moof is not fail safe but fail bricked! Certain versions of this may suffer too.
Too. Much tech is just further fail point
Usually it's hard to reply to a statement which starts with " ..I know a guy that...", but I'll try. Our app is the same we perfected in the last three years on thousands of users. The good thing is that the app is not mandatory and the system can be operated by the display only or simultaneously by app and display. So you'll always make it to home, worst thing you won't be able to display your instantaneous consumption during the trip.
Hope this clarifies and thanks again for the opportunity. Really.
