True Pedelecs

[Baka]

I'm in the market for a pedelec kit to backfit to a bike. I want this to be a true pedelec, where the degree of assistance from the motor is determined by the intensity of the rider's pedalling, with no throttle on the handlebar.

What are my options? The ones I know of are:

* Bionx (rear hub drive, looks good, expensive)
* Sunstar (crank drive, but low battery capacity?)
* Panasonic (crank drive, hard to fit to most bikes?)

I'm particularly interested in finding one that is a front-hub drive. The Gazelle Innergy bikes are like this, but are not available in a kit to backfit other bikes.

 

[lemmy]

Looking at my Panasonic, it wouldn't be an option since it is more or less integrated into the design of the frame.

 

[flecc]

The BionX as a kit is indeed expensive, much cheaper when bought as part of an e-bike though. Their batteries are expensive too.

The Sunstar SO1 is rather low powered, this has apparently been addressed in the SO2 unit, but the French importers seem to have no details on this. In fact they don't seem to be well served by the importers, judging by the website.

The Panasonic unit does need a special lower frame arrangement as Lemmy says, a mounting channel replacing the whole bottom bracket area, since the unit has it's own bottom bracket. On the upside-down frame example with mounting points arrowed shown below, it has been added below an existing BB, but that's not satisfactory and leaves inadequate ground clearance:

Your best bet is to source a torque sensor and add it to an existing hub motor kit. I don't have any details on those, but they have been discussed in here so one of the members with that information may be able to advise.

P.S. There's some discussion about these torque sensors in this thread.

This one is interesting.
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