Electric Bike 2.0

Over a year ago now, I bought myself an Electric Bike conversion kit from solarbikes.

Electric Bike V1.0

It has been brilliant for that time, and I would rave about it as the perfect commuter bike, but then a couple of weeks ago I plugged it in to recharge … and nothing happened.  After a nummber of phone calls to Matt, and trialing a number of other chargers and even another battery the verdict was that my old lithium battery was dead.

To his credit, Matt sold me a new battery below cost, and after a bit of fiddling today, I present to you, Electric Bike 2.0 …

I haven’t taken it out for a spin yet, but the electrics are a lot neater than in the earlier version (though still messy given it still uses the original controller), with less fuses to blow up, and even a nifty little button on top which shows you how much charge the battery has.  Apparently it is a much higher quality battery as well … here’s hoping.

The biggest upside I see with it is that whereas the old battery took up the whole rear pannier, I now have all this pannier space for carrying work gear and my shopping.  The big downside is that I can no longer get away with zipping past road cyclists on the way home leaving them thinking wtf?  I’m afraid the big battery gives me away too much … the sacrifices we make.