Further progress on the hand trike
This a further update on our original blog post regarding “electrifying” the hand pedaled trike for a disabled gentleman and we have made great progress.
The Trike was sent to us in a special delivery van, but when it arrived it was so large it would not fit through our workshop door, so we did all the work on our showroom floor. This was actually quite nice because all our customers and visitors were fascinated by it and asked us many questions about it.
For us this was a challenging project, adding an electric motor powerful enough to deal with any hills in any terrain was an issue since this had not been done before as was the fitting of the motor, but the issues didn’t stop there. We needed a battery that would last for around 100 miles even with very light pedaling, or even no pedaling at all ( throttle capability) .
At Electric Bike World we have the capability to make any size and any shape of batteries and in any voltage and with any Amp hour capacity. So we designed and made an enormous monster Lithium battery of 48volt and 60Ah. When you consider that most electric bikes have a 36volt 10Ah battery and even our top of the range LifeCycles have an 18Ah capacity, 60Ah is massive; a crazy 2880 Watt/hours. We can’t have this bike running out of power and stranding the rider and with this battery that’s not likely to happen. We also used the best quality Panasonic Cells and the best quality BMS battery management system.
The battery was designed to fit inside a large box that we bought from a Motorbike wholesaler, and secured it with industrial zip ties held via metal brackets. This box was actually made to hold two helmets for motor cyclists but was ideal for our purposes. The batteries fitted in snugly, and the box was also large enough to take the main controller as well, and when it was done it looked great on the back of the Trike.
Our next job was to complete the wiring and road test and when that’s done it will be ready for testing and returned
to our customer.