Falco e-motors kickstarter project

[Cyclezee]

Hi Bob,

It is good to see your passion and belief in the system, that really shines through and I know personally how much time and effort you and Mark have devoted to it's development.

I have seen first hand how and where you work so I am well aware that you really do know exactly what you are talking about.

My experience with the Falco system was probably too early in the development stage when their were still a bugs to be ironed out, but from what you say these have now been dealt with.

All I can say is good luck with it

 

[trex]

Bob, like Cyclezee, I am impressed by your self defence post. This forum is a fair trial ground - nothing will be taken face value so don't be disheartened by some sharp criticism, it will do you good on the long run.
Do bring your projects and ideas here, where you can get the best sounding board for free.
However, members would expect you to support the forum financially with a paying trade account and not to use it to promote your products until you've paid up.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Just clear things up. I have indeed ridden the Falco system. So has my good friend Saneagle from the Forum. If you want my opinion, It didn't seem any different in performance to any other low to medium powered direct drive motor. It was relatively quiet, but lacked torque for hill-climbing. As I'm 100kg, it didn't have enough torque for me. It wouldn't be able to get me up the hills round here, so I immediately lost interest in it. My judgement was that you can get the same or better performance from lower cost proven systems. I personally don't like integrated systems. I prefer modular ones where it's easy to diagnose faults. Also, at the time there were reports of problems with the wireless system. Add to that the relatively high cost, and it becomes difficult to make a case for it.

Bob, perhaps you can answer a question to satisfy my curiosity. How do you get 50v from Panasonic cells. We normally talk about 13S as 48v and 14S as 52v. How many in your system?

 

[Rakesh Dhawan]

Thanks for the great input everyone. The classic line has been fairly standardized. As with every development, we had teething problems and those have been cleaned up.

Falco Fusion Sport Drive is an evolution of our classic system to the next level.

Wireless console has been optional all along and it will be more optional for the 2015 line up. The tiny wired console with Smart phone charging is CAN based. Many serious cyclists in the US are using Falco system with just the motor and the battery. They are able to have their settings adjusted by the Falco Interface.

The Smart Phone App (also optional) for Falco Fusion Sports does many things:

• Unlocking of the Off-Road Mode;
• Heart Rate Control;
• Personalized Fitness Program;
• Biometrics Feedback;
• Voltage, Current, Battery Capacity Information;
• Power Training;
• GPS Mapping of the ride data;
• Social sharing.

The tiny control unit simplifies the controls:

• Battery Status;
• Power on Demand (Throttle for North American Version);
• Assistance + Regeneration Indication;
• Regenerative Braking;
• Smart Phone Charging.

Of course, we have added the 50V, 420Wh battery and the cassette.
The next evolution adds some of the great functionality we were lacking without sacrificing the wireless technology which took 4 years of hard work to perfect.

 

[trex]

Rakesh, don't you think you oversell a little?

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Can you tell us how many cells in your battery?

 

[Rakesh Dhawan]

Dear Trex:

I am not a salesman. I have never been. I wish I could be. We have been very conservative with our development. We are only telling you what we are designing. It has been a long road and we have stayed on.

There were a number of challenges I took on when we started this 5 years ago. One was to be totally unconventional in terms of technology (Everybody wants to be the same. We want to be different perhaps foolishly at times). Second was to set up an R&D and manufacturing in India. China and Taiwan are saturated. Again I wanted to try out things differently.

These were by no means big challenges. We are succeeding although slowly.

We have also been conservative with our production. We wanted to make sure we have got the bugs ironed out.

Now, it is time to roll.

Our product line has matured. Our team has matured and we are moving to the next level.

Rakesh

 

[trex]

India may be a good choice.
Good luck with Kickstarter.

 

[Hybrid_Bob]

Hi guys,

I apologise if things got a bit heated there, but I do appreciate all the feedback on the system as we can't move forward without it.

I just wanted to make sure that things were as transparent as possible.

I appreciate that the forum would like some financial support for obvious advertising. However in this case it was not posted by anyone within the Falco umbrella of staff and was of interest to Remco so he shared it. I am only here to express my opinions in regard to what was discussed and to inform folk about any out of date info.

As always if anyone wants to try out the system we look forward to seeing you. If we are too far to travel then of course feel free to get in contact by any other means.

d8veh. Thanks for the feedback. I would agree with you that if you want instant high stall torque the system will not necessarily meet your requirements. The real area of excellence for this kit from my experience is as a boost to standard bike riding rather than being able to take over all the riding effort completely. I love riding the system as you can probably tell because I can go very fast and still feel like I'm getting a good workout and I have almost the same amount of torque available at high speeds as well as at low. It allows me to enhance my normal riding experience while getting a good kick up the arse so I on't tare myself a new one!! Having said that I only weigh 68-70kg so my viewpoint will be affected by that too. Down here in Hampshire we don't have the biggest hills to bastardise us with, but certainly in very hilly areas where I have demoed the system it is as you describe and to be frank we would like to see greater torque too. The down side of trying to get greater torque in this system is that we couldn't fit in a high enough winding count to slow the motor's terminal speed down to something more usable at lower speeds. (our fastest no load speed of the motor @36v was 178kph in a 20" wheel!) This means from a riding experience, for me anyway, that you know the motor will always be able to keep up with normal riding speeds without having to run high V packs. Yes the integrated controller side of things was a worry for me in the beginning, but I have been proven wrong about that by the motors over the last few years.

Thanks Cyclezee. Yes it may have been a bit early in the development when you got on board with us but we thank you for getting involved, along with all our other ustomers and we'll be here if the system does ever tick your boxes in the future.

As for the battery situation, I must admit that I am not sure how that works! Sorry Rakesh! Yes as far as cell counts go it would fall between 13-14s. I have not been involved in the development of that pack as it is all US based. I'll keep you posted! We have been more than happy with our 36v and 48v versions here, but again there may be proof in the pudding as he has managed to surprise me on many occasions with what is possible!

 

[RobF]

Bob,

Don't worry about some of the working class heroes on here who simply cannot abide a product aimed at the premium end of the market.

I want to see the widest possible choice, so I think it's great to see cheap Chinese kits developing all the time alongside higher end kits from the likes of Falco.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

As for the battery situation, I must admit that I am not sure how that works! Sorry Rakesh! Yes as far as cell counts go it would fall between 13-14s.

That's really basic stuff. I'm surprised that you don't know that.
I'm not sure whether I have the correct meaning of your answer because it can be interpreted two ways, but just to make it clear: You can't be between 13S and 14S. It has to be one or the other, or neither.

I see EM3ev.com are calling their 14S pack 50v, so maybe that's it. It would be nice if someone could confirm.

 

[Remco]

Just back from work and I'm happy to see that level of discussion here has normalized. Now the project needs backers too succeeeedddddd!

Rakesh, the userstories you listed for the app are impressive. And with future releases who knows what else will be implemented. Will new customers get future software updates with bugfixes and new userstories in it?

I want this set on my Koga Terraliner Alloy next year, a beautifull bike like this Koga deserves a high end set:

 

[Hybrid_Bob]

That's really basic stuff. I'm surprised that you don't know that.
I'm not sure whether I have the correct meaning of your answer because it can be interpreted two ways, but just to make it clear: You can't be between 13S and 14S. It has to be one or the other, or neither.

I see EM3ev.com are calling their 14S pack 50v, so maybe that's it. It would be nice if someone could confirm.

Haha! Sorry, that was my bad! I meant to say I'm not understanding the claims made either and agree with what you are saying about cell count and voltage As far as normal understanding of battery tech anyway.

As I say I'm not 100% clued up on how we are going to be getting 50v but as you say if EM3 are stating the same it could be along the same terms as them!

 

[Rakesh Dhawan]

Will new customers get future software updates with bugfixes and new userstories in it?

Hello Remco,

That is the exciting part of the App. There are going to be a lot of fantastic updates and all of them will be available for download from our site.

 

[Rakesh Dhawan]

That's really basic stuff. I'm surprised that you don't know that.
I'm not sure whether I have the correct meaning of your answer because it can be interpreted two ways, but just to make it clear: You can't be between 13S and 14S. It has to be one or the other, or neither.

Hello d8veh,

The battery configuration is 12S and not 13S or 14S. We are using new Panasonic cells. The peak voltage on the pack is 51.5V.

Best,
Rakesh

 

[trex]

you see the problem with description Rakesh.
We call 10S batteries 36V. So we would call 12S (yours) 42V and 13S 48V.
A 12S 10AH would have a capacity of 420WH.
Also, from a practical point of view, we need motor performance chart to compare your motor against other offerings from Crystallyte, 9Continent, Xofo etc. or better still, add your motor to ebike.ca emulator database.

 

[Remco]

Li ion cell have 3,6V nominal power and 4,2V maximum fully charged:

12 * 3,6V nominal voltage = 43V
12 * 4,2V fully charged = 50,4V (I think this is the maximum peak voltage Rakesh means) This will drop during a discharge run.

Which we had lifepo4, it has a better more constant discharging characterstics.

 

[trex]

of course we can guess where the 50V and 420WH come from. That's why d8veh asked Rakesh to confirm. There is such a lot of knowledge among members that it's not easy to impress members with the Falco kit.
It's the same with talking up the possibilities with an app. There is a difference between reproducing what has been done before and creating something genuinely new.
By installing the controller inside the motor, you actually make a reliable DD motor less reliable because of temperature. Also, it's difficult to see if a manufacturer is going to use your kit in a road legal bike, your kit would emit too much RF noise. If the kit isn't adopted by a manufacturer who is prepared to spend money to get EN15194, the kit won't appeal to most members because it's not road legal. You see where we are heading to.

 

[Remco]

of course we can guess where the 50V and 420WH come from.

Yeah right, why didn't you say it in the first time, LOL?

There is such a lot of knowledge among members that it's not easy to impress members

I'm not here to impress. That's exactly the problem with some of you guys here. Taking the information in this topic here and then converting it to an attitude like who has the "longest". That's not the goal with my topic. The goal is that ordinary people, not e bike nerds, will get backgroundinfo about that there is a good plug and play oem set in town for an attractive price.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Hello d8veh,

The battery configuration is 12S and not 13S or 14S. We are using new Panasonic cells. The peak voltage on the pack is 51.5V.

Best,
Rakesh

Jeez! That's exactly what I mean. The battery is lower voltage than a 48v one, but you tell everybody it's 50v. Anybody else would call it a 44v battery.