If only he'd been pedalling!

Fordulike

Esteemed Pedelecer
Feb 26, 2010
3,802
1,538
I think something similar might have happened here with a bike like that.. having said that I don't think Australia is particularly cycle friendly anyway..
I do like their hoon laws. The thought of any whistleblowers having the option to ring the hoon hotline, does make me snigger a bit though.
 
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Deleted member 4366

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I think the whole system ended up very fair for the rider to only get a warning considering that he was a disqualified driver and he was a little rude to the police. If I was a dictator in charge of Australiia, he'd have got something a lot worse. I'm not against a bit of discrete tweaking, but that was an electric motorcycle.

One thing it does show is the importance of pedalling when you're over 25 km/h and not going downhill.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,162
30,579
The e-bike the rider was on is a Tidal Force bike, once made in the USA but the very powerful motor designed in Russia. The motor is in one wheel, the battery in the other wheel. I've tried one, their top speed is 30 mph, so the officers observed 40kph easily within its capabilities.

Tidal Force were only making them for some 18 months, despite substantial backing from an angel investor. The rights to the design were then sold to French onetime car maker Matra who produced the futuristic MS1 concept below, but I don't think it ever hit the road. The disc brakes were really something else!

 
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Deleted member 4366

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I don't think that's right, Flecc. The Tidal force motors/batteries were larger in diameter and all black/grey. His bike is just a DIY with two of these cheap Chinese 1500w motors that are all over Ebay. You can see that he has two batteries. There's a stack of lipos behind his seat and a massive one under all that gaffa tape.



Golden Motorstill make/sell a double-motored bike. I had a go at fixing one for a guy, which had had water in the integrated controllers and motors. I got it going, and it was pretty quick. The standard battery is miles too small, but the owner had got himself a massive LiFePO4 once to replace it. The weight wasn't too bad when riding, and it felt a bit like a bicycle and that you were contributing something by pedalling, but I think that was just an illusion:

 

Zlatan

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 26, 2016
8,086
4,290
No registration. No tax ( if applicable) No MOT ( if applicable) No insurance. No license...and he gets a warning. Middle age, middle class ...Wonder how an 18 year old would have been treated.
He should have been arrested and punishhed..extending his ban perhaps?? He was flaunting the law and making situation worse for genuine users..
 

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