Is there a universal mid mount motor standard going to be developed?

[Aussie Jon]

I love my bike, but I see the motor and batteries as the parts that are becoming obsolete fast. Is the EU or other organisation working towards a universal mid mount motor cradle standard? or is the pace of ebike evolution too fast at the moment?

Background: I have built myself an ebike and am thinking of my next mid mount motor. But I want to future proof my bike a bit.

Current bike is a Yuba Mundo V5 frameset, a Merida Cappuccino donor ebike. Hacksawed out bottom bracket, jigged up cradle, TIG'd cradle in, canabalised Merida, built up Yuba. in 2018/2019 I toured, New Britain (PNG), Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Langkawi(Malaysia) and Singapore, bike has 10,000km on it and the battery is getting tired (about 6000km motor use, in developing countries I save the battery for the big hills or when sick.

A new Shimano 6000 battery is over $1000AUS . A complete Bafang 620 cargo bike system is $1300AUS.

I could cut the out cradle out, fabricate a new cradle for Bafang and get going. But its a lot of work. I like my Yuba, its a keeper.

My questions:
1. Do any companies have a universal cradle that is a common standard?

2. What modern mid mount motors are compatible with Shimano 5000/6000 series cradle? -do any of the Bafangs fit?

 

[Nealh]

The likes of Japan, China and German designers /engineers to come up with a universal mount will never happen, in an ideal world it would be nice to swap out your Bosh system to a Bafang or Shimano unfortunately it's never going to happen.

Kudos though for such a nice good looking retro fit to your Mondo.

 

[sjpt]

Odd: I tried to respond here earlier and the thread had disappeared. ...

Most of the standard Chinese motors (such as Bafang) do not need a special mount, though still sometimes have issues with details such as brazed cable runs under the bottom bracket. One could fairly easily be replaced by another, and also the batteries/controllers/displays can often be interchanged, or at least compatible replacements easily found..

As far as I know there are no adaptors that will fit standard motors in the cradles designed for proprietary ones (such as Bosch or Shimano); others have commented on that before. Once you get onto the big name propriety brands they have lots of details that make them unservicable and difficult/impossible to replace parts such as batteries with other brands.

 

[Ocsid]

I would like to think some level standardisation or various standards will happen, it has to a large extent in the components of bicycles, they even once standardised on threads.

 

[Gringo]

I would like to think some level standardisation or various standards will happen, it has to a large extent in the components of bicycles, they even once standardised on threads.

You may as well ask Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki etc to make there motorcycles with interchangeable motors or Bosch and Black&Decker to use the same batteries.
There’s no financial incentive for any manufacturer to make there products live any longer than the designed life. They don’t even have “standard fit” motors within there own product lines.

 

[sjpt]

One of the biggest problems with standardization in many areas is that standardization groups consist almost exclusively of manufacturers with very little input from consumers.

That is when standardization groups exist at all, which they don't for ebike motors (as far as I know); the only standards (eg 250w nominal continuous power) come from national standards bodies. Practicalities do mean that some standard practices have grown up (such as 24v, 36v, 48v) that give us quite a bit of mix and match capability outside the Bosch etcs of this world.

 

[Nealh]

With ebikes there are few standards in electronics, the few standards that will be found is in China hub motor ebikes. Hub motor wiring is pretty much standard, I have four different branded hubs and all are the same. Most use the same water proof motor connector whether Bafang, Mxus, Aikema, Xoingda, Keyde etc ,etc, mostwill use a Julet made motor connector or a an own make one following the exact same design. You get the oddity like the Suntour HESC why oh why they have to re-invent the wheel god only knows, this makes there bikes almost obsolete to repair unless one can do it themselves. If a bike uses Julet connectors then these are again factory standard wiring sequence from the manufacturer so compatible as long as one is swapping like for like, on the other hand Higo (an almost identical) connector is compatible as the wire sequences are different though a Julet and Higo will happily mate together you would likely fry a component part.

 

[Aussie Jon]

Thank you for your positive responses about the bike. Also you all summed up what I thought would be the answer.

I am having difficulty finding drawings of the Bafang mid mount motors to try and determine if I can modify my existing cradle to fit a Bafang. Are you aware of the mounting dimensions for Bafangs?