Two wheels better than One?

[Ajax]

I was thinking are there any electric bikes where both wheels are motors? Has anyone thought of adding an electric motor to a bike already set up for rare wheel drive?

I can see possible problems with sharing the throttle controls, and of course separate power source. The weight might be a bit much, but all said, think of the possible benefits, i.e hill climbing etc...


Would there be an differential problems with this set up? I.e where on motor was providing more power than the other?

 

[flecc]

There wouldn't be any difficulties with power imbalance since any one e-bike motor isn't powerful enough to run away with the bike by itself. Acceleration and hill climbing will be much improved but there's little gain on the flat unless one motor is set up for lower speed with good hill climbing but the other chosen for speed. With that combination one could run the right motor according to the circumstances instead of both motors together, giving better range.

The control difficulties are overcome if one is pedelec controlled by the pedals, the other with a throttle. Of course the bike with a total power rating of 400 to 500 watts from the two motors would be illegal almost anywhere in the EU including the UK.

This Lafree below has a Heinzmann front hub motor added to the bike's own Panasonic chain drive unit, and to cap that it has a tiny petrol generator on the carrier which enables both motors to be run at the same time. Very very illegal of course:

 

[20 inch terror]

naughty.....but i like it.