Want to ride an e-bike? No batteries needed! • FRANCE 24 English

[Raboa]

 

[saneagle]

That's nothing new. You can't store enough charge in supercapacitors to be of any real use at the moment, so all you have is a heavier bike that's harder to pedal because of the weight and the drag from the direct drive motor. It's great in theory, but rubbish in practice. The capacitors would need about ten times the capacity and stay at the same weight before that idea becomes useful.

 

[matthewslack]

All the energy seen by the motor is coming from the rider, just not in real time. It time-shifts the demands on the rider to even out peaks and troughs.

It'll take the edge off the effort of going uphill, but rather inefficiently as deployed energy has gone through many energy conversion processes from leg effort via chain, gears in the motor, motor as generator, capacitor charging and reverse processes back to assistance effort.

Not the holy grail, which would be a sub-kg low power, high efficiency at climbing speed, zero drag when not assisting, uphill assistance only, motor and energy store.

 

[thelarkbox]

I seem to recall an old Tom Stanton Youtube with a supercap powered ebike that debunked the idea pretty convincingly.