Since gasoline because unusable after awhile, most cars will become obstacles and block up roads.
So we of course want something that can zip around the roads!
The main advantages I see are:
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Peddle when out of juice
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Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery
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The batteries can reasonably be charged by solar panels that a lot of houses have.
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Gets around all the blocked roads.
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Generally easier to repair.
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The distance travelled on a full battery is absurd
I don’t expect any movies to put their heroes on an eBike, but they should!
IDK just thought you’d appreciate my dumb thought XD Any other reasons why during an apocalypse you should find an ebike?
I like ebikes, but I lean towards the comments promoting plain ol bicycles as the optimal option. Simply put, a bicycle’s only requirement is a reasonably-flat surface. If nature had provided roads, it’s entirely possible for evolution to have devised wheeled creatures. For the same energy consumption, a human moves roughly four times faster or farther on a bicycle. That’s a lot of advantage for zero extra energy.
But getting back to objective requirements, the other thing working in the bicycle’s favor is the sheer number of them today: over one billion across the entire Earth, with around 100 million produced per year. If a world calamity happened right now and society collapsed, the estimated 60 million horses would become a luxury, not a utility, where 8 billion people vie for resources.
Obviously, much like a game of Catan, the horses and bicycles of the world are not evenly distributed. So if you’re going to acquire something solely to put in the bunker for a doomsday scenario, I’d suggest not putting a horse in there; they won’t like the dark.
- Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery
This is generally not a thing.
- Generally easier to repair.
Generally no. DIY ebikes from good components are easier to repair but not without spare parts. Good luck with that during an apocalypse. Cheap factory ebikes as well as expensive factory bikes with mid drives aren’t repairable. Finding parts is a problem with the former (today, not in an apocalypse), the other can only be repaired by authorised shops due to parts and DRM.
As others mentioned, batteries may not last too long depending on the make and chemistry. A LFP based DIY would likely last the longest. You have to keep a few spares of all parts - controller, motor, computer, and a spare battery.
This is generally not a thing.
Regen is a fairly common feature in ebikes. It doesn’t work while you ride, other than as a brake going down hills, but as most are hub drive if you lift the rear wheel off the ground you could use the bike as a generator and charge the battery by pedalling.
However, it would in no way be energy (food) efficient compared to just using a bicycle due to the losses, but if you needed it for emergencies or for powering something else, it could be used.
It’s not a common feature.
It doesn’t make as much sense to do on an bike, mainly because regenerative breaking requires more expensive electronics and stresses the battery more.
My family has 7 ebikes, all different models and none has regen.
It’s not common, but it does make sense to do! No, not in charging the battery but in braking. Regen slows down the bike without wearing down your brake pads, which is extra important with a heavy bike. I cannot even manage 900 miles without changing my longtail’s pads. I have yet to replace the pads on my regenerating e-trike.
The extra 20% range is nice but I’m more happy about the money and hassle I’ve saved in not replacing brake pads.
You can’t slow down with regen without putting the energy somewhere, and that’s the point of brakes, they convert kinetic energy into thermal to slow you down.
The point of regen is to not waste the energy and put most of it back into a battery. At the scale of an ebikes, the additional components electronics, battery thermal management, and so on for regen are more expensive than just adding 20% more battery.
Unless you wanted to make an expensive, super efficient or very light ebike, it just doesn’t make sense at the moment.
That will not likely always be true if we ever use different battery chemistry and the cost of regen electronics goes down.
I agree it doesn’t make sense to pick regen for extending range. Just buy a bigger battery if that’s the biggest issue, say a rarely used bike but long ranged when needed.
To me it’s the brake pads that add up. Replacing two pairs of pads every few hundred miles is way more expensive than the system and any additional battery wear. $500 isn’t that many sets of pads.
Considering I don’t charge my batteries much beyond 80%, yeah, there’s plenty of room to put that extra energy early in the ride. I’d rather charge a battery than to grind pads into dust.
Honestly I’d wonder if the wear on brake pads could be cheaper than the additional strain on the battery.
I have 1400 miles on my non-regen bike which has burned through three sets of pads (1.5 mm currently left). I’m slowly trying better/harder pads which won’t eat rotors and don’t cost as much. $25 every 500-ish miles isn’t great (10k miles is $500 in pads) . Suggestions are welcome!
I think a key difference is my neighborhood is quite hilly. I’ve never smoked and glazed a set of pads before moving in. That was a quick learning experience for me.
Maybe a super cap, to better handle the charge rate?
It also requires special frame dropouts consideration because of the back-and-forth torque. Typically a strong torque arm.
Regen is only really a thing with direct-drive hubs and not even with all of them. Yes you can weld the clutch of a geared hub, but this isn’t done in production. Some DIY shops like Grin do it on some motors but that’s not a widespread practice. And there’s definitely no regen on mid drives. To be clear, I’d absolutely use regen if I had a direct-drive hub, because the controller I use supports it, but yeah, it definitely isn’t common.
Grin is co-developing a mid drive regen. It has a neat design.
Not a mid-drive but a geared hub. And yeah, it’s a pretty cool design. I’m just worried about cost and water/salt ingress.
Whoops, you’re right. I misremembered that for sure.
Totally agreed with the cost. Grin motors are pretty inexpensive, but not many companies have a complete system. Who knows what a licensing agreement would run.
I mean 5 years is longer than the 6 months for gas, so if you have a vehicle that out lasts that I’d love to know it!
Many do charge when peddling, you can google and see many offer that feature.
I design and build DIY ebikes. I’m aware of what common systems are available and I don’t know any that is capable of this. The only thing that comes close to this description is regen braking which isn’t engaged while pedalling because it creates enough resistance as to make you stop. On a DIY you could theoretically turn regen on while riding at low rate to charge from your legs. Wouldn’t be very practical because you can just use the same energy from your legs to ride longer. To be clear, there’s no free charging where you just pedal normally and the battery charges. If you engage charging the battery, like turning on regen, it will make pedalling harder. The difficulty will be proportional to the energy you put in with additional 10-20% losses. Say you ride at 15kph, that generally takes about 60W. You know how that feels. If you charge with 60W while going at 15kph, your legs will have to produce about 130W. That’ll feel as difficult as riding at 25kph.
It’s the apocalypse. There will be plenty of spare parts to scavenge. We live in a world of abundance.
That’s exactly why repairing any old Honda or Toyota hatchback will be easier than repairing an e-bike.
Where will you get fuel?
Fair point. And we’re back to regular bikes. But I think the fuel supply will still last longer than an e-bike.
The batteries will wear out eventually and lose capacity. Even if you have an unlimited stock of spares, the cell chemistry will eventually break down a few years after they left the factory.
Dude what, no, pedalling doesn’t charge the battery on any single ebike I’ve heard of: https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/do-electric-bikes-charge-when-you-pedal/
That would be horrible lol. Maybe if it were configurable. 1% slow down to charge it in a few days would be kinda cool.
IRL or in the apocalypse? I mean in either case you have to not be using power while it charges. A dead e-bike is way more work than a regular bike. There would also inherently be a fair bit of loss in the mechanical>electrical>mechanical conversion.
Yea it would be like riding a bike with way more resistance. Maybe ok as muscle training, but not useful as transportation.
I agree that bicycles generally are the vehicle of choice for a post-apocalypse scenario, but I’m not convinced an eBike specifically would be the ideal choice.
Horses can carry more than bicycles, are faster over short distances, better off road, require no spare parts, and run on grass.
require no spare parts
IIRC a horse with a broken leg is not self-repairing but beyond repair.
Any vehicle that’s beyond repair is beyond repair.
The threshold to reach there is different. I can replace my bicycle rim and tyre when it’s mangled, i can’t replace horse leg when it’s broken.
What I’m saying is that horses with broken legs - and they break relatively easily - never heal fully, hence people shooting racehorses after they fall even once.
Not that I don’t think it is cruel, mind you.
Be cruel not to shoot them. The pain of the initial surgery aside, you have to suspend the animal in a sling the whole time it’s healing. Can’t do that with a massive herbivore because their guts get impacted. That’s a lot of food and no walking to keep the shit flowing.
But you can still use the parts on other cars…
Horses, however, have high “emissions”, in a manner of speaking. :)
Quite insightful! I wonder if the sheer number of bicycles compared to horses would make bicycles more like passenger cars, and horses like light trucks?
Oxcarts would be heavy trucks, then.
Batteries are only good for about 5 years.
I mean do you have a vehicle suggestion that lasts longer than 5 years?
Normal bicycles
Horse.
I think you misspelled “Bikes” in your title.
Guess the concern is maybe in the apocalypse might not have a ton of food, but having a solar setup should be pretty easy.
But either way, need more bike riders in apocalypse movies!
Most solar inverters are tied to the grid so will be useless after the fall of civilization.
Ebike is another way to refer to electric bicycles. It’s the new transportation mode people are absolutely loving as an option for city living. This is due to the emphasis of cities becoming walkable to reduce their impact on climate change.
They know, they’re saying ebikes would suck in the apocalypse. I agree. They’re too heavy and the batteries don’t last long enough to be useful without power access. If you had that kind of power access an emoto would be better.
why an e motorcycle over an electric bike? I feel the disadvantages are worse: its heavier, larger and requires more time to fully charge. Sure its faster, can probably get your further, and can carry heavier things, but every time you’re not using those aspects, the disadvantages are more pronounced. Can’t fully charge the battery due to slow charging with whatever you can muster up? will now you’re just carrying dead weight.
Will there be nice roads that you know are safe for you to drive fast on? Maybe, again you may be carrying deadweight otherwise.
If you’re not using it to carry large/heavy items, again you’re riding around in dead weight.
As you said: range, speed, capacity.
Your disadvantages are not issues when your range is 150mi+. When an ebike range is 30mi you will be pedaling back from the next town with your gear and goods on a dead battery. That’s why the weight matters.
An emoto should slow-charge in ~5 hours. That’s ~double the time for ~5x the range.
You need nice roads the same as a bicycle does (as in: you don’t).
I’m assuming you dont ride motorcycles because they’re much more capable than you’re giving them credit for.
I would like to know more about this “carrying dead weight” your referring to. i don’t usually carry my motorcycles around. lolI suppose it really depends on needs. I don’t know whether people would really be needing to ride 150 miles in a single charge. You’re correct about myself not riding motorcycles, which is why I asked. by carrying dead weight I meant having to deal with the bulkiness and lack of flexibility with motorcycles. You don’t usually carry around a motorcycle nor an ebike, but being able to take it into buildings with you to hide it would be some nice flexibility. Ebikes aren’t lightweight either, but compared to a emoto they are.
If you ride 50 miles to another town and 50 miles back you will need that capacity.
If you don’t need that capacity you could get a smaller motorcycle that is hardly bigger than a bicycle.
Certainly heavier, obviously.I store my motorcycles indoors in a spare room in the winter so i have space for my car in my garage. You can take motorcycles indoors.
There are motorcycles as small as bicycles and some as large as… Well a large motorcycle. lol Motorcycles are very flexible. More flexible than bicycles, imo. You can find one to fit whatever your needs are.
Some electric motorcycles:
I’m going out on foot. You can get into, out of, over or under, just about anything. And I don’t want to draw attention whizzing down the road.
Also want to be able to hide quickly and you can’t just bop off the road and into the woods dragging a bike. Even left on the road, that’s a clue someone is near.
Nah. No offense, but give me a Surly Trucker over any e-bike. If I was not so messed up with my back, I’d still be good for 200 miles plus in one day on a couple of Snickers bars. Even in my rough shape, I can manage 30 miles daily as is and ~50 with consequences after.
Even without roads, I’m nearly as fast on a carbon 29’er hardtail like a Cannondale Flash and if I was in shape, I would want to cut my own trails anyways.
I’d probably look for a way to move to a makeshift belt drive and single speed. I could probably rig up rubber belts from cars and stuff for far longer than I’ll be able to source chains. I’d eventually be able to do a leather belt drive to stay running for awhile. The hard part will be what to do about wheels in the long term. Wooden rims were standard long before aluminum. I bet I could still salvage enough heavy canvas, glue, and scrap rubber to make my own tubulars. Yeah, I think I could be riding for many decades.
How are you at reverse engineering circuits and rewinding motors? I’ve wound my own transformers before, but a stator is a whole different beast, especially with brushless. That ~30 mile range, battery lifespan, and monstrous dead weight without power would drive me mad.
I’ve put 12000 miles on my trucker and love it, but i still think in an apocalypse I’d want a nice steel single speed (bonus if belt drive). The less maintenance and parts the better.
It’s an interesting idea and have some merit to it, but it can never outbest and outlast a normal bicycle. Still, it’s significantly better than a car or motorcycle and depend on what sort of apocalypse we’re talking about.
2)Peddling charges the batteries, so in an emergency you can turn on the battery
To actually charge the battery you need a voltage higher than the battery itself, and to charge the battery using the motor you will need something with regenerative braking, and to crank these motor you need higher energy than you normally do and put in to overcome the resistance in order to generate enough power to charge the battery. Even with regen braking in normal situation, i don’t think it’s enough to charge the battery. You’ll be pedalling a significantly heavier bike in the end because of all that resistance.
3)The batteries can reasonably be charged by solar panels that a lot of houses have.
This is the true benefit of ebike, but you have to be in an apocalypse in a place with plenty of solar panel.
5)Generally easier to repair.
Compared to car or motorbike, yeah, but compared to a normal bicycle, there’s a challenge if the electronics are fried or when battery need replacing.
The distance travelled on a full battery is absurd
This is true on eco mode, and depend on battery capacity, which affect the weight
Basically no ebikes charge from pedaling or have regenerative breaking
Regen braking ebike do exists, i did a quick google and Rad Bike have it, i’m not sure how it feels to pedal one, but i’d imagine it will be heavier than normal ebike without assist.
honestly it depends on how long the apocalypse is. the batteries are eventually going to go to shit, I think I’d rather have a flex fuel bike that can run on vegetable oil or pure ethanol, the latter of which which should either be abundant or easy to make in any apocalyptic situation.
I feel like I could keep a small engine running pretty much indefinitely.
A Honda 50cc engine will run longer than you
Then let me tell you about the perfect apocalypse vehicle I already have, a Honda CT110. These were only sold in the US from 1980-86, but over here in Australia (and in NZ as well) our national post carrier used them as their main delivery vehicles, so Honda kept making them until 2013. Nothing ever changed though. It’s got a kickstarter and the headlight’s powered straight off the stator, so if the battery dies it’ll still keep going. I once ran it on two-stroke mix because I ran out of fuel, it’s had “right at the back of the shed” vintage petrol too and ran great. It also uses the same spark plug that basically all Honda small engines use, so there’s a million of them around I could tax. It is literally just a bored-out lawnmower engine with a gearbox bolted on 😅
Depends, batteries can be made of a bunch of things. I think a bike that charges from peddling would do wonders.
In general, yeah. And if it has a decent cargo setup or a trailer you can leave the solar panels out to charge small things while traveling.
On the down side, you’re relatively slow.
Not really that slow once you remove the governor or buy an unlocked e-bike: https://discerningcyclist.com/fastest-electric-bikes/
In a non-nuclear apocalypse, I think they’d work wonderfully for a while. Some especially well built varieties might last long enough for people to figure out how to make new ones.
For a movie or in a book, I think they’d work best for a mad dash to safety immediately after the collapse of civilization. Whizzing past gridlocked cars on the way out of town, running out of charge half a mile short of the top of a mountain pass, recharging just enough on regen braking down the other side to make it to the destination for the night.
After a few years, any working electric bikes would be highly prized. Bikes drawing power from trailers of lead acid batteries and then diy batteries would be attempted to various degrees of success. Plain bicycles and walking would be the normal ways of getting wherever one might want to go.
Sure, but something will fail within 5 years that likely you will not be able to fix.
Just get a bike. Attach a batter motor to it if you want, but have it be mainly mechanical bike. Also the battery is a consumable, remember that.
Source: I have been preparing for nuclear devastation since the mid 70s.
Electrics are a fun idea but unless it is basic enough you can fix it with random parts, it is not viable long term if society collapses.
Honestly, a horse is probably the best, or several horses for preference.
