GM Is Getting Into the Electric Bike Business (techcrunch.com)

General Motors is planning to bring two new electric bikes to the market in 2019; one will be folding and the other will be compact. TechCrunch reports: The bikes will be "smart" and "connected" and somehow inspired by GM's OnStar, the company's subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security and emergency services feature found in cars. Hannah Parish, director of General Motors Urban Mobility Solutions, wouldn't elaborate what that might look like. We'll have to wait until next year. The bikes are also equipped with safety features including rechargeable front and rear LED lights. And the electric propulsion on the bikes were designed by GM engineers who created a proprietary drive system. For now, GM is focused on naming the e-bikes. And it's turning to the public to help. The company launched a brand-naming campaign Friday as part of its broader e-bike announcement. The company launched a website where people can suggest names for the e-bikes and have the chance to win up to $10,000.

Comments

And who is going to pay OnStar fees on a bike?

[Joe_Dragon]

And who is going to pay OnStar fees on a bike? even more so if they want to pay year round even in areas where you can't ride year round?

Re:And who is going to pay OnStar fees on a bike?

[bagofbeans]

"GM's OnStar, the company's subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security and emergency services feature found in cars."

It's also a tracking system, so the "you are the product" deal works too.

Hardcore innovators

[JaredOfEuropa]

safety features including rechargeable front and rear LED lights

Wow, what will they think of next? By the way, on an e-bike I'd expect integrated lights rather than rechargeable ones, powered by the propulsion battery.

Re:Hardcore innovators

[zugmeister]

blinking lights do NOT increase your visibility, but reduce it.

This must be why police cars and auto hazard lights and road sawhorse lights are all steady, right?
It may be harder to judge the speed of an oncoming strobe, but I'd say there's a pretty good case it grabs attention.
I haven't even been hit once with my blinky headlight going! ;-)

Stick with cars

[DogDude]

Call me crazy, but shouldn't they be working a bit harder on electric *cars*, maybe?

The almost right bike

[WindBourne]

Skip the chain. Simply have the pedals turn an alternator to charge the battery, which runs the motor. Then use the motor for braking (i.e. regen).

Re:The almost right bike

[hey!]

What you are proposing is a series hybrid; this is useful in situation where driving the wheels with your engine requires a complex, heavy, and usually inefficient transmission.

Bicycle transmissions are extremely light weight and efficient -- efficiencies of over 95% are achievable in a properly maintained bike. So while series hybrid arrangement makes sense for a diesel electric locomotive, parallel hybrid makes sense for an ebike. It doesn't make sense to add stuff in series with a powertrain that is already as efficient as anything could be.

Bikes are almost unique in the mechanical world: they operate at extremely low powers and speeds. An elite cyclist over a long race stage might produce an average of 300 watts. To put that in perspective moderate walking takes about 60 watts. It doesn't take a very large motor or battery to close the gap between an average cyclist and an extremely fit cyclist. So the usual arrangement on the ebike world is to use pedal sensors to control a motor of 500-750 watts in parallel with your own power output.

Riding a series hybrid ebike would be riding an ergonomically awkward electric motorcycle. Riding a parallel hybrid ebike is very much like riding an ordinary bicycle would be, if you had superhuman legs and lungs.

Re:The almost right bike

[zugmeister]

And presto! Here's your 60 lb electric bicycle. Once you account for the energy lost from your pedaling to the generator, stored in the battery then run through the motor, I'd be surprised if your really heavy bicycle gave you a return of 50% of what you put into it. Contrast that with a decent standard bicycle drivetrain (94-97% efficient) and you have why that would be a problem.
Now if you have a dynamo hub to charge capacitors powering lighting, speakers, phone etc. I bet that could have some legs to it... Regenerative breaking is awesome in a car BTW. I was driving my friends Nissan Leaf all over town one morning while he was trying to drink coffee. It was most amusing (for me).

Re:The almost right bike

[Anonymous Coward]

In the cycling world, a popular metric that people measure is their power output, ie watts. The serious amateur athletes and professionals have use either a crank-based (strain guage) power measuring device, or a similar system mounted inside the hub of special wheels. it's measured as some small time average of Torque x d theta /dt.

OnStar Infrastructure is already there

[adfraggs]

Technically speaking it wouldn't be difficult to track electric bikes, give them some kind of wireless connectivity and thus make them "connected" but you need something behind that to make it actually useful. There aren't a lot of companies out there that can immediately tap into a network like OnStar with all it's existing technology and support base. This is something GM can just add on to what they already do, and so it actually makes a lot of sense. They can release a connected bike with some of the features of their connected cars without needing to make a massive investment. GM can hook their beta up with live OnStar agents so it's fully functional from day one. Think about how hard that would be for a start-up, to have some kind of reliable service on the other end that could interact with a small customer base during a trial period. Maybe there isn't a market for what it can do, but if there is and they get the service component right then this could be an instant success.

Re:OnStar

[b0s0z0ku]

I don't want automatic accident reporting unless it has something like a 2 minute delay where I can tell it NOT to call anyone. If nothing is damaged other than your own vehicle, why risk a ticket, police contact, and fine by reporting a damn thing?