Looking like a cross between a pedaled dump truck and a modern day motor carriage, the new Intelectra from German startup Dynamic Drives Giessen is a seriously muscular cargo mover for cities.
Of course, it’s not solely leg power that drives the 270-lb (122-kg) Intelectra truck-cycle forward. In fact, leg power doesn’t drive it directly at all.
Instead, the rider’s pedaling power gets converted into up to 250 Watts of electrical power by a generator between the cranks. This nominally charges the 1,400-Wh+ battery that directs power to the pair of 125-W rear hub motors. The rider’s pedaling strength and cadence control the motor output via an intelligent multi-controller system so that pedaling harder still makes the quad move faster, but it’s all electronically operated.
How in the hell is that efficient?
The standard Intelectra does not include a throttle for non-pedaled acceleration, and thus classifies as a pedelec bike with a top speed of 15.5 mph (25 km/h). Dynamic Drives says that it can equip the rig with a throttle for customers who request one, but that pushes it into the electric scooter category, requiring registration, license plates and a driver’s license to operate legally.
Yeah, the pedals have got to be solely due to regulations.
It’s definitely less efficient than a standard well-tuned bike. On the other hand, I’m guessing you can plug it in to charge the battery and so you the rider don’t need to supply all of the energy to drive the thing. Plus it’s going to be excellent for hills because you don’t need to supply all the climbing power. If this were a pure manual crank vehicle you would absolutely hate it on the first hill! Pedaling 1200lbs up a hill sounds like an absolute nightmare!
No doubt. But it’s pretty unusual compared to pedal assist. With pedal assist, your leg work doesn’t lose any power in the transfer to the wheels, and you still get all the benefits of this system.
Perhaps the reason they didn’t go with pedal assist is due to the sheer amount of torque needed to pull that much weight. I could see them not wanting to have a huge gear train to be able to get the pedal power into the correct part of the torque band to both accelerate and maintain pulling power.
The pedals are additionally used as a controller to engage the electric motor & make it move (because that is “the electric bike”).
And one can still paddle without moving just by holding the brakes (to just fill the battery).
The pedals are still needed to generate power for the battery, regardless if the paddling motion also activates the electric motor (electric bike) or not (electric scooter).
How in the hell is that efficient?
Yeah, the pedals have got to be solely due to regulations.
It’s definitely less efficient than a standard well-tuned bike. On the other hand, I’m guessing you can plug it in to charge the battery and so you the rider don’t need to supply all of the energy to drive the thing. Plus it’s going to be excellent for hills because you don’t need to supply all the climbing power. If this were a pure manual crank vehicle you would absolutely hate it on the first hill! Pedaling 1200lbs up a hill sounds like an absolute nightmare!
No doubt. But it’s pretty unusual compared to pedal assist. With pedal assist, your leg work doesn’t lose any power in the transfer to the wheels, and you still get all the benefits of this system.
Perhaps the reason they didn’t go with pedal assist is due to the sheer amount of torque needed to pull that much weight. I could see them not wanting to have a huge gear train to be able to get the pedal power into the correct part of the torque band to both accelerate and maintain pulling power.
The pedals are additionally used as a controller to engage the electric motor & make it move (because that is “the electric bike”).
And one can still paddle without moving just by holding the brakes (to just fill the battery).
The pedals are still needed to generate power for the battery, regardless if the paddling motion also activates the electric motor (electric bike) or not (electric scooter).