About the Winter storage for your e-bike... again! :-)

   Hi, fellas! We all know - old man Winter is coming, and how hard is it sometimes to find a good warm cozy stable for our faithful and so handy little electric horses. After 5 years of e-biking in Canada I know that very well too, since I'm living in the apartment like most of you too, so this year I've decided to try and help my fellow e-biking Torontonians to cope with that problem in a most efficient, elegant, meaningful and affordable way offering the thoroughly put together unbeatable storage and service package for just mere $50 a months which at the end of the cold season will not even buy you a decent new lead-acid battery, but will keep your horse and his energy source in a good or even better shape than it was, so here's my ad I run currently on Toronto's Kijiji website:

 

  Store your e-bike securely indoor over the winter in a regular secure public storage facility for $50 per month and get your e-bike or scooter and battery maintained and ready for the next riding season for free during the entire cold season from November thru March or you can store only your battery in a heated climate controlled secure indoor storage for just $20 per months and still have it regularly charged and professionally maintained.

Free E- bike maintenance includes:

- Drum brake pads checked and properly adjusted or replaced
- Tires pumped and kept up to the specified pressure
- All bearings and gears lubricated
- Screws, bolts and nuts tightened
- Loose plastic parts reattached
- Loose wires and parts secured
- Power lines checked and their efficiency measured and  analyzed
- Small plastic cracks fixed
- Small dents on plastic repainted


Free SLA battery maintenance includes:

- Original condition and performance analyzed and recorded
- Capacity checked and accurately measured at multiple loads
- Every SLA cell capacity analyzed individually and labeled
- Overall battery performance balanced and battery trained
- Weak cells detected and reconditioned or replaced
- Battery training and reconditioning progress measured and recorded
- Battery wires checked and battery properly reassembled
- Battery case fixed if needed


Free pickup and delivery within GTA.
Free access to the storage by appointment.
Free consultation, advices, battery performance and capacity analysis.

Other free and paid repairs, fixes, services or arrangements are possible.

The labor and maintenance are free if e-bike is stored for at least three months. Parts are extra.

On the pictures above you can see me and my all terrain all season powerful horse :-)

Any questions by phone or e-mail are welcome.

Your fellow e-biker Lubo. 
 E b i k e r L u b o & B i k e R i d e r . c o m
( 6 4 7 ) 5 4 7 - 3 7 1 2 

If you do not want your e-bike battery look like this...

   If you do not want your batteries look like in the picture above, here's my personal humble piece of advice that works with any charger. Just to be on the safe side after one morning I've found my battery almost "red hot" (but luckily not melted, swollen and fused together) I've got the idea to use a regular cheap mechanical cyclic timer along with the chargers I plug in the timer. I set the timer to turn OFF and ON every 15 minutes, so the batteries and chargers have time to cool down and chargers detect the charging state of the battery better when just turned ON as I've noticed after dealing with about a dozen of  different chargers for the last 5 years of e-biking.

   This way chargers do not have a chance to get stuck in the ON state charging indefinitely until the battery melts. Besides, since the timer is 24 hours while only approximately 6 to 8 hours is needed for a complete charging of the battery, you can set up additional 3 or 4 zones or charging modes for your battery like extended charging periods or extend the cooling time. If that sounds too complicated or too "techie" to you, you can always order the right timer already setup for all these modes just by letting me know that you need one, pay by PayPal or e-mail and get it soon by a regular mail or UPS or you can purchase it thru E-bay if  it is more convenient or preferable way for you.

   You can find timers anywhere, even in dollar store these days, but make sure they are mechanical, cyclic and are able to switch as often as every 15 minutes to make sure your charger doesn't get too much rest during the night shift :-). Usually cheap timers are able to switch ON and OFF only every 30 minutes, so those with better 15 min timing resolution are a bit harder to find, but not too hard. I picked one from Walmart for 20 bucks or so which comes with the power bar, so you should find one like those easy as well.  So, that's just my two cents in preventing battery melting - the cheap and easiest way (at least until you're rich enough to afford a better charger that does not melt any batteries at all :-) Obviously aforementioned method is just a preventive measure, it is not a panacea to prevent overcharging. After all there are also just plain faulty batteries with shorted cells and so on, so keep an eye even with timer on your charger and battery as often as possible. But panacea or universal and foolproof method of preventing battery melting actually does exist. That would be a thermal shutdown protection, which turns off the charger as soon as the battery temperature reaches the certain temperature threshold like let's say 40C. I'm going to look for this sort of solution, so stay tuned and visit my blog or sign up for updates.  

   And if you find a better solution or even cheaper 15 minutes timers here in Toronto, let all the readers here know posting down bellow your findings in the comments. That would be your two cents :-) Thank you in advance!

Lubo Ebiker.

Best Buy Wants to Become Top EV Seller; Educating Customers is Key

By Steve Puma      August 9th, 2010    8 Comments

When it comes to innovation, Best Buy continues to surprise me with with just how far ahead they are of every other big-box retailer. For example, they are currently the leading retailers of electric bikes and scooters, and have recently added Brammo motorcycles to the mix.
However, Best Buy's long-term strategy includes much, much, more than adding a few two-wheeled EVs to their huge selection of computer, electronics and appliance products. As I learned from Chad Bell,  Best Buy's director of emerging business,  the company believes that, by educating its customers about electric vehicles, it can become a preferred destination for them to purchase EVs of all kinds, up to and including highway-capable cars that one might normally expect to purchase at an auto dealership.

Through Geek Squad, the company provides repair and maintenance of the EVs it sells, and  is beginning to provide services related to EV charging stations.

At the recent Plug-In 2010 International Conference and Exposition, Mr. Bell represented Best Buy in a panel session called: "Innovative Business Models in the Electric Vehicle Industry", which also featured representatives from electric motorcycle startup Mission Motors, and EV infrastructure startup Better Place.
Mr. Bell explained that, as Best Buy has grown, so has its ability to impact the communities it serves. Its large number of retail stores, with their high access to consumers, gives the company its significant reach.
At the same time, he related, "Transportation is experiencing a paradigm shift on a global scale, as the industry move towards a more sustainable power model, and a behavioral change to customized solutions." Electric Vehicles are a good fit for Best Buy, for a number of reasons, one of those being that they have a lot in common with many of their other products, “Electric cars are basically computers on wheels."




Mr. Bell noted that Best Buy was already well-positioned to become an early EV leader. In a December, 2009 poll, 240 people where asked, "Where would you think to buy an electric vehicle or scooter?." The leader, by far, was Best Buy (7%), outpacing Amazon.com (3%), and, surprisingly, beating out motorcycle dealerships (3%), bicycle shops (3%), and even Wal-Mart (1%).
However, since EVs are a completely new market, one that customers are unfamiliar with, this emerging business model will only drive long-term value for Best Buy if the company can successfully communicate the benefits of sustainable transportation to its customers. The best way to do this, is through education. "Our mission is to take a leadership position in alternative transportation by educating the customers about better ways to get around."
Like any smart car salesman, Best Buy knows that there is no better tool for educating customers than letting them try out an electric bike or motorcycle for themselves, so having customers test drive the vehicles is critical for success, along with quality after-market service, which will be provided by the Geek Squad.
(One interesting concept, related by Mr. Bell, was the notion that EVs, and specifically electric bikes, could have plenty of unexpected benefits for customers. For example, he related a story about a customer who could not ride a standard bicycle, due to back problems. She was quite ecstatic to find out how easy an electric bike was to ride, and that, if she had one, she would be able to ride along with her children, something that she had not previously been able to do.)



Mr. Bell laid out the company's strategy for moving into different segments of the EV market, with each successive entry representing a larger market opportunity, and requiring a larger education effort for Best Buy. This education process starts with currently available product offerings, starting with non-licensed electric bikes, such as the A2B, and then moving into motorcycles, such as the Brammo Enertia.
The next step is to begin testing out early-generation electric cars, such as the Mitsubishi i-MEV, and, in 2009, four i-MEVs were painted in Geek Squad livery, and are currently part of the fleet. Rick Rommel, senior vp of emerging business, told BNET's Jim Motavalli, “We like what we see...They're pretty good and our agents like them."
Subsequent steps include bundling car-sharing programs, such as Zipcar, with its EV products, offering access to the company's on-site charging infrastructure (used to charge Geek Squad vehicles) , introducing Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), such as the Miles ZX40S or the GEM, and potentially introducing, mass-production, full-speed, electric automobiles.
Although they appear to be off to a good start, the success of Best Buy's strategy is certainly not a given. As Russ Finley of Grist.org points out, "customer support is critical for retail sales, however, they are about to embark on a steep learning curve. Many bikes will be returned because they don't meet the near infinite variety of customer expectations. A 300 pound guy who thinks he is getting a scooter will not be pleased to find his range is only five miles..."
Of course, this is all the more reason why customer education is so important.

Putting the brakes on pedal power

LETTER FROM CHINA

Bicycles give way to automobiles, but e-bikes keep two-wheel tradition alive

A member of China's People's Liberation Army rides an electric bicycle in Beijing. The "e-bikes" are especially popular in big cities, where urban realities provide at least some disincentive to car ownership. (Nelson Ching/bloomberg News)

By Keith B. Richburg and Zhang Jie

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 

 

Of all the signs of China's growing prosperity -- the gleaming new office towers, the glitzy shopping malls and designer boutiques -- perhaps the most visible is on Beijing's streets and highways, where noxious traffic jams have replaced the free flow of bicycles.
Domestic sales for cars and sport-utility vehicles passed a million a month in November, making China the world's new automobile capital, at the expense of one of the world's great bike cultures.
Bicycles were ubiquitous in Beijing not long ago -- the preferred mode of transportation for millions of Chinese. Major streets boasted wide bike lanes, sidewalks carried ample parking space for bikes, and bikes usually had the right of way at intersections. But lately, public space for bicycles has been shrinking under the tyranny of the car.
"The drivers are very aggressive. They won't wait for you for a second," said Wang Litang, 65, a retired government worker who still takes his singing thrush on long bike rides, the cage dangling from the handlebars, a common Chinese practice. "The road belongs to them now."
But the battle of the byways is not over yet, as two-wheeling enthusiasts have a popular new competitor in the marketplace that is giving the car a run for its mileage. It's the electric bicycle, or e-bike, which operates on a rechargeable battery. While China is on target to sell more than 12 million cars this year, it is also on track to sell 20 million e-bikes, if trends hold from 2007 and 2008, when 20 million e-bikes were sold each year. E-bikes are proving most popular in Beijing and other big cities, where some commuters are realizing that owning a car may bring a certain prestige as a sign of affluence but also comes with gasoline prices, parking fees, the odd traffic ticket and the notorious traffic jams.
"My family bought our first car in the 1990s, but we sold our car last year," said Bai Liping, 45, a saleswoman in an insurance company and an e-bike rider. "Having a car is not that convenient, compared with an e-bike."
Besides the lower costs for parking, and the convenience of whipping quickly through intersections, she said she spends far less on maintenance than she did on a car. E-bikes need their batteries recharged overnight, and the battery typically lasts about a year before needing to be replaced.
They are also relatively inexpensive, from about $219 for the smallest models to about $366 for the largest, fastest variety.
"The real sweet spot will be if China's e-bike explosion leads to the development of electric cars and the infrastructure for charging these e-vehicles," said Alex Wang of the Natural Resources Defense Council office in Beijing, and an avid e-biker. "China is probably better positioned to make this leap than any other country in the world."
But interviews with several e-bike owners showed that convenience, not the environment, was foremost in riders' minds. "It only takes us 15 minutes from here to our store," said Zhang Shu Mei, 39, who was at Beijing's Eastern Suburban Market loading up her e-bike with goods for her grocery store. "We feel freezing riding on this e-bike in the cold wind. But there's no other choice. What would we ride if we don't use this?"
The growing popularity of e-bikes also seems to be threatening the dominant position of traditional bicycles, at least in the big cities. According to the China Bicycle Association, the peak for traditional bicycle sales in China was in 1988, when 40 million bikes were sold. That number has steadily dropped, and it has stabilized at around 20 million locally, with more Chinese bikes sold for export.
The nature of the bicycles being sold here has changed, said Niu Qing, general manager of the bicycle association. Urban Chinese are increasingly buying mountain bikes and multi-geared bikes, to be used for weekend recreation, instead of the old-fashioned commuter models.
"The bike is transforming gradually from purely a traffic tool to an entertainment and body-building measure," Niu said, adding that predictions of the death of the bicycle in China may be premature. "The industry is not going into a nose dive like people think," he said. "It will never vanish."
There may be one unintended side effect of the explosion of e-bikes and fewer people going to work through pedal power: According to the Health Ministry, 22 percent of Chinese adults are overweight and 7.1 percent are obese. In the cities, those numbers rise to 30 percent overweight and 12 percent obese. The statistics mark a dramatic rise from the 1990s, the ministry said.
"People are lazier than before," said Jin Shan, director of the sports culture research center at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences. "Before, no matter how far it was, the bike was your only choice. Changing from bikes to cars and e-vehicles is one reason Chinese people are getting fatter."

South Seattle Community College Offers Electric Vehicle classes

Seattle, Washington — South Seattle Community College, in partnership with the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association, is offering a number of non-credit electric vehicle classes, including a six-day Electric Vehicle Conversionworkshop. Taught by a group of experienced instructors who have converted over two dozen vehicles, the six-day workshop guides students through the complete process of converting a vehicle from a gasoline engine to electric power. By the end of the workshop, the group will have completed one running electric car conversion capable of highway speeds, with a 30-60 mile range on one charge.

Electric Vehicle Conversion Workshop
Instructor: Ed Stegall
An intensive six days hands-on learning class that teaches the basics in converting a gasoline engine to electric power.
8 am – 5 pm M T W Th F Sat March 22-27 $899
Additional non-credit Electric Vehicle classes:

Electric Vehicle Safety Systems
Instructor: Roger Wright
Learn how to keep your electric vehicle safe; how a DC system works, what parts go into it, and why you should have these parts.
9 – 11:30 am Sat February 27 $35
** Enrollment is still open for the February 27 class. **
6:30 – 9 pm T May 25 $35

Introduction to AC Drives for Electric Vehicles
Instructors: Dan Bentler and Frank Jump
Learn the advantages and disadvantages of DC and AC motors. Gain valuable insight and knowledge of how AC drives work and how to apply them to vehicles. Class will provide hands-on operating demonstrations of motors and variable-frequency drives and other motors using bench-top equipment VFDs.
9 am – 4 pm Sat April 24 $65

Electric Vehicle Component Technology for Conversion
Instructor: Cory Cross
Learn about what parts go into a conversion and how they connect to each other. Strong emphasis placed on learning to read schematics and understanding why the parts are connected that way.
6 – 9 pm Th May 13 $45

Electric Vehicles – Batteries
Instructor: Stephen Johnsen
Topics include: general overview of popular suitable batteries for EVs; comparison of costs and specs on various batteries available; calculating the kWhr rating of my pack; how to extend battery life; charging and recycling of batteries.
6:30 – 9 pm T May 18 $45

Electric Bicycles
Instructor: Ed Stegall
Go through the process of actually converting a normal bike to electric. Class also covers bike safety, bike laws and basic maintenance and tips for doing your own conversion on your own or with a kit.
Class fee of $99 includes two sessions.
6 – 9 pm Th June 3
9 am – 4 pm Sat June 5
Electric Vehicle classes fill quickly and interested students are encouraged to sign up early.
Register online at www.LearnAtSouth.org, or call (260) 764-5339 for more information.

South Seattle Community College
The college’s Continuing Education division offers 150 classes each quarter, ranging from computer skills to cooking to home repair. Designed to fit into busy schedules, these classes offer the lifelong learner variety and flexibility, with online and classroom instruction.
Seattle Electric Vehicle Association (SEVA)
The Seattle Electric Vehicle Association was founded in 1979, with a mission to educate, demonstrate, and proliferate electric vehicles. The interests of SEVA members represent a wide spectrum of Electric Vehicle interests range from fast dragsters to NEVs, from home conversions to Teslas. For more information, visit the website at
www.seattleeva.org.

 

Related News

• Waitrose Trials Electric Bikes
• London: The Electric Vehicle Capital
• Peugeot Has Concept E-racing Bicycle
• Exercise Without Pedaling – the E-Ko Bike
• The Electric Bike Continues To Gain Popularity

Posted on 20 April 2010
Tags: Electric Bikes, electric cars, electric motorcyles

« Biking Is Fun, Healthy, and Helpful

Portland, OR Adds Ebike to Transportation Fleet »

• Electric Bike Kit Review: the Solar Bike
• Electric Vehicles Won't End Climate Change
• The Difference in Motor Power - 250w 500w 750w
• Will Ebikes Eventually Be Banned?
• List Your Business, Bike Company or Store FREE!
• Ultra Motor Offers E-bike Training Sessions
• E-Cycle Racing in Canada
• Team Hybrid Launches 'Falco E-motors' at Eurobike
• Take a poll: Are E-Bike Riders Just Lazy?
• How to Educate People About LEV's

• Lubo Ebiker: Batteries get much cheaper too. For instance I can...
• JAMES: BOUGHT MY PEDEGO A WEEK AGO. ALLS WELL BUT FOR TWO...
• james wilson: Nice post. I can't help but feel like Obama's los...
• rich: if i couldnt start riding with a assist motor i wo...
• rich: i have a 350 bionx/and would love a 750. or as lon...

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Charge Your E-Vehicle at McDonalds… Soon

McDonalds announced that it was building the “first green restaurant” in Cary, North Carolina.
Gizmodo reported that McDonald’s says the facility will not only be built using all green construction materials, but will be complete with free-to-use charging stations for your electric vehicle.
McDonald’s has recently changed much of its packaging to be more eco-friendly. They have also attempted to reduce the amount of pesticides in the potatoes they purchase for their fries. (McDonald’s is the largest buyer of potatoes in the United States.)
North Carolina ranks twelfth among adults in obesity rates, and fourteenth among children.
One of the biggest obstacles to electric vehicles is the availability and the difficulty in finding charging stations outside of your own home.  Perhaps more restaurants will follow McDonald’s lead.

Posted on 19 July 2009

1 Comments For This Post

1. Ahmet Says:
   July 21st, 2009 at 2:30 am
   
   Hi, interesting topic – I have just bought an electric bike that I use to get to work everyday. I Just plug in at work to recharge it and then cycle home.
   Absolutely love the bike, it was cheap and simple to use. I got it from http://www.elecbikeco.com they seemed good but I am sure there are many other companies out there too.
   Good luck
   Ahmet

• Electric Bike it Review: the Solar Bike
• Electric Vehicles Won't End Climate Change
• The Difference in Motor Power - 250w 500w 750w
• Will Ebikes Eventually Be Banned?
• List Your Business, Bike Company or Store FREE!
• Ultra Motor Offers E-bike Training Sessions
• E-Cycle Racing in Canada
• Team Hybrid Launches 'Falco E-motors' at Eurobike
• Take a poll: Are E-Bike Riders Just Lazy?
• How to Educate People About LEV's

• Lubo Ebiker: Batteries get much cheaper too. For instance I can...
• rich: if i couldnt start riding with a assist motor i wo...
• rich: i have a 350 bionx/and would love a 750. or as lon...
• Marlena Kenney: This bike design is amazing. It's trendy unlike ot...
• gSPIN: the emperor has no clothes. don't looky like an I...

battery pack best buy bicycle bicycles bikes brammo cars ceo china commuters designers ebike e bike ebikes electric bicycle electric bicycles electric bike Electric Bike Batteries Electric Bikes 

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