One of the more enjoyable aspects of riding a bike is the direct connection you have between your legs and your motion. Many e-bikes just add power to whatever you're doing but the more premium e-bikes often use the Bosch system which uses crank torque sensors to provide a more direct feeling of control over the bike.
Separating the cranks entirely from the drive seems like the exact opposite approach to me - without a direct physical connection between the cranks and the drive I imagine it'd feel spongy and unresponsive to a rider. I don't think people would enjoy riding a bike like that.
I agree. Also, in many jurisdictions, e-bikes cannot have a throttle and must only add power to pedaling to qualify as a bike and not a vehicle that requires a license.
And the FreeDrive thing linked looks like a $1000+ component by itself, and bills itself as allowing new bicycle architectures. Most press about it is about high-end cargo bikes. I don't find its existence very compelling as support of the author's claims.
> One of the more enjoyable aspects of riding a bike is the direct connection you have between your legs and your motion.
Also, one of the least enjoyable aspects of cheap stationary exercise bikes is the need to push the pedals over the dead spots. On real bikes most of the power comes from pushing down and inertia helps with the rest of the pedal rotation. Spinning bikes have heavy flywheels to work around the problem but I wouldn't expect them to work on an actual bike.
This is a great point about a potential downside of the 'Free Drive' decoupled crank concept. By decoupling you also get rid of the coupled inertia of the bike/rider and petaling becomes weirdly inertia free which most people really dislike.
Though I guess with very sophisticated sensing and control algorithms you can in theory emulate inertia. I wonder if they try to do that? Would be a cool project.
I guess they could adjust the generator somehow, but the response would have to be really immediate. I think I could adjust to something that feels like rubber band instead of chain, but varying speed over pedal stroke sounds bad.
Yes, I know that some people swear by elliptic chainrings. I had Biopace rings back in the day and didn't really like them even though the effect was quite small.
I can attest the shimano 'steps' and bosch equivalent systems feel very different from 'older' systems. They start helping almost as you put force on the pedal, so e.g. when stop/starting on a hill with 50kg cargo (twin girls or cement bag) it makes a huge difference. The difference between the adhoc 'power on front wheel' and the integrated ones is night and day in comfort. Maintenance is more complicated, but if you're using this as you main vehicle (we don't have a car) you can maybe set aside a small (200-300eur) yearly professional maintenance budget. I'll admit I can't do it myself.
Separating the cranks entirely from the drive seems like the exact opposite approach to me - without a direct physical connection between the cranks and the drive I imagine it'd feel spongy and unresponsive to a rider. I don't think people would enjoy riding a bike like that.