Dual Motor AWD – Page 2 – Tales On Two Wheels

Larry vs Harry Bullitt – the Battery (Box)

A big bike with two motors needs a big battery. Lets take advantage of the frontloader design to both hide and secure it.

The Bullitt Build
1. Battery and Battery Box (you are here)
2. Cargo Box
3. Brakes
4. Front Motor & Wheel
5. Rear Motor & Drivetrain
6. Bits & Pieces

A big issue with an ebike – particularly one that is left outside on its own all the time – is battery security. The battery is maybe the most expensive component on an ebike and its a big theft target. So typically you have to carry the thing inside with you, and hey… thats a real pain in the neck. Not only is it a really heavy black brick, but you have to dismount it and re-mount it to the bike, and disconnect and reconnect it to the motor (forget about your display keeping the correct time and date), every single time. I have come up with my own way to make the best of this bad situation for my other cargo bikes, but with the Bullitt, we can make the problem go away.

The Kinda-Secret Compartment

Take a look at the picture above. See the big black box under the cargo area, near the ground? Thats it: the battery box. You’d be surprised by how many people don’t notice it. Even if they do, what are they going to do about it?

I had seen a few other Bullitt builds with battery boxes and they seemed like great ideas: The battery goes out of sight, out of mind under the floor of the bike. It lets you get creative on battery size (as in you can go bigger if you like since there’s lots of room down there). It may even be made secure enough that you can just leave it on the bike – eliminating maybe the biggest inconvenience of using an ebike for daily errands and shopping.

Also, just as with electric auto designs, a ‘skateboard’ config for the battery puts it centered and below the floor – down as low as it can go. That is as good as it can get for performance.

But I was thinking of none of these things when I was putting together my build sheet. I was still thinking I would do another quick-carry sling pack with the battery inside, and toss that pack into the cargo bay for easy removal and replacement. It wouldn’t be secured to anything but I would see about figuring that out later on.

My sling pack with a 20ah battery inside, used on my Surly Big Fat Dummy

But while the parts were still trickling in, I was participating in a discussion on the Bullitt Universal Owners Group on Facebook. Another Bullitt owner showed off his own build and mentioned his battery box – and that he had gotten it from Splendid Cycles – the same shop where I got my Bullitt frame and parts. I gave them a call and in short order one of the last examples they had on hand was on its way to me. I was told up front the box was a blank canvas, and I would need my own elbow grease to add mounting holes and any other refinements, such as waterproofing, cable exits etc.

As-delivered, the battery box looked as you see it below. A simple slot holds it up on the back. Its front at first seems unnecessarily complicated, but is quite clever. Its seamless, unbroken face prevents any direct channel for water ingress from the front, just behind the tire. The cutouts necessary to let the box slide into place doubled as my exit points for the power, charging and temperature sensor cables, so no need to cut any holes. It fits absolutely flush to the near side of the frame so no insulation is needed or wanted. Its shape is angled on one side to clear the steering tube.

The box as-delivered, almost. I used black flexible silicone sealant to all the internal seams, and dabbed over all of the rivets as well.

Box Installation

The first step was to drill the box so it could be fixed in place. As-designed, it would stay put. But I am sure there would be some shifting and rattling… and I can’t abide rattles. Also, the existence of the box complicated the installation of the honeycomb floorboard. The floorboard expects to be able to drop a bolt straight down and use a nut underneath to lock it down. Well, now that bolt hole is completely inside the box on the front left corner. Its outside on the right front, but not by much. I needed to change those two mounts to fixed studs going from the bottom up.

I also wanted to add an entirely separate bolt on the front dedicated to strongly fixing the box in place. I decided to use an oversized hole, and used a hand file to enlarge it to a rectangle. Following that, a combination of an oversized, hardened washer and a flush-fit M8 bolt gives a flat fit that works under the honeycomb board fitting directly down on top of it.

The new ‘studs’ are common, long M6 socket caps with – get this – a Presta valve nut to hold them in place. I needed a low profile nut and there’s nothing lower-profile than the common presta nut, which even fits snugly inside the bolt hole manufactured into the LvH honeycomb board.

Forward box mounting complete. Two studs are ready for the honeycomb board, and the center bolt holds the box tight to the frame.

For the rear of the box, to match up with the honeycomb board’s rear mounting hole, I had to use another M6 rather than go with another big M8. I drilled a thin hole thru the box’s top flap and the honeycomb board’s rear mounting bolt goes thru there. However to be consistent – because I wanted to use security nuts to make getting into the box that much more difficult – I made it go in from the bottom-up like the others (we’ll show those security nuts etc. in more detail when we talk about the cargo box installation).

Now Install The Battery

At this point, the next step in the installation process – which, maddeningly, has to be done in this order whether you like it or not – was to install the battery.

You can see how I accomplished that below. All of the padding is closed-cell, and I left as much of the battery untouched by foam as I could. The battery lays on the bare alloy of the box with no padding (a solid metal wall is plenty of protection). It is surrounded on four sides such that it cannot move, even after months of pothole pounding commutes and store visits. I disassembled the bike after 500 miles and looked inside to be sure of this. No water had gotten in either despite riding in rainstorms.

There is a brake cable braze-on above the pack underneath the center bar. It is perfectly positioned to smash into the cells underneath if the pack bounces up to meet it. I prevented this possibility via some left over Minicel T600 EVA foam (you’ll see what I used it for in the Cargo Box episode) to fix the battery in position (i.e. keep it from bouncing). Two pieces are used, one on each side of the braze-on. Underneath this area the visible green rectangle is a piece of thin metal fence strapping which provides a last but certain line of defense against that braze-on ever contacting the bare pack.

The battery is literally incapable of movement on any axis. It is held solidly – but not enough to smoosh anything. Rapping on the box with your knuckles yields a satisfying thunk as if you are rapping on a solid block of metal.

Notice the short extensions in the pics above? There are two lengths of them in use (strictly speaking there are three as we need two when we split the power to run to both motors). I don’t like to make direct connections to wiring that is a hassle to repair – like wires that run hot directly from the battery. I want to be using a short extension on each side of a connection for two reasons. 1: So the wear and tear occurs on something that is easy and painless to replace if it wears out. 2. If something terrible happens like a short, the melted connector is on an extension and can be easily unplugged, thrown away and replaced. No need to be working on live wires to salvage the battery (assuming a short doesn’t cause other problems with the pack itself).

I have had one occasion where this saved my bacon when an XT60 extension shorted on a water bottle bolt head. There was no damage other than to the destroyed cheapie extension. In this case, there is no issue of frequent connects and disconnects, but the habit of using extensions for the safety angle is hard to break.

Lets Talk About The Battery

An AWD bike needs a lot of power. Even one where I have toned down the power to civilized levels. You must have a pack whose Battery Management System is strong enough to run two motors at once, and if you get into the subject and learn the specifics, you will find out real fast that commercially-manufactured battery packs can’t cut the mustard (this is why commercial AWD bikes have two separate batteries). If you want to build the bike right as opposed to building it cheap and sucky, you have to get yourself a custom pack built that is tailored to the job.

Pack Details

The battery itself was built custom to my specs after some discussion with Matt Bzura at Bicycle Motorworks. This is one of several packs I have purchased from his firm, after hearing nothing but good things about his work from other builders over the span of a few years. I’ve had nothing but good experience working with him as well.

I knew that an AWD bike needs more power, so the battery pack needs to be bigger than usual. And the Splendid Cycles battery box is a big sucker. If I put in a battery that filled that box it would be TOO big. Looking at the box dimensions and knowing what I wanted to do for crash padding gave me one half of the picture. Matt @ BicycleMotorworks filled in the blanks with the dimensional details of the cells and battery management system chosen for the job.

Cells	Samsung 40T (21700’s)
Pack Config	14S8P (52v)
BMS Capacity	70a Continuous output
Amp Hours	32
Output Cable	XT90S / 8ga
Charge Cable	XT60 / 12 ga

The 40T cells in the larger 21700 size, and overall pack design allows it to operate under load without voltage sag, and without heating up, despite the enclosed space and the dense, closed cell padding that holds the pack fast. A temperature sensor is attached to the pack top and runs outside of the box for easy visibility from the saddle.

What About Heat? 
In use in a normal climate - bearing in mind its sealed in a big metal box - the pack does not get noticeably warm over and above ambient air temperature - nothing over 5 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient.  However, 5 degrees over ambient is a lot when its 105 in the shade, where in the sun, the pavement is radiating heat at 130.   In severe heat (as I write this, the end of next week is scheduled to reach 114°F, which is more than 45°C) I need to plan ahead for where the bike is going to be parked, and plan my route to provide the shortest, shadiest path to my destination.  Our local area has already experienced several days where the temperature has exceeded 110°F / 43°C. Even though the battery cells are not thermally coupled to the case, I ringed the box with heat sinks to help keep the pack a bit closer to ambient temperature.  They have reduced pack surface temperature by up to 5 degrees.

The battery charge cable is routed outside of the box along with the power cables, and comes up as shown in the photo below (the green plug). This plug is semi-rigid thanks to the manner in which I insulated the end connector, as well as how its braced against other secured wiring. It is easy to access, protected from the elements via the plug cap and not going anywhere. In winter months a rubber band and some plastic will ensure nothing can get through and cause any fireworks.

And last but not least… this is a 52v battery that has a capacity of 32 amp hours. I like having batteries big enough that range anxiety doesn’t exist. You simply go ride the bike and do what you need to do. Considering the bike – thanks to its motor configs – eats only 400-500w at cruise… my ass will wear out in the seat before the battery charge does…

So long as I remember to charge it. But even then – and this has happened to me already – the battery is big enough to maybe rescue me from that faux pas.

The battery temp sensor sits here, without any need for actual mounting. The Bullitt’s ride is so stable nothing more is required. The charger plug is covered in a green cap at center.

Thats about all I have on the battery and battery box. We’ll stick to the same area of the bike in the next article in the series, as the two are linked together:

The Cargo Box

The Bullitt, by Larry vs Harry – Cargo Bike Build

And now for something completely different. The Bullitt from Larry vs Harry is a bucket list bike that (now that its finally done) I love to ride. This series will cover the details of a frame-up build that includes AWD electrification.

The Bullitt Build (you are here)
1. Battery and Battery Box
2. Cargo Box
3. Brakes
4. Front Motor & Wheel
5. Rear Motor & Drivetrain
6. Bits & Pieces

Take a deeper dive into the benefits, whys and wherefores of assisted AWD on this bike here.

Originally, this was going to be a single article that covered everything. However, as time progressed and I got more and more of the details written down, I found I was at almost 6800 words, and could easily hit 8-10,000 before completion. Thats too damn big, so it had to be broken up. This opening post will cover some of the introductory bits. Then we’ll split off into followups that hit the high points of the various things worth bringing up.

There’s a lot to get to so lets jump in.

Background

Having built up the Mongoose Envoy as my first cargo bike, then supersizing to the Surly Big Fat Dummy, you would think the Larry vs Harry Bullitt was my third choice for a cargo bike. It was the opposite: The Bullitt was my first choice. But first,

What the hell is a Bullitt?

A Bullitt is a bakfiets. How does me saying that help you? It doesn’t, until I add that bakfiets is a Dutch term that means “box bike”. You’ll be helped along a bit more by the fact that a bakfiets is often referred to in English as a ‘frontloader’. So, the box is in front of the rider. Here is a Google image search that will let you see a slew of them, of all different types.

Looking at all those different pictures, they all look sort of like 2- or 3-wheeled dump trucks. Not exactly a fun ride. But thats to be expected of freight haulers, right?

So, What the hell is a Bullitt?

A Bullitt is a frontloader-style cargo bike made by Larry vs Harry in Copenhagen, Denmark. It does its cargo carrying job, but its also specifically designed to be nimble, on a frame that is relatively rigid. Its also meant to be those things in a lightweight package, where that frame is lightweight alloy (whose inherent rigidity is mitigated by the sheer length of the frame. A Bullitt is also a very comfortable bike to ride).

In short, the Bullitt is a cargo bike for people who still want to have fun riding their bike. You aren’t schlepping around in the bicycle equivalent of a minivan.

This gets the idea across in 1 minute.

When I originally decided to build up a Bullitt, I set up my build sheet and began listing out components. But before I finished, the cost crossed my pain threshold and I chickened out. This was going to be my first cargo bike. I had no experience with the platform, and wasn’t even sure I would like the idea, never mind throwing in the funkiness of a frontloader. I wasn’t ready to make such a big financial commitment.

So I went the budget route with the Mongoose Envoy. I used that frame and fork as a donor platform to develop a really nice lower-cost cargo solution. After some use I decided 1)this whole cargo bike thing was really cool and 2)the Envoy wasn’t big enough for the XXL jobs I wanted to give it.

When I was doing my research prior to buying the Envoy, I had almost bought the much larger Surly Big Fat Dummy, but bailed on that one too due to the same kinds of newbie uncertainties that led me to bail on the Bullitt project.

So, wanting to upsize, I went there next. That bike has been a thing of beauty. I loved it and still do for a variety of reasons beyond its utility as a cargo bike (and a bikepacking bike. And a take-the-trails-route-instead commuter. And an unstoppable freight train that terrifies all who cross its path). The Big Fat Dummy truly is a BFD.

But…

Using the BFD for all things, every day, I could see room for improvement. Stuff that bugged me and worse – slowed me down.

At the shops, you have to bring the battery in with you or risk getting it stolen. I had a solution for this but it still takes effort to deal with and is a pain. Additionally it limits the size of the battery as the bigger it is, the more trouble it is to carry around.

The BFD has two panniers that hold more than 275L (not 27.5… Two Hundred and Seventy Five). Who can ask for more? Except bags that big aren’t kept opened up and ready for use. They’re folded up and strapped to the frame. Expanding them requires some fussing and fiddling with the straps. Not the end of the world but it has to be done. And then you need to cinch those four to six straps down to secure the load. And balance your load between the bags or bad things can happen. When you are doing this every day at multiple stops, you start wanting things to be easier… but how?

Enter The Dragon

A Bullitt from Larry vs Harry. Thats how. A bike purpose-built for a narrow type of use-case: urban utility. The Bullitt is the most nimble and rigidly-framed of the genre: the sports car of the frontloader world. The battery on this bike will be locked in a quasi-concealed, sealed box under the cargo floor of the bike; out of sight from prying eyes and prybars. No more lugging it into the store with me. Most importantly, the bike has a floor in the first place. Cargo is held in a great big open box. I can just walk up, dump my shit in and and take off. No more pre-flight prep.

Also I kind of liked that it looked weird… and I had no idea whether I could ride such a contraption. I don’t get that kind of uncertainty with bikes much these days and I looked forward to the challenge.

Oh, and since LvH decided to call the green paint on the bike Lizzard King, well that makes for an obvious name for the bike.

Ohhhh no. There goes To-ky-o. Go go Godzilla!

Bullitts are – wonderfully – built up from frames and customized by a great many of their owners. So even though I am doing a lot of writing-up here, there’s not much point in doing full how-to’s, since thats how most everyone does it already, anyway. So my focus will for the most part be more of a high-level one rather than getting down and into the finer details of Tab A inserting into Slot B etc.

What a mess! A month or so after initial build completion my custom battery arrived… time to take it back apart!

So Lets Build It Already!

So much going on… Where do we start?

The Frame Kit

Your local Larry vs Harry dealer will happily sell you a complete bike, or even one whose frame has been purpose-built to integrate an electric motor. You can choose an internally geared hub, and the frame has a split in it to allow a belt drive. Lots of options for a complete bike, or buy their frame kit and build your own.

I chose the frame kit route. The kit comes with the frame, fork, steering arm, headsets (plural) installed and a number of other components that are unique to a Bullitt’s construction, so you don’t have to go searching all over creation for weird parts. I also purchased the “honeycomb floor board” (the cargo deck) and the “side panels” (hard sides to the cargo area that turn it into a big bucket). It all arrived in one giant box, too big for UPS so it was a LTL freight carrier in a full sized semi-hauler that brought it in. The truck was so big it had to meet me on the street.

I purchased the frame kit from Splendid Cycles up in Portland, Oregon. I handled the transaction entirely over the phone and the folks at Splendid were both helpful and generous with their time, answering my technical and build questions and making sure I was taken care of. Delivery was prompt and I was frankly amazed at how well the frame was packaged once I got the box opened up. Oddly enough I met the tech who packed my frame online, in the Bullitt Facebook group, who was happy to see I got the frame and confirmed what was visually obvious: he had spent time making sure it was packed well so it would get to me in the same shape it left their shop.

All Wheel Drive

Even though the bike only took me about a month to build so it was at least roadworthy, there was a lot going on with this bike. Most of the reason it was such a pain revolved around this one feature. In the end, it was worth it, but the added complexity of an AWD ebike is not for the faint of heart.

Two-motor AWD means wires *everywhere*. Hiding them is something of an art form.

I have built several all wheel drive ebikes, but not recently. I decided the Bullitt was going to be the proof-of-concept behind a different, more civilized/everyman form of ebike AWD that I had been mulling over for years but never did anything about. That subject, the merits of an AWD ebike and the specifics surrounding it are all dealt with in a separate case study in my dual-motor AWD ebike series. I’ll let that post and its companions stand on their own and just say that the sort of cooperative, drama-free AWD that was put into the Bullitt is, in my estimation, a tremendous success with regard to making it a viable all-day, everyday auto replacement.

Which leads us straight into the next episode:

The Battery (and Battery Box)

Dual Motor AWD Electric Bikes – Case Study: Larry vs Harry Bullitt Cargo

After multiple strong AWD builds, I used this one to prove a unique concept: You don’t need big power to get big AWD benefits.

AWD Ebikes Menu
AWD. OMG. WTF!
Case Study – Flatland Fat Bike Commuter. Hub+Hub
Case Study – Alpine Road & Trail. Hub+Mid Drive
Case Study – Low-Power Cargo Beast. Hub+Mid Drive (you are here)

The Lizzard King

500w, 25a geared Bafang G020 front hub motor
30a BBSHD mid drive (rear motor)
52v, 32ah single battery, skateboard config (box under cargo floor)
KT and Bafang displays
160 Nm rear, 45Nm front

Want to see all the details of how this bike was built?

Go here to see that separate series of articles.

My previous AWD builds all used effectively the same front wheel setup: A 35a controller mated to a Bafang geared fat motor packing an 80 Nm punch. It was so powerful, on my early commuter bikes I needed to turn down acceleration via a slow-start setting. When I graduated to a combination mid drive+hub, I found best results on rough trails came from the same slow start, but also using the front power sparingly: little if any throttle and gentle PAS.

There things stayed for a few years – roughly from the middle of 2017 to early 2021. During this period I concentrated on riding and refining the use and configuration of these AWD bikes. I built other bikes during this time- all more traditional single-motor mid drives. As part of that work I came up with tuning settings that worked very well with pedaling and a cycling mindset. These changes worked great with the 2Fat AWD bike as well.

With regard to tuning, I concentrated on backing off the BBSHD’s power when delivered in ‘pedelec’ mode: limited use of throttle and pedal assist only. The point of this was to have a bike that did not run away from me, still delivered measurable, useful levels of assist, lacked the common complaints against cadence-type assist and did not suffer from any of the weaknesses of torque-sensing.

When 2021 arrived and I wanted to build a bucket-list bike – the Larry vs. Harry Bullitt cargo bike – I decided to go all out and make it AWD. Further, I wanted to prove a concept I had been mulling over for the last few years. For lack of a better term, lets call it Drama-Free AWD: Not a hot rod, but what a normal person who just wanted a reliable automobile replacement would want to ride.

Ingredients

Its a pretty short list:

Low power
High power in a front wheel can be fun, but its not necessary to gain the traction benefits that come with AWD. Use a smaller, lighter, relatively low-powered motor (45 Nm vs. the prior 80 Nm) as part of its design. Also use a smaller controller that peaks at 25 amps rather than the previous 35. Continue to use the slow-start setting to ensure … Drama Free AWD. 25 amps on a smaller diameter wheel will still be a strong assist, but those amps will be rolled on slowly so no surprises.
Fast Wind Front Motor
The Bullitt has a 20″ front wheel. A ‘fast wind’ motor favors torque off the starting line at the expense of higher top speed. This is normal for a small wheel build and further solidifies the emphasis on slow, strong startup power that melts away on its own as speed increases.
Toned-Down Rear Motor
My revised motor settings keep the BBSHD from engaging until speed reaches 6 mph (9.7 km/h) if I rely on pedal assist. I learned how important that is to drivetrain longevity when I built 2Fat. We’ll re-use those identical settings.

Since this picture was taken, I switched the big flat Catalyst pedals for Funn Ripper SPD pedals, and I cleat in.

What I Expected

On a bike destined to carry heavy loads, the front motor is intended to get the bike off to a painless start. It does this job very nicely. Despite the relatively low power, it still gets the bike rolling from a stop, and effectively takes out the BBSHD’s shock to the drivetrain when that second motor kicks in at 6 mph (9.7 km/h).

That reduced sting will translate into reduced wear and tear, and reduced parts replacement over time. Its too early to pull hubs apart and look inside to verify this assumption, but since I have seen and verified the effect before on similar hardware, there’s no reason to assume different results.

UPDATE: June 2022.  Over 1800 miles / 2900 km later, I am still using the original chain.  At about 1300 miles / 2100 km, a check on the rear cluster and cassette (upgraded to the steel DT Swiss body) showed barely any discoloration on the cassette surface... never mind any wear.

It was a short list of things to expect and… it all panned out. But there were also some pleasant surprises. This turned out better than I thought it would.

What Surprised Me

I noted above the motor is ‘fast wind’; built for low-speed torque, not high speed rpms, and how this plays into the smaller front wheel size. Intellectually, thats easy to understand. Less obvious was the fact that, in practice, there will be a lot less motor usage than there was before.

With The Great Pumpkin, I usually run both motors at equal levels (usually full blast) all the time. The bike and flat, straight streets just lend themselves to a high speed cruise. Two identical motors and identical controllers gulping juice from one battery mean a big power drain. No surprise.

With 2Fat, while I reduce power to the front motor, I was often giving the bike hard use on trails. More often than not the bike is fighting its way up a hill, thru a bunch of sand etc.

So even though The Lizzard King is not dramatically different than 2Fat in terms of its configuration, the world it lives in is quite different: level and smooth city streets. Easy acceleration and long periods of the motors spinning fast while running at an efficient cruising speed.

More different still: Off the line, the front motor kicks in slowly and then power melts away as wheel revolutions increase. It pulls strong from zero to about 16 mph. But from 17+, it starts scaling back as the motor approaches its rpm limit. By the time 20 mph rolls around, on typical level 2 assist you are down to about 200 watts of output. By the time you hit 23-24 mph on flat ground, wattage to the front wheel has minimized to a steady… 38 watts. Just enough of a dribble to ease the wheel’s free spin.

If you hit an incline, you’ll slow down a tad and see wattage output creep up again. But rolling down the street on the flats, the front motor takes itself out of the picture. Its time for…

… The rear motor to kick in. As noted, pedal assist does not engage the rear motor until it reaches 6 mph. So when the front motor is eating the most juice, the rear motor hasn’t even started. As the mid kicks in and spools up, the hub begins making its graceful exit.

The two motors never really run hard together at the same time, unless climbing a hill (or I force the issue via using the two throttles). Then you can see watts climb on the front rather than fading away. Cruising at an energetic cadence around 24+ mph , you are on the single rear motor, being given a small boost from the front motor (remember those 38 watts?).

With the two motors staying out of each others’ way, this translates to an overall reduction in expected battery drain, consisting of both reduced peak and continuous draws. It gets better though.

Much Better!

The rear BBSHD is also using a lot less power than its siblings in The Pacific Fleet.

At 20 mph, on PAS 2 in the front and maybe PAS 4 or 5 in the back, looking at both displays, I can see 250-300w being output from the rear motor, and another 150-200w being output from the front. 500w or kess are being drawn between the two motors, on a great big cargo bike. All the way up and down the speed curve, watt and amp output for the BBSHD is much less than it is on any of my other bikes.

Not So Fast!

All of this wonderfulness is only true when running under pedal assist. If I mash the rear throttle the BBSHD will, as usual, peg the output gauge until I release. And that means it will burn thru my battery range lickety-split. Not a surprise. There is no free lunch in this world, but if we stay off the throttle we still get a hefty discount.

And I still configured my big single battery (custom-built for this bike) to the usual theoretical limits: A 25a peak front controller and a 30a peak rear controller mean I must have a battery management system with a bare minimum of a 55a continuous rating, and preferably 60 (mine is 70). I would rather not take any chances, but clearly I have a bigger safety margin than I figured on originally.

And despite the capability of the bike, reality is it rides more comfortably around 20 mph. So power consumption is lower still simply because of the type of bike it is. But the big takeaway is its lower power use is lower across the board. It was an unexpected gain in efficiency, but looking back on it, it should not have been. The benefit was hidden by my hard use of the other bikes.

Commercial Manufacturing

Should a commercial bike be made with this Drama Free AWD kind of approach in mind, a thoughtfully designed system could manage power in such a way as to map out the curves on the individual motors. Develop something that never bumps into the limits of a much more conventional BMS. That makes for a battery system less expensive and easier to source in volume. And a street machine is going to have lower power needs than is generally understood to be the case with an AWD bike.

Lower power means safety for the casual rider, lower cost and smaller battery sizes.

Lower power on a street bike could look like – in the USA at least – dual motors fitted to bikes that still remain legal within both federal manufacturing standards and individual state vehicle codes. A 249w front motor and a 500w rear for example. Or even a 250/350.

Whats the Takeaway?

The fact that I can operate a great big bike like The Lizzard King at power levels well below allowed USA ebike power limits is testimony to the fact that viable, useful AWD can operate well within the legal framework of ebikes in this country.

Just because you have two motors does not mean they both have to be running simultaneously at full blast. Turns out… not doing that can be kind of a big deal.

Dual Motor AWD Electric Bikes – Case Study: Fat Trail and Hill Climber

Built to conquer the weakness of twin hubs in hills – and eliminate the damage a mid drive does to an ebike’s drivetrain. The bike I call 2Fat did all that.

AWD Ebikes Menu
AWD. OMG. WTF!
Case Study – Flatland Fat Bike Commuter. Hub+Hub
Case Study – Alpine Road & Trail. Hub+Mid Drive (you are here)
Case Study – Low-Power Cargo Beast. Hub+Mid Drive

So, my Gen 1, 1.5 and 3 bike layouts are all twin geared hub designs. What was Gen 2?

2Fat

750w, 35a geared Bafang G060 front hub motor
30a BBSHD mid drive
52v, 12.5ah rear motor battery in triangle
52v, 12.5ah front motor battery on rack top
Batteries connected in parallel to form a single ‘virtual’ 25ah power source to both motors
KT and Bafang displays
160Nm rear… 80 Nm front (do the math on that one!)

I live part-time in two towns: The first, an extended work visa, is in Fresno California, smack in the middle of California’s San Joaquin Valley and flat as a table. I built The Colonel, The Purple Thing and The Great Pumpkin for commuting in Fresno.

While I most often take pics of it in a wooded area, 2Fat is just as happy on paved, hilly roads. Shown here with front panniers, its 4-bag carry capacity makes it a quasi-cargo bike.

After a fashion, I finally was able to get a big enough bike rack on the back of my SUV to bring the Colonel to my actual home in Pacific Grove, California. My house is at the top of the hill there. Unlike in Fresno, nothing in or around the area is flat. You are either going up a steep hill, or down one, or both.

My intention was to be able to use the Colonel like I did in Fresno, as local errand transport and a light duty cargo-shopper. Unfortunately, I found out the first day about the limitations of hub drives: They suck in hills.

Hubs are Single Speed

Hub drives power an ebike via the axle. They don’t – and they can’t – use the gears of the bike. Forcing a single speed hub motor up a hill makes it just as miserable as a human stuck with no gears. So even though I have very powerful hubs, and they were geared hubs that put down the most torque of any on the market… they still struggled. Even with two of them. I could hear the gears groaning inside the motor casings and I could tell that, while I could get up the hills, my motors were not happy about it. I did not want to lug them into an early grave. I had already gone to a lot of trouble to make the bike bulletproof and had no desire to ignore the problem and inevitably kill it.

These twin 80Nm hub motor wheels were on The Colonel at the time of my first hill country ride (above). Now they are on the Great Pumpkin.

The solution?

I Need To Build a New Bike

Everybody knows mid drives are the solution to the hill problem for an ebike. A hub motor is single speed and at least relatively weak on torque, but a mid drive uses the gears in the drivetrain, plus it has double or more the torque output of a hub, and thats before you factor in the multiplier of the gears. Wonderful right? Except mid drive motors – especially DIY builds – are notorious for putting drivetrains into an early grave. Why? Well because they pour a LOT more power through the chainring, chain, rear cluster and cassette body (i.e. “the drivetrain”) than a bicycle was ever meant to withstand.

A normal cyclist can pump out maybe 300 watts for a minute or so, but typically normal sustained – strong – output is about 100 watts.
A professional sprinter/mutant is capable of pumping out almost 1000 watts, but only for about a minute or two. Thats not enough power to make a slice of toast.
EU-market electric motors must peak at 250w of output to stay legal (pssst… they don’t).
A 25-amp BBS02 on a 48v system puts out in excess of 1250 watts peak
Your garden variety 30-amp BBSHD running under a 52v battery is peaking – and can sustain – about 1750 watts of output.

My rear rack trunk battery. The capped red wire is for charging. The black wire on the rack stay is power output to the front motor. This is the original dual-separate-battery config

That gives some perspective on how much abuse is heaped upon a drivetrain with a mid drive. Coming off the successful builds of The Colonel (v1.0) and the Purple Thing (v1.5), I knew AWD reduced load on the individual motors dramatically when they work together as a team.

Given that, I thought about how I could use a front hub to reduce or eliminate the shock that a mid-drive puts onto the ebike’s drivetrain. Not only would I gain the traction benefits of AWD, and the benefit of reduced load from the team effort – things I already knew were a big positive – the front hub would also, if used in a slightly different way, provide an important added benefit: eliminating all the extra wear and tear that goes with having a mid drive.

If it worked, it would give me a bike with all the original AWD performance benefits, plus the ability to effortlessly climb walls, without tearing the bike up.

SPOILER ALERT: It worked unbelievably well.

New steel on the right, used alloy (1000 miles of use) on the left. And this was WITH AWD to reduce the wear and tear. Ordinary single-motor systems with this mileage would be dramatically worse. Substituting the steel body eliminates all wear.

In fact this bike is a showcase on how AWD can almost eliminate mid-drive wear and tear. Making a bike that climbs hills and bombs trails really well is almost an afterthought.

So that is what I am going to focus on here in this article. What was built and how was it used?

The Build

Briefly, this bike is the Great Pumpkin on the front wheel, and a typical mid-drive installation on the back. In between is the usual extra wiring scattered all over the place to deal with powering two motors, set up dual PAS etc..

The Front Motor

2Fat has another Bafang G060 80Nm front fat motor installed – this time its inside of a custom-built 100mm double-wall Weinmann (branded as an Origin8) rim. Go fat or go home. Attached are the same two torque arms as seen on the Pumpkin’s installation, and once again the controller is sitting in a grommeted handlebar bag that doubles as a wallet/keys/phone holder. It also serves to disguise the uncut steering tube I used to give me a more upright – but not too upright – riding position.

Another big, fat, 80Nm front hub motor. This time laced into a 100mm rim. Because fat bike.

Different from the Pumpkin is the battery setup. This bike was built before the v3.0 Pumpkin came onto this Earth (The Purple Thing had just been born). So, lacking the wherewithal to commission a big custom battery for the triangle, I used two packs, one for each motor. The front motor’s 12ah 52v battery was located in the rack trunk at the back of the bike. I had already learned I did not want to put a battery on the front rack as it made the steering too heavy. The rear motor’s 17.5ah pack was in the triangle.

It could be worse: Tucked in between the panniers in the rack trunk is one of two batteries. The second pack is in the triangle. Whats on the front rack? A weatherproof, adjustable 5a charger.

Additionally, due to the very low standover of 2Fat’s Large sized frame thanks to its top tube (it is a titanium, USA-made Chumba Ursa Major) there is not enough room to plug in a properly big battery in the triangle to handle both motors. So I had to do two batteries and live with the awful choice of putting one on the back rack.

After running the two dissimilar, separate batteries from its initial build in 2017 to March 2021, I switched to two identical, now-parallel’d-together packs in the same locations. Each is 12.5ah (14S6P) with Samsung 25R cells. Each has a 50a continuous BMS. As such, the system has a single 25ah power supply with a BMS capable of handling 100 continuous amps. Considering I can never peak past 65, I’m in great shape. I purchased the packs from Bicycle Motorworks, who builds their packs in the USA and constructs them at time of order.

Sidebar:
Running battery packs in parallel should only be done by those who have done the research and know exactly what they are getting into. In this case, both packs are identical, being manufactured to-order together, and have the same charge cycle count. Their voltages were matched before they were joined and there is some additional babysitting that will be necessary for charging and balancing. If you can avoid running packs in parallel and use just one battery: Do that instead.

Using two entirely separate batteries is a kludge and your last resort. Not only will you have to charge them separately, you will also draw down the two batteries separately at different rates which will result in uneven remaining power, lesser range and more frequent recharges.

The Rear Motor

This is pretty much your garden-variety 52v BBSHD installation. It has a couple of nice spiffs in the form of a 42T Lekkie Bling Ring, and Lekkie Buzz Bars, but neither of those things are a requirement of the AWD approach we’re discussing here.

The rear wheel is another matching Weinmann 100mm rim, again with DT Champion 2.0 spokes and 16mm brass nipples. The rear hub is a DT 350 Big Ride, which has sealed cartridge bearings and has been upgraded to a steel cassette body. Additionally a 9-speed Shimano HG400 cluster gives me steel cogs literally welded together into a single cluster, that spreads the enormous torque of the BBSHD across the entire steel cassette body. The DT350’s ratchet engagement mechanism is one of the few known bombproof rear hub mechanisms when faced with the power of the ~~Dark Side~~ 30a BBSHD motor.

A solid rear wheel build with extra strength parts throughout is crucial to a successful mid drive ebike.

205mm front and rear rotors with Magura MT5e brakes

The Special Bits

There is a bit more that went into making these motors work together. The complete integration possible on the Pumpkin thanks to the use of identical motors and controllers wouldn’t work here.

Brake Cutoffs

Trying to share cutoff signals between the motors again – using adapters for the red-to-yellow connections found on the BBSHD – resulted in bricking both motors. I tried everything to share the signals. It can’t be done unless you are willing to install a second, independent set of hydraulic magnet style cutoffs, zip tied to the integrated MT5e cutoffs and connected via a ‘y’ further down the line. That would work but it would look like crap, for very little benefit over what I ended up doing: I set up the front brake to engage the front motor cutoff, and the rear – with a red-to-yellow HIGO adapter – to cut off the rear motor. Since I always use both levers to do my braking I get an effective result.

Pedal Assist

PAS for the BBSHD is built into its motor casing, so it just works. PAS for the front motor was another matter entirely. Ordinarily the assist disc and sensor runs on the right-hand, drive side of the bike and hides behind the front chainring. This is not possible with the BBSHD’s secondary gear housing being there instead. So PAS had to be made to work on the left hand side. The KT controller has left-hand PAS sensor installation settings.

What was needed then was a left-hand install. This was quite a bit trickier, since the 120mm motor running in front of 5″ tire-compatible chainstays had zero extra spindle length to mount the disk. Lacking a bottom bracket cup to mount the PAS sensor ring, I set it behind a second inner lockring – I used two inner lock rings stacked like jam nuts rather than the usual inner+outer ring. These doubled inner rings had the secondary benefit of being a more aggressive, solid mounting for the motor.

With the sensor mounted, next I had the sensor ring to deal with. As noted above… there was no length available period for the sensor disk as the crankarms mounted pretty much flush to the bottom bracket.

The eventual solution involved hogging out the center of the PAS sensor disc so it could sit on the inner flange of the Lekkie crankarm instead of the spindle. I prepped the crankarm with… thin strips of thick duct tape so the disk would sit tightly on the flange. It was a bodge but it worked, and with just one improvement since installation in 2017 it has held perfectly. That improvement is a zip tie to help hold the disk steady in position (of course I used a zip tie. We have duct tape in the mix; all thats missing is a zip tie).

Worth noting: I used this identical PAS ring mounting when I built the Lizzard King AWD cargo bike in 2021. Not only did I have enough extra spindle so I did not have to do this surgery on the ring, I also realized I could unscrew and reverse the sensor in its mounting ring. This eliminated the need to use the reverse settings in the display/controller. Since the inset ring was reversed, it was outset now… and that held the sensor closer to the magnets (they work fine inset as seen here, but closer is better).

The Cockpit

Here’s where the eagle-eyed may spot a preview of how I ride this bike to soften up the mid drive.

Those are Jones SG bars with ESI XL Extra Chunky grips, wrapped in silicone tape

On the right, we have the grip, then the brake lever, followed by the 9-speed shifter. Here again we see a v2.0 feature that v3.0 fixed: A SRAM drivetrain gives us a SRAM, not Shimano shifter. The Shimano shifter needs so much real estate on the grip it is impossible to put a throttle on that side of the handlebars. Look at the cockpit of The Great Pumpkin and the Lizzard King to see how a SRAM shifter solves this and lets me do one throttle per thumb.

Being unable to do that at the time – and believe me I tried EVERY possible combination of throttles. I still have most of them in a box in my garage. I settled on two styles of thumb throttle, side by side on the left, with the innermost throttle being for the hub/front and the outermost for the BBSHD/rear. As for the eagle-eyed part: The front throttle is cocked higher so between that and its longer throw, it is engaged first and when at 100% it follows the natural curve of my thumb. Both throttles can then be at 100% and my hand stays comfortable at WFO.

How To Ride It

At last we get to the point!

I already let the cat out of the bag earlier: The biggest deal associated with this bike is not that it can climb really well (REALLY well). Nor is its ability to handle trails and rotten conditions its star quality.

No, the real point of having a mid drive teamed with a front hub motor is to use that hub motor to take the shock off the drivetrain that mid drives deliver. Do that and you also take away the excess wear and tear on the parts (if we are being fair, a lot of this comes from doofus riders who don’t know what they are doing).

When starting, start with the hub

This is most of the deal right here. Don’t make the mid drive haul the bike up from a dead stop. Its got the torque to do it. But everything takes a beating in the process. The nylon gears inside of the mid drive. The chainring. The poor chain. The suffering cogs. The cassette body being dug into by the cogs. The pawls inside of the cassette body that are straining against the hub. Your ebike hates you for doing this to it.

By using a mid-drive-strong chain, a steel cluster and a steel cassette body with a ratchet engagement mechanism, we harden the drivetrain to be very tolerant of this abuse. Between that and learning how to use a mid drive, wear and tear really isn’t bad at all. Maybe no worse than a quality analog bike used hard. But still… even with the hardened drivetrain it sure would be nice to take things easier.

By using a hub motor to get the bike rolling – even by just a few mph – we accomplish this mission. Using my pedaling-friendly BBSHD programming or something like it, the BBSHD will not kick in on pedaling until the bike crosses about 5 mph. So from a stop, you hit the front throttle for about one full second. That throttle is cocked up a bit higher on 2Fat to make that a natural move. The bike starts up from its dead stop without any strain on the drivetrain since the BBSHD is not even running. Simultaneously, you also start pedaling. This engages the cassette mechanism.

When speed crosses 5 mph, the BBSHD’s pedal assist now kicks in on a drivetrain that is already engaged. There is no longer a risk of having the motor jerk the chain and smash the cluster into engagement. And with this gentle engagement, the motor starts working on a bike that is already moving. So you get the doubled benefit of a lighter effort against all components to get your fat bike off its fat ass. Instead, you get smooth – and strong – acceleration. The lack of lugging the motor has the further benefit of not generating anywhere near as much heat since the motor is no longer running at low rpms for anywhere near as long. And those nylon gears inside the motor are writing you a nice thank-you card.

Or…

Rather than using the throttle, you could also just start pedaling. I have set the KT controller to engage PAS as quickly as possible. Combine that with the BBSHD’s controller being told to hang back for the initial startup, and you have a completely thumbs-off solution that implements at a nice gentle pace.

So… It just works.

Or you can force it! Remember with this setup you have two throttles. There’s no law that says if you need it, you can’t jump the gun and either hit the rear throttle early, or hit it so the motor engages harder than it would have in your designated PAS mode. So if you need a little extra push thanks to an XL load of groceries, or a steep hill, you have options at your disposal.

Downshift? Schmownshift!

One of the mantras associated with smart mid drive riding is that you always Always ALWAYS freaking downshift the bike when you come to a stop. The LAST thing you want is to lug the motor up from a dead stop because of all the brutality it visits on your chain, your cogs blah blah blah. So that means you remember to downshift one or two… maybe even three times before you come to a stop. When the light turns green you upshift in sequence one gear at a time as you get back up to speed again. Thus as we all understand: you row thru the gears.

Another rule mid drive mavens repeat ad nauseum is – if you have an 11T small rear cog… stay the hell off of it. Its too small to use on a mid drive. It bogs the bejesus out of the motor from a stop, its too small to be able to get up to speed before the sun sets and if thats not bad enough, the teeny cog on even the steel Shimano clusters is alloy and it is not attached like all the others are. Its an individual. So not only do they dig into the cassette body harder, they die fast. Like Really Fast. As in a few hundred miles tops.

Well, on AWD mid drives like 2Fat, you can forget about all that. Because of the powered front hub doing its part (either thru a quick dab of throttle or just letting PAS start the bike), there is no longer a need to shift at a light. You can forget about the whole process. Just leave it and it’ll be fine as if it was a hub motor! In fact the front motor allows the bike to increase its speed so it gets up and goes fast just like a hub motor does.

I found this out within a day of building the bike, and since then learned from experience the 11T cog will last about 1500 miles before it typically cracks (two so far). Thats not so bad for a readily available US$7 part. And if I wanted it to live longer, well it wouldn’t kill me to go up a gear at a light once in a while.

At the office, outside my e-garage. There is a trail network along my commute route that 2Fat lets me take

Wrapping It All Up

2Fat itself is not the ideal example of how to execute this concept. It is a product of when it was built and my knowledge level at that time. In the present day, I for sure would not want to build a bike with two batteries, and if I did I would NEVER put one on the back rack. But thats partly the limits of the frame I used. I came within a hair of using a Salsa Blackborow frame kit for this bike until, at the last minute, this titanium beauty fell into my lap for a song… but thats another story.

Next, I wouldn’t use Shimano components thanks to the real estate problems introduced by the shifter. Instead I’d use SRAM components so I could do one throttle per thumb.

Really the Great Pumpkin with its XL size and XL triangle, plus its SRAM shifters – would be ideal here. But them’s the breaks. This is what I’ve got. Boo hoo.

With that said… I did learn as I went along, and in 2021 I returned to dual motor bikes with the Lizzard King, a bike meant to prove a different kind of AWD could be awesome: You don’t need the 80Nm, 35a punch of the Pumpkin’s or 2Fat’s front hub to gain the benefits of AWD. A low power implementation, done a little differently, should be very effective and appeal to a much broader range of everyday, low-speed, low-drama ebike use. And…

SPOILER ALERT: It worked unbelievably well.

Dual Motor AWD Electric Bikes – Case Study: Twin Geared Hub Commuter

A big bruiser geared specifically to be pedaled hard at 32-34 mph, this is my commuter workout-workhorse. Don’t want to sweat? Just relax and pedal easy… at 28 mph.

AWD Ebikes Menu
AWD. OMG. WTF!
Case Study – Flatland Fat Bike Commuter. Hub+Hub (you are here)
Case Study – Alpine Road & Trail. Hub+Mid Drive
Case Study – Low-Power Cargo Beast. Hub+Mid Drive

The Great Pumpkin

2 x 750w 80Nm geared Bafang G060 hubs
1 x 52v, 30ah battery with Samsung 30Q cells, 90a continuous BMS
2 x 35a KT brand controllers
2 x KT brand displays
160 Nm total power

The Great Pumpkin remains my fast commuter workhorse. This bike is meant for transportation to and from a destination, not sightseeing. As such it is designed to travel as close to the safe, legal speed limit as possible. Here in California the assist limit is 28 mph, I stay on the street (no shared-use bike paths allowed) and this bike’s gears are made to let me power it up past that 28 mph limit to about 34 mph – if I am strong enough to pull it off.

A note on speeds and our local roads here, and how they influence the design and capabilities of this ebike:  in California the law limits ebikes to 28 mph (45 km/h) of assist.  Thats an assist limit, not a speed limit.   The maximum lawful speed is the posted motor vehicle speed limit, adjusted downward if necessary to maintain safety.  So if you can pedal the bike faster than 28, thats fine so long as doing that is "safe for conditions".  

These speeds seem like a lot to readers in some parts of the world.  But remember here in the USA we've got open roads that are nothing like you see in many urban centers in, for example, the EU.  The two pictures above come from two different places along my 15-mile commute route.  The speed limit signs are in mph not km/h.  Bear in mind drivers regularly exceed these limits by a significant margin so in rush hour traffic a 30 mph bike is by far the slowest thing on the tarmac, with no pedestrian issues to speak of.  So, on streets like this, if I can pedal to 34 mph - and oftentimes I can - thats perfectly legal.  In fact I have been paced and radar'd by police cruisers and motorcycle traffic enforcement many times without incident.

So the secondary purpose of this bike is to enable me to work hard while still transporting me to Point B at a practical speed. You’ve heard how ebikes let you arrive at your destination without getting all sweaty? Well, this one lets you arrive all sweaty on purpose if you like.

The geared hub motors let it accelerate fast in traffic, and despite its necessary lack of suspension, the fat tires (and the suspension seatpost) let it ride well on lousy pavement. It has over 7000 miles on it at present (March 2021), and benefits from all of the learning I got the hard way building its predecessors. In fact, I am using the same set of wheels I had built for my very first AWD ebike: The Colonel. This is a testament to finding a good wheelbuilder at the Local Bike Shop of your choice and have them build you a quality wheel with quality components.

Fresh from the wheel builder in March of 2017. DT Champion 2.0 spokes, 16mm brass nipples, double-wall Weinmann 80mm rims. Still going strong today, three bike builds later.

Motor Choice

The Pumpkin is a flat-country bike. Dual geared hubs are powerful, but hub motors – since they power thru the axle and cannot use gears – are just single-speed. Despite their power and ability to handle lots of current, they can get the bike up steep hillside streets, but they struggle doing it. Riding this bike in the Carmel/Pacific Grove portion of the Monterey Bay Area, where nothing is flat, I found it could climb anything but it lugged its motors mightily doing so, to the point I feared for their long life. But if you live on flat land (and this bike’s permanent home is in the table-flat San Joaquin Valley), this is the design that will gobble up pavement for lunch. It will get you where you need to be safely and quickly as an ebike can legally travel.

Why didn’t I choose maintenance-free direct drive hubs? Because they lack torque, and that means slow acceleration unless I load the bike down with bigger, higher voltage batteries and motors with much more unsprung mass.

Battery

Having done it the wrong way before out of necessity (translation: too expensive) I put in a single big battery on this bike. It has the biggest battery I could fit into the triangle of this XL-sized frame (A Chumba Ursa Major made with chromoly tubing). A 14S9p (52v) pack that uses Samsung 30Q cells to give me about 30ah. That means it takes awhile to charge. But it also takes awhile to drain, and this single battery is placed down in the triangle where it does not reduce the carry capacity of the bike, or screw up its performance with schlocky placement of a battery on the rear rack.

But doing an AWD bike with a single battery means you have to address more than just size. The Battery Management System (BMS) has to be able to handle the amp draw of two motors simultaneously. Looking for batteries out in the wild that can do this… you’ll find almost none that are capable of it.

Initial battery fitment prior to connecting the power and charging cables. The bag hides a multitude of cable-routing sins.

How do you calculate the sort of battery you need? You take the peak output of both of your motors and add them together. Your BMS’ “continuous” power rating has to be more than that peak to ensure your motors never trip the BMS’ limits. If they do, to reset the battery you have to hook it up to a charger, which is unlikely to be handy on the side of any road you’re traveling on.

So, with a 35a rear controller and a 35a front controller, I need a battery with a 70a continuous (or more) BMS, and thats a special order item. In my case, the BMS can handle 80a continuous current.

Controllers and Wiring

The 35 amp KT brand rear motor controller is sitting under the saddle, zip-tied neatly with small clear, low-visibility ties to the seatpost mounting arms of the rear rack. This puts the controller in open air to keep its heat down. It will reach temperatures of 135 degrees fahrenheit if stored enclosed. A home-made fender comprising of an extended commercial mudguard and cut-to-size flexible cutting board provides complete coverage from water coming up off the rear tire.

The front motor controller is an identical 35 amp KT, housed in the handlebar bag. This bag has had reinforced brass grommet holes placed strategically inside and out so cables can pass thru its inside compartments to the outside of the bag, without creating issues of splashing water (here again extended fenders help). The top of the bag is left zipped open and this keeps heat from becoming a problem. The front motor cable travels directly up and into this bag, while cables for pedal assist, brake cutoffs, display and throttle exit out either a grommeted side entry or out the open top of the bag. The bag itself essentially hides all of the front motor cabling rats’ nest, both by housing excess wire inside itself and via natural camouflage, providing a black backdrop to black cables running along and woven into its MOLLE exterior. Cables exiting and entering are carefully bundled together for neatness.

Is that a controller mounted to the front rack? Nope its a 5 amp weatherproof charger, with the cables housed in the dump pouch, just behind it.

The center triangle bag is stuffed mostly full with the custom-sized triangle battery. Like any triangle bag on an ebike, it also serves to hide excess wiring, and given the dual custom splitters for brake cutoff signals and pedal assist (one sensor signal is split off to both motors for simultaneous PAS power) there is plenty of wiring that thankfully remains invisible thanks to this bag, which seldom needs to be opened. The bag has forward and rear-facing cable holes that don’t suffer from water ingestion, again thanks to the fender setup. A capped XT60 charger plug is coming out the front of the bag just behind (and shielded by) the head tube, and this cap is removed and a charger is plugged in here to recharge the battery.

Display/Controls

Ergonomically, the cockpit is very well designed and reflects this being my third or fourth try at doing the job. There is one throttle for each thumb in easy reach, and both throttles are clocked so when fully engaged, the paddle is pointing straight down. If you hit a pothole your thumb doesn’t push thru and break the throttle. It slips off instead. The PAS panel is also one-per-side, and also within thumb reach without losing your grip on the bars. SRAM 9-speed shifters are in use, because a SRAM shifter gives you enough real estate on a handgrip (vs. Shimano) to stack multiple hand controls and still be able to easily reach everything.

Cockpit view. Notice the max speed reading on the top display. I used the gears and got a workout on the ride into the office that day.

Despite the duplicated motors and controllers, the displays are mismatched simply because I am re-using parts from older bikes no longer on the front line (in this case parts came off The Purple Thing). For this build I needed a new display and the KT model LCD8H was available, so I grabbed one. It is the same display as the KT model LCD3 above it, used for the front motor. The LCD8H is just in color and easier to configure.

And in case you noticed… yes this is a bike with Class 3/Speed Pedelec performance that has throttles. Reality is, though, the bike is designed specifically as a pedelec. Pedaling acceleration via PAS is plenty fast and is in fact (thanks to controller settings) a little faster than using the throttles. They are only put into use typically for a split second on take-off from a standing start while I regain my balance on the bike and settle in to pedaling. If I am crossing a 4-lane street, I am off the throttles before I get past the first lane while crossing and won’t touch them again until the next stop at the next intersection.

Power (too hot)

These two 80Nm motors have controllers feeding 35a to each axle provide giggle-inducing acceleration. So much so I found performance needs to be turned down for multiple reasons:

#1 – (Safety). Come to a stop at an intersection. Acceleration is so strong from a stop, you leap forward so fast you are always the first vehicle that gets to the other side, and you’d better be hanging on. Thats fine if you meant to do that. If on the other hand you accidentally engaged pedal assist, you could be throwing yourself – literally – into the path of a car.

#2 – (Safety). Come to a stop at an intersection. Put your feet down, release the bars and take a drink or something. If you engage again (pedal assist or throttle) and forget to put your handlebars straight, your front wheel will shoot off in the direction its pointed in. Typically a bad thing.

#3 – (Fork survival). With this much torque pulling on the front fork, things start to happen that a bicycle was never stressed or designed for. A front fork was never designed to be pulled on hard, for extended periods or in sudden jerks. Especially not day after day for days and weeks stretching into years.

#4 – (Frame survival). This one was unexpected: Even though I am using a highly durable hand-made-in-USA frame, I still found it was straining under the repeated daily stress of stoplight-to-stoplight acceleration from the rear motor. Specifically I started to hear creaks from the rear triangle and dropouts. eek.

#5 – (Safety again for crying out loud!). I use fat street-smoothie tires in summer. Doing that with the motors unrestrained makes for about a half rotation of front wheel spin on full throttle, and maybe a 1/4 spin on pedal assist… and a goodly chirp out of the back, at the least (lots more if the ground is not clean, dry pavement). Thats fun for an afternoon showing off but more than that and its just plain dangerous.

Power (just right)

To slow down the bike so it accelerates at a safe rate on city streets, and doesn’t wear itself out from all the extra stress of doing this day in and day out, I utilize a setting in each of the two KT brand controllers that sets the power curve to ‘slow start’: C5=00 is undocumented on all but the newest KT display manuals. Where it is documented, it is listed as the most restricted of the three ‘slow start’ modes.

What this does is create an acceleration curve slope that is shallow at tip-in but increasingly steep as it continues forward. Here’s the crazy-cool part: Even dialed way down on both motors this bike is still typically faster than anything else crossing the intersection from a standing start. So you aren’t missing out on much in the way of fun if you want to pour on the amps. Its just safe, sane and controllable when its put on a leash.

Torque Arms (!)

I’m not going to get too deep into the specifics of this topic, but I will say if you use hub motors you have to use torque arms. Gotta do it. Thats for any motor that has ‘flats’ on its axle to allow their use (which is almost all of them). It is true many motors do not need torque arms because they are of such low power. I will say having suffered the consequences of not using one, its WAY better to be safe than sorry and just go ahead and install them regardless of motor power.

What could happen? If you don’t use a torque arm, the force of the motor will overwhelm your bicycle’s dropouts and the motor will “spin out”. That means your steel dropouts will not be able to contain the motor’s axle, which will spin (instead of the motor casing spinning) and when that happens the dropouts spread. Your frame or fork is effectively destroyed and unsalvageable at that point. These 750w, 80Nm motors are right on the edge of demanding two torque arms. For sure they need one. I have used two on the front motor and one on the rear, where the stronger rear dropouts are much less likely to have an issue.

Gearing

Last but not least… take a look at the pictures on this page and you will see the biggest front chainring ever on a fat bike. Look to the back axle and you may be looking at the smallest cluster. And the derailleur is a mid-length cage, to boot. Fact is, this bike was geared to be pedaled fast on the street, not overland on trails as is the norm for fat bikes.

The front chainring is a 50T ring, while the rear cluster has an 11T small cog. Frankly I forget the size of the biggest cog because I never use it. Its 28T… Maybe 30. And since the hubs on this bike are the motors, powering the bike thru the axle, not the drivetrain, gearing is largely useless unless I want to pedal faster while going slow. This almost never happens because this bike should not be taken on pedestrian paths or similar where such slow travel is necessary.

Redundancy

For a daily driver bike that is transportation, not recreation, you need to address many areas to ensure reliable, day-in, day-out operation. There are many issues addressed on that topic with this bike, but I’ll only touch on the AWD-specific ones here. In a word: Redundancy. If you do a general overview of this bike’s propulsion systems, you will see almost everything but the battery is a separate, independent system. None of this is accidental or done because I was forced to do so (you can buy controller solutions that reach out to two motors at once, for instance). Its done this way because its better. Dual throttles are better. Setting PAS independently per wheel is better than combining the two. Even two different displays let you focus on different bits of each (although that one I could do without if push came to shove).

Redundancy on a dual motor bike can be a big benefit. I’ve had one unfortunate lesson in this: I went over the handlebars and slammed straight down on the pavement, cracking some ribs. I also bent my front fork (just a little) and smashed my rear throttle, among other things. That broken throttle disabled the rear motor despite all other components being in working order. I was able to limp the bike home without pedaling, which I really needed given the cracked ribs and various and sundry other minor injuries.

This is one more reason by the way, why I want throttles on the bike. If I am physically unable to pedal I want to be able to get me and the bike home, or to the emergency room as the case may be.

Gallery

And THAT is my rain or shine daily driver.