Cytronex E-Bike: The Lightest Electric Bicycle
Written by man on March 11th, 2010 in Other.
A absolutely new technology feels like magic. (Anybody who uses an iPhone will apperceive this effect). So account this: you’re cycling forth in a failing single-speed bike. You’re adequate the way a one-speeder transfers your legs’ ability to the alley with basal ability losses (a transmission, in contrast, costs you about 10% in efficiency).
But again you see a abrupt hill. Normally, you’d be affected to angle on the pedals, or to dismount. But on the Cytronex I was demography through arresting Winchester in countryside England, what I did was columnist a button on the right-hand ancillary of the handlebar. And lo, what acquainted like the duke of God gave me a push, and I aloof went up that hill. Like magic, indeed!
The Cytronex abstraction is simple. Take a quality, low-weight bike, for archetype as fabricated by Cannondale. (There is no substitute, as Cytronex’ Mark Searles says, for lightness). Add an electric hub motor to the front wheel. The clincher is a battery that looks like a standard bicyclist’s water-bottle, and is easy to insert or remove. The result: a normal, efficient electric bicycle you’ll pedal without electric bike support on level ground and up light gradients, and that doesn’t weigh you down with unnecessary ballast (the Cytronex package weighs 5 KGs). But when you hit a hill, or encounter a headwind, you can retrieve the motor’s 180 Watts of electric assistence.
Other e-bikes are more complicated and heavier; in fact, Cytronex claims to make the lightest electrics in the world. Electric bikes can be of two kinds. Firstly, there are the quasi-mopeds, complete with twist-grip throttles. Millions of Chinese bodies use these, and they accept their accessible purposes, but you won’t acquisition yourself pedaling abundant on these abundant machines, alike if you can. Then, there are the so-called pedalecs that employ a sensor which knows how hard you are pedalling: push harder, and the electric motor provides more assistance. Pedalecs can be OK-looking, but at atomic in Europe, they are in crisis of actuality stigmatised as senior-citizen transport.
No such crisis in the case of Cytronex. The hub motor is inconspicuous, and the array is ingeniously stealthy. You wouldn’t look like you own one just because you’re too lazy to pedal a normal bike or too poor to own a car. Cytronex’ capital raison d’etre is to access your active radius. As Searles says, “I wanted to enable more people to commute by bike”.
Cytronex offers a ambit of bikes able with its electric system. In accession to the single-speed Genesis Day One,
I test-drove a gearshift-equipped Cannondale as well, and it worked beautifully, albeit without the simplicity of the single-speed one. For actively arresting area though, a shifter is absolutely better.
Searles is additionally alive on a amalgamation which will accredit any acquiescent bike artisan to install electric apparatus to a ambit of bikes — alike assimilate pre-owned ones. Initially planned for backward 2009, this seems to be a bit added complicated than expected: some bikes are not adapted to electrification. Expect Cytronex kits to reach the market in 2010.
In late November, I visited Cytronex in Winchester for some test rides and for a quick Q&A session with company owner Mark Searles.
