Also my Mountainboard is an 8s system and blows away most other 12s systems here.
I still have my doubts about that range but they are using a gear pulley system and no belts (âdirectâ drive) and run 80mm wheels last I checked. To be able to do 18.6 miles (like @captainjez quotes) on a 160Wh battery it means itâs around 8.6Wh/mile. On my diy running 15/38t with belts on big 107mm wheels I get 13Wh/mile (and thatâs not by going slow). Getting that down to 8.6Wh is doable, specially when you build your own motors and find the best efficiency for your drive train.
Another thing to keep in mind is that âdirectâ drives have way more free roll and during a normal ride that also increases range.
I wish we had a standardised way of testing range, some commercial boards do market themselves with ridiculous range that is never achieved in real life.
That being said, I am excited to see a new high end production board on the market.
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helical directdrive even, super freerolling, asked if they sold the pulleys separate for sience, a year back. They refused. Sadface. It would sell like butter on these forums. Maybe as spare part in the future? @captainjez
Thatâs not what direct drive means. In-wheel hub motors are radial direct drive and Carvon-style motors are axial direct drive. A quick search uncovers a lotâŚ
Gear reduction systems are exactly that - gear drives or cog drives or whatever, but they certainly arenât direct drive.
That wonât change unfortunately. We donât have any plans to sell parts - only complete boards we can support.
I literally added the quotes around the term for you.
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Derek had some good info about efficiency of hub motors vs direct. He found the carbon v3s to be the most efficient but his numbers for those where not far behind what I could get with hummies hubs, which is slightly worse than the direct drive had seen. The numbers where around 10 wh per mile with Carvons vs 12wh per mile with the direct drive vs 14wh per mile with hummie hubs. The reality is that I could get it down to 10wh, but performance would suck. At 14wh, performance is still ehh. And at 40wh per mile, you have ludicrous mode.
At the end of the day, it comes down to drive train and motor losses, but most importantly, the number of watts your running at. A geared system will always perform better than a direct drive or hub motor system at the same wattage. But you get a hub or direct drive motor large enough and you get good efficiency still. So at that point, it becomes personal prefernce.
The tests up to now are not the most scientific either. I think the reason Derek had better range with the carbon vs gear drive is because of the motor plus gear combo was for high speed (70 mph) rather than lower speed. Would love to get builders together at some point and build scientific tests So we can all learn more about how to build efficient systems using the drive train of our choir, because I think it can be done with all drive trains.
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