We Have A Huge Problem With Ebikes....

historically bikes have generally been something that you can upgrade later on so if you bought a bike in 2015 a couple of years later you saw a new Fork that had arrive that you thought was pretty good you'd be able to put it on your bike the same with a group set or even something Wireless you can generally upgrade that frame not all the time because there has been some different standards that have been introduced but it's pretty much been a decent thing because otherwise we're left with all these different proprietary standards that have no kind of compatibility together so guess where we're at now with ebikes nothing works together let me show you what I mean this is a fua battery LIC and lightweight but it will only ever work in a fua based ebike this is a Bosch battery they do different types of batteries this is a vertical battery and it will only ever work in a Bosch frame that takes vertical batteries this is aam battery sram's cool new system that came out actually uses the Bros motor but they've made their own battery and this will only ever work with that particular SRAM ebike the batteries definitely don't work in other frames the motors they all have different motor mount systems this is a range extender it will only work and connect to specialized bikes it's got a different type of plug from any other brand this is a TQ range extender guess what different plug only ever work with TQ and this is a giant one even though they use the Yamaha system it won't work with Yamaha bikes because it's got Giant's own proprietary port on it nothing is compatible with one another the charges do not work in other brands got one two 3 four five six seven eight different Chargers that all do exactly the same thing they just charge ebikes so across these bike brands and Frames nothing works like none of the charges work across different bike brands or motor Brands the motor mounts are completely different the batteries definitely do not work so we've got this crazy amount of proprietary stuff at the moment that is being released with each ebike so I get it from a business perspective Brands want people locked into their own ecosystem whether it's a Bosch ecosystem a Bros a Yamaha Shimano fua TQ there's loads of different bike brands out there and they're all kind of in this technological arms race to bring out better systems so not only do we have this situation where nothing is interchangeable nothing works together within each brand there's also this kind of obsolesence piece that happens over time let me share with you a couple of specific examples now this is not to hit on any brand because they pretty much all do it a couple of years ago Bosch released a new smart system motor the bolt pattern was identical to the previous version but because of some internal electronic changes nothing was backwards compatible so if you owned any of the older stuff you couldn't take advantage of any of the new kind of Bluetooth controllers or anything like that they said they had to do that to make a step forward but nothing was backwards compatible Shimano had an ep8 motor and then they recently released the EP 801 nothing on that is backwards compatible even the batteries that are exactly the same shape and fit they just don't work with the older system so even within the own brand of manufacturer we have these systems that are not backwards compatible now specialized have just released a new SL motor it's a super light quieter and more powerful motor that has exactly the same bolt pattern and physically will fit in the older bike but they won't sell it and it won't work if you even try and do it because it needs these kind of firmware update so I've got a really cool new frame here that I'm going to build up and it will take any Fork it will take a fox it will take a rock shocks it'll take a 34 a 36 or 38 from any brand brilliant although there's loads of traditional parts that will fit on this I can't use any other Brand's motor any other Brand's battery or even charger for this so what happens to this in a few years when they bring out a new version a new motor so we've got two issues here firstly we've got proprietary systems we've got all of these Brands trying to bring a point of difference to the market which I understand all the brands want a competitive Advantage but that brings out all of these different systems all of these proprietary Chargers the range extenders the batteries none of this works with different brands and this is not good enough I think there needs to be a standard that we stick to and there is some kind of future upgrade path at least for buyers when they buy a new bike the second thing is backwards compatibility now what if Bosch bring out a new motor system next year and a new battery system and none of it is backwards compatible and you can't buy these things you can't go to a bike shop and buy motor because they're all sold as a complete package a frame motor and battery and I think this is introducing a lot of concern with people buying bikes do remember if you bought a laptop many years ago next month it was already outdate because the pace of innovation was so rapid and the technological advances were really quick that you would be rapidly outdated that's what we're facing with ebikes and ebikes aren't cheap if you lay down 8 n 10 grand on a bike and in 3 months time there's a new system that superseded what you've got and is better and you have no way of fitting that to your bike that really does suck and what about the green and sustainability aspects of it now ebiking is cleaner than driving a combustion engine car commuting on it but what happens when a brand brings out a brilliant new system that doesn't work with your existing frame so it introducing all this new technology but with no clear upgrade path and just leaving people people a little bit disappointed that their £10,000 ebike in 6 months time could be outdate so this is not to point fingers at any particular brand on manufacturer because everyone is doing their own thing and they're all doing incredible work but this needs to be better so maybe some easy wins let's just have a charging standard let's have one particular charger that can work across all the different bikes easy let's have a motor standard bolt pattern that makes it easier for consumers to upgrade and get different Motors but also much easier for frame designers it must be really difficult if you're a frame designer choosing which brand to go with because if you get it wrong that means that that brand that motor brand might be slightly out of favor and you've just laid down hundreds of thousands into mold and R&D and that motor might be bit rubbish compared to something else and you've ended up with a bike with a motor in it that no one wants and because they can't upgrade it they're not going to buy the bike so how about we have a standard for motor bolt patterns so they all share the same standard and a bit like udh there's a deria hanger standard what about a UBS a universal bolt standard for Motors that would make complete sense and when it comes to batteries really there's no excuse to have all these different versions of batteries they're all fitting into a down tube of a mountain bike which is a constrained space let's not make 30 different versions of the same thing that have no benefit to anything other than that one particular bik frame now I know there's different standards and different voltages and all that kind of stuff but I think we can do much better than what we've got at the moment so to motor manufacturers let's have collaboration instead of competition so let's make this better for everybody from bike brands that are designing these bikes and have the challenges how to fit all the different systems together and the end consumer let's not end up with 20 different batteries 20 different Chargers 20 different Motors and let's have some kind of electronic upgrade path so when a new motor comes out it can be fit to the millions of ebikes that are sold every year because designing new bolt patterns and new standards and new batteries absolutely sucks for everybody the consumer the brands the environment is just not good enough and it needs to be better sorry for the rant but I've been wanting to do this video for quite some time and again this is not to call out any brand or any of the great people that are working in the industry this is about raising the conversation making it better coming up with collaboration not competition and basically everybody wins

Channel: Rob Rides EMTB

Views: 268,290

Keywords: e bike, emtb, ebike, motor, shimano, brose, bosch, standards, problem, issues, tq, fazua, obsolescence, battery, lifetime

Id: PN505EbwWT0

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023