Funny you should mention electric bikes as an interest. I put an ebike together last year while I was without a car. Used a 1kw hub motor in the front wheel, 48v lithium battery pack. wheel, BLDC controller, brake levers, control panel, etc all came as a kit. Cheap Chinese ebay stuff. My 20ah battery cost more than the kit and bike together. Top speed was 39mph and I am 240lbs. A lot of fun but a wonder I didn't kill myself cause I could not fit the disk brake to the cheapo walmart bike, and had to make do with center pull brakes. Wheel was poorly laced. A good bike mechanic could have made it run a lot truer, maybe, and the rim was some aluminum alloy. But it was my wheels for over a year. Range at moderate speeds was in the neighborhood of 20 miles. Bike was rather heavy, with motor and battery. Nevertheless I did not regret going with a 1kw system. A smaller battery would not have worked well, either, I don't think. The 20ah battery provided plenty of current when needed. I think the biggest fault with the kit was the wire size. Could have been a lot bigger. I melted a connector or two, yeah. Oh, and a torque arm is a good idea, not included in the kit but is cheap to get elsewere, or can be easily fabricated. That prevents the axle from spinning out in the forks which of course would break the phase wires and hall sensor wires probably in a spectacular display of electrical fireworks.
It was a lot of fun passing all those super serious pedallers on their $2k bikes in their lycra biking togs, without even spinning a pedal haha. I would always flick my old fashioned bike bell as I approached to overtake them. Must have seemed quite unfair to have some white haired old guy not even sweating in the New Orleans heat, whizzing by them. Well look at me, going OT in my own thread. Anyway yeah ebikes can be kinda fun and lots of room for tinkering.
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