7 ms·

E-bike companies are fighting to stop riders from repairing their electric bikes

97 points by danboarder 3y ago

shortcake27 3y ago
> But complicated and potentially dangerous components like lithium-ion batteries – which require special tools, skills and experience to operate on correctly – are another matter. What special tools, skills, and experience is required to unscrew a battery pack? How is this a legit strategy, to artificially make a product difficult to repair then claim it needs to be excluded from the law? Didn’t right to repair gain traction from exactly this type of garbage? Ie John Deere, phones with heavily glued batteries that then show fake warnings in the OS etc.
- nullc 3y ago
  Lots of ways to hurt yourself working on a car too. Many of the things we teach people in primary school really only serves the purpose of making them familar with the subject so that they can be more savvy consumers of expert help in the future. The loss of exposure to things like shop class seems to be resulting in waves of people that think it's okay to outlaw repair because they don't understand it themselves.
- jdietrich 3y ago
  >What special tools, skills, and experience is required to unscrew a battery pack? An e-bike fire is no joke. If you don't know what you're doing, you can easily turn a li-ion pack into an incendiary device. Aside from the safety issues, there's a huge reputational issue for the industry. I don't like the idea of restricting the right to repair, but I really don't like the idea of sharing an apartment building with some guy who replaced the cells in his e-bike battery pack because he watched a YouTube video and figured that it can't be that difficult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jGYWhGnJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jGYWhGnJ4
  - Etrnl_President 3y ago
    Try https://batteryuniversity.com/ https://batteryuniversity.com/
  - avery17 3y ago
    Then your apartment complex should ban ebikes repairs, not the state.
    - cykotic 3y ago
      Sometimes a regulation needs to be done at the government level for the protection of everyone. For instance, we didn’t leave it up to individual apartment complexes on whether or not they wanted to implement ADA requirements or fire detectors. It’s generally bad policy to leave it up to landlords on whether or not something should done or banned for safety reasons. Their default mode is to do nothing.
  - getarofilter 3y ago
    [dead]
  - shortcake27 3y ago
    I think you may have missed my point, but that’s my fault because I was being facetious. When I need to replace the battery in my car, I don’t open up the battery to replace the plates and acid. I buy a new battery (from a brand and store of my choosing) and recycle the old one. Why are ebikes different? Why are people having to replace the cells in the pack? Because the manufacturer has made it impossible to get a aftermarket replacement battery pack. So I’m saying the solution is for manufacturers to build their products in a way that makes it easy and safe to replace the battery (without lockin), instead of intentionally building products that are difficult/unsafe to repair and using that to claim the product needs to be excluded from right to repair.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      So then, e-bike replacement battery packs should be as easily available and as easily changeable as car batteries. Problem solved ? What am I missing ?
getarofilter 3y ago
Hi. This is something i know more than a little about. Allow me to spew.. The water resistant ratings are not up to the challenge of "car replacement" or even letting your ebike get rained on. Their ip rating is for puddles, light rain, a quick fast pour every now and then. The display on the handlebars has such an IP rating and really Doesnt belong on the handlebars as-is. Also, there is no point: the display can be put in a triangle bag where it is protected from elements Aand not a distaction. No important info is really shown on the display, except maybe battery. The protocol for water ingress is gaskets and seals which fail and heavy grease that sticks. Instead, ebikes need oil fill ports and thinner lube. I use a rear hub ebike (because i can have a nice crank, pedal at my cadence, far more repairable) and i drilled a hole in the shell to allow sewing machine oil and wd40 to be added without disassembly. This takes water out, cleans the insides and also can fling oil everywhere because i never tapped and plugged the hole but whatever. The electric hub holds sufficent oil, no need to plug really. The spokes NEED to be tensioned right. Loose and too tight apokes brake fast. You need to be able to true your wheels, your bike weighs more and will need the extra attention at least initally. The readybuilt ebike wheels(you know, with the motor in the hub) have sticky nipples and need TLC/lube when first unboxed so they dont stick and become useless(your wheel would be broke if so). disc brakes suck. Like 90% of disc brake users just got roped into a heavier braking system which they dont need. I stop on appalacian hills hauling my 3 year old with rim brakes, and they help keep my bike light. Kool Stop braking pads are not a "poisoned offering" but standard brake pads on new Cannondale, trek, etc WILL deatroy your rim multipules of times faster than Kool Stop pads. Blame money. About the batteries: dont use a battery that is safe up to 18amps of discharge on a 21amp motor controller, you will shorten your battery life or catch fire. Li-ion batteries should never be purchased from someone advertiseing incorrect mah or s-p(ex. 12s3p) specifications,, like on ebay, because its like the seller is saying, "you accept being lied to and not knowing what you are purchasing" LiFe batteries are more heavy but last longer and can discharge well. If you live in a hilly area, you pull a trailer, are older then a ebike is a decent idea. It is better to be a fast cyclist and a good bicycle handler than just have a good ebike because the motors often give you 500-1000watts of power and if you can generate 500-800 watts yourself then you have quick transport. Its in bad taste to only use the motor. Go with a 160-165mm crank so you are less likely to hurt knees from jerky/tourqey efforts, they also spin faster cademces which is better because ecyclists pedal slower than non ebike When something breaks on your bike replace it with something more resiliant, otherwise keep the lowcost parts because cheap stems, brake bosses, seatposts even are worth keeping provided they work for you.
haspok 3y ago
This article makes no sense to me, because right to repair is not necessarily about the customer repairing their own stuff, but somebody else other than the manufacturer repairing it - it can be an independent repair business or a shop with the necessary safety measures and qualifications. I suspect this article was sponsored by the anti-right-to-repair lobby...
icegreentea2 3y ago
The linked through article is much much better (https://www.fastcompany.com/90935615/e-bike-companies-are-fighting-to-be-exempted-from-right-to-repair-laws https://www.fastcompany.com/90935615/e-bike-companies-are-fi...) than the original story. It drills down to the key challenge in the e-bike space right now, which is that effectively no-one (not even the manufacturers) does battery repair. There is no equivalent tooling, parts or manual for bike manufacturer's to provide, because the current approach is just to chuck (recycle) problem batteries. Certainly we should be consider the safety implications, but we should probably also consider that e-bike batteries not being covered under right to repair laws will not stop people from tinkering with them - we know that because being exempted from right to repair laws represents the status quo. And the less documentation and tooling provided, the more likely that tinkering will be risky.
- nameless912 3y ago
  That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place. I just don't want manufacturers making part swaps more difficult than they need to be in the interest of "safety".
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place. There's an additional part which is crucial: No DRM-crap (secret APIs, cryptographic handshakes) preventing other companies from selling safe replacements for the original Sealed Danger Boxes.
    - nameless912 3y ago
      Oh absolutely. I love that my E-bike's battery is just an off the shelf BMC and a bunch of standard lithium cells in a plastic box. That's what they should all be.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
nameless912 3y ago
I'm going to say something slightly vulgar, because as someone who did their own ebike conversion and is moderately interested in this space: fuck 'em. E-bikes, and by extension bikes in general, are amazing forms of transportation specifically because they're so incredibly repairable using simple-to-acquire tools and skills. Any impingement on the right to repair in the bike space is a pure cash grab from suits that don't understand the space. Bike people have _never_ liked proprietary or unrepairable parts, and this seems like just another case of silicon valley "entrepreneurs" hopping into a space they know nothing about, thinking they can "innovate" their way into dominance with this kind of nonsense. Fuck. You. You don't deserve to be operating in this space if you don't understand the consumer you're targeting.
- vr46 3y ago
  Ditto. Power gives up nothing without a fight.
- pierat 3y ago
  DRM, proprietary components, "signed hardware" (ala Apple), app bullshit - is all forms of enshittification. And damn near every silly-con valley company engages in one or more of those. And I hope they die eating their own crap they put out. I support the 4, not 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR, Recycle. And enshittification is completely opposite of reversing pollution and climate devastation, by forced generation of more enshittified trash :(
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - cwillu 3y ago
      FWIW, a /s buried in between two sentences and surrounded on both sides by punctuation is remarkably easy to miss.
      - voakbasda 3y ago
ryukafalz 3y ago
I've seen them around but didn't realize People for Bikes was an industry group. It makes sense. Normally they're advocating for more bikeability, so their incentives are aligned with their customers', but here they're not. I'm glad we have folks like iFixit pushing against things like this. The argument about danger always falls short. Not having repair manuals and software available affects skilled repair technicians too, and if you provide them then skilled technicians can perform repairs just as well as the manufacturer can. Manufacturers don't have a monopoly on technical skill.
- rchaud 3y ago
  > People for Bikes Industry lobbyists taking naming tips from the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.
Kon-Peki 3y ago
All e-bike components should be forced to include an "origin tag" and serial number that will survive the heat of a battery fire. And strong enforcement and penalties for counterfeits. At that point, these problems go away. The bike companies are worried about getting blamed for apartment fires where innocent kids die. It's a valid concern; ignoring it means you aren't going to win this fight.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The batteries that start on fire are made by shady foreign companies that won't put the tag on. There will be a tag, but it will be the same for all, and a look alike copy of what a real manufacture of quality has on theirs
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Customs needs to do a better job with inspections.
hyperman1 3y ago
The core problem here seems, again, lythium ion batteries not being replaceable by consumers. I wonder why there is no push to build the lythion AA/AAA equivalent. The cells are already quite standardized, so we need to bundle a few of them in a plastic container, with some support electronics. Some standard form factors for small and big devices should do. I'd love for my UPS and my bike to have the same batteries. This seems a standard EU workbook: Give the industry 2 years to come up with something, with the threat of eurocrats dictating a standard if they fail.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  There are many standard lithium ion cell sizes, here is a list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes#Lithium-ion_batteries_(rechargeable) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes#Lithiu... Many battery packs (power tolls, Tesla, and more) are just a bunch of cells ganged together with a battery management controller inside a plastic shell. The problem lies in the connectors/controllers being proprietary.
antisugar 3y ago
Maybe someone will indulge an ignorant question: Is there any reason someone couldn't make a cargo E-bike powered by a car-battery, or a marine-battery? Of course regular E-bikes need a battery with a slick form factor, but a longtail or a bakfiets could fit a big rectangular box somewhere in the cargo space. Are there electrical engineering reasons why I've never seen this done?
- bluGill 3y ago
  Atomic zombie will sell you plans for one. He really needs to update his plans, some cool bike plans, but all look 20 years old and obviously are missing advancements from since then.
- pomian 3y ago
  You can use regular'car' batteries. The problem is only in the amount of power they provide by weight. Lead acid batteries can only deliver about 15-20% of their full power (these are example numbers not precise.) So let's say you can go full speed but only for ten minutes, then slower and slower. Lithium batteries can provide about 80% of their full power, so same vehicle as above, but 60 minutes of full power. There are of course lots of other pros and cons to available batteries.($$$) But range to weight, is the most basic.

97 points by danboarder 3y ago

> But complicated and potentially dangerous components like lithium-ion batteries – which require special tools, skills and experience to operate on correctly – are another matter. What special tools, skills, and experience is required to unscrew a battery pack? How is this a legit strategy, to artificially make a product difficult to repair then claim it needs to be excluded from the law? Didn’t right to repair gain traction from exactly this type of garbage? Ie John Deere, phones with heavily glued batteries that then show fake warnings in the OS etc.

nullc 3y ago
Lots of ways to hurt yourself working on a car too. Many of the things we teach people in primary school really only serves the purpose of making them familar with the subject so that they can be more savvy consumers of expert help in the future. The loss of exposure to things like shop class seems to be resulting in waves of people that think it's okay to outlaw repair because they don't understand it themselves.
jdietrich 3y ago
>What special tools, skills, and experience is required to unscrew a battery pack? An e-bike fire is no joke. If you don't know what you're doing, you can easily turn a li-ion pack into an incendiary device. Aside from the safety issues, there's a huge reputational issue for the industry. I don't like the idea of restricting the right to repair, but I really don't like the idea of sharing an apartment building with some guy who replaced the cells in his e-bike battery pack because he watched a YouTube video and figured that it can't be that difficult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jGYWhGnJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jGYWhGnJ4
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
  Try https://batteryuniversity.com/ https://batteryuniversity.com/
- avery17 3y ago
  Then your apartment complex should ban ebikes repairs, not the state.
  - cykotic 3y ago
    Sometimes a regulation needs to be done at the government level for the protection of everyone. For instance, we didn’t leave it up to individual apartment complexes on whether or not they wanted to implement ADA requirements or fire detectors. It’s generally bad policy to leave it up to landlords on whether or not something should done or banned for safety reasons. Their default mode is to do nothing.
- getarofilter 3y ago
  [dead]
- shortcake27 3y ago
  I think you may have missed my point, but that’s my fault because I was being facetious. When I need to replace the battery in my car, I don’t open up the battery to replace the plates and acid. I buy a new battery (from a brand and store of my choosing) and recycle the old one. Why are ebikes different? Why are people having to replace the cells in the pack? Because the manufacturer has made it impossible to get a aftermarket replacement battery pack. So I’m saying the solution is for manufacturers to build their products in a way that makes it easy and safe to replace the battery (without lockin), instead of intentionally building products that are difficult/unsafe to repair and using that to claim the product needs to be excluded from right to repair.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    So then, e-bike replacement battery packs should be as easily available and as easily changeable as car batteries. Problem solved ? What am I missing ?

getarofilter 3y ago

Hi. This is something i know more than a little about. Allow me to spew.. The water resistant ratings are not up to the challenge of "car replacement" or even letting your ebike get rained on. Their ip rating is for puddles, light rain, a quick fast pour every now and then. The display on the handlebars has such an IP rating and really Doesnt belong on the handlebars as-is. Also, there is no point: the display can be put in a triangle bag where it is protected from elements Aand not a distaction. No important info is really shown on the display, except maybe battery. The protocol for water ingress is gaskets and seals which fail and heavy grease that sticks. Instead, ebikes need oil fill ports and thinner lube. I use a rear hub ebike (because i can have a nice crank, pedal at my cadence, far more repairable) and i drilled a hole in the shell to allow sewing machine oil and wd40 to be added without disassembly. This takes water out, cleans the insides and also can fling oil everywhere because i never tapped and plugged the hole but whatever. The electric hub holds sufficent oil, no need to plug really. The spokes NEED to be tensioned right. Loose and too tight apokes brake fast. You need to be able to true your wheels, your bike weighs more and will need the extra attention at least initally. The readybuilt ebike wheels(you know, with the motor in the hub) have sticky nipples and need TLC/lube when first unboxed so they dont stick and become useless(your wheel would be broke if so). disc brakes suck. Like 90% of disc brake users just got roped into a heavier braking system which they dont need. I stop on appalacian hills hauling my 3 year old with rim brakes, and they help keep my bike light. Kool Stop braking pads are not a "poisoned offering" but standard brake pads on new Cannondale, trek, etc WILL deatroy your rim multipules of times faster than Kool Stop pads. Blame money. About the batteries: dont use a battery that is safe up to 18amps of discharge on a 21amp motor controller, you will shorten your battery life or catch fire. Li-ion batteries should never be purchased from someone advertiseing incorrect mah or s-p(ex. 12s3p) specifications,, like on ebay, because its like the seller is saying, "you accept being lied to and not knowing what you are purchasing" LiFe batteries are more heavy but last longer and can discharge well. If you live in a hilly area, you pull a trailer, are older then a ebike is a decent idea. It is better to be a fast cyclist and a good bicycle handler than just have a good ebike because the motors often give you 500-1000watts of power and if you can generate 500-800 watts yourself then you have quick transport. Its in bad taste to only use the motor. Go with a 160-165mm crank so you are less likely to hurt knees from jerky/tourqey efforts, they also spin faster cademces which is better because ecyclists pedal slower than non ebike When something breaks on your bike replace it with something more resiliant, otherwise keep the lowcost parts because cheap stems, brake bosses, seatposts even are worth keeping provided they work for you.

haspok 3y ago

This article makes no sense to me, because right to repair is not necessarily about the customer repairing their own stuff, but somebody else other than the manufacturer repairing it - it can be an independent repair business or a shop with the necessary safety measures and qualifications. I suspect this article was sponsored by the anti-right-to-repair lobby...

icegreentea2 3y ago

The linked through article is much much better (https://www.fastcompany.com/90935615/e-bike-companies-are-fighting-to-be-exempted-from-right-to-repair-laws https://www.fastcompany.com/90935615/e-bike-companies-are-fi...) than the original story. It drills down to the key challenge in the e-bike space right now, which is that effectively no-one (not even the manufacturers) does battery repair. There is no equivalent tooling, parts or manual for bike manufacturer's to provide, because the current approach is just to chuck (recycle) problem batteries. Certainly we should be consider the safety implications, but we should probably also consider that e-bike batteries not being covered under right to repair laws will not stop people from tinkering with them - we know that because being exempted from right to repair laws represents the status quo. And the less documentation and tooling provided, the more likely that tinkering will be risky.

nameless912 3y ago
That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place. I just don't want manufacturers making part swaps more difficult than they need to be in the interest of "safety".
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > That's fine, batteries being a black box that you replace wholesale is generally fine by me so long as we also put the appropriate recycling processes in place. There's an additional part which is crucial: No DRM-crap (secret APIs, cryptographic handshakes) preventing other companies from selling safe replacements for the original Sealed Danger Boxes.
  - nameless912 3y ago
    Oh absolutely. I love that my E-bike's battery is just an off the shelf BMC and a bunch of standard lithium cells in a plastic box. That's what they should all be.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago

nameless912 3y ago

I'm going to say something slightly vulgar, because as someone who did their own ebike conversion and is moderately interested in this space: fuck 'em. E-bikes, and by extension bikes in general, are amazing forms of transportation specifically because they're so incredibly repairable using simple-to-acquire tools and skills. Any impingement on the right to repair in the bike space is a pure cash grab from suits that don't understand the space. Bike people have _never_ liked proprietary or unrepairable parts, and this seems like just another case of silicon valley "entrepreneurs" hopping into a space they know nothing about, thinking they can "innovate" their way into dominance with this kind of nonsense. Fuck. You. You don't deserve to be operating in this space if you don't understand the consumer you're targeting.

vr46 3y ago
Ditto. Power gives up nothing without a fight.
pierat 3y ago
DRM, proprietary components, "signed hardware" (ala Apple), app bullshit - is all forms of enshittification. And damn near every silly-con valley company engages in one or more of those. And I hope they die eating their own crap they put out. I support the 4, not 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR, Recycle. And enshittification is completely opposite of reversing pollution and climate devastation, by forced generation of more enshittified trash :(
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cwillu 3y ago
    FWIW, a /s buried in between two sentences and surrounded on both sides by punctuation is remarkably easy to miss.
    - voakbasda 3y ago

ryukafalz 3y ago

I've seen them around but didn't realize People for Bikes was an industry group. It makes sense. Normally they're advocating for more bikeability, so their incentives are aligned with their customers', but here they're not. I'm glad we have folks like iFixit pushing against things like this. The argument about danger always falls short. Not having repair manuals and software available affects skilled repair technicians too, and if you provide them then skilled technicians can perform repairs just as well as the manufacturer can. Manufacturers don't have a monopoly on technical skill.

rchaud 3y ago
> People for Bikes Industry lobbyists taking naming tips from the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.

Kon-Peki 3y ago

All e-bike components should be forced to include an "origin tag" and serial number that will survive the heat of a battery fire. And strong enforcement and penalties for counterfeits. At that point, these problems go away. The bike companies are worried about getting blamed for apartment fires where innocent kids die. It's a valid concern; ignoring it means you aren't going to win this fight.

bluGill 3y ago
The batteries that start on fire are made by shady foreign companies that won't put the tag on. There will be a tag, but it will be the same for all, and a look alike copy of what a real manufacture of quality has on theirs
- midoridensha 3y ago
  Customs needs to do a better job with inspections.

hyperman1 3y ago

The core problem here seems, again, lythium ion batteries not being replaceable by consumers. I wonder why there is no push to build the lythion AA/AAA equivalent. The cells are already quite standardized, so we need to bundle a few of them in a plastic container, with some support electronics. Some standard form factors for small and big devices should do. I'd love for my UPS and my bike to have the same batteries. This seems a standard EU workbook: Give the industry 2 years to come up with something, with the threat of eurocrats dictating a standard if they fail.

quickthrowman 3y ago
There are many standard lithium ion cell sizes, here is a list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes#Lithium-ion_batteries_(rechargeable) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes#Lithiu... Many battery packs (power tolls, Tesla, and more) are just a bunch of cells ganged together with a battery management controller inside a plastic shell. The problem lies in the connectors/controllers being proprietary.

antisugar 3y ago

Maybe someone will indulge an ignorant question: Is there any reason someone couldn't make a cargo E-bike powered by a car-battery, or a marine-battery? Of course regular E-bikes need a battery with a slick form factor, but a longtail or a bakfiets could fit a big rectangular box somewhere in the cargo space. Are there electrical engineering reasons why I've never seen this done?

bluGill 3y ago
Atomic zombie will sell you plans for one. He really needs to update his plans, some cool bike plans, but all look 20 years old and obviously are missing advancements from since then.
pomian 3y ago
You can use regular'car' batteries. The problem is only in the amount of power they provide by weight. Lead acid batteries can only deliver about 15-20% of their full power (these are example numbers not precise.) So let's say you can go full speed but only for ten minutes, then slower and slower. Lithium batteries can provide about 80% of their full power, so same vehicle as above, but 60 minutes of full power. There are of course lots of other pros and cons to available batteries.($$$) But range to weight, is the most basic.