Mid Drive!

When I first ordered parts for this build, I ordered a 1200-watt rear wheel hub motor kit for simplicity. I chose direct-drive over geared because I wanted to be able to one day add regenerative braking, as well as a reverse function.

Since I received my kit, I've been reading up on the forum Endless-Sphere. The conclusion I've come to is that my direct drive motor may get bogged down with the weight of two people plus the chassis.

Some people would get around this problem by swapping the direct drive motor out for a geared one, but that would mean sacrificing the ability to have regenerative braking and reverse function in the future, so I opted to make my 1200-watt direct-drive hub motor into a mid drive, connected to the rear wheel at a fixed gear ratio of about 0.57:1 (16t at the motor to 28t at the wheel). To achieve this I'm using cogs on both the motor and the wheel that bolt onto the disc brake mounts. This means that in the future I can still have regenerative braking, and also drive the rear wheel in reverse! On top of that, the other benefit of a direct-drive motor is superior reliability as there is only one moving part!

In future full-suspension models (eventually), this same setup will allow for superior rear suspension performance by massively reducing the amount of unsprung weight!

So, today I de-laced the hub motor and then built up the fat tire rear rim onto a standard disc brake hub. Now I can get into the meat of this project - the build of the main frame! I have some modification to do to my welding table tomorrow to allow me to clamp down anywhere on the table, but once that's done I will be getting started on all the cuts and tacking together the two main portions of the frame. I promise I will post lots of photos! Until then, enjoy this taste of the future "hub motor as mid drive" setup!