Reducing Speed of Ebike
There are many reasons why you might want to reduce speed of an ebike. 15mph is the max legal speed in the UK, so there is one reason. May be you would like to lower speed to match pedal gearing on a single speed bike. . . there is another.
What I Did:
I attached a 1.2ohm resister to the signal wire of the throttle. There are three wires in a normal ebike throttle cable. They are nromally red, black and green. You need to solder a resistor inline with the green wire.
Addition of this resistor cut the top speed from ~25mph to ~10mph. Measured with GPS on flat road.
I added another 1.2ohm in parrallel to incrase speed, target being 15 mph. However a resistance of 0.6ohm ( 2 x 1.2ohm in parallel) put the speed right back up to 20mph+.
Guess Work and Assumptions:
So from this we can assume that increasing resistatnce in the signal wire reduces speed. What resistance works on each bike is another question. Perhaps some bikes will require a higher resistivity.
The perfect resistor for my bike would be between 0.6ohms and 1.2ohms. But just 0.6ohms differnce can cause a 100% change in top speed, so it is a fine tuning process for sure. I have produced the below graph, which would indciate a resistance of 0.9 ohms would be about right for me.
The graph shows ohms required to give a percentage of original top speed. I know nothing about electronics. I would appreciate pointers in comments if anyone knows something cool.
Could you use an ohm meter between the signal and ground wire to measure resistance with the throttle open and closed. This would give some idea as to the ohm of resister required.
An Idea!
Could you use an ohm meter between the signal and ground wire to measure resistance with the throttle open and closed. This would give some idea as to the ohm of resister required.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI put a pot meter in the signal wire.
But al it does is make the scooter take longer to reach top speed. But it still end up to almost it's normal top speed. Am I doing something ring?
That sounds strange. Almost as though you are limiting ampage through your throttle rather then voltage.
DeleteI am afriad I cannot help. You might try the forum "Endless Sphere" which has some knowledgeable people on it.
What if you want to have a slower ramp up from stop but still have your max speed untouched?
ReplyDeleteNot sure. I have various ebikes, and have used an electric wheelbarrow with around 4 or 5 different motor controllers between them. Some give a "jerky" start others less so. The electric wheelbarrow (for the short period is worked for) had a very gentle strat building up to speed, even though it used the same thumb throttle as my ebike. Which behaves differently. So I would say this behaviour is dictated by the controller, and that is far to complicated for me to explain with my limited knowledge.
DeleteOne thing I would say though is that when you limit the speed of an ebike using the resistor method, as described above, the strat off becomes very jerky. What about a capacitor, would that "charge" and allow gradual build of throttle voltage? Worth a try perhaps.
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