Electric clutch

[Motophyllic]

Now that I think of it, I guess ideally would be a lever on the left handlebars that is a clutch for half of the travel and upon pulling further turns into a left-hand rear brake. I’d love that.

 

[wwmotors]

I'm with ww on this one. A clutch on a typical ICE engine allows the engine to rev freely, then the clutch allows the power to be transmitted through the gear box to the rear wheel, depending on how much engagement is fed in through the clutch lever, and how hi the engine is reving.

The electric clutch seems to just be an additional "throttle" to control the electric motor. There's no spinning the electric motor up and then engaging the gear box right?

I'm not getting it and don't see what it does differently then the throttle?

I've been wrong on plenty of things before so would love to hear, or better yet see a demonstration

What am I missing here?

And the EM looks like a ball, very high quality. Wish they would produce an enduro style bike.

You forgot the momentum, what You can store in the revs at a ICE engine. This engines have a lot of mass in the crankshaft. An electric engine has no momentum at all, compared to a ICE engine. I have a brammo, which has a clutch and 6 speeds. It makes no difference, wether letting the clutch pop or not, when You want to wheely the bike. It simply does not wheely at all!
We had a Electro MX rental park for 7 years: It took only several minutes for everyone, to understand, how to drive a bike with only the throttle and LHRB. It is defintely easier to learn than the other way round. I love the ease, to drive an ALTA especially in Enduro sections. The concentration is always on tha track, not on the bikes insufficiencies!

 

[VINSANITY]

Could you describe your electro MX Park abut more - very interesting - why did you get out of it.

 

[wwmotors]

Could you describe your electro MX Park abut more - very interesting - why did you get out of it.

From 2007 to 2014 we where renting electric Quantyas (Brand from Switzerland) to everyone like in a carting hall. So the customer got bike, clothing, trainer and track (3 levels). 10 minutes where12€. Easy concept, but the weather problems (no hall and 6 months to cold and wet) and the expensive bikes did not leave much margin. Another problem is, that half of the bikes are on the charger, the other half is riding. So You need a lot of bikes (invest), to keep people busy! So we stopped it in 2014. I kept the track for testing, servicing and dealing with electric bikes (Brammo, Zero, Quantya, and at last ALTAs) and I do seminars concerning Motorbikes and especially electric bikes for TÜV organisations. So the track is still in use. Just changed it a bit and keep it in shape. In the moment, I wait for a successor for ALTA, because this was the best dirtbike ever built, for daling them to people! Enclosed a picture from the track and a Quantya dirtbike, what we used first.

 

[enjoythesilenc]

Great information! I have been thinking about how to make an electric bike with a clutch for a while. My goal was to find or reproduce the Brammo Engage bike. Do you have one of those? All I could find was some brief video of them being used at a park in europe and that was you? AOF is the best little corner found on the internet

 

[F451]

From 2007 to 2014 we where renting electric Quantyas (Brand from Switzerland) to everyone like in a carting hall. So the customer got bike, clothing, trainer and track (3 levels). 10 minutes where12€. Easy concept, but the weather problems (no hall and 6 months to cold and wet) and the expensive bikes did not leave much margin. Another problem is, that half of the bikes are on the charger, the other half is riding. So You need a lot of bikes (invest), to keep people busy! So we stopped it in 2014. I kept the track for testing, servicing and dealing with electric bikes (Brammo, Zero, Quantya, and at last ALTAs) and I do seminars concerning Motorbikes and especially electric bikes for TÜV organisations. So the track is still in use. Just changed it a bit and keep it in shape. In the moment, I wait for a successor for ALTA, because this was the best dirtbike ever built, for daling them to people! Enclosed a picture from the track and a Quantya dirtbike, what we used first.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I've been wanting to open an electric dirt bike only riding area for some time now. You mention many of the same issues I've been thinking about. I don't have any real plans to do anything, but if I find the right partners here I would love to give it a try. I do have one guy in mind but he's not taking the bait when I've briefly floated the idea about it, Lol.

 

[C5tor]

Can you give us a little rundown on how the Quantya compared to the Alta?

 

[wwmotors]

The Quantya (german Wikipedialink: Quantya – Wikipedia) was more like a moped, compared to the ALTA.
Oldschool Brushed engine, 14 Lipocells with 48 Volt overall voltage and 2,4KWh. More or less working passive BMS. That lasts for 20min Proriding or 40 min beginner. Everything was built as light as possible. Only 19inch front and 18 inch rear wheels. Maximum speed about 70km/h. Maximum power 17HP. But it was the first really useable electric Enduro/Cross Motorbike on the market. Maximum jumps hwere 10-15m possible. But for rental it was OK, becaue the main customer was noct a pro but a nowecomer to the sport. 100kg total weight. The best discipline was trial- or Enduroriding through the woods: There the battery kept alive up to 1,5-2hours. Due to the fact, that I do MX since 38 years now, the Quantya cannot compare with the ALTA MXR. No way!

 

[Philip]

Now that I think of it, I guess ideally would be a lever on the left handlebars that is a clutch for half of the travel and upon pulling further turns into a left-hand rear brake. I’d love that.

Ditto! This is what I was thinking too.

And then the lever pushed forward for more regen. This would be the ultimate LHRB/Clutch/Regen control.

 

[enjoythesilenc]

Here is the electric clutch test fixture. (Some here may actually know the video creator)

 

[kd1987]

Perhaps you can describe exactly what the advantages/features you think an electronic (not physical) clutch would give you over the throttle only setup? Neutral coasting maybe? It wouldn’t really help keep the motor in its power band because there isn’t really one. It wouldn’t help you from stalling the bike, cuz you can’t really do that. Anyway, just curious what you’d like it to do.

a leaver is much easier to control a catwalk when the throttle is at max rpm for balance rather then relying on the twist trottle only and not accidently twisting it more then one wants too.. it sucks falling off the rear end of a brand new stark varg first ride... i am a new rider to an electric bike like this and i made a rookie mistake with my varg right when i got it. didnt even ride it yet and i put it in 80hp like it was no big deal .. lmao it come up so fast i began to fall off bike back end and just me reaching for really any thing to try and stop the force of it from going into a back flip i reached for the front brake leaver for control of my wrist so i could better try and control my wrists on twisting an electric throttle but i had already fell off the back end but still had my hand on throttle only and then i slipped trying to brace the bike from back flipping but i ended up twisting throttle more right when the bike was about 45deg angle into a catwalk ananthen i was like ohhh shit and let go to watch it do 2.5 backflips in mid air with out touching ground on any part of the bike and landed finally on front steeering end...

 

[HadesOmega]

Sounds like a whiskey throttle to me

I have a regen throttle on my Light Bee with an EBMX X-9000 controller and love it. I can control the amount of regen being applied or cancel out the throttle.