Blog

It's November, and we're all hoping that you've all recovered from Hallowe'en shenanigans and are starting to plan your over-winter electric bicycle build projects. There's nothing quite like rainy days to huddle in the garage and start building a rocking bike for next year. And for us, it's a time to buckle down a bit and focus on original R&D projects for next season too.

It's rare that we get involved with anything political, but then again it's rare that a city is blessed to have a visionary mayor who knows how to deliver on a cycling promise and is willing to shake up the infrastructure to accomodate it. Since starting off with the Burrard Bridge experiment in 2009 to the Hornby and Dunsmuir separated bike lanes, bicycle ridership has increased significantly in the city due to the decisive leadership of Gregor Robertson. And this with the planners still largely unaware of how big of a role electric bicycles will play in the near future to take cycling to even greater masses.

We give Gregor Robertson and the Vision slate a big endorsement in the upcoming Nov 19th municipal election, and we hope that those similarly affected will take the time out to vote. The stakes are rather high with the main challenger threatening to undo much of the progress recently made.

Those following business and economics will be aware that China has restricted export quotas on the materials used to make rare-earth magnets, which has caused price increases of 6 fold on Neodymium since the start of this year. That is great news in that rare earth mines all over the world can now open and produce these materials with much better environmental and health standards. However, it does mean that the magnets used in ebike motors are about 3 times as expensive as they used to be, which causes a 50-70% rise in the cost of direct drive hub motors and a somewhat lower rise in the cost of geared motors.

We still have the old prices listed for our remaining 9C motor stock, but as soon as the next shipment arrives in 2 weeks then expect the price on these and the associated 9C based direct drive kits to go up accordingly. 

We've still been quite busy setting up all of the lab and shop space at our new building, sourcing and laying out the tools and equipment necessary to make this place into a powerhouse for ebike product development. Check the images below to see some of the progress to date.

Power Electronics Lab	Complete Machine Shop

The venerable 400 and 5300 motor series that got so many enthusiasts started on ebikes has now been formally discontinued by Crystalyte (about time some would say!). The good news is that Crystalyte is now producing a new HS/HT motor series that is based on the same efficient motor construction style as Nine Continent, but with much better mechanical fit for bicycle and disk brake compatibility. For a more complete summary of the improvements see the postings on the Endless Sphere thread here.

We sampled these motors in January and have put them up on our simulator. We expect to receive our stock available for purchase in mid-July, and these will be the first bulk batch of sensored HS/HT 35mm motors delivered in North America, so that they will be fully backwards compatible with all the sensored motor controllers.

Infineon Controllers: After our recent shipment vanished in transit, we're still sorting out a situation. Our next batch when it does come will finally have a universal voltage range, so that the same unit can run from 24V to 72V batteries without any need to change resistors on the circuitboard.

eZee batteries: We have had good supply all year of the 3 battery types alluded to above, but the high range 36V 14Ah and standard 36V 9Ah options will be sold out soon, with only the 48V 10Ah battery option remaining. Next shipment from eZee is scheduled to arrive mid-July. 

In case people are worried we have fallen off the map with no news updates since February, rest assured this is not the case. Rather things have been so busy setting up our new shop space that there has been little time left for posting on the website. We'll try to summarize all that has gone on with the following updates.

We've traditionally been heavily involved activities around June, from the VEVA Electrafest to Car Free Days to Velopalooza and assorted Bike Month events. Unfortunately we've had to bow out of participating in all of these this year. But there is one new event coming to town that we are most excited about and will be a big part of. Vancouver is hosting its very own Maker Faire! We missed traveling down to the San Francisco event in May but will take part in the Vancouver event in a big way. Locals should definitely make a point of coming out to see creative DIY projects of all kinds on display.

Just a heads up that since the announcement of potential strikes at Canada Post last week, we have been automatically upgrading all Canada Post / USPS orders to Fedex ground service for shipments in North America. We will still continue to honor the Canada Post price as quoted on our website for these orders. For overseas shipments, it means we can no longer safely send packages via standard airmail, and customers will have to pay for the Fedex International Priority service instead or wait for the strike to wind down.

We're happy to announce Evan Sandercock, a 15 year old ebike enthusiast from Alberta, as the winner of our Grin Tech logo contest from last winter. His idea of a smiling electrical plug was simple and effectively captured the essence of what we do. After several months of additional doodling and consultation with a professional designer we have shaped it into the logo shown here. Congratulations to Evan who gets $1000 in ebikes.ca store credit, we can't wait to see the projects you do with it.