Justin Lemire-Elmore

We try to give an honest forecast on when we expect new items to show up, sometimes we get it right but usually there are wrenches thrown in our plans!

Our long-awaited shipment of 12Ah LiFePO4 batteries has arrived and was unpacked this last week. These include 24V, 36V, and 48V configurations all in a tidy and well packaged rectangular layout. We will need another week to rewire all the charging and discharge connector leads, as well as to begin the discharge testing of each pack before sale. Expect them to be posted to our online store around March 26th.

Most of the "Sold Out" signs on our store site will disappear once the next boatload of goods from Crystalyte comes in. There are going to be some new additions with this order as well, including 72V pedal first controllers, spare axles to convert between front and rear hubs, and more of the famous 4110 mosfet 50A motor controllers. Although the ship is scheduled to arrive any day, due to logistical reasons we won't be able to pick it up until March 25th.

The first large batch of eZee conversion kits is completed but still sitting at the manufacturing warehouse, awaiting for a final inspection that all of the customizations and small changes were done correctly. We will have an accurate arrival time estimate when they have shipped, but at this stage it is looking like a few weeks into April.

Who would have guessed that this January 2008 would be our busiest month to date! We certainly didn't, and are running out of stock in a lot of categories. Either ebikers are an active winter riding crowd, or most of our customers come from California, or a bit of both. We are basically out of rear hub motors and 72V motor controllers. Unfortunately for reasons largely out of our control, the next shipment of Crystalyte parts has faced delays and won't get here until around the second week of March.

After a few weeks of fast paced development the next version of the Cycle Analyst code has been released for beta testers. This brings out features such as a serial output stream for data logging and on-the-fly adjustment of the current or speed limits via a potentiometer or other signal source. For more details, see this thread on the endless-sphere forum.

We are now completely sold out of the trial shipment of eZee hub motor kits. The response from those early adopters has been resoundingly positive and we appreciate all the feedback that has come back this way. Our next shipment with several changes and improvements is scheduled to arrive in mid-March. So hold tight all those who were slow on the draw, mid-March isn't that far away and we will ensure to maintain steady stock of these kits throughout the 2008 cycling season

We have received and already quality control tested the new batch of NiMH batteries from Nexcell, including '2D' cell 24V and 36V packs, and 'F' cell 36V and 48V batteries. For the first time in our testing history, every single battery in this shipment passed QC. The '2D' packs discharged to at least 19Ah with no cell reversals, and every 'F' cell battery put out a solid 12.5-13Ah without a single early reversal. The 2D packs have doubled up fuse holders in parallel to better handle 40-50A currents. These are available for purchase now.

There are a few other new items added to our store site. We've got two new sizes of black heatshrink, including 20cm wide which fits snugly on smaller 8Ah NiMH batteries, and a large 28cm tube that can even stretch over our triangular layout packs. There are 70oC thermal switches useful for overcharge protection for people building or repairing battery packs, and rolls of self-adhesive silicone tape for effective sealing and waterproofing of exposed electrical connections. 

It was sad news that we heard Sheldon Brown had passed away on Feb 3rd of this year. For anyone who has even casually searched the internet for technical information on bicycle systems, from seemingly obvious compatibility questions that no one seems to answer (like "can you use an 8 speed shifter with a 7 speed freewheel") to obscure details on internally geared hubs, Sheldon Brown's website would turn up like a resource beacon in a World Wide Web that is increasingly dominated by marketing and commercialism.