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On Sept 6th a small team of UBC engineering students stepped out of a converted Volkswagon bug arrived in Halifax, having just completed the first Canadian coast-to-coast treck in a pure electric car. As with Justin's ebike trip in 2008, they did this in real style with minimal funding and no support vehicle, charging up along the way with existing grid infrastructure, and proving that youthful determination can achieve feats that coorporate giants can only dream of. Congratulations to Ricky and crew. See their blog postings here.

The image on the left shows the LiFePO4 battery pack on the bug when they stopped by our shop briefly before the departure.

Many people were a bit surprised that VEVA didn't host their annual REV! electric vehicle show this summer. Well no worries, they are organizing a fall event this weekend called Electra Fest. It will be a full-on show of electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes. So come down for this free show at the Concord Pacific just north of Science World, 10am to 4pm on Sunday. We'll be there.

Not to forget, this Friday, Sept 10th, is the monthly kilowatt hour ebike ride. Meeting at the Vancouver Central Library at 6pm as usual.

We're going to wrap up the great Cycle Analyst giveaway contest with four more submissions for the last two months of summer. The winners are: Pete Chaloner in Ottawa who built a converted an EZ-3 trike for his wife who can't ride a regular bike due to with a degenerative lower back problems, but who has now happily clocked over 6000 km on the electric. Scott Bellinger, who has built a minimal assist tadpole running just an 85 watt motor through a Rholoff hub. Michael Elliott of Phoenix AZ who built his Crazybike2 submission submission entirely from Junk and recycled parts. And finally Sharangan Vithiyatharan and his engineering team at the University of Melbourne for their Urban Transporter project.


Pete Chaloner (err Cindy)


Redboy by Scott Bellinger


Crazybike by Michael Elliott


Urban Transporter

We're excited about the homemade electric bike show coming up this Sunday, including some people coming in from way out of town to show their system. Setup at the Vancouver Art Gallery happens at 11am, with the prizes awarded at 2 o'clock, and plenty of time to hang out with neat people right until the event ends at 7pm.

For those who want to bring a bike to show, don't be intimidated! Anything that you have made which you are proud of we would love to have on display, and there are lots of prizes to give out. The registration details are here.

We have additional details for the electric bike show we are hosting in partnership with the event eatART Powers the VAG 2010. We'll be awarding prizes for 6 different categories, so if you have an interesting electric bike you've built then please indicate your intent to come by registering online.

Our good friends at eatART have their 2nd annual fundraiser and energy awareness event taking place at the Vancouver Art Gallery on June 27th "eatART Powers the VAG 2010" (or here for the facebook page). This will include bicycle powered sound systems and numerous other projects that highlight energy awareness and consumption through creative and interactive engineering art projects.

To add to the fun, we thought it is a great occasion to bring together all of the handy ebike project builders in the region and throw the first homemade ebike design contest. This will be a chance to showcase to the public just how accessible, practical, and awesome an electric bike can be for reducing your overall energy footprint. We will have the exact contest categories, judging criteria, and a submission form prepared at the start of June. However, we are putting the word out now so that if you've had some pet project underway or on the to-do list, there is now a little extra incentive to get it rolling with a firm deadline on the calendar. Entering the competition will be free, and prizes will be plentiful.

EARLIER this year we worked with eZee to produce a 48V option of their convenient flat rack mounted lithium pack, and are glad to now have a large quantity available and in stock now. The 48V 8Ah lithium battery is made from 3C rated Samsung cells and is a mere 3.3kg in weight, with a 25A output current capability. Sourcing reliable 48V packs has been an unexpected challenge for us over the past several years, but our testing on this one so far gives a lot of confidence. Discharge profile is shown in the graph on the right.

Momentum Magazine asked us to do a small piece about the electric bicycle community for their online content related to different bicycle sub-cultures. We decided to explore where the North American side of this movement has come from with a bit of historic perspective that may be overlooked. A big thank you to Felicio Sadalla, Joshua Goldberg, Morgan Giddings, Barrie Wilkinson, Stéphane Melançon, and Coffee Luke for taking considerable time to share their stories.









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Unfortunately there were issues getting all of the images to a standard for the published piece, so we put all the intended pictures that were to accompany the text in the table above.

At the start of July, we will be required to charge the full 12% HST tax on our ebike kits as opposed the the 5% GST only that was charged before, as electric bicycles were exempted from provincial tax. Local residents considering a purchase soon may want to factor this into consideration.

Although the tax break on electric bikes was nice, we understand that it's simpler and more fair to just have the same sales tax apply to everything rather than a complex set of exceptions. Our only real beef is that gasoline for vehicles was one of the very few things made exempt from the extra 7%, of all items that deserve to have a consumption tax gas should be first on the list.