Mission Endure 74: DIY Electric Bike #1

I posted a few Blog Posts back that we are entering the world of alternative energy. We are developing a prototype of a product that includes a DIY PowerWall. We have a lot to learn and we are doing some smaller projects to help us learn the different pieces of technology that we need to understand to be both safe and successful. Each smaller project will help us learn some new technology and build upon the previous project.

Our first smaller project is to build Electric Bikes for both of us. Matthew and I both have old bikes that we can barely use any longer. This gave us a great platform to experiment with. We ordered parts and built Matthew’s Electric Bike a few weeks ago. The weather is too cold to use it much, but it works well and he has used it a few times since we built it. Here is a short video of Matthew riding his Electric Bike around the office parking lot when we got it finished. He had a huge smile on his face.

It isn’t the most ergonomic or beautiful E-Bike on the planet, but we learned a lot and we know how to do it better next time. This bike we concentrated on getting the pieces to work together and now that we have it running we can go back and focus on making it look prettier. We were able to practice our soldering and wiring skills and even more important we were able to practice our DIY and E-Bike decision making skills. We have at least one more E-Bile to put together, and then it will be time to work on a different project to help us get closer to the goal of a DIY PowerWall.