A mechanical engineering student that doesn’t know the law of energy conservation?
Yes, many electric bicycles power themselves while going down hills or costing. As for the other idea that you could recharge them just by pedaling … That exists already. Almost nobody wants it because it’s easier to plug your bicycle in. The point of the electric bicycle is to do less work, not to do more. Otherwise you would get a regular bicycle because it weighs less.
Regen braking exists, and everyone does want it, because it gives free power when you hit the brakes. The reason nobody adds it is because up until recently, you could only have coasting or regen braking, and not having to pedal literally all the time is just far more important for bikes. There’s a recent tech, freegen? Called something like that, it lets you have both regen braking and coasting,
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Aw man, Lemmy finally got a LinkedInLunatics instance? How long has this been here? That was like the last thread I’ve been hanging onto with reddit. Finally, this place feels like a genuine alternative 🎉
The community (which isn’t an instance!) has been there for a couple of years already: https://sh.itjust.works/post/27701
If you haven’t come across it before there is the Lemmy Explorer tool (with options for Piefed and Mbin as well): https://lemmyverse.net/communities
Welcome to the fediverse’s LinkedInLunatics, my friend!
This guy apparently doesn’t understand the first and second laws of thermodynamics. However, in his defense, this is sorta how regenerative braking works, but with less complexity.
Regenerative braking was my first thought.
Most people don’t. There is just no free lunch to ever be had.
That explains why we exist right now (for free)
A very, very unfunny joke.
It’s impressive that he figured out how to create a post though, considering room temp iq (during the winter in a commie block apartment, in celsius)
deleted by creator
Wow, excessive emojis and em-dashes… Not ai at all
I was about to say, could this post possibly have any more emojis? Although, from my knowledge of existing MLM hunbots I unfortunately already know the answer lol
Yeesh… the entire thing is so much secondhand embarrassment it makes me want to delete my entire profile just for the sake of it regardless of never using the actual site
My LinkedIn feed is like 90+% AI at this point. I don’t know why anyone bothers looking at the “content” on that website anymore. I only see it just incidentally on my way to the job listings and I am always shocked at how terrible it is
with uBlock Origin you can just filter the feed
www.linkedin.com##[aria-label^=“Main Feed”]
Why not cut out the middle man and directly charge battery 2 with battery 1? Switch and repeat.
wow, you did not have to call out my subnautica in-cyclops power cell recharging stations for spare cyclops batteries like that
Techbros rediscovering old principles, a tale as old as…well, since the tech industry.
I have never seen the Arabic language translation of this meme but I immediately understood it from having seen the English version.
If free energy was ever to be discovered it just wouldn’t come from some LinkedIn dipshit posting with AI, sorry.
I had this exact idea… when I was 7. That was before I was introduced to newtonian physics.
It’s a good idea, even if it can be ruled out. That person should offer more ideas. All of those Newtonian physics people never seem to offer up ideas.
You were introduced to classical mechanics at age 8?
They could’ve heard of Newtonian physics at any point between when they had the idea and now
Sort of.
They can understand some basic concepts before you get into the math. Especially potential energy turning into heat, which children experience firsthand frequently. IMHO kids these days seem to understand energy more easily than we did; I think it’s because of video games.
mechanical engineering student
Did not pay much attention in high school
Look out for v2.0 which also features a sail on the front which you blow to go faster.
Okay, but blowing on a sail to go faster is actually a thing. Mythbusters even stated that they did their experiment in the worst method (i.e., not using modern designs and methods), and still found that a fan on a sail could make it move. It’s not free energy, but let’s not ignore how cool sails are.
This sounded very wrong to me, so I googled and apparently they had a setup where the reflected air from the sail caused a net flow in the opposite direction allowing them to move forwards. But that is less effective than just blowing the air straight backwards without a sail.
Look for the sail car video from Veritasium. With a chain drive you can out run the wind using the principles of sail propulsion.
When the battery runs out, you pull over and “pedal” to recharge the battery, then you’re good to go again!
now that is genius!
I don’t own one of these, but that sounds actually useful if for example I’m about to climb a big hill and want to pedal at a less strenuous pace (but for more time) than would be needed to overcome the slope.
Assisted modes already exist, and regenerative braking already exist
But this joke is more funny :)
But do e-bikes have regenerative braking? I haven’t seen that. I’ve been thinking that it would just be too heavy and clunky to be worth it.
Too heavy? You just run the motor in reverse which turns it into a generator and adds friction to do generative braking. There really isn’t any added weight.
Bikes normally have freehubs, a ratchet on the cassette (sprockets) of the rear wheel, when you stop pedalling the bike freewheels, without that the pedals would keep turning.
This makes driving a motor from the wheel impossible without heavily modifying the normal bike mechanics. That’s why regenerative braking on e bikes is rare.
Not if you have a hub motor. Those don’t interact with the gear system at all.
Yup, which is also why they’re really hard to pedal if the battery dies.
Only very cheap e-bikes have hub motors. They’re not a good idea precisely because they don’t interact with the gearing system. So you lose that functionality.
It’s not worth losing access to gearing just to get regenerative braking because the amount of power being used isn’t worth trying to recoup.
It needs a direct drive which is more weight than the other systems
Why would it need a direct drive? A mid drive can do the same thing they just don’t usually since you’d need to gear for it. direct drives are the most efficient at regenerative braking but they aren’t the only type.
Freewheel hub would prevent it.
You would need to put the freewheel between the motor and the pedals, and have an always-spinning chain/shaft
Could be done, perhaps, with significant added complexity (and hence maintenance). In practice it is not, to my knowledge there are no mid-mount regenerative system on the market. It is worth noting that mid-mounts are significantly more efficient than hub mount, enough so that even compared to hub mounts with regeneration, mid-mounts have more range for a given battery / wattage. The vast majority of hub mounts also do not implement regeneration.
You can find YouTube videos of people experimenting with flywheel-based regenerative braking. They’re completely impractical but pretty funny to see.
Motors are generators when run inversely:
Motors = put in power to get rotational movement
Generators = put in rotational movement to get power
You already have the heaviest parts on the ebike - motor and battery, just need some capacitors and charging circuit board which are light and not too big.
Cheap electric bikes I’ve ridden with regen breaking slow you down quite a bit.
It’s not difficult to get regenerative braking on a bike it’s just difficult to get regenerative braking on a bike that’s any good. Hub mounted motors are the least efficient type of motor because it’s just directly driving the wheel at whatever speed it can output, with no access to gear ratios. E-bikes that forgo generative breaking in favour of a more efficient motor designs achieve better speeds for any given amount of power usage.
So yeah you can absolutely do it. But it’s not a good idea for reasons that have nothing to do with the weight.
It’s like 3-15% energy reclaimed, not efficient
Yes, but is it possible to pedal and use regen breaking to recharge the battery when stationary? It does work like that in my car (plug-in hybrid) but I don’t know if e-bikes are the same way.
The traditional method of pedaling uphill less strenuously is to drop to a lower gear. You might go slower, but I’d bet even on existing e-bikes with pedal assist, this is something that’s already pretty reasonable now days.
Gears
That’s what gearing is for (you just go up the hill slower), but I can see the benefit to not being on the road.
Sure, but there are limits. One needs a certain amount of forward speed to maintain balance easily, and there’s a maximum speed that can be reasonably pedaled. If the hill is steep enough then in my experience reducing the gearing enough to make pedaling not too strenuous runs into the other two limits. If an e-bike can have a low battery topped off before the hill starts, then pedal-assist (at least) would take care of the need to lower the gear while going up it.
If you need a minimum speed to maintain balance, how are you going to pedal while stationary?
Better to have active regeneration, where you pedal a bit harder on flats to top up the battery for hills.
Kickstand, holding a fence, etc. That active Regen thing sounds great, if I buy one of these I’ll make sure it can do it.
One needs a certain amount of forward speed to maintain balance easily
Not true. One just needs to practice static balance. It’s a great skill to have so everyone should learn how to do it.
Also you can use the lowest gear going almost a walking pace and climb up really steep hills. That’s how we do it on MTBs. It also requires practice and good balance.
Ah, that would be a nice skill. I might even be better equipped for it now than when I was young because I’ve gotten into roller skating and improved my balance that way.
Incredible comment.
This has to be a parody account right?
A parody account… on LinkedIn?
I’m becoming increasingly more and more confused as to what this site’s purpose is intended for… I think they lied to me in college lol
Either that, or he’s not very smart, had a thought, poppet it into ChatGPT, and ChatGPT as it tends to do, affirmed his dumb idea, and he ended up asking it to make a Linkedin post for him on the idea.
I’ve seen similar stuff from students who think they’ve cracked how something works, only to be incredibly wrong, because they only know half of what they need to, but don’t know enough to understand how little they know. It’s part of the journey of getting sorta-good at something though.
Either he’s lying about being a mechanical engineer or the barrier to entry to become a mechanical engineer is embarrassingly low.
It this guy seriously proposing a perpetual motion machine for the purposes of EV charging? Also not that it really matters but who the hell has range anxiety on an electric bicycle. You get 30 miles out of those things easily, what sort of bike rides is he doing where you have to recharge that more than once a month?
He should try recharging a solar panel with a light powered by the solar panel. Just achieving infinite power.
I’ve gone as far as 55 miles in one bike ride, and hope to do a full century ride someday. 30 miles is not at all out of the ordinary for bicyclists.
30 miles is laughably low. A single ride would drain it for me. To go to store it would take 10 miles, not counting anything else.
I recommend going to a closer store.
Why? For less convenient, choice, and worse prices?
A 10 mile round trip would probably take about 3 hours, it probably isn’t as far as you think it is.
3 hours? How slow do you bike? I average 25 to 30mph on a non powered mountain bike. I could walk that in 3 hours.
30mph is incredible
Literally. Especially on a mountainbike averaging 50kmh is insane.
Probably own a speed pedelec. They average that top speed.
But then you could just buy an electric moped instead.
Says unpowered mountainbike in the post though. Can only imagine they meant 30kmh
I work 18 kilometres away from where I live, that takes me 45 minutes on my acoustic bike. That’s just a little longer than 10 miles. The round trip is ~an hour and a half
Are you walking or cycling?
what sort of bike rides is he doing where you have to recharge that more than once a month?
My distance to work is 12 km one way, so your battery would be empty afer two days…
16km for me and I’m not even leaving the city, this battery would last a day, not that I need it.
He’s probably lying. While the bar is pretty low for entry level M.E.s, it’s not quite that low yet.
As an old Toolmaker, I have made my share of intern wannabe MEs cry after crushing their idiot ideas. I swear, the older engineers would send those clowns to me just so I would beat them about the head and neck with a stick.
(I have a Daughter that has a PhD in ME. I warned her to turn down the free lobotomy offer upon finishing her degree. She listened and is now a happy and very, very smart Dr. of Engineering working with EV and HVAC systems)
He’s a student so he probably just doesn’t know any better
I mean A middle school student should understand why this won’t work, so not much of an excuse
Yeah you need to take basic physics in high school before even getting in to engineering school.
Don’t be so hard on him. He is still a student and got to learn.
Nice to get a moment to pull out a classic
As someone who sucks at physics, I’m convinced that Trollface has proposed so many solutions around the internet to provide free energy, but the capitalists are conspiring to sabotage him, just as they did to N.Tesla.
The other one being to shine a light on a solar panel. For bonus points you include a mirror and a vampire.
I remember the one where he uses two magnets, and the one where he wraps his head with a bag and puts a plant inside it, so he can swim with infinite O2 supply.
