Xiaomi Launches Foldable Electric Bike QiCycle At a Price Of $450 (indianexpress.com) 138
Xiaomi on Thursday unveiled its first ever electric bike -- the QiCycle Electric Folding Bike. The bike, made of carbon fibre, packs a host of sensors and weighs just 7kg. From a report on IndianExpress:QiCycle has an integrated electric motor, which can be used for propulsion. The bike is powered by 250W-36V electric motor, and uses Torque Measurement Method (TMM) to assist the rider's pedal-power. It comes with Shimano Gear Shifters to let users switch gears based on the terrain. It also has a bike computer display to show all the fitness-related parameters such as calories burned, distance traveled, speed, etc. Xiaomi says the QiCycle has a large Panasonic 18650 battery, which can last up to 45 kms on a single charge. Qicycle can be folded and kept in the trunk of a car.The QiCycle is priced at roughly $450, and is currently only available for sale in Chinese cities.
18650 is a form factor (Score:1)
its 18mm by 65mm, the 0 means its round. the bike probably has a battery pack with much more than just 1 single 18650 in it...
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Panasonic is minting money with those batteries. Tesla uses them too in their battery packs.
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It's 36V, so it almost certainly has 8 or 9 18650s in series.
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Correcting myself - it seems to have two sets of 10 in parallel, total of 20.
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Only twenty 18650's to get a range of (up to) 45km?
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Well, it's only pedal assist... and it's the marketing from a Chinese company. So...
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Motor is rated at 250W and 36V, or around 7A. Battery is rated at 58Ah at around 3.7V, or 215Wh. So yeah, less than an hour of run time at full output. That seems about right, actually. You will need to put in a fair bit of energy to get to 45km.
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250 watts is a lot of power.
100 watts is enough to get a typical cyclist to around 15 mph on level ground. (Assuming 100% efficiency, which is overly optimistic, but not too far off for an electric motor.) Going up to 250 watts wouldn't increase your speed by that much -- maybe 23 mph? Mostly the extra power would be useful for hills.
If you keep your speed down to 15 mph (treat it like a bicycle rather than a moped) it would last a good deal longer, and of course by pedalling you can get a lot more dista
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treat it like a bicycle rather than a moped
In many places, e-bikes are not even allowed to behave like mopeds at all (I believe that 5/6 pedal assist is the legal maximum in Europe, for example).
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Do you have a link about that? The PodRide project on IndieGogo could use that kind of information.
Not exactly EU... (Score:2)
But in Switzerland [www.tcs.ch] (geographically in the middle of Europe, but not quite exactly part of EU) :
- if it goes under 25 km/h, and has a maximal power of 500W, it's considered as a bicycle (with power-assistance. Meaning that you need to turn the pedal for the electric motor to help you).
There's no peculiar registration required, nor special insurance.
Any one above 16 can freely drive them (special moped driving license required for kids between 14 and 16).
Helmet are just strongly recommended for bicycles.
- if
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That's the part that confused me. I am pretty sure a single 18650, such as those used in my flashlights, isn't enough to power a bike for 45 kilometres.
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Being the American infrastructure is based on automobiles. Locomotion at speeds averaging 15 miles per hour (roughly 25 kilometers per hour) is rather dangerous with other vehicles going 2 to 4 times faster with a lot more mass behind them. Bike trails in the US. are often just signs telling drivers to be more careful.
Re:I want an American tricycle ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Being the American infrastructure is based on automobiles. Locomotion at speeds averaging 15 miles per hour (roughly 25 kilometers per hour) is rather dangerous with other vehicles going 2 to 4 times faster with a lot more mass behind them. Bike trails in the US. are often just signs telling drivers to be more careful.
With so many drivers being distracted by their cell phones, just being out in public is dangerous. But that shouldn't stop you from living.
Average cycling speed varies greatly by where you ride. Speeds on sidewalks or through parks congested with pedestrians will be much slower than on paved roads. I commute 10 miles to work over paved roads on a mountain bike, complete with 30-pound panniers on the back. I ride in the road, not on the shoulder (there are no sidewalks or bike trails). With the panniers, my average speed is 18-20 mph. Without, it's 20-22 mph. Downhill, I can easily go 27 mph. Friends who ride much lighter road bikes ride faster than that.
When I ride, my bike is lit up like a friggin' Christmas tree. I have red lights on my seat post, on my pannier, and on the back of my helmet. I have white lights on my handle bar and my helmet. Even my pedals light up - they have a built-in generator, and have a red light on the back, a white light on the front, and an amber light on the side.
There aren't many statistics about cycling accidents. Meaning, more than just "were they wearing a helmet?" For example, were they experienced riders? Were they under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Were they riding in conditions (or speeds) beyond their skill level? Were they wearing light-colored, reflective clothing and/or have lights on the bike?
Most bike accidents happen to inexperienced riders and/or idiots. The rest were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither of those points will ever stop me from riding.
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Effective Cycling by John Forester has interesting statistics, including the effect of training (his course at MIT naturally) on accidents:
http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey... [wright.edu]
From memory, the biggest threat to the cyclist is first themselves, hitting things or loss of control of the bike, then being hit by other cyclists (aka, asshats riding against traffic), and then vehicles.
The "scariest" scenario most people think of is being hit from behind by a car. That is surprisingly less than 1% of all accidents, alt
victim blaming hogwash disproven by studies (Score:2)
"Most bike accidents happen to inexperienced riders and/or idiots."
There is absolutely no evidence to support this incredibly victim-blaming comment. There is plenty of evidence to refute it, if you simply google the phrase "cyclist driver fault study"
Examples: http://www.executivestyle.com.... [executivestyle.com.au]
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05... [nytimes.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/lif... [theguardian.com]
You're a classic victim-blamer. See, it's those other, stupid, slower, more inexperienced cyclists who get hit. Not you. You're experienced. Dressed li
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Most bike accidents happen to inexperienced riders and/or idiots. The rest were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither of those points will ever stop me from riding.
Same goes for most things. Once you remove the idiots from the stats, the risk profiles becomes much, much lower.
I ride a motorbike, and the stats for motorbikes are terrible. But once you realise that motorbikes are magnets for idiots, the stats become a lot more acceptable.
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Most bike accidents happen to inexperienced riders and/or idiots. The rest were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither of those points will ever stop me from riding.
Same goes for most things. Once you remove the idiots from the stats, the risk profiles becomes much, much lower. I ride a motorbike, and the stats for motorbikes are terrible. But once you realise that motorbikes are magnets for idiots, the stats become a lot more acceptable.
Yea, but a motorbike is going so much faster than a bicycle. On a bicycle, I can ride onto the grass or even into a driveway if I see something dangerous. That's just not an option on a motorbike.
Just last week a guy on a motorbike was killed while merging onto the highway. He collided with a car while merging, then he went down, and two cars behind them crashed to avoid running him over. Now that you mention it, I have to wonder how much control he had over his bike to have been hit while merging.
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Yea, but a motorbike is going so much faster than a bicycle. On a bicycle, I can ride onto the grass or even into a driveway if I see something dangerous. That's just not an option on a motorbike.
Well that depends. I always plan an exit strategy when the risks increase. It's not 100% foolproof, but planning for that car to pull out in front of you is all part of the strategy.
Just last week a guy on a motorbike was killed while merging onto the highway. He collided with a car while merging, then he went down, and two cars behind them crashed to avoid running him over. Now that you mention it, I have to wonder how much control he had over his bike to have been hit while merging.
Yes this is good example. That scenario would be nearly impossible for me IMO, because the benefit of a bike is speed. When things get hairy you can always out accelerate the problem. In the case of a merge, if the car is in front of you, you slip in behind. If it's next to you or behind, speed up and go past. There's no chance
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Most neighborhood roads have a speed limit of 25-35mph which is generally very safe for bicyclists. As long as you're not the guy in Dallas the other day that was bicycling in the middle lane of I-635 you should be fine.
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I've been cycling in traffic for 30 years and never been hit by a car once. I've cycled in Ireland and England where you have to share narrow roads with cars, buses, and 40-foot trucks. I now live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I bike to work just about every day, and the infrastructure here is far more bike-friendly than in the UK.
In the morning I ride on the expressways. Yes. Expressways. Non-cyclists think it's dangerous, but it's actually safer than regular surface streets since there's a big wide sh
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It's no more dangerous to ride a bike on a road full of cars than it is for a car to drive on a freeway full of trucks.
A number of people have survived being positively creamed by big trucks, either because they had very safe cars or because they got very lucky. Being positively creamed by a car while on a bicycle... ugh.
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While a cyclist will almost certainly get hurt in a collision, when all the risks are taken into account, someone who cycles regularly is at less risk of premature death than someone who only drives. All things being equal, avoiding cycling to work and using a car instead while it reduces the chances of dying in a collision, it increases much more the chances of dying prematurely of diseases related to a sedentary lifestyle.
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How Far, How Fast Without Pedaling? (Score:2)
Re:How Far, How Fast Without Pedaling? (Score:5, Funny)
Electric assist may be nicer on your knees better than normal bikes. Or if you live in Escher's world you can just coast downhill and then downhill back.
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When you are standing on a sphere, everything is downhill. We are precariously balanced on top.
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Hi from the Southern Hemisphere.
The entropy is so messed up down here in Australia that we drive on the left side of the road.
I can comment on how fast (Score:2)
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Or if you live in Escher's world you can just coast downhill and then downhill back.
That's the world we'll all be living in in the future, apparently - judging from the fact that it used to be uphill both ways in the past.
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Don't knock M C Escher. He was the world's first schoolboy to have to walk to class uphill both ways.
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And also the first hiphop DJ.
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That was a big flop, though. The fire code inspectors came to his new club, took one look at all those stairways fanning out in different directions, and shut him down.
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Isn't this model intended mainly to 'flatten out hills'?
Does it come complete with... (Score:2)
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the increasingly common chinese government backdoor for data collection? A technology appliance from China somehow feels incomplete without it.
You probably find it incomplete because you are used to american hardware... ;-)
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It's interesting that we have not found any of these back doors. I mean, some surely exist, but none have been publicized. Only a few instances of gross incompetence, nothing you could point to as being a sophisticated back door created by a government level entity.
Either they are really good at hiding them or they don't bother on export equipment. I'm thinking maybe the latter, because they can just force Chinese companies to cooperate with them and hand over data they have anyway, so a back door is kinda
Thats cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is not how much it costs, it is how much people can afford to pay. For the average Chinese resident 3000 Yuan can easily be their entire wages for the month. So here they price the bikes accordingly. It is just like you can buy a new car for $15000 or you can buy a Ferrari for several hundred thousand. The cost to assemble a Ferrari is more expensive but not 10 times more expensive.
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The same people who pay $10,000 for an unpowered bike.
It's all about impressing their peers. They make an impression on the rest of us too, but that one is not so good.
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Envy cloaked in contempt.
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You think I envy someone that stupid?
I bet you think I envy people who spend $10k+ on watches too?
It's not how much you earn, it's how much you keep.
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If they've got 10k to spend on a watch, they've probably kept more than you have too.
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Whatever you need to believe to feel better about yourself...
If you do it silently, people won't pick on you about it.
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Your eyes are clamped shut.
Look around you. Apartment complexes full of brand new cars. 40 year olds with negative net worths and $100,000+/year incomes. Programmed consumers are the dumbest people _ever_ to have lived.
People that spend $10k on watches are just morons. The truly rich spend much more, 10k watch is likely owned by an idiot barely making six figures.
Trading their freedom for overpriced trinkets. Morons.
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What I see right now are angry neckbeards in basement apartments eating ramen, with 50k in savings, raging against the machine, and patting themselves on the back for their superior insight.
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Interesting imagination you have there.
Now get back to work, you have payments to make. Soon you'll owe less than the things are worth. Then you can buy new things again.
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You give them too much credit.
They can't accept it's not the equipment's fault. So they sell the bike for five cents on the dollar on craigslist and buy another, even more expensive one.
They never finish races, much less win. An hour riding a cheap bike burns as many calories as an hour on any bike.
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Truth is, I've been riding my old bike for so long, it has become a collectable. Wish I had saved the parts that wore out.
I'd guess I was forth hand, Original purchase, trade-in bought by bike shop mechanic, sold to 350+lb friend of mine, not ridden for years, traded to me for 1/4 lb of mota (about $200, this was about 20 years ago, back when mota was a thing in CA).
Apparently the seat post is worth as much as the rest of the bike. Hipsters want original thuds.
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I have friends with ~$5000 bikes. For them, it's not about impressing people, they actually can tell the difference between various components. In a 100 mile race, the little things add up. There are worse hobbies.
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I think the difference is that those friends of yours actually do (I assume) train for and ride competitively in those 100mi races. That's not the case with the majority of people spending stupid amounts of money on fancy-pants bicycles that sit in the garage the bulk of the time.
I could see going up to $800 for a Public Bike D8i or M7i, if I were going to commit to making my commute to work every day via bicycle. More than that is really wasted (And bike-thief paranoia inducing.) unless you are a competi
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You are making an impression anyhow, it's not a good one.
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It is not how much it costs, it is how much people can afford to pay. For the average Chinese resident 3000 Yuan can easily be their entire wages for the month. So here they price the bikes accordingly. It is just like you can buy a new car for $15000 or you can buy a Ferrari for several hundred thousand. The cost to assemble a Ferrari is more expensive but not 10 times more expensive.
The problem is that the companies making stuff want to be able to hire someone in $CHEAP_COUNTRY for $X/10, instead of someone in $EXPENSIVE_COUNTRY for $X. But then want to be able to sell it in $CHEAP_COUNTRY for $Y and in $EXPENSIVE_COUNTRY for $Y*10. Then they bitch and moan and buy off politicians in order to prevent people from buying it where it's cheap and bringing it to where it's not, while they do exactly the same thing with labor.
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I got a suspended electric mountain bike for that... It's worth the money. It was made in Germany, and I know it cost more that $200 to make.
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I live in a city with hills so steep that in some places they gave up on the notion of sidewalks and put in stairs. Actually, I live about halfway up one of these hills. A fairly basic electric assist bicycle would be pretty handy, especially if it folds as small as most of the folding bikes I've seen.
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Now more than ever you get what you pay for with bicycles, which by the way a very significant portion of are manufactured in the Netherlands. In the luxury market the significant portion becomes even more significant.
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Hahahahah. Yeah. No. I'm sorry you haven't ridden a nice bike before, but if it's your daily commuter the dollars make a lot of difference in the effort and comfort of the ride. Extra bonus points for electrical assist which can be had in an horrendous after market kit for a few hundred dollars, or just buy an e-bike with battery pack and motor integrated in frames which works much better than the aftermarket addons and further makes commutes excellent.
You won't notice much of a difference between $5000 and
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I went to an ebike store and the guy was showing me bikes in the range of $4,000-$6,000. Who would pay that much? Ridiculous. You know they are being manufactured in China for $200.
I know right. I was in the Apple store and they wanted $1000 for a phone, but last time I was in China I could get a ChingChong special for $20. Why would anyone pay more than that?
Grrrr (Score:5, Insightful)
"[...] which can last up to 45 kms on a single charge.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I really hate it when people pluralise units by adding an "s". Forty-five kilometres is written "45km". "45kms" would be forty-five kilometre-seconds, which is a rather different quantity.
Re:Grrrr (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry to be pedantic
No you're not.
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Us pedants want to know.
I believe you meant to say "we pedants."
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Wee peed-pants?
7 kg with e-assist? (Score:2)
I say bullshit. Even the lightest Brompton without e-assist is heavier than that. Drastic weight reduction methods required to bring a purely muscle-powered bike down to 7 kg - let alone a folder, and especially let alone an *electric* folder - would bring it into multi-thousand dollar price tag territories.
So... Bullshit.
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Yeah, I was thinking it must be made of aluminum foil or something. And they decided that it was better marketing it as a folding bike than a crumpling bike.
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It's actually mixed up information from 2 bikes. the QiBike and the QiBike R1. The R1 looks like a normal road bike, costs 3000$ and weighs 7kg and no motor. the UCI weight limit is 6.8kg so lots of expensive bikes are made to that weight (or lower, and race teams add weight).
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Here is some info:
http://en.miui.com/thread-2985... [miui.com]
Single 18650 battery weights about 40-50 grams. Xiaomi states it uses 20 of them so the battery alone is about 1kg.
The bike weight is 14,5kg.
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City Bike (Score:3)
Itsy Bitsy wheels, and minimal capacity — it's doubtful it even delivers as advertised at this size. Not useless, but not amazingly useful. The price is good, if it lasts any period of time.
I would like a folding bike which is sized for larger-than-man-sized creatures like myself. I have a Haro X7 in the XL size and it's about spot on.
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I would say your mountain bike is not very useful either since you rarely go to the mountains with it.
Actually, I rarely go anywhere else with it. Since it's full-suspension it's not ideal for flat ground, and the rubber it's wearing would disappear rapidly on tarmac.
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It is useful. Just not to fat suburbanites.
I'm asthmatic, and I live in the country. I'd use my bike a lot more if it would help me out with some of the hard parts, and that would make it a lot easier to not be fat. I don't road bike because I love life.
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Why would you want that foldable? Even if you folded it your Haro would still be the size of a tuba.
If I could fold my Haro in half, I could stick it in the (admittedly very large) trunk of my car without any trouble. I don't want to use a trunk scuffer or a roof dragger and a trailer hitch for my car costs more than a Honda. Since it has a through-shaft front axle it's got an extra step before I'm able to trunk it, which is not a big deal but still silly to have to do every time.
In any case, fairly credible full size folding MTBs exist [montaguebikes.com], but they are still a bit small for me.
Not Selling Bikes! (Score:1)
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TLDR; My phone: Xiaomi RedMi3 Pro Prime [aliexpress.com] @ $146.99 - $10 cheaper than it was two weeks ago.
"zi-o-mi" (Score:2)
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With a Z? that's craxy talk!
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Doesn't your subject miss a syllable? There are two Ms in the name, not just one.
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Yes. But let me introduce you to a revolutionary concept: if you connect several 18650 cells in parallel, you get multiples of a single cell's capacity. And if you connect several groups of 18650 cells in series, you get multiples of a single cell's voltage.
And if you connect a metric shitload of 18650 batteries together with a BMS and a car around it, you get a Tesla.
Amazing isn't it?
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Even more ridiculous than the guy I saw the other day on an all-carbon monocoque time trial bike, and riding it in regular street clothes. This must be the modern equivalent of the teenagers driving around London in the 1980s in Porsches.