Three companies highlight their tech with an e-bike

The US/German concept bike, seen on the Gates stand at the Taipei Cycle trade show, pairs a Gates’ carbon synchronous belt-drive and a NuVinci N360 hub and drivetrain, with power supplied by a Bosch motor from Germany.

The pedal-assist bike uses products launched last year but now brought together for the first time by Karlheinz Nicolai, famous for his G-Boxx gearbox system for downhill bikes and more lately for his design work on the Grace e-motorbike.

The concept bike is designed for commuters. The location of the motor unit in the frame enables a short rear triangle and compact chainstay section and offers plenty of ground clearance. All cables and wiring are fully integrated into the frame.

The CenterTrack belt-drive from Gates is a "a quantum leap forward for belt-drive technologies," said Todd Sellden, director of Gates Carbon Drive Systems.

"It offers all the clean, quiet and strong advantages of our existing drive trains but with an even higher level of performance."

Fallbrook’s latest hub, the NuVinci N360, features the company’s ‘continuously variable planetary’ transmission, technology based on an idea first suggested by Leonardo Da Vinci (hence the company name) and enables smooth gear changing. Perfect for e-bikes, the company’s CVP system has a set of balls distributed about a central idler, a rotatable input disc on one side of the idler and the balls and a rotatable output disc positioned on the other side of the idler and the balls. Tilting the axes of the balls varies their respective contact diameters with the input and output discs, varying the transmission ratio.

Chris Vasiliotis, NuVinci product manager, said: "With the NuVinci N360, shifting is easy even under high torque pedal-assist conditions, and there are no ratio gaps, missed shifts, shift-shock or noise. Riders feel comfortable shifting at any time."

The Bosch eBike system was launched at last year’’s Eurobike show. The drive unit can be operated in one of four different modes – including eco, tour, sport, and speed. “

Rainer Jeske, senior vice president at Bosch eBike Systems, said:

"This enables bicycle manufacturers to tailor their products according to their selected target audience."

The bike is not for sale but is a test-bed for the three technologies married on the unnamed e-bike.