Author Topic: Electrifying Cargo Trike  (Read 4699 times)

Offline MrFred

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Electrifying Cargo Trike
« on: July 02, 2019, 03:19:42 AM »
A friend has a cargo trike - 1 wheel at the back and 2 at the front. The rear wheel has a Nexus 7-speed internal hub, so I don't think they should put a hub motor on the rear. Therefore options are (1) a mid-drive or (2) hub motor(s) on the front wheel(s).
Questions:
  • Would a hub motor (MP edge) on just one of the two front wheels work/make sense -- or would it cause the bike to sway to one side?
  • Can a motor be placed in each of the 2 front wheels and both be controlled by the same throttle? Does this make sense?
  • Has anyone done either of the above?
The bike is something like this:
https://wicycle.com/products/bikes/big-box-trike

Offline Bikemad

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Re: Electrifying Cargo Trike
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2019, 11:31:05 AM »
1. Due to the steering setup, I would expect the steering to be seriously affected by the torque of the motor, both under power, and under regen.

2. Two motors can be controlled by one set of controls, but you would need to splice the two control harnesses together as shown in Gary's video.

I would suggest staggering the joints over a longer distance (instead of all in the same place) to ensure they cannot touch each other , similar to this extended cable joint:



Alan