Re: Extending the range of an electric bike...

On Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:48:49 +0100, Pyromancer
<pyromancer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Something I've wondered about electric vehicles since the C5 came out -
what would the legal position be if you had a fuel driven generator on
board to charge/recharge the traction battery? I can think of a couple
of scenarios:

1. Generator connected directly (via suitable charging circuit) to
in-use battery, effectively a diesel-electric or petrol-electric bike.

Like the Prius? IMO that would be a moped or motorcycle.

2. Rider has 2 batteries. One powers the bike while the second sits on
a trailer being charged by the generator. Swap batteries (poss just
switching cables over or even building permanent switch-gear into the
trailer and just switching over) whenever the traction one runs flat.

If you were required to physically switch the batteries. And, the
trailer was a separate entity, that could - IANAL - be a generator
charging a stand-alone battery, on a stand-alone trailer pulled by an
electrically assisted pedal cycle. "just switching cables" could make
it harder to justify.

There's enough gray areas here without bringing hybrid
diesel/petrol/hydrogen/whatever-electric into it ;-)
.

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