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I spent two weeks delivering for Uber Eats and made $4.40 per hour

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383 points imartin2k | 2 comments | 13 May 17 10:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.458s | source
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unityByFreedom ◴[13 May 17 11:07 UTC] No.14330361[source]▶
Sounds like a raw deal for a bicycle, but, how about on a scooter?
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tibbetts ◴[13 May 17 11:13 UTC] No.14330372[source]▶
Sounds like the Foodora people have their act together so if a scooter was a winning strategy they would be doing that. Maybe city driving regulations are a problem? A bike with an electric boost could be good though.
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sundvor ◴[13 May 17 11:30 UTC] No.14330428[source]▶
Yeah, but e-bikes have very limited range which would quickly become an issue on longer runs. The systems are awfully heavy to pedal unassisted; well at least my Bionx conversion was (have removed it since).
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johansch ◴[13 May 17 12:15 UTC] No.14330561[source]▶
In this case the guy drove 25 km/shift for Uber Eats and 37 km/shift for Foodora.

My ebike with a Bosch drive unit and a 400 Wh battery gets me a range of about 35-40 km on the maximum assist mode ("Turbo").

Also, the batteries are easily swappable. Just place some chargers with extra batteries in a few of the restaurants...

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1. sundvor ◴[14 May 17 07:31 UTC] No.14334673[source]▶
The Bosch system is crank driven, right? In hind sight I regret not going for something like that. The Bionx hub is ludicrously heavy, with short spokes prone to breakage, and required (at the time) its own crappy cassette.

I had to crack the 25 km/h speed limit restriction as going above it required an almost Herculean effort. It should have reverted to an assistance level that offset the weight / drag, but alas.. it just turned off.

Batteries were easy enough to replace though.

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2. johansch ◴[15 May 17 22:06 UTC] No.14345562[source]▶
Yeah, it's placed in the crank house.

What I like the most about this is the sensor system. I am pretty sure there is an actual torque sensor in there. This makes for a very smooth acceleration phase.

Along with a back wheel magnet sensor to keep the speed limit. Last year I made a homemade hack for this.. I used a microcontroller, an electromagnet and a magnetic sensor from a cheapo bike computer to forget every second impulse towards the Bosch system. It worked. The speed limit changed to 50 km/h.

Ended up not bothering to weather-proof it though. 25 km/h is enough most of the time anyway.