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Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable

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207 points LorenDB | 5 comments | 14 Oct 24 19:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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oulipo ◴[14 Oct 24 20:15 UTC] No.41841449[source]▶
Founder of Gouach, the repairable (and fireproof!) e-bike battery mentioned in the article, happy to answer any question!

- we salvaged 100s of discarded e-bike batteries

- we found that 90% of components were like new

- batteries were thrown away because of the spot-welding and the glue which prevents repairability

- we spent 2 years (and 5 patents) to design a robust, safe, and easy to assemble system that requires nothing but a screwdriver

Our batteries have been in use since 2 years in the streets of France, on micro-mobility e-bikes, in the harshest possible conditions (rain, snow, cold, heat, shocks), and we're very happy with their performances!

We're now opening it to the general public (for conversion kits, and to replace old batteries that are no longer manufactured)

We plan to open-source at least part of the embedded software, so people can write extensions (to let their battery "talk" with any e-bike system, and share it — using WASM embeddable code — to other people on the web!)

Let's fight planned obsolescence!

(and if you're looking for a new battery, there's 25% off on https://get.gouach.com)

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1. acyou ◴[14 Oct 24 20:20 UTC] No.41841506[source]▶
How do you address local heat generation at the interfaces between the cells and the contacts? Does that pose additional risk of cell failure leading to thermal runaway in high current scenarios?
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2. oulipo ◴[14 Oct 24 20:23 UTC] No.41841536[source]▶
Yes! You can check the technical details on our documentation and our FAQ here (sorry, we're still cleaning up now, but feel free to ask for details)

https://docs.gouach.com/knowledge-base/frequently-asked-ques...

We've seen that our design does not pose heating or resistance issues

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3. acyou ◴[14 Oct 24 20:32 UTC] No.41841639[source]▶
Which cells did you test with? Is that result valid for other cells?

What is your team's background in battery safety?

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4. oulipo ◴[14 Oct 24 20:38 UTC] No.41841715{3}[source]▶
We are using DMEGC INR 18650 cells, which is the best quality/price ratio that we've found, often beating even great brands.

We've developed a LOT of experience on safety after fighting a few fires haha, this is why we added a lot of software and hardware safeties (fuses everywhere, alerts, etc)

Oh and we designed a fireproof casing to be extra-cautious that nothing would happen to our clients! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJETffg0kFc

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5. acyou ◴[14 Oct 24 21:01 UTC] No.41841956{4}[source]▶
Are you working with any external lithium ion battery safety specialists?