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Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable

(www.ifixit.com)
207 points LorenDB | 2 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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pims ◴[14 Oct 24 20:24 UTC] No.41841540[source]▶
Hello,

I own a Specialized Vado SL from 2022. Can I use your battery as a range extender?

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oulipo ◴[14 Oct 24 20:27 UTC] No.41841584[source]▶
Yes! You can use the Datex extender that we sell when you order the battery here https://get.gouach.com
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UltraSane ◴[14 Oct 24 20:56 UTC] No.41841900[source]▶
Why does that URL redirect to your indigogo site?
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1. dylan604 ◴[14 Oct 24 21:42 UTC] No.41842333[source]▶
Seems like a perfectly valid question to me. Why the flagging? Redirecting to IndiGoGo makes it look like it's not yet a real product. Linking directly to the product mentioned when the link was provided seems like a much more helpful thing rather than some generic self promotion. So is the product being pitched actually being sold as claimed, or is it hoping to become a product while looking for funding?

So, why is the link redirecting?

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2. oulipo ◴[14 Oct 24 21:59 UTC] No.41842485[source]▶
Hi! Thanks for the question!

The link was our original pre-launch page, and now redirecting to the Indiegogo campaign!

The product does exist, and is in use, but until now our clients have been B2B, who are able to pay upfront for the commands.

As we are now opening to the general public, and we're a startup, we needed a schema like Indiegogo to get the money upfront and be able to buy the materials to assemble all the batteries!

We're expecting to ship at the end of the year