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Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable

(www.ifixit.com)
207 points LorenDB | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 19:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.248s | 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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sandworm101 ◴[14 Oct 24 22:40 UTC] No.41842927[source]▶
>> 2 years in the streets of France, on micro-mobility e-bikes, in the harshest possible conditions (rain, snow, cold, heat, shocks)

Um... Paris isn't exactly a harsh climate. Send some batteries to me in a month or two and I'll show them winter. Proper winter starts when it stops snowing.

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1. oneplane ◴[14 Oct 24 23:08 UTC] No.41843158[source]▶
Everything is relative ;-) Hash in the context of places where you'd ride your bike is a very different kind of hash than let's say, the weather on mercury or pluto.