Electric bicycles

Hi everyone :)
I am electrosensitive and I consider converting my bicycle into electric one. I was wondering, does anyone here already have experience with e-bikes? I am curious about either good or bad experience.

I would expect two separate issues:
 - high-frequency radiation coming from "too smart" control unit - e. g. bluetooth connection with smartphone and other "absolutely necessary" features. This could likely be avoided by choosing "simple enough" control unit, or at least it should be easy to shield.
- magnetic field coming from the motor itself (and possibly from battery), since e-bike drives need large electric currents. This is the part I am most curious about - are these magnetic fields "weak enough" to be ok even for electrosensitive people? Would e. g. using front-wheel axis motor move the motor to safe distance? Does anyone have experience with DIY shielding solutions for this specific probelm? Or is it unbearable no matter what? :)

If you're interested about my motivation - I am using bicycle as my main means of transport for a very long time, for way longer than I know about my electrosensitivity. Recently I purchased cargo bike to get my kid to kindergarten, and I have to admit, the physical strain from year-round daily commute is getting quite high. Commute on bike is my preferred choice, so at first I'll explore what options are available without switching means of transport for upcoming few years.

Thank you,
Rumcajz

You might have more success with getting an answer to this on the Facebook group, as it might be hard to find people with e-bike experience (unless it's a large and active group like you'd find on Facebook).

Marc

Hi Marc,
thanks for suggestion, but Facebook is not an option for me. The list of Facebook's negative side effects is way too long for me to use it ;) Because of that, I was quite happy when I found this forum. I do not have unrealistic expectations on activity.

Specifically for my problem with e-bikes - currently I am exploring last option - fine tuning my "biological motor", taking inspiration from professional athletes on regeneration and training. If this is not enough, I will need to add some kind of motor to my cargo bike before next winter. Maybe someone with both ES and e-bike will write their experience here before that happens.

If not, I'll probably rent an e-bike specifically for measuring the magnetic field (+ to try some lightweight shielding) and post my experience here for future reference.

Rumcajz

I just checked the archives on the Facebook group -- someone did ask about e-bikes a couple years ago. There were a few responses from people who said that they were NOT bothered by their e-bikes, so possibly not so bad after all. Okay brands included Pedego, Ebgo, and Townie.

Thanks a lot for forwarding that info, it gives me hope :)

Hi, I haven't dealt with electrosensitivity myself, but I think starting with a simple conversion kit would make sense. Some systems have fewer connected features than others, so you may be able to avoid Bluetooth and smartphone connectivity altogether.

Regarding the motor, I imagine the distance between it and your body, along with the specific motor design, could be worth considering. Rather than investing in shielding straight away, I'd try to test a few different setups first, if you have the opportunity. That way, you can see how comfortable you feel before spending money on a conversion kit.

Hopefully, someone here who has actually converted a bike can share some first-hand experience.

Hi everyone, update from myself :)

TLDR: I bought e-bike conversion kit, electrified my cargo bike, had to apply a small shielding for magnetic field coming from the motor, and now I am happily using it for daily kindergarten commute. It did solve my original problem (physical strain from daily year-round commutes with extremely heavily loaded bicycle in hilly landscape).

Therefore I would recommend e-bike as means of transport to anyone electrosensitive. Altough I have to say you need to be careful, pick well and maybe do a little measurements/shielding yourself.

Now the longer version:

Sources of EMFs in e-bike

• Bluetooth/mobile networks etc.: many e-bike models and conversion kits offer connectivity to smartphone via Bluetooth. Some even offer permanent mobile data connection - marketed as anti-theft protection (you can remotely track your e-bike when stolen). My guess is that this would be about as bad as typical smartphone and most likey it won't be possible/easy to disable/remove these modules, so I would just avoid models with these features.
• Electric and magnetic fields from battery, controller and motor itself. This one you can't avoid, but you can:
• place these systems as far as possible from your body
• apply shielding
• decrease their levels by using less motor power
• Display: there is quite high variety of displays. I would recommend monochromatic displays (8-segment digits) over bright full-color displays. But I don't think this will be major problem, since the displays are generally quite small.

Motor and battery position

E-bikes or conversion kits are sold with three motor positions:

• Mid drive, where the motor is placed between cranks and uses normal bike chain to deliver power. Altough this is marketed as "the best option" from e-bike users due to best riding experience, I would say that mid drive is the worst option from ES perspective. The motor is the closest to your body, and battery + controller are usually placed very close as well. Please note it might be possible to shield the fields to acceptable levels, but I have done no experiments on that myself.
• Direct "wheel drive", either front or back wheel. The motor is placed directly in wheel axis. Batteries are usually placed on rack. For ES people, I would definitely recommend this option, since it allows to place source of EM fields relatively far from the body and it gives you enough space to put shielding between yourself and the motor.

Since I ride around with my son seated on back carrier, I went for front wheel drive - that allows to place the motor far away from both me and my son. This setup has some challenges (you need to be careful on wet/cold/frozen/... roads to avoid crashing due to front wheel skids), but for experienced and careful rider that's not a major problem.

My experience

Conversion

I bought conversion kit with 250-1000W MXUS XF15 motor, controller KT48SVPR (sin-wave current comes to the motor), KT-LCD3 display and 36 V 17Ah battery. (This setup allows connecting additional Bluetooth module, but I obviously did not purchase/connect that :) I can confirm that if you leave the BT module out, the setup produces no wireless-communication EMFs.) As already mentioned, I have front-wheel variant. The controller unit sits directly above front wheel (hanging from front rack), battery placed vertically on the rack (top end approx at handlebar level).

The converstion process itself is not hard (anyone with basic DIY and/or bicycle service experience can do it), but take your time. It took me ca 3 afternoons to do the rebuild properly.

Riding the bike

During first week I used no additional shielding, and was experimenting riding with motor power 100-300 W. 300W is more than enough even for such heavily loaded bike as mine. Riding was fine, but within few days I got really terrible calf cramps. They were much worse when the motor power was closer to the 300 W range.

Shielding magnetic fields

After first week, I applied prototype magnetic field shielding: 6-layer Yshield plate, cut and placed on front fender plus 6 stripes of 1-layer Yshield "tape" wound directly around the motor inside wheel spokes. This reduced the magetic field measured approximately at the closest location of feet to the motor, at ca 300W from 6 mG to ca 4.5 mG (milliGaus). (The reduction is not high, but it most likely also changed shape of magnetic field lines, which could be an important factor as well.)

Why prototype? I used leftover pieces of Yshield materials I had at home. In following weeks, I plan to rebuild the shielding with more 6-layer shielding material and expect to improve the shielding a bit more.

This prototype shielding got rid of the calf cramps. To be accurate - there is a chance that the magnetic fields are unrelated to the cramps. The e-bike makes you ride differently - faster cadency with smaller force, opposed for the "heavy bashing" I did before; and it is possible that the cramps came from changing the riding style. (I still suspect the magnetic field more, because I have similar experience from operating electrical sewing machine.) I can definiely rule out bike geometry as underlying cause of the cramps - since bike geometry hasn't changed at all with the bike rebuild.

With respect to other components (battery, control unit, display + controls, pedal assist sensor) - I measured some low levels of EMF directly next to them, but this goes to zero way before any body parts during normal operation. I did not notice any negative effects on myself coming from these components.

To sum up, I would definitely recommend e-bike conversion kits to anyone electrosensitive - it is an easy to build/maintain and use means of transportation. If regular (100% bio powered) bicycle and/or walking is not option for you, suitably built e-bike could be the next best option. At least, it definitely beats public transportation (too wireless devices around) or modern cars (stuffed with "smart" nonsense you can't even identify without dismantling the car completely).