My incidental mention of converting our Bike Fridays to use air flight legal batteries seemed to trigger a wave of interest, even though the conversion is a project for use in the next tour, not this one.  Questions have abounded, so I thought I would give a very brief into to the topic sooner than later - like, now.

Ebike conversion is an even geekier topic than general ebiking. What's more, ebike use has been seen to be a controversial topic in cycle touring circles. I am putting this stuff in here, but if you have doubts about ebikes you should skip on to soon read something about our gear packing and soon the  first actual World Class day of the actual tour!

Some insightful questions came from Trish Graham, and I tried to give the basic background to her in an email. I am reproducing much of that email below. For some the content will be trivial and for some gobbledeegook.  I am sure our actual experience with the conversions, when that happens,  will have a lot more tricky content to it. Let me know if you think you would like to see that, or if this material is quite enough, thank you!

The key to air travelling with an ebike is the "LiGo" battery, developed by Grin Industries in Vancouver.  Airplane regulations restrict lithium batteries on board to 100 wH each. A typical ebike battery is 400, 500, or 600 wH, hence the problem. But LiGo's are 98 wH. We bought 6 each. When you go on the plane, they are just a pile of not connected to anything 98 wH batteries. But at the destination they snap together like Lego and plug into each other. We bought bags to go behind the back seat, that can actually hold 10 connected LiGos, they say. Other than the LiGo's, the main electric parts for the bikes will be Bafang. Unlike Bosch and Shimano, the Bafang stuff is generic, meaning that it can plug into the LiGo's without problem. You could not put LiGo on an otherwise Bosch bike, for example.

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About the Grin web site (ebikes.ca), Justin the founder is an engineer and he makes everything more complicated than it needs to be. That's why we sought help from our local bike shop. Also really only the LiGo batteries are unique to Grin. The other stuff, or stuff like it can be obtained lots of places

One possibility to  avoid questions of what motor to get  and where to place it, the drive train, the control console, etc. etc. is to find an appropriate bike locally  and to just adapt it to take the LiGo batteries. But most shops sell really slick ebike models with built in batteries and proprietary motors. So maybe the answer is to start with a nice regular bike and to ebike convert it.

I that light, there still aren't all that many parts to decide about. Here are some hints about each of them:

The motor can be one placed in either the front or the rear hub, or it can be a centre drive.  Bosch and Shimano have really slick very built in looking centre motors, but these are proprietary systems. Hub motors seem much simpler and more common on a retrofit. Between front and rear, we first chose front, thinking to balance the weight of the bike, but rear is closer to the batteries, and other parts, making for fewer messy cables strapped to the frame. With rear, the gears will definitely have to be derailleur, but that should not be a problem. The motor does not need to be big and strong. A little, nominally 350 watt motor is fine. Typically you get the motor already laced into a wheel, so what you end up actually buying is an electric wheel.

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The controller is a little box that talks to the motor and to the control console up on the handlebar. Sometimes the controller is built in to the motor so you don't see it, but normally you need to get this little box and it gets strapped on somewhere. Of course the connectors and the whole thing needs to be compatible with the motor and the console.

The console is the thing on your handlebars that allows you to control the assist level, and that gives you your speed, your battery level, distance travelled, current assist level, etc. The one from Grin, that they call the Cycle Analyst, is ridiculous - with twelve screens of data. But the one from Bafang, that we are getting, is very complete but also understandable.

The bottom bracket arrangement, where the pedals connect, requires a little thought. The system wants to see what you are doing with the pedals, in order to provide the correct amount of boost. In the simplest case, it only wants to see that you are pedalling, so then it will turn on the amount of boost level you have requested at the console. Next simplest wants to see that you are pedalling, and how fast. Both of these are called cadence sensors. We think these are lame. What we like is what the Bosch centre drives use - torque sensor.  With this, the system looks not only that you are pedalling, but how hard you are pushing. The harder you push, the harder it pushes. This gives the most natural feel

The battery. LiGo's cost about $175 each, so 6 come to over $1000. But that is the standard price, around here. We paid $1200 for the 400 wH Bosch  battery we put on Dodie's system when we brought her bike back from Netherlands, having had to leave the battery in Paris.

The throttle. You do not want a throttle! With a throttle, what you got was a scooter, not a bicycle!

As I was typing this, a friend came over, and I explained what we are trying to do, with these travelling bicycles and batteries. He responded with the reasonable question of why not just rent an ebike at the destination? To test this solution, I typed "ebike rental Malaga" into Google. The first thing that came back was ebikemalaga.es  These folks have a nice looking Dutch style ebike for rent  for basically 15 euros per day. So that would be 900 euros for a 60 day trip. 900 euros is about 1/3 the cost of buying or retrofitting an ebike. So if you had 2700 euros to spend, getting three tours from it might not be so bad? Dodie, I must say, hated this suggestion. She wants her own bike, fitted and set up her way, not some dumb rental. 

Comments anyone?