page_title: Electric bicycle
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Electric bicycle / History
caption_attribution_description: English: New e-bike, made by Dutch industrial cooperation (Philips patents, Simplex bike-industry). Made at the Simplex Factory, Overtoom, Amsterdam. 3 June 1932 Nederlands: Fietsen. Het nieuwste snufje van de Nederlandse rijwielindustrie is de elektrische fiets die met Philips octrooien vervaardigd wordt in een vijftal rijwielfabrieken. Foto: Deze fiets is vervaardigd in de Simplex rijwielfabriek aan de Overtoom in Amsterdam. Nederland 3 juni 1932.
context_page_description: An electric bicycle also known as an e-bike is a bicycle with an integrated electric motor which can be used to assist propulsion. Many kinds of e-bikes are available worldwide, from e-bikes that only have a small motor to assist the rider's pedal-power to more powerful e-bikes which are closer to moped-style functionality. All retain the ability to be pedalled by the rider and are therefore not electric motorcycles.
  E-bikes use rechargeable batteries and the lighter ones can travel up to 25 to 32 km/h, depending on local laws, while the more high-powered varieties can often do more than 45 km/h. In some markets, such as Germany as of 2013, they are gaining in popularity and taking some market share away from conventional bicycles, while in others, such as China as of 2010, they are replacing fossil fuel-powered mopeds and small motorcycles.
  E-bikes function like hybrid electric vehicles since the electric motor combines battery propulsion with another source of electricity but this time by pedal power instead of internal combustion engine power so in some cases the terms used would be hybrid electric bicycle or hybrid pedal-electric bicycle
context_section_description: In the 1890s, electric bicycles were documented within various U.S. patents. For example, on 31 December 1895, Ogden Bolton Jr. was granted U.S. Patent 552,271 for a battery-powered bicycle with "6-pole brush-and-commutator direct current (DC) hub motor mounted in the rear wheel". There were no gears and the motor could draw up to 100 amperes (A) from a 10-volt battery.
  Two years later, in 1897, Hosea W. Libbey of Boston invented an electric bicycle (U.S. Patent 596,272) that was propelled by a "double electric motor". The motor was designed within the hub of the crankset axle. This model was later re-invented and imitated in the late 1990s by Giant Lafree e-bikes.
  By 1898 a rear-wheel drive electric bicycle, which used a driving belt along the outside edge of the wheel, was patented by Mathew J. Steffens. Also, the 1899 U.S. Patent 627,066 by John Schnepf depicted a rear-wheel friction “roller-wheel” style drive electric bicycle. Schnepf's invention was later re-examined and expanded in 1969 by G.A. Wood Jr. with his U.S. Patent 3,431,994. Wood's device used 4 fractional horsepower motors; connected through a series of gears.
  Torque sensors and power controls were developed in the late 1990s. For example, Takada Yutky of Japan filed a patent in 1997 for such a device. In 1992 Vector Services Limited offered and sold an e-bike dubbed Zike. The bicycle included NiCd batteries that were built into a frame member and included an 850 g permanent-magnet motor. Despite the Zike, in 1992 hardly any commercial e-bikes were available.
  Yamaha, a Japanese automotive giant built one of the early prototypes of ebike back in 1989 and invented the pedal assist system in 1993.
  Production grew from 1993 to 2004 by an estimated 35%. By contrast, according to Gardner, in 1995 regular bicycle production decreased from its peak 107 million units.
  American car icon, Lee Iacocca founded EV Global motors in 1997, a company that produced an electric bicycle model named E-bike SX and it was one of the early efforts to popularize ebikes in the United States.
  Some of the less expensive e-bikes used bulky lead acid batteries, whereas newer models generally used NiMH, NiCd, and/or Li-ion batteries, which offered lighter, denser capacity batteries. Performance varies; however, in general there is an increase in range and speed with the latter battery types.
  By 2001 the terms e-bike, power bike, "pedelec", pedal-assisted, and power-assisted bicycle were commonly used to refer to e-bikes. The terms "electric motorbike" or "e-motorbike" refer to more powerful models that attain up to 80 km/h (50 mph).
  In a parallel hybrid motorized bicycle, such as the aforementioned 1897 invention by Hosea W. Libbey, human and motor inputs are mechanically coupled either in the bottom bracket, the rear wheel, or the front wheel, whereas in a (mechanical) series hybrid cycle, the human and motor inputs are coupled through differential gearing. In an (electronic) series hybrid cycle, human power is converted into electricity and is fed directly into the motor and mostly additional electricity is supplied from a battery.
  By 2007 e-bikes were thought to make up 10 to 20 percent of all two-wheeled vehicles on the streets of many major Chinese cities. A typical unit requires 8 hours to charge the battery, which provides the range of 25 to 30 miles (40 to 48 km), at the speed of around 20 km/h.
caption: E-bike 1932 (by Philips & Simplex)
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