Modules on Project Neodrive

Corner Module

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: First iterration working · in redesign

A self-contained corner unit: hub motor, disc brake, and suspension fork, bolted together as one replaceable assembly.

Why not just buy it?

Barrier 4: not sold as a product at all.

We could buy every part of this module off the shelf, and did. Suspension forks, disc brakes, and hub motors are all mature bicycle commodities, available in quantity one, with datasheets, from suppliers who will still exist in ten years. Nothing here was hard to source.

Open FOC Firmware

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: in development

Firmware for cheap field-oriented control boards, tuned for e-bike hub motors, so that a kW-class drive can be commanded and instrumented instead of merely switched on.

Of everything in this project, this is the contribution we expect to outlast the rest.

Why not just buy it?

Barriers 2 and 3: sold but either not usable as delivered, too expensive or otherwise sold only as a closed system.

Battery Pack

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: built · in use

15S3P LiFePO4, 2.88 kWh, assembled from bare cells with bolted bus bars and a commercial BMS.

Why not just buy it?

Barrier 3: sold only as a closed system.

E-bike batteries are easy to buy and impossible to build on. They are sold as part of a matched drive system, in a proprietary case, with a proprietary mount, communicating over a proprietary protocol with a controller you also cannot modify. Capacity, voltage, and chemistry are whatever the vendor decided.

CAN Commodo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: in development, expected for january 2027

Handlebar controls and throttle, published on a CAN bus. One bus, one connector, an arbitrary number of inputs.

Why not just buy it?

Barrier 3: sold only as a closed system.

E-bike controls are the visible end of the closed drive system, and they are cheap and plentiful — as long as you want exactly what the vendor imagined. A throttle is an analogue signal into a controller that expects exactly that throttle. Displays speak undocumented protocols to a specific motor controller. Adding an input the vendor did not anticipate (a mode selector, a turn indicator stalk, a regeneration control, a data logger) become a reverse engineering challenge.

Steer-by-Wire

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: in development

Steering transmitted by cable rather than by column: a capstan winding a brake line, so the steering input can sit anywhere on the chassis relative to the wheels.

“By wire” here is literal. This is a mechanical cable system, not an electric one.

Why not just buy it?

Barrier 4: not sold as a product at all.

Steering is where the bicycle and car ecosystems both stop being useful.

Pedal-by-Wire Generator

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Status: in development

Chainless pedal generation: the rider turns a generator, the generator charges the pack, the motor drives the wheel. We get full freedom to put the pedal wherever we need.

Built from a large drone BLDC motor and a gearbox, because the commercial version unobtainium.

Why not just buy it?

Barrier 1: minimum order quantity.

The purest example of it in the whole project.

Chainless pedal generation is not experimental. It is in production, and shipping in commercial cargo bikes today. It is a solved problem, and we are not claiming to have invented anything.