The drive systems by Faulhaber ensure the sustainable e-motion on bikes throughout Germany, both with normal bikes or pedelecs (pedal electric cycles).
To organise the use of hire bikes, bike sharing providers rely on the company’s drives. For the locking systems of hire bikes, small Faulhaber gear motors are installed in the front fork. Depending on the usage system, the bike sharers can then hire a bicycle at fixed hire stations or even without a station using a smartphone app. There are now various bike hire companies that offer bicycles as well as pedelecs at their stations. A pedelec assists its riders with an electric motor. The degree of assistance can be set individually and is dependent on the pedal force or cadence of the rider.
Basically, a pedelec functions like so: a sensor registers that the rider is pedalling and passes this information on to the controller. As a control unit, the controller regulates the battery and ensures that it sends the required current to the motor. As soon as current flows, the pedal assistance of the pedelec engages. Used as the bicycle drive system for pedelecs, Faulhaber motors ensure the optimum drive. Because these motors are very small in spite of their high performance, they can be installed so cleverly that the pedelec cannot even be recognised as such from the outside.
The 3274 … BP4 brushless DC-servomotor in combination with a planetary gearhead is integrated in the frame and the corresponding battery gets ‘disguised’ as a water bottle. This variant of an electrically assisted bicycle achieves a peak of 330 watts for a duration of approximately five minutes at a time.
Getting into gears, Faulhaber’s DC-micromotors of the 1524/1724SR series also ensure the right drive when shifting gears on the bicycle – both with standard bicycles as well as with pedelecs. Electronic shifting systems guarantee efficient riding and increase comfort and safety. At the same time, they reduce wear on the shifting components. Gear shifting is performed with the help of the small servomotors.
The future of the bicycle remains then exciting, as further electronic components will change cycling. What direction that could take is demonstrated, for example, by the SmartFaraday Pedal project, developed by a team of students in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Freiburg. The intelligent bicycle pedal offers a number of functions that help cyclists track their journeys – from performance and route tracking to theft reporting and even an interface for Internet and smartphone. The students won the Cosima competition with this project in 2017. One of their main sponsors is the Faulhaber company.