Self charging: can e-Bikes be recharged while riding?

The idea of a self-charging electric bike is pretty appealing, right? A way of getting from A to B with all the benefits of an e-bike (good for the planet, fun to ride, low fatigue) with the added incentive of it being even more ecologically friendly than a standard e-bike. It also just feels like an elegant solution, having a bike that has an electric motor to help you when you need it on climbs, while also storing some of the energy generated when you hit higher speeds on the descents. 

You'll be excited to learn that self-charging e-bikes have arrived, albeit the technology is in its fairly early stages. In this article we'll explore where the technology is at today – and where it might one day get to. 

There are a handful of ways that e-bikes can be self-charging.

Probably the most common technology on self-charging bikes is regenerative braking. This is where kinetic energy produced by the brakes on your bike is harnessed, rather than wasted, and turned into electricity to recharge the battery. This is achieved by the motor effectively switching purposes when you are slowing down, transforming temporarily into a generator instead of a motor. 

Regenerative braking is very common on electric cars, these days, and it can be more effective in the auto world because the average speeds of a car are much higher, meaning more kinetic energy is being used. Cars also weigh more, which again increases the amount of kinetic energy available for transformation.

It's not going to fill the battery very quickly, but we've seen some solar-powered e-bikes with panels fitted to the frame or on a rack attached to it as a means of capturing energy while the bike is being used outdoors. Of course, all the usual caveats apply to using solar panels to charge an e-Bike as to any other application of the solar panel technology; the panels need sunlight to work, must be kept clean, and are heavily dependent on the amount of surface area for generating power. 

We're aware of at least one brand offering its customers the opportunity to charge up their e-bike's battery by doing a home workout, similar to a spin class or the popular home-workout brand, Peloton. The idea behind Freebeat's MorphRover model is that you set up your bike on a stand in your home, then use it to complete a workout (they provide you with access to a video of an instructor to keep you motivated). The energy that you generate while doing the workout is stored in your battery, and is there to assist you the next time you choose to ride outdoor. 

You can also just pedal the bike in its stand and that too will charge the bike's battery. 

The self-charging electric bicycle is a relatively new product in the market, and at the moment the self-charging part is not going to have an enormous impact on the overall range of your electric bicycle as a whole. The days of an e-bike with unlimited range are a little way off yet.

While self-charging properties cannot currently overcome the factors below entirely, they can help to mitigate or offset them. 

Assistance level: if you're asking the electric motor for more assistance, it's going to be draining the battery of electrical energy more quickly, which reduces the range.

Hills: climbing hills will drain the battery more quickly than riding on the flat, however, if your bike has regenerative braking, you'll regain some of that energy when braking on the descents. 

Capacity: a bigger battery should give you more range – capacity is measured in watt hours (Wh) and is usually prominently 

Weight: this applies to both the bike design and the rider using the bike, the heavier the total payload the more energy will be consumed by the electric motor.

One of the reasons you may be interested in a self-charging e-bike is that it would reduce the amount of energy you need to use from fossil fuel-generation. Many e-Bike riders are eco-conscious consumers, so it makes sense that minimizing burning of fossil fuels would be a top priority for them. While the current level of the tech won't make a big dent in the amount of carbon we burn, there are greener ways to charge up your e-Bike at home. 

Chief among these is to make sure as much of your domestic energy is  from renewable sources like wind and solar. Some home electrical energy suppliers offer green tariffs, while you can also install solar panels at your own home as a way to drastically improve the greenness of the energy fueling your e-Bike.

We're super-excited to see where self-charging electric bike technology goes over the next few years. It wasn't so long ago that e-bikes themselves were extremely clunky products with prohibitively high price tags, heavy components and poor efficiency... now they're an ever-more-popular mobility solution being used by more Americans every year. 

As development continues apace, we could see a truly viable self-charging e-bike sooner than you might think. In the meantime, explore our range of refurbished e-bikes on Upway today, and maybe you'll find your dream bike. Find out about licensing rules and if e-bikes need to be registered where you live.