BikeOn Converts Your Bicycle to Electric in Less Than a Minute

Electric bikes are a great way to make cycling a bit easier. They can help you cruise when you get to speed, and even assist you in climbing steep hills. But electric bikes can easily cost a few thousand dollars to buy new. That’s a lot of money to spend, particularly if you already own a bike that you like. If that’s the case, then you can always purchase a conversion kit. Unfortunately, those tend to be difficult to install. BikeOn, , however, is an electric bike conversion kit that can be installed in less than a minute without any special tools.

To convert a bike to electric, you need some way for an electric motor to drive one of the wheels. You also want to still be able to pedal the bike, either with or without assistance from the electric motor. In most cases, that’s achieved by replacing one of the wheels with one that has a special hub motor. BikeOn completely eliminates that need by fitting onto your cassette on the rear wheel, allowing you to use the existing hub and wheel. Thanks to a very innovative two-piece main drive gear design, you don’t even have to take off the rear wheel to install BikeOn.

Once it’s in place and secured to the bike’s frame, the motor unit receives power from a 250 Wh battery in a water bottle design. The motor is rated at 350W (US spec), or 250W (EU spec). BikeOn should have a range of up to 20 miles. To avoid the need for a throttle, the BikeOn unit has a number of integrated sensors to detect when to provide assistance. Those include a torque sensor, accelerometer, and gyro. There is even an app that connects to BikeOne through Bluetooth. BikeOn’s controller is open source, and the PCB design files have already been released. There are also plans to sell BikeOn as a kit later this year, though there is no word on pricing yet.