Hub motors are very discreet already!
I was reading this article about the US government aiming to improve battery technology…
“The endeavor will be called Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR). The goal? An automotive propulsion battery with five-times the range capacity, costing one-fifth present lithium-ion batteries, and to be completed in the next five years.”
If this happens in 5 years, the world will be a very different place. Then I could have an electric bicycle with a battery that weighs 5 pounds and the motor assists you for 70 miles on a single charge. It’s possible to do that now, but the battery will be very heavy and that makes it impractical!
But batteries are bulky and heavy!
Everyone focuses on electric/hybrid cars but cars weigh thousands and thousands of pounds. Bicycles weigh like, 20–25 pounds. So if you mate good battery technology to it, that’s going to be the most efficient thing ever (or motorcycles, too). I don’t need a 3,000 pound machine to carry my 200 pound self. That gives you some insight as to how energy dense and powerful gasoline is and what a long way we have to go for battery technology to catch up.
