InBike URBAN, a cheap italian ebike (made in China)

It is similar to this, but color is grey! Full alu frame, 26" wheels, shimano 6 speed, LiMn 24v 11 Ah.
Full Legal Eu motor 200 watt. Very basic control system. Extremely light: the battery pack
is so light that I was not convinced it contained anything at all, but at the moment it is charging correctly
It is supposed to be for my wife, but I will let you know if it is working as for the specs.
I decided to buy it, since it is very light, has reasonable quality components and it seems they are selling
it with numerous different brandings, so I hope it should be quite reasonably reliable.
Of course the price seemed to be right for an entry level EU ebike: 399€
I got it at a sale in a supermarket.

ps. I bought it tonight 8) more info later!

have fun!

I bought one that looked very similar for my wife, it was 36v 10ah. It worked very well holding 16mph for about 25 miles with pedal assist.

Tench said:

I bought one that looked very similar for my wife, it was 36v 10ah. It worked very well holding 16mph for about 25 miles with pedal assist.

Click to expand...

yes, it seems a popular entry level model! I waited till they came out at the supermarket
with a bike with Lithium. At that point no excuse, needed to try and verify the performance.

It has 3 power assist levels : min (80 W), medium (120 W), max (200 W) + 6 kmh speed limit (10 W).
Speed reached at different assist with no pedal is 17, 21, 25 kmh.

full charge battery is 29,2 V, they are 7s5p and they are LiMn, so the battery gauge is a bit off:
75% battery is really meaning 40% and the other 3 leds are like 30% , 20%, 10%.

Practically, the 25V x 11Ah are enough for roughly 40 Km at great speed
and very light pedaling or almost none ... so 6 - 7 Wh/km, not bad 8)

with max assist only it is going 30 Km per charge, using medium and max with light
pedaling just to pretend to do some exercise it is going for at least 50 Km ...

I probably will add some additional capacity to reach 15 Ah ....
I will add some Zippy Lipo liying around ... :lol:
that would make respectively 45 and 75 Km per charge with top up time of 8 hours.
At that point it will be as good as possible for an entry level 200 Watter

So far so good, no broken parts, motor slightly less noisier than at the beginning.
It mounted fine also a rear kid sit, after phisical annihilation of the driver sit bracket and screw.

ev.miles..ev-grin 8) .. 500 Km .... by car it would be around 40 euros of gas!

it seems that at 5000 Km the bike is paid in full via saved gas cost, since I charge with solar ...


have Fun!

I'm consistently doing more than 50 Km per charge when discharging approx 80% of the stock batt.
Typically I solar charge each day at an average of 30 Km and 50% discharge.
I hit the LVC just once while low and using max assist and another time I got to LVC just after having
ridden 65 Km on 1 charge, pedaling just a bit, almost nothing: no sweat. :wink:
It looks like the stock battery is really made of 7s5p cells ( aquamarine green in color ) of 2.2 Ah.
This is confirmed by the charge taken when I hitted LVC to top up.
I will add 5 Ah of turnigy lipo 50C to help climbing ability, just got extension cables from HK.
Overall, the cheap bike is quite good. Curious to see LiMn chemistry how good with time it will be ...

have fun!

ps. 700 Km already done...

I'm back!
At 4000 Km on the clock, 150 charge cycles and 4 years of use ...
the battery pack is holding 60% or less of the original capacity...
Since the e-bike payed fully for itself due to the gas savings, I needed to do something with it ...

...to be continued

This is the result ...
I made a custom pack, using 4x Nissan Leaf 2012 battery modules (60Ah, 8.4V each).
I distributed them in 2x lateral waterproof Cases from Decathlon.
I bulk charge them. But still balancing the single cells, charging them also individually, each trip.
Using for now the pack between 30% and 70% capacity, to stay safe... 8)

... to be continued ...

This is a picture of the 2 battery packs on the back of the bike, from outside...




...and another picture of one pack content...



...usable energy is around 1.5kWh, top up time from empty is 6-7 hours...
...projected reach per charge is between 200 and 300 Km... depending on speed and power setting...
...hot battery speed is 23Kmh at MIN, 28Kmh at MED and 35Kmh at MAX...
...going down to 18Kmh, 24Kmh and 29Kmh with a depleted battery...

Have fun!

Hiya... Curious... You said, in part:

At 4000 Km on the clock, 150 charge cycles and 4 years of use ...
the battery pack is holding 60% or less of the original capacity...

Click to expand...

Hmmm... "60 percent or less"? Sorta interested that the cells seem to have degraded at a "faster rate" than I might have thought. "Shelf life" kicking in?

Tks

LockH said:

Hmmm... "60 percent or less"? Sorta interested that the cells seem to have degraded at a "faster rate" than I might have thought. "Shelf life" kicking in?

Tks

Click to expand...

Hi, LockH!
Yes, I'm puzzled too... The battery is made of 7s5p 18650 LiMn cells. They are something around 2200mAh each to get to the advertised 11Ah total. Fancy green aquamarine color cells with no markings.
I opened the pack, when I bought the new bike, and rebalanced everything, since the bottom cell group, energizing the BMS, was off with the others.
I suspect, since the e-bike was on sale in fair quantity in a popular supermarket chain, that they got a stock, possibly 1 year old, maybe more, maybe less...
I also suspect, since the battery pack was having some strange reworked soldering, and retape of groups, that at a certain stage possibly somebody dismounted a large quantity of that battery packs and tested individual groups of cells, reassembling a fair amount of packs with the good ones, while discarding some amount of cell groups altogether.
I guess the manufacturer of that cells was testing a new chemistry and was having average quality control.
Initial 2 years with the battery were good... up to 60km range, good performance going uphill.
After that, range started to shorten, but now, after 4.5 years, uphill performance is ridicoulous and range is 30-35km top...
I assume it is due to a degradation of the Rin of the cell, mainly, because the charging time is still the same, but the controller hits easily the LVC for any reason... using MIN power assist, so minimum motor current, is best to have enough range, but the pack has clearly degraded. :?
I'll dismount the pack to see if it is just a cell group that is bad or the entire battery...
Eventually I'll build, out of it, a 6s5p or 6s4p pack for a minimoto I have in preparation... discarding the bad cells...
Maybe there is something I missed, since in the last 4 years I was busy with other things and I didn't follow the electric scene...

Have Fun!

I made another experiment.... a stealth battery pack.... 8)

I used 2 packs of Turnigy Lipo 2.2Ah 40-50C... 1 for the forward trip and 1 to come back home... to test...
They are 22.2V 6s1p packs...

I did in total 21Km at an average of 20Kmh... discharging both packs to 3.73V per cell...
It looks like they are good for at least 30Km trips.



As a side thought, it seems that those hi-C LiPo are more energy efficient in delivering their juice to the motor,
since with a total of 4.4Ah LiPo I get more than 50% of the range of the original e-bike battery that is rated 11Ah and is 7s5p...

Probably, connecting both pack in parallel, I could get even better range while also reducing the stress on the cells,
since they would need to deliver half the current of the actual setup... ... we will see...

Have fun!