On the Solar Tilting Trike I have done roughly 1700km from the beginning of my tests in March.
Therefore I start to have now enough data to understand how it works and whether there is any unexpected behavior.
As far as the hub motor is concerned (Falco engine) this is what I have experienced so far:
- The power is released (using the PAS) in a way that the faster the speed, the lower is the wattage. This is different from what we would expect: once I have selected for exemple the Level 1 assistance (say 150W) this power should be constantly supplied regardless from the speed
- This is quite annoying and unpleasant because at a certain point the motor suddenly kicks in the regenerative braking: in this case the only possibility for me is to stop pedalling, wait for few seconds and then start pedalling again.
- Additionally I have noticed that sometimes, without no apparent reason, when regenerative braking is selected nothing happens and the wheel spins freely. I have asked the manufacturer what to do in this case: they said to try to deconnect-reconnect the battery….it seems to work but of course it is not very practical and cannot be considered a stable solution.
- Although I could also use the Torque Sensor, after having tried to change different parameters unfortunately I could not find a way to make it work correctly. Therefore I have the only choice to use the PAS (Pedal Assist System). This way to use the power from the engine is more basic:it is a real shame I cannot take advantage of the full functionality available from Falco.
- I am very happy about the possibility to use the hub motor without any electric assistance: the so called ‘zero cogging’ seems to work pretty well. A couple of times I had to go back without any assistance and I was able to pedal without (almost) any resistance from the direct drive motor.
I have done a graph (see below) to explain what happens when using Level 1 and Level 2 of assistance: this is an example but the same behaviour is visible also on the other levels of assistance (3, 4 and 5).
We can see that with Lev 1 Assist from 34km/h the engine starts doing regenerative braking (red line), at Lev 2 from 43km/h, etc.
As a quick reference, just to explain how it works, this is the Falco Android interface where in the administration of parameters I can determine the specific value (parametric) of power for each single Assist Level (From Level 1 up to Level 5 ).
This is really very handy and practical; after having done this initial setup, the ACTUAL Assistance Level required can be quickly selected ‘on the fly’.
And here we can see in the Falco Android interface where I can select on the fly the required Assist Level: in this exemple we can see one green bar which corresponds to Assist Level 1.
In this video we can see a static test of the Falco motor where I show:
– max speed (unloaded!) for all 5 assistance levels: with level 5 ( at 4′:00″ ) it is just… unbelievable!
– ‘zero cogging’ when pedalling without electrical assistance
Note: this is not the REAL speed that can be reached ‘wheels on the ground’, it is just a theoretical indication