One Day left to preorder a ShareRoller on Indiegogo

[Nirmala]

A quote from the ShareRoller website: "Patterned urethane belt: We've worked tirelessly with our urethane supplier to develop a proprietary motor belt that maximizes grip and efficiency in both wet and dry conditions. Plus, it won't cause excess wear of the bicycle tire or scooter wheel. That's pretty important."

Obviously as with any bicycle, you would need to keep an eye on your tires. Even if it caused just a very slight amount of additional tire wear, that would just be something to keep an eye on and replace the tire as needed. It seems pretty unlikely that a flat rolling surface applied to the tread of the tire would cause tire shredding. I did some searching on Google and could not find any reports of tire damage from a friction drive, although there were some reports of increased wear (which the ShareRoller is designed to minimize). If you have heard of something regarding a friction drive causing some kind of catastrophic failure, I would be interested to read more about it. NOTE ADDED: This was in response to another post on this thread that seems to have been removed.

And another question for @Jeff Guida ....does the ShareRoller work with fat tires like the 4 and 5 inch tires used on fat bikes?

 

[Nirmala]

I did find these two posts on a forum for motorized bikes:
http://motorbicycling.com/showthread.php?t=1845
http://motorbicycling.com/showthread.php?t=32933

But those were the only references I could find, and it seems clear that the one report of going through a tire quickly came from having the pressure of the roller on the tire way too high, and it was using a gas powered friction dive that was described elsewhere as having "massive torque". The others who responded found that their tires were lasting a long time.

 

[J.R.]

@Jeff Guida

Thanks for coming here to answer questions about your Share Roller. Innovation and out of the box thinking is how ebikes have gotten where they are today. It's also good to have discussions like this, at this point in development.

I also wonder about tire wear, I guess the real answers will come from the first group of owners/riders. It's possible the tire manufacturers might respond to questions as they relate to the friction aspects of the drive.

My question relates to the use of this product on Citi Bike type of rentals as shown in the video earlier in this thread, since it's where this all seems to have started. The Citi Bike agreement expressly forbids the use of "electric drives" in the prohibited acts section.

(Link Removed - No Longer Exists)

Jeff, have you spoken to the administrators of the Citi Bike program, or any rental program and gotten any clarification about the use of the Share Roller with their bikes?

Thanks

 

[JeffG74]

Thanks for the responses everyone. One more point related to off-road use that I forgot to mention - pebbles, rocks, and other debris can interfere with the exposed motor-tire interface. ShareRoller's position at the top of the tire is much less at risk for this than other systems that drive the bottom of the rear-tire, where not only are they quite close to the ground, but will also see debris kicked up at them from the front tire.

As for fat bike tires, ShareRoller's current design will accommodate 4-inch wide tires without any problem. Given the amazing popularity of fat bikes, we are looking into a few tweaks that sill expand that to 5-inch.

And as for specific bike share operators, indeed use of ShareRoller would be governed by their individual user agreements. And while the device works perfectly without any modifications on the bikes of over 15 networks worldwide, we cannot recommend ShareRoller's use on any bike share network if it is not permitted. That being said, we have had interest from a number of bike share operators, both in North America and abroad, and in fact will be conducting one or more pilot tests in the Spring. That's all we can say for now.

This article from the Wall St Journal has some nice video footage related to ShareRoller use on bike share (and scooters) if you haven't seen it, although the customers shown may be violating that particular bike share's Terms of Use, as don't forget that NYC has an unusually hostile attitude towards e-bikes at the moment:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorkers-find-new-ways-to-roll-1442864055

 

[Nirmala]

I just received an update from Jeff at ShareRoller. They are still on track for May shipment of existing pre-orders, and they have opened up another round of pre-orders at about a 30% discount from retail that will ship in June. You can learn more on their indiegogo page at: http://igg.me/at/shareroller/x/12713097