Intra Drive crowdfunding UK production of gearbox e-bike drive

I'm into it, I like the idea. Derailleurs and cassettes have no place on e-bikes. I won't buy an e-bike until there's a gnarly winch'n'plummet style bike with something like this fitted.

Motor & Gearbox will be in my next eBike, just hope that it's 2nd generation by then.

Great idea and love how small it is. Just want to know the answer to the first questions most people want to know (which isn’t listed on their website or in this arrival), what’s the peak NM torque and how much does it weigh?

It's a good idea. I doubt very much that crowdfunding will raise enough to develop it.

Im 100% on board.

Gearboxes dont normally work because they are draggy compared to a direct chain drive and you notice it on a proper bike.

E-bikes circumvent that entirely, and it brings the weight in board and low down, frees up the rear wheel.

I think im gonna buy myself an ebike for my 40th ina  few years, and if i do its defintely going to be one of these setups.

I'm another that loves the idea of a motor gearbox combo. Been following Intradrive for a while, was a bit gutted for them when Pinion got theirs to market first

EDIT: big selling point is the compatibility with Shimano mounts though. Would make it quite tempting to buy a second hand shimano bike with budget put aside to convert to Intri Drive if/when it dies

Yer for me - not buying an ebike until 50th (which is creeping up!) and only then when there are some decent motor/gearbox unit bikes.

there are a few others about also such as the latest Valeo/Effigear

https://www.effigear.com/en/content/24-smart-e-bike-system

i`m desperately hoping this gets to market before my shimano motor expires - as it uses the same mounts - would be a awesome upgrade!

@vanhalen

you might think they could move to offering an kit system for existing shimano motor users as one way into the market

i keep suggesting it to them! all it needs is a battery plug adaptor and the controller. its not rocket science!

Hi this is Mark from Intra Drive Ltd.Thanks for your interest!
The weight is 4.5kg without cranks - this is displayed on our website.
The torque, which is normally specified at the output sprocket on mid drive motors, is hard to define, because we have an 8 speed gearbox....  so it changes depending which gear is selected.  I can give you some numbers, but they won't be directly comparable to Shimano Bosh etc.  Hence we do not publish this data (and neither do Pinion).

The torque, which is normally specified at the output sprocket on mid drive motors, is hard to define, because we have an 8 speed gearbox

Surely, the torque of the motor is at the input to the gearbox, the number of gears is irrelevant. The torque at the output of the gearbox would be a power measurement rather than a torque measurement IIUIC.

Torque of mid drive motors (Shimano, Bosch, Brose, Mahle etc) is defined at the output sprocket, which is after the reduction gearing within the drive unit.  It could be defined at the input (eg at the motor shaft, before reduction gearing), but this isn't the industry standard.

The torque our motor produces before the reduction gearing is about 3Nm (peak), but obviously this is a meaningless number if comparing to the torque at the peak output sprocket of the Shimano EP8  (85Nm).

Power is simply Torque x rpm. so you can define power or torque at any point within a powertrain.

Torque is quite a confusing metric for most people, and as I say we'd need to specify 8 different torque values (one for each speed) so we decided to instead express the output as power in Watts.

FWIW Pinion state "85Nm or better 160 Nm wheel torque", not exactly sure what they mean by that

@mravilious - what makes them more durable than the competition? Is it the integration of gears and motor into a single unit or something specific to the gearbox or motor designs? How will you demonstrate its better than the other guys (enough to convince a crowd to fund it)?

Seems like a great product, not a fan of crowdfunding myself, good luck to them though.

I'm another not yet ready for an ebike, but when I am, it will hopefully be something like this.

Getting rid of the derailleur and the unsprung mass of giant 700+ gramme cassettes can only be a good thing.

i got a linkedin saying they had met (and gone past) their funding target in just 4 days...

dazzydw: The big improvement in durability with our powertrain comes mainly from the gearbox.
Gearboxes are inherently more durable than derailleur gearing systems.

Take the gearbox in a car for example: generally speaking it requires no maintenance and is still going strong after hundreds of thousands of miles when other parts of the car reach end of life.  This is because gearboxes use hardened steel gears, lubricated with oil, and protected from the elements.

Contrast this with derailleur gearing: pressed steel sprockets (not high strength hardened steel) which easily damaged and are exposed to water, dirt, road salt etc.

We have tested the gears within our gearbox on a high power dynomometer we built, which is capable of loading the gears with the worst case peak load they will ever see in the real world, continuously.  In this way we were able to complete the equivalent of 10 years of real world heavy duty use within a few weeks. We then continued the testing, and the gears eventually failed in the way we had expected, based on simulation models we had previously run using specialist gear design software. Your question has made me realise we should really publish the results of the testing!

Also it's worth mentioning that we're not the first to develop gearboxes for bicycles, Pinion GmbH and Effigear (France) have been manufacturing gearbox drivetrains for bikes for 10+ years, and these products are well proven to be durable.  In June this year, Pinion launched a combined motor and gearbox for the e-bike market, which has been very well received. PINION MOTOR.GEARBOX.UNIT | Motor and gearbox in one unit

Our combined motor and gearbox is directly comparable to Pinion's system: equally compact, similar motor power, similar weight.  Bombadier group (Canadian manufacturer of trains, jet aircraft and many other things) heavily invested in Pinion, so clearly they are convinced that gearbox powertrains are the future for e-bikes!

I would love to know more about the whole sustainability/circular economy thing or do you just mean repairable.  For me it would mean some sort of definition of how repairable it is by the average home mechanic, how long spare parts would be available after a model becomes discontinued, how small a part is available, what sort of lifetime is the gearbox designed for, some sort of plan to make design files for parts available to other manufacturers in case the company folded.  At the moment those words are looking like marketing.

A good example might be siemens/bosch home electrical goods where they have a service site you can go to with exploded parts diagrams and you can see the different parts that can be purchased along with costs or Miele where they specify that they design for a 20 year life.

A gearbox is a great idea though, especially for e-bikes.

I think this looks great but I'm unsure of who (other than really small brands) is going to move away from Shimano, Bosch and SRAM. Yes, there's increasing numbers using Bafang & Fozthingy but not in noticeable numbers.

if they dont make the product you want you will go to an alternative supplier.

those brands above just dont make what is offered by Intradrive/pinion etc.

i want an intradrive motor as i have a shimano equipped bike and i accept that, at some stage (probably not that far away) i'll have to buy a new motor...

OEM wise the market may force shimano etc to build a gearbox motor.

It looks pretty rudimentary at this stage. Compare this with the new Pinion system and it looks years behind. A bit more work on the design needed I think. Good luck.

I’m not entering all my details to get the pitch, any idea what you get for the investment?

nauticalbiker
Full Member
It looks pretty rudimentary at this stage. Compare this with the new Pinion system and it looks years behind. A bit more work on the design needed I think.

That's hardly insightful, you're comparing something thats in full production to a prototype

Also it’s worth mentioning that we’re not the first to develop gearboxes for bicycles

And presumably like all those other gearboxes manufacturers are hoping that e-bikes will be the vehicle (excuse the pun) for mass market uptake of a product that up until now is of fringe interest to enthusiasts only. I can see that e-bikes, gearboxes and motors go together. My guess is that like early suspension was back in the day  it'll flush out to maybe one or two huge manufacturers who can get their products in front of the massive players in the Bike Industry Pon, Giant, Merida etc etc who'll decide who that be. Everyone else will, I suppose in time, pick up the "alternative to OEM" market after the mounting design has been settled.

At first I thought this was a product launch from Freeflow Technologies but instead it looks like Intra Drive are a completely separate Scottish based ebike company.

I would support them but I have a strict 'never give Edinburgh people money' policy 😉

Seriously though, I'm not really interested in ebikes for mountain biking but it looks cool so hopefully it'll take off.

I think this looks great but I’m unsure of who (other than really small brands) is going to move away from Shimano, Bosch and SRAM.

Probably true for the big manufacturers but I can see there being an aftermarket developing - especially as the big manufacturers don't seem to consider the motors a repairable item.  If your Shimano motor fails out of warranty buying something that's repairable in future seems a better option than replacing like-with-like.  If you've got one that you can get aftermarket repairs for they're still some hundreds of £