Originally Posted by
yves845
I love your machine, it's an impressive trike !
Your Idea of finding someone in town to recharge the batteries is the most pratical and lest costly proposition.
I looked at solar panels for RVs and to get sufficient output, the surface is larger than the bike, it cost 3000 euros and it's 50 pounds of added weight. And anything foldable is providing a riculous amount of power considering the big batteries need.
Regenerating brakes will not be efficient enough.
Those trikes are built by the local bike co-op, not myself, although I've thought about trying to make one myself. The basic design is relatively straightforward. They do sell a few, but they're not cheap.
Center for Appropriate Transport ? 455 W 1st Ave. Eugene, OR 97401
For the winter, they've added a surfboard shaped roof onto the top of the Pedaler's Express trike to keep some of the rain off.
There is a class of solar panels with relatively high efficiency called "semi-flexible" that might be worth looking at.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SOLAR-CITY-...E/372020470647
It looks like they are about 41.3" x 21.2" (1050mmx540x2.5mm) for 100W. Probably other models available, for 2.5 Kilos. If you put 4 on the roof, you'd have 3'5" wide, and 7' long for a cost of about $600, weight of 10 kilos (plus the controller and circuits), and about 400W peak power. You can't expect to always generate at peak power, but might be able to make up some of your power needs.
Hmmm, here is a 48V, 40Ah battery pack, 12.75 Kilos, for $958. Multiply that out, and you get about 1600 Wh of power.
https://it.aliexpress.com/item/lifep...816045901.html
So, that would give you about 100w for 16 hours, or 400w for 4 hours. So the battery pack is about the same weight as your solar panel. Similar cost, and may have more energy than the solar panel generates in a day.
As we say, six of one, half a dozen of the other.