BillN33

any Brompton owners signed up for this conversion?

URL is swytchbike.comdashfolding-bike-kits/

(I am not allowed to post URL's until I have 10 posts) - so put the dashes in

looks good value at present - but it is crowd funded and if you order now they are saying June delivery

the videos are good and apparently the business is being put together by guys from Panda cycles who have a good reputation

chagzuki

I have, the price was too tempting. I'm not sure the bracket will fit most configurations though... their website shows it on the post-2017 M-Type. So I'm not sure how it will fit my Brompton.

BillN33

did you go for the 25 or 50 mile kit

I'm really tempted, but as you say, not sure how it will fit and ride - pity it cannot fit on the Brompton block

linberl

It's crowdfunded - so June delivery most likely means November, lol. Hope it turns out well.

chagzuki

The 25. I might have misunderstood but I think I saw a facebook post in which Swytch claimed there will be a bracket that fits where the Brompton block does, but this would mean giving up the luggage options.

Schwinnsta

I think the Brompton one is only 25 kit.

BillN33

They do a 50 mile kit - US$575

I wonder how long the discounted price will last?

Schwinnsta

I stand corrected.

Doc_Wui

It's crowdfunded, but off the shelf components, except for the battery box, which is just a box. As a hobbyist with several electric bike kits, I think it's a good concept in design and if it didn't have to ship from the UK, I probably would be on their list.

jpjuggler

I saw the swytch bike conversion for brompton...I was intrigued. I went to Local bike store that carries brompton.. the mechanic said bromptons are not engineered to handled power pulling from the front wheel. it damages the frame/folding point. I do not know if the mechanic was sharing credible info or not. As I saw this thread, has anyone else heard negative prediction regarding swytch/brompton? the mechanic also said that brompton is coming out with its own electric model and the whole bike was re-engineered to take pulling power from the front.....the brompton site for electric is uk only... nothing available in N. America......at this point,..

Schwinnsta

A to B magazine has reviewed the Swytch.

Joe Remi

There have been several front-hub Brompton kits on the market for a while now, I had the NYCe Wheels kit. It worked fine, regardless of what your bike shop guy says.

jpjuggler

hmmm. that's great news... I can only assume NYCe is fairly reputable... how long have you had it.... ? Lots of miles on it? thanks for the info.

Joe Remi

I had it for 6 months but didn't ride very far. The lady who sold it to me said she used it for a year. Those little 250W motors aren't very powerful, a steel fork can handle it.

berlinonaut

Electric conversion Kits for the Brompton exist roughly since the early 2000s and front-wheel ones for more than 10 years now from a variety of vendors. Alltogether I'd assume they must have sold thousands over the years. I've not yet heard of a fork or a frame braking on a converted Brompton.

Indeed Brompton did some structural work on the bike frame and fork for their own electric conversion. Obviously 3rd parties cannot do that. Still it seems to be sufficiently robust. Brompton's factory electric bike got seriously delayed, for years and years, initially it was supposed to hit the shop floors in about 2010. In 2015 or 2016 Brompton stopped their dealers in Europe from selling 3rd party conversion kits to make room for the factory version, that slowly seems to hit the streets now in the UK and at some later point in time in the rest of the world. It probably has a bit of a higher quality level overall with an enforced frame and a torque sensor instead of a pedal sensor. I rode a prototype a while ago and it went nicely. But so do the conversion kits for a cheaper price. People using a conversion kit on their Brompton that I know are happy with it. For me more a question of taste and money than anything else.

Joe Remi

Brompton waited way too long - and way overhyped - what is essentially their own version of the standard 250W front hub kit. This "revolutionary" ebike "designed with help from Williams F1" might've been interesting three years ago. I'm bored waiting for it now.

berlinonaut

BTW one interesting thing about the Swytch is that in opposite to most other conversion kits you do not have to spread the fork or widen the dropouts. Both is to a minimal amount common with most existing conversion kits. So the conversion is easily reversible and in theory one could mount the swytch on a titanium Brompton as well, though I would personally not dare to do that.

Other than that the mounting of the swytch-bag with the battery on the handlebar seems to be a possible issue on the Brompton as the space for bags on the carrier block is then somewhat limited. In the test in a to b they stated a slightly higher use of battery power with the swytch than with the factory eBrompton, but not to a relevant amount.

Joe Remi

The NYCe Wheels kit I had mounted the battery inside a regular Brompton bag. This kit operates with the bracket as part of the battery, the wires plug into it. I see no reason why you couldn't just place the whole thing - battery on bracket - into a bag.

Joe Remi

Oh, one reason is you'd lose the ability to change pedal assist settings on the fly. Hmm, that's a big drawback, and putting the battery on the bars - aside from affecting the steering - is definitely going to screw up the fold.

berlinonaut

A bit space consuming. During the indigogo campaign they optionally offered a socalled "one cable solution" that did not need/use the connector. I'd consider this a good solution for the Brompton. It seems that only a handful of people ordered that, possibly beccuase they were not aware of the space issues on the Brompton. What makes it even more interesting is that the weight of the battery is on the frame, not on the handlebars. A bit more sophisticated is the solution on the nano Brompton kit where the battery is also in the brompton bag, but the connection is done via the luggage block, so no need do connect or disconnect cables.

towndock

The Swytch 25 miles and 50 mile ratings don't exactly compare to other kits mileage assumptions. I put a Leeds 250 watt front wheel kit on a bike (not folding) for my wife over a year ago. It works great. Leeds is a simple concept - you just press a switch when you want some electric boost - otherwise just pedal. The hub motor doesn't appear to cause significant drag when just pedaling.

Leeds mileage ratings actually assume your cover the miles under electric power. The Swytch mileage number must presume you are pedaling the whole way also (the battery amp hour numbers are too small otherwise.) The Swytch 25 mile battery is 5 AH. The Leeds 24 mile battery is 12.8 AH. Of course the Swytch is pedal-assist.
The Swytch pricing is attractive. I'd love to see a real world review of a Swytch compared to a unit like the Leeds.

Joe Remi

Yes and I think Leeds under-represents based on the assumption of no pedaling. I doubt Swytch is using that method to get their number.

berlinonaut

The Swytch, as all actual kits sold in Europe, is a pedelec kit - you only get electric support when pedaling. To ensure that you are pedaling is done via a sensor, via a magnet on the cranks ("pedal sensor") on the cheaper ones (most retrofit kits use that), via a torque sensor in the bottom bracket on the more sophisticated and more expensive ones (barely found on retrofit kits). These kind of sensors are mandatory due to European law. In the uk and some other European countries up to 2016 (?) you would not need a sensor and were allowed to use a simple throttle instead (which I think may still be the case i.e. in the US). This seems to be what you describe for your Leeds. This is in fact more like an electric moped than like a bicycle as you can move w/o pedaling (though you still can and are supposed to). Obviously riding moped style will eat more battery than when you do half the work through pedaling. This explains the differences in range. Still the mileage rating of the Swytch is probably on the optimistic side, as with most kits and ebikes. And the mileage differs vastly depending from which level of support you choose. Most kits have something like five different levels, with the higher levels of support obviously eating more of your batter, thus influencing the range massively. With the torque sensors you'll get a percentage of your own pedaling force on top by the motor, with the levels being something like 25%,50%,100%,200% etc.. Basically a fair deal - you pedal, the motor supports accordingly.
With the magnet ring-sensors the sensor just checks the movement of the crank and applies power to the amount of the level you have chosen upfront - so it is more of a fixed amount of Watts that you get in each level and typically only the higher levels of support will support to the legal max. speed of 25 kph when the motor cuts out (32 kph for the US and Canada, but I think not available on the Swytch Brompton kit). And as you can pedal w/o using power you can still move like a moped, just that you have to move the cranks w/o force. Obviously that will again influence your mileage to the negative.
So these range discussions are a difficult one. A to b does regular tests of ebikes and kits on a standardized route that includes flats as well as various, differently steep hills and measure the amount of battery power used when riding and pedaling comfortably. With Brompton kits they typically measure around 10 Wh/km. The (preproduction) Swytch was a bit higher than that, the factory eBrompton a bit lower than that. "Normal" sized bikes may be a bit lower as well with the suboptimal aerodynamic rider position on an M or H Brompton being one of the reasons.

An average, not too sporty cyclist will be able to deliver between maybe 75 and 150 Watts for a longer timespan. As a very rough estimate on a bike like the Brompton you'd need around 185W for 25kph, according to Kreuzotter. At 75W you'd reach about 17,5 kph, at 100W about 20 kph, at 150W around 23 kph. In the flat, more power needed when it get's hilly. So you see where the differences in range come from - they depend from the amount of your own pedaling force that you bring in in addition to the motor.

Mr.Motorvator

Yes, that's why I designed the NANO that way! Brompton has got it wrong too - why dump a loyal bunch of customers who have several bags to suit them? The Swytch motor is the same performance as the NANO - when we have tested enough we might use it to avoid fork modification.

Mr.Motorvator

I hear this rubbish all the time: Bromptons own system drives the front wheel OK so why not others? I have ridden my NANO conversions EVERY DAY for 10 years with no fork/frame problems. It is quite typical of every manufacturer to refuse warranty on any modifications they didn't think of themselves. Pashley the same: I have converted every one of their bikes and I bought my first Tri-1 from the guy who designed it - Richard Cresswell - and he fitted a motor for me.