Freegen ebike regenerative braking hub mechatronic discussion (youtube.com)

Cool idea, I am surprised nobody came up with it sooner.

This is a pretty clever idea and the video does a good job of explaining how it will work. I'm looking forward to these becoming pretty standard on all ebikes.

I love the concept,but it saddens me that it's going to make hall-sensor/potentiometer brake levers an even more distant concept.

at least this adds a bit more granularity than the lame off/on ebike e-brake switches that are most popular right now -- but it sucks that it's at the loss of pad life rather than just sticking a dirt cheap hall sensor on a lever somewhere and leaving the pads for emergencies.

it is very clever, though.

Yesterday I was at a Bikeshop and was discouraged to buy a wheel hub motor eBike compared to a bike with these motor next to the crank. Apparently if you change your wheel (i.e. having a flat), you loose your warranty from a supplier(not going to name).

So a big negative for me is the added complexity and dependency on bike shops for simple things as changing wheels.

A fascinating idea, however it looks like the E-Bike industry has "moved on" to mid-drive motors anyway in recent years, which have the advantage of better weight distribution and being able to more tidily integrate into frames. Mid-drives don't have the missing freewheel problem, but due to this can't have regenerative braking. And I don't know, I think I'd still prefer two redundant mechanical braking systems rather than having the functionality of one being basically completely replaced to act as a fancy sensor for a software controller to know how much regen to apply. It's still great for these concepts being explored, and we're lucky to have a company like Grin Technologies in the aftermarket segment that are actively researching innovative new ideas.

Grin Tech is awesome - one of my favorite e-bike companies ever!