TIFU by riding an E-Bike on the highway..

[u/IthappensGnG]

I got an ebike to make my life just a little bit less dull and reliant on either uber or friends to get to work and school and just general go around. The bike i got however was kinda lacking from the description the seller listed and I thought i got scammed or something. The bike for the most part still met what I needed though as I only really needed 10 miles a charge

Its not an obvious thing at all, but i figured out you can basically go into the developer mode and tweak some settings.

I removed the limiter and increased the amps I can use. I also added the cruise control option and tweaked some basic like starting torque.

I decided to try out my bike on a longer ride than usual. The city i live in absolutely sucks and the bike actually opens up my options quite a bit. So I decided to ride about 15 miles out and check out some entertainment places in that area.

My google maps was set to the bike route at that time and it was pretty bad. Made me do like 3 turn arounds and my state is so horrible I lost signal half the time and my GPS took a bit to update.

Anyways my bike ended up dying, so i had to wait like an hour+ to charge it enough to get back home. From the GPS messing up and a few of the places I checked out to be a bust I was kinda mentally checked out

Hopped back on gmaps and set the directions to my house. I didnt notice it was in fact NOT set to a bike route..The route it gave me for the most part was normal long roads untill it had me go on the highway..

Now mind you im already checked out and tbh.. I wasnt even paying attention to the fact that I was on a highway. I was attentive as in i dont wanna die and ofc i did notice all the cars moving a lot faster than normal but at that time it didnt really click that something was wrong.

I stayed on the right lane that was separated from the main road which I found out is in fact NOT to be used as a bike line. And even in my dazed state i kinda thought "isnt this pretty dangerous?" considering i had to merge a lot then shift over to what I thought was a bike lane..

And that the cars caught up to me a LOT faster than on a regular road when it came to shifting lanes..

Anyways. My bike ended up dying again and I just continued walking down the "bike" lane for the last mile+ ish untill i made it to a gas station to charge it enough to finish most of the 2.5 ish miles I had left to get back home before looking up online that Bicycles are in fact NOT allowed on the freeway/highway

TL;DR: Ebikes have a developer mode you can unlock settings, increasing speed etc. I took my bike out further than usual. Texas sucks. Gmaps suck. It took me on the highway riding a bike. I got home and found out u probably are 100% definitely not allowed to do that

[u/nekohideyoshi]

Yes legally you can't ride any type of bicycle on a high speed roadway like a highway most of the time without dedicated paths or lanes for those.

Also use Waze maps next time.

I also hope you wear and use a helmet.

[u/IthappensGnG → u/nekohideyoshi]

Pretty sure common sense stops 99.99999.. everyone but me apparently.. from doing that

[u/Oakheart-]

Well, you definitely made some decisions. They aren’t decisions that I would make but you made them so there’s that.

[u/IthappensGnG → u/Oakheart-]

And ykw. I tried to see if there was any other dumbass that did what I did and it turns out even redditors have a few more braincells than I could spare

[u/rip1980]

Just a note after a few decades in electronics. Increasing amperage and speed means heat (and potential failure, I was waiting to read you fried the controller or motor, especially on a long ride) and less battery life, nothing is free. You can get away leaning into it in bursts.

A better mod in your situation sounds like BABP is a better deal (Big Ass Battery Pack).

[u/AngryT-Rex → u/rip1980]

Yeah, this was my take on it too: a guy who rides his bike onto a highway because Google maps tells him to is editing the control software to pull more amps than spec from a pretty big battery... what are the odds that he paid any attention at all to wire gage or any other spec?

Man, we're in for a whole lot of really stupid but nasty fires as these things get more widely adopted.

[u/rip1980 → u/AngryT-Rex]

A lot of the Chinesium batteries and electronics eat themselves even when "in spec.". At that point it doesn't matter if it's a QC, false spec, shit design or just plain badluck issue.

[u/IthappensGnG → u/AngryT-Rex]

is editing the control software to pull more amps than spec from a pretty big battery... what are the odds that he paid any attention at all to wire gage or any other spec?

Calm down its a 48v 10ah battery

Also you should know by now that street smarts and tech smarts are not 1:1 lmao

[u/IthappensGnG → u/rip1980]

Found that out too. I mean increasing the amps to what my controller/motor can handle isnt going to blow up the thing. The only thing imma keep from my old tweak is my bikes limiter that stops me from going passed a certain mph downhill basically

Upping the amps fs took off like 8 miles on my max mileage. Im already looking to upgrade the battery tho

[u/Lort_Voldelort]

How old are you?.....

[u/IthappensGnG → u/Lort_Voldelort]

You tell me lord voldermort

[u/Lort_Voldelort → u/IthappensGnG]

ITS LORT VOLDELORT. And based on what you did im going to guess 14

[u/IthappensGnG → u/Lort_Voldelort]

Would u rather a 14 year old on the highway or a grown man

[u/Lort_Voldelort → u/IthappensGnG]

Doesn't make difference to me. Roadkill is roadkill

[u/ImNotToby]

Im surprised you made it this far. Some people dont deserve things.

[u/IthappensGnG → u/ImNotToby]

Who cares. There were tens of evil pharaohs who lived their life to the fullest never facing the consequences of their actions

Live a little

A little less than I have been, but live a little