Last night I watched a really entertaining presentation on Google Video by a Canadian e-bike enthusiast & entrepreneur who rode from coast to coast last summer on his custom built Franken-e-bike.
(Edit: this is a 2 hour video. Not that there's anything wrong with that: I found it as entertaining / engaging - if not more so - than spending that time watching a typical Hollywood movie that would eat up as much time.)
7000 km on under $10 worth of electricity *
(Calculated
from his battery pack, not from the grid. It was not quite a couple of bucks difference.)
His average speed was something like 35 km/h, which is pretty decent.
The bike was pretty interesting:
It was a rolling platform for testing his home-built chargers, motor controllers, and different battery chemistries.
His goals for the trip were:
1) to meet up with other e-bike enthusiasts across the country
2) to test the feasibility of such a trip (in terms of finding power for recharging, etc)
3) to field test the stuff he built
4) to demonstrate how energy efficient e-bikes are
The cool thing is he mounted a digital camera on the bike that took a photo every minute, so he had a great basis for his presentation.
Talked a fair amount about the interesting characters he met along the way, too.
Video link:
Via Hackaday:
E-bike across Canada for $10 - Hack a Day