...but not to busy to pull this on you:
Bam! I just purchased my motor, got my last battery installed, bought a motor controller and all the connectors I'm going to need to feed this beast!
Price as it stands now:
Batteries: $997
DeWalt charger: $30
Anderson high current connectors: $110
Motor:$790
Motor Controller: $240
Throttle:$60
Washers, allthread, nuts: $20
total so far: $2250
That's a lot of cash and doesn't even include the bike ($800)!
To pay for itself, I'll look at driving my truck, which costs $62 to fill up and gives me a 300 mile range. That's 20 cents a mile in the truck. My daily commute is 14 miles, so 2.80 a day to work and back. That in itself is about $700 a year. There's also a $20 a month tax credit for biking.
Overall, I'm driving about 5000 miles a year in the truck, which is about 900 a year in gas... plus other maintenance, plus I know I'll 'drive' more with an ebike that's pretty much free to drive.
All said and done, it looks like this thing is going to take maybe 3 years to pay off. If it works well enough, I could theoretically stop paying car insurance, but I've heard that when you start back again they treat you as if you were 16.
So in summary I'll say that I might never break even with this bike, but it'll be amazing to build and ride.
I'd love to be able to ride this bike with my mountain bike onboard the xtracycle so I can go ride. I'll definitely need to insure this beast!
