Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2013 Vol I

WCECS 2013, 23-25 October, 2013, San Francisco, USA

Developing of an E–Bike Testing Station and

Measuring of Efficiency of E–Bikes
Jaromir Konecny, Martin Pies, and Martin Latocha

Abstract—Quality check in industrial process is required in

more and more fields. One of such field is electric bicycle.
Electric bicycles become more popular for general public due
comfortable and ecologic possibility to transport. Before the
electric bike leaves the factory, it should be tested. This article
proposes concept of testing station, which is available to test
electric bikes.
Index Terms—Electric bike, Distributed measurement, Mi-
crocontrollers, Power system measurements, Prototype system,
Quality check.

I. I NTRODUCTION
OWADAYS general people use bikes. The bikes are
N popular not only in Netherlands, but also in China or
in USA as it is mentioned in [7] and [8]. Moreover the
popularity of electric bicycles rapidly increases in Czech Fig. 1. Testing station concept
Republic [1] (in czech). This article proposes concept of
testing station for electric bicycles [2]. The aim of testing
station is provide the complete test after production. Request
of tested bicycles is the chassis does not be opened during the
test. Battery pack is not part of the E-bike. The main idea is
to fix the E-bike in the testing station, then simulate standard
using and print certification. The E-bike support is active
while pedals are spinning only [5], [6]. The simple solution
is to connect motor, which will rotate pedals and it will
simulate normal operation. The powered wheel is connected
to electronic brake which simulates load. During the test
several quantities are measured. The E-bike testing station
is able to measure pedal motor current, voltage and power.
Similar concept is presented in paper [3], but the novelty
of this solution is in comprehensive testing system, which
allows to estimate a potential maximum load of bicycle’s
propulsive unit. The electronic brake is able to measure,
load, distance, speed etc. Moreover the battery simulator is
connected and it measure input current, voltage and power.
It is possible to calculate total efficiency of the bike. The
Fig. 2. E-bike testing stand
concept is shown in Fig. 1.

II. H ARDWARE CONSTRUCTION

via USB. Main module cares for timing, measuring and data
E-bike testing station is constructed as modular system. collecting from electronic brakes and measuring modules.
Flexibility is one of the important properties. Hardware The electronic brakes are connected wireless via Nordic chip
chassis is assembled from metal profiles and serves as stand. [9]. Moreover measuring modules can be connected to testing
The tested E-bike is fixed into this stand. See Fig. 2. station. In this case one measuring module is connected. By
The electric part is hidden in the cupboard and it includes connection another measuring module is possible to connect
the whole electric hardware. See Fig. 3. The heart of the E-bike motor and measure its power. This functionality is
stand is main module, which is connected to the computer not suitable for testing station, because it needs open the
E-bike chassis and connect measuring module between E-
Manuscript received June 29th , 2013; revised August 2st , 2013. This work
was supported by the project SP2013/168, named “Methods of collecting bike motor and E-bike control unit. The E-bike motor and
and transfer of the data in distributed systems” of Student Grant Agency pedal motor need low voltage to operate. Two power sources
(VSB - Technical University of Ostrava). MANSON are available in E-bike testing station [10]. This
All authors are with the Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical
Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 2172/15, power sources can be controlled by the main module. The
70833 Ostrava, Czech Republic, Europe, e-mail: [email protected]. pedal motor revolution is controlled that way.

ISBN: 978-988-19252-3-7 WCECS 2013

ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2013 Vol I
WCECS 2013, 23-25 October, 2013, San Francisco, USA

III. E LECTRONIC CONSTRUCTION

This chapter will describe E-bike testing station electronic.

The concept was developed consideration modularity and
flexibility. The E-bike testing station can be used as mea-
suring station for design and developing. The heart of the E-
bike testing station is main control unit designed on Freescale
Kinetis K60 processor [11]. The tower system is used. The
electronic is designed as elevator to Freescale tower system.
The advantage is simple periphery construction. It is not
necessary to take care for processor, because we are using
tower development kit. The block diagram is shown in Fig. 3.
The main control unit is powered by 12 V power source and
it also provide power source to CAN bus. Two another power
sources are used. The E-bike battery voltage is approximately
28 V, for this reason the regulated source MANSON 0−30 V
is used. For the purpose of spinning simulation the DC pedal Fig. 4. Measuring module
motor is used. The motor voltage was chosen as the same as
the voltage of measuring device. The pedal motor is powered
by another regulated source MANSON 0 − 30 V. The source Measuring module was designed as separate module based
is controllable by external signal. The external control signal on Freescale processor K20, which is able to measure three
is used for pedal motor speed regulation. The relay motor phase motors. The E-bike control unit produces 16 kHz
switching logic is used for quick stop and reverse spinning. PWM modulated signal, so it is necessary to sample the data
at least 32 kHz. The motor waveform shows Fig. 5. It shows
three voltages phases and one current phase. The measuring
module is capable to sample at frequency 100 kHz on three
phases voltage and three phases current. Thus, total sample
rate is 600 kSPS. The module has two AD converters and
at same time is measured one current phase and one voltage
phase. This provides to calculate power without time shift.
In addition, the measuring module calculates power and total
power in each step.

Fig. 3. E-bike testing station electronic block diagram

The E-bike control unit is also connected to Main Control

unit. This feature allows to test motors separately. It also
allows control support and it allows measure motor in
entire range of use automatically. The main control unit is
capable to connect with electronic brake. The E-bike testing
stand includes two electronic brakes. The first brake can be
connected to the front E-bike wheel and the second brake can
be connected to the rear E-bike wheel. Whenever one of the
electronic brakes starts rotate, it connects with main control
unit and it starts sending measured data. The communication
channel is wireless. Fig. 5. Three voltage phase and one current phase

To measure AC power is important to detect period. The

A. Measuring module
measuring module is able to detect periods from each voltage
This chapter will shortly describe the concept of measuring and current channel. See Fig. 5, period detection is much
modules. To preserve modularity and flexibility, the dis- easier from current channel. To provide better functionality,
tributed concept was chosen. The main control unit provides the calibration is necessary. The calibration must be done
CAN bus connection, moreover it provides power supply directly in measuring module, because it calculates power in
12 V. Two measuring modules are connected to the CAN each step and then sum for one period. The power calculation
bus. shows equation (1).

ISBN: 978-988-19252-3-7 WCECS 2013

ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2013 Vol I
WCECS 2013, 23-25 October, 2013, San Francisco, USA

1 X
N
P = u x · ix (1)
N x=0

N number of samples during one period

ux instantaneous voltage
ix instantaneous current
The power calculation with calibration shows the equation
(2).

1 X
N
P = (Ku ux + Qu ) · (Ki ix + Qi ) (2)
N x=0
where Ku , Qu , Ki , Qi are calibration constants.
Likely the computation capacity should be height. The
direct memory access is used to decrease of computation
power. One hundred samples are measured and then are
processed. The processor should process 100 values in one
millisecond. It should calibrate voltage and power, then Fig. 6. E-bike testing stand electronic
calculate power, detect period, all for three phases and finally
it should calculate total voltage, total current, total power and
send it to the CAN bus. One value should be processed in
less than 1.5 µs. It is clear, the computation power is high. Consider this situation. The E-bike support is maximal and
The processor load reach up to 98 % during measurement. the wheel speed is also maximal. The brake load starts
To summarize the measuring module parameters: increasing slowly. When the brake load reaches the maximum
• Measure three current phases −40 A to 40 A 100 kSPS
E-bike power, the speed drops and as a consequence the
each control unit efficiency also drops. When the efficiency drops,
• Measure three voltage phases −40 V to 40 V 100 kSPS
then maximum power also drops. As a result the speed
each falls rapidly. On the other side is electronic brake. The
• Calculate total 3 phase power
electronic brake load is also dependent on the speed. When
• Calibrate each sample (linear approximation is used)
the speed fall down, the load also fall down. The whole
• Provide DC measurement
system stabilizes on certain state. Unfortunately this state
• Provide AC measurement, trigger on each channel, up
not corresponds to efficiency and maximum power. The
to 125 Hz measurement of the maximum power and efficiency carries
• Galvanic isolated power source and galvanic isolated
out closely to point, when the speed drops.
CAN bus Another issue is transient response, when the load steps
• Fully isolated current channels up. Following graphs was divided into three separated figures
• Voltage channels with common ground because of transparency. Fig. 7 shows efficiency, when the
load step was 5 s. Fig. 8 shows efficiency, when load step
IV. E- BIKE TESTING was 10 s. Fig. 9 shows efficiency, when the load changed
continuously. It is clear, the fluent load change suppress the
This chapter will shortly describe E-bike test procedure. transient response.
One test involves several partial tests. The four basic tests
are presented in this article.
1) Support test
2) Quick stop test
3) Reverse pedals spinning test
4) Load test
The first test should check the whole E-bike functionality.
The pedal motor starts spinning and the support should start.
The second test is quick stop test. The support should switch
off in very short time maximum 280 ms after the pedal
motor stop. After that test the pedal motor starts spinning
in inverse direction. During this test the support should not
start. The last test measure E-bikes total performance. E-bike
is loaded by the brake and maximum power and efficiency
is determined.
One of the issues is how to determine total power and
total efficiency. The E-bike control unit has not constant
Fig. 7. E-bike efficiency test – 5 s
efficiency for different speeds. The E-bike control unit has
highest efficiency when the speed and support is maximal.

ISBN: 978-988-19252-3-7 WCECS 2013

ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2013 Vol I
WCECS 2013, 23-25 October, 2013, San Francisco, USA

The E-bike testing station has several advantages. The first

advantage is to make the quality check more objective instead
of subjective testing drive. The second advantage is ability
to print protocol and save measured data with barcode to the
database. It provides valuables data for the developer and
production. The next advantage is ability to reload particular
test, when the costumer make complain. The disadvantage
is price of the entire solution. The final cost was around
65.000 $. This cost involves expenses for hardware chassis,
electronic, fully modular C# testing application and research
expenses. For the future work we are expecting process
the measured data. We expect, we will make data analysis
and try to find some innovative way to increase the E-bike
quality. For example we will try to analyze the efficiency
of different E-bike constructions, different E-bike control
Fig. 8. E-bike efficiency test – 10 s units and motors. The E-bikes can be also fitted up by GPS
tracking system, as it is shown in [4].

R EFERENCES
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for quality check and research and development.

ISBN: 978-988-19252-3-7 WCECS 2013

ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)