Look out for v2.0 which also features a sail on the front which you blow to go faster.

now that is genius!

I don't own one of these, but that sounds actually useful if for example I'm about to climb a big hill and want to pedal at a less strenuous pace (but for more time) than would be needed to overcome the slope.

Incredible comment.

As someone who sucks at physics, I'm convinced that Trollface has proposed so many solutions around the internet to provide free energy, but the capitalists are conspiring to sabotage him, just as they did to N.Tesla.

Yet another "engineering student" who hasn't learned his Newtonian physics yet. Which I'm pretty sure is covered in grade school, but you never know.

The amount of emojis scream AI generated.

LinkedIn has been shit posting goldmine lately.

I have never seen the Arabic language translation of this meme but I immediately understood it from having seen the English version.

It's a good idea, even if it can be ruled out. That person should offer more ideas. All of those Newtonian physics people never seem to offer up ideas.

You were introduced to classical mechanics at age 8?

Yea I’m 99% sure it was drafted by AI

Likely not only drafted with AI, but only pursued because he entered the idea into ChatGPT and asked "is this a good idea?," and uncritically took ChatGPT's enthusiastic support as vindication.

The Future

Tbf it wouldn't be a perpetual motion machine because batteries -- even rechargeable ones -- have a limited capacity that reduces over time because they are a chemical reaction, the components of which degrade over time.

Most people don't. There is just no free lunch to ever be had.

Regenerative braking was my first thought.

It's impressive that he figured out how to create a post though, considering room temp iq (during the winter in a commie block apartment, in celsius)

Mechanical engineering student huh?

1 week

This is a normal trajectory for college freshmen. Get introduced to a bunch of basic ideas. Spitball and try to see how you can apply them. Start running into all kinds of caveats and engineering hurdles. Go back to class. Bother the RA. Maybe actually learn more about what you're trying to accomplish. Become a better engineer.

Not believing you can create a perpetual motion machine should practically be an entry requirement. If you think you can you need to go back and do high school science again.

I once had an exam question that began with the phrase "ignoring thermodynamic principles...". That question really threw me, it basically asked what would happen under XYZ situation if physics didn't exist. How the hell am I supposed to know that?

My LinkedIn feed is like 90+% AI at this point. I don't know why anyone bothers looking at the "content" on that website anymore. I only see it just incidentally on my way to the job listings and I am always shocked at how terrible it is

I was about to say, could this post possibly have any more emojis? Although, from my knowledge of existing MLM hunbots I unfortunately already know the answer lol

Yeesh... the entire thing is so much secondhand embarrassment it makes me want to delete my entire profile just for the sake of it regardless of never using the actual site

I've gone as far as 55 miles in one bike ride, and hope to do a full century ride someday. 30 miles is not at all out of the ordinary for bicyclists.

30 miles is laughably low. A single ride would drain it for me. To go to store it would take 10 miles, not counting anything else.

He's a student so he probably just doesn't know any better

what sort of bike rides is he doing where you have to recharge that more than once a month?

My distance to work is 12 km one way, so your battery would be empty afer two days...

He's probably lying. While the bar is pretty low for entry level M.E.s, it's not quite that low yet.

As an old Toolmaker, I have made my share of intern wannabe MEs cry after crushing their idiot ideas. I swear, the older engineers would send those clowns to me just so I would beat them about the head and neck with a stick.

(I have a Daughter that has a PhD in ME. I warned her to turn down the free lobotomy offer upon finishing her degree. She listened and is now a happy and very, very smart Dr. of Engineering working with EV and HVAC systems)

Don't be so hard on him. He is still a student and got to learn.

wow, you did not have to call out my subnautica in-cyclops power cell recharging stations for spare cyclops batteries like that

That's effectively what hybrid cars do.

Essentially regenerative braking. Should work, though the question is how coat effective.

F1 has been using this principle for years

That's just regenerative braking on a bike. Without batteries.

In theory that idea isn't actually bad although I suspect in practise the mechanism would be extremely complicated and would be liable to jamming it in opportune moments. That said doing this electronically is already a thing, although not really in e-bikes.

Dynamo lights work off a similar principle. It extracts energy from pedaling or the wheels spinning to power lights on the bike. You can feel the drag and it's probably about 5w of power. Really not a whole lot. About the same energy you'd save from wearing smooth socks or cleaning the chain for some perspective.

The extra weight required to implement a solution like yours would probably rob the rider of any gains. But in a very theoretical sense it could work if the material weighed an insignificant amount.

Why flip a switch when you can just let the bike sense if it is going up or down hill?

Would make hilly terrain a much smoother ride.

Then again, if you do all that electrical, you already just have an electric bike. Which is even more versatile on flat ground.

Either that, or he's not very smart, had a thought, poppet it into ChatGPT, and ChatGPT as it tends to do, affirmed his dumb idea, and he ended up asking it to make a Linkedin post for him on the idea.

I've seen similar stuff from students who think they've cracked how something works, only to be incredibly wrong, because they only know half of what they need to, but don't know enough to understand how little they know. It's part of the journey of getting sorta-good at something though.

A parody account... on LinkedIn?

I'm becoming increasingly more and more confused as to what this site's purpose is intended for... I think they lied to me in college lol

The Law of LinkedIn:

If you think it's satire, it's probably actually just a really stupid individual.

got to also involve nft, blockchain and ai somehow

Make sure to invert the polarity of the dilithium matrix. That always seems to help.

Counterpoint:

Hills exist, go down them.

Like, the whole point of these things, at lesst as I see them, is that you get that free lunch on the way down a hill, then when going up a hill, well yeah, you still aren't gonna like, be 1:1 be able to power right back up it, but it will be easier going up that hill than if you did not have your free energy lunch on the way down.

This then results in you not needing to expend as many literal calories going up a hill, so now, you don't need as much food to recharge after a ride, thus you do actually on net come away with at least a portion of a 'free lunch', in that you don't need as much food.

But yes, I will give you that... the overall weight added to the bike from the batteries would have to be in a manageable range, so that the uphill assistance is not just entirely used on uh, pulling its own weight.

Apparently regenerative breaking efficiency in bikes is rather limited (small motors / generators, high friction). It still increases the range a fair bit (enough to be a better investment than bigger batteries), but efficiency is still not as high in bikes as in bigger vehicles which can drive more kinetic energy into bigger generators with better individual wheel control

Some paper says ~25% extra range in bikes at the high end vs ~50% energy savings in Japanese trains. Different units for those numbers, but you can infer that trains has much more efficient regenerative breaking because that number indicate a doubled range for the same amount of energy used.

I have a very high end e-bike (because I'm bad with money) and it doesn't have regenerative braking so I don't think it is a thing.

I know regenerative braking is a thing but it just doesn't seem to be on ebikes all that much if at all.

There was actually a prototype environmentally friendly airplane designed and tested back in 2000 during a genocide in Yorkshire that I feel like isn't talked about enough. The plane, using bicycle technology, was successful in transporting all of the local populace to safe territory with the help of a veteran Royal Air Force member and an American entertainer posing as a flight specialist. Really an incredible story and there's still footage of the flight. but I don't know the status of the airplane today.

Hello, I am the owner of a large investment fund and I am willing to offer 1 billion dollars to develop this young man’s technology

They are already trying to EV airplanes.

Is this serious or a joke? Regenerative braking and other energy recovery methods have been standard on electrified vehicles for decades. Electric planes do exist, but the problem is that the mass to thrust ratio for electric motors is worse than jet engines. Most successful ones are pretty small and light.

Yes but they do not offer regenerative... Accelerating

My e-bike dosen't have it and it's sounds pretty complex to add efficiently on a bike. It's just take like 5 hours to charge in a normal output. And every corporate building have outputs for e-bike so I can charge while working.

Yeah, same, I like this idea.

If your actually mobile bike can also be used as a makeshift generator, to feed into a home backup battery?

Yeah maybe not huge levels of appeal there, but it is a neat utility feature.

Maybe I've played too many zombie survival games with base building... or, maybe I am aware of the shockingly shitty state of the US power grid.

Also:

If you have a bike, and battery/powerstation like that?

That leads to a potentially amazingly ironic situation where you effectively jump start a dead ICE car ultimately from a fucking bicycle, if you can hook your battery/transformer/power station thing to charge a portable car battery jump starter.

Honestly this would make a great video idea for Tom Stanton.

I love it, and it reminds me of James May talking about using launch control at a zebra crossing

For each second of using regenerative braking, you can accelerate for 0.7 seconds.

But how much do you actually brake when riding a bicycle? That's completely neglectable (at least for me).

Electric cars already do this and I'm sure there are some smaller electronic mobility devices that also do regenerative braking. It's not exactly a new concept.

What added weight? If there already is an electric motor on the bike you can just use that as a generator during braking or coasting down a hill. That’s what EVs already do.

You get into the habit of just ignoring the gears because it doesn't seem to make any real difference. Sure been in a lower gear is more efficient but it doesn't feel any different so you don't think about it.

Wind being an outside source of energy can actually make this work. As long as the wind is blowing, not just your own motion making it feel windy.

Or you know, a sail.

Nobody will even consider listening to a pitch to schedule a phone call to listen to an elevator pitch for consideration for a short phone interview to be considered for a meeting to speak with the board, unless it includes AI for some useless reason.

So add AI.

Regen braking exists, and everyone does want it, because it gives free power when you hit the brakes. The reason nobody adds it is because up until recently, you could only have coasting or regen braking, and not having to pedal literally all the time is just far more important for bikes. There's a recent tech, freegen? Called something like that, it lets you have both regen braking and coasting,