Scooped again by the Scooter Scoop, who report Piaggio today published a patent for an electric moped with two motors, one driving the back wheel, the other located inside the front wheel. Over the years, many manufacturers have tried to power the front wheel, usually from within, as seen in the 1922 Megola to the current Revo Power Wheel. Most of these met with little success, but Piaggio seems bent on innovation lately. Perhaps this patent is just a legal lockdown of a rough idea, or maybe an integral front-wheel electric motor is an alternative to their HyS gas/zero-emission concept, or even a powerplant for the Carving Tool. Who knows what madness Piaggio is up to?
2 thoughts on “Piaggio patents 2-wheel drive electric “moped””
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I’m guessing that this DOES have something to do with the HyS project. Regenerative braking is essential to highly efficient electric vehicles – and *most* breaking effort is accomplished at the front wheel. To recover breaking power you need a generator in the front wheel, and it might as well be a motor too.
Hub motors are such a useful concept in EV’s that we may end up seeing an internal combustion/electric hybrid with *3* motor/generators. Two hub motors in the wheels and a third generator attached to the combustion engine without any mechanical linkage to the drive system. No gears, no transmission, no drive belts, chains or shafts, no mechanical cables.
Damn, scooped by my own laziness. I just sold off my bravo project that I was going to do that to. E-hubs are readily available on ebay and other online electric bike shops. They can string a 16 inch rim to the hub but the controlers would need to be adjusted. The battery pack isn’t very big and by my measurments would fit perfectly on the back rack of a bravo. I guess they could sue me for infringement if I ever built one. Maybe I just dodged a bullet!