GreenWheel Wants to Make Going Electric Easy for Bikes
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 02.19.09
Photo via Discovery News, credit MIT Media Lab
How great would it be if you could just swap out the wheels on your pedal-powered bike and - Voila! - it's an electric bike? Well, you might not have to wait too long for that to be a reality.
MIT scientists are working on a bike wheel that would allow you to swap out your regular old boring bike wheels for an electricity-generating wheel.
Called GreenWheel, the system is designed so that all the important components - power generation, storage and propulsion - are all encompassed within the wheel. And it can last as long as 8 years or 40,000 miles.
From the outside, the GreenWheel has the radius of a small dinner plate and is about 2 inches thick. Inside the aluminum frame sits the three major GreenWheel components: an electric generator, batteries and an electric motor.
Something so small, durable, and able to be retrofitted to existing bikes could mean an inexpensive option for people looking into electric bikes.
More details about how it works and what knowledge it takes to install it is available at Discovery News.
Via Discovery News
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