I Bought an Electric Car You Can Pedal
I want you to imagine you’re the kind of weirdo that likes the idea of a bicycle the fresh air the exercise the environmental friendliness but you also occasionally want to haul a passenger you want to haul some cargo you want some weather shielding you want the
Ability to go faster than 15 mph and you want to needlessly spend $50,000 boy do I have the vehicle for you it’s called the twike it’s an electric car you can pedal it and it’s terrifying oh [Laughter] god this is my twike I paid actual money
For this and yes it is really called twik say so right here it’s a dumb sounding name until you understand that it’s a combination of twin and bike and once you understand that it’s still a dumb sounding name twike calls this a human electric hybrid which is silly
Because that also perfectly describes an ebike in the back between the rear wheels is an a as synchronous AC induction motor driving the rear wheels through a single speeed gear reduction and a differential up front are two sets of pedals one for the driver one for the
Passenger no one’s allowed to be dead weight in the twike they also Drive the rear wheels through a 5-speed chain drive gear box with Freewheel like a bicycle like I said it’s a human electric hybrid in the exact same way an ebike is a human electric hybrid but
With the added complication of reverse if you’re wondering if the pedals are back driven when it’s in reverse the answer is no in Reverse or neutral yes it has neutral the pedal are disengaged oh boy all right right leg in step on the bar lean back brace yourself fall in and
Then inside the twink twight I want you to imagine how you think this drives now throw all that out the window you’re wrong it’s far more terrifying than that to demonstrate I’m just going to take you on a drive with me it is in Drive pedals are engaged now should start moving
Forward that’s 10 m hour 20 25 30 twike the company was formed in Switzerland in 1992 but the story of twike goes back to 1986 when the first twike was built by a group of Swiss students for the World Expo in Vancouver that first twike while it looked similar to this one was basically just a covered tricycle didn’t
Have a motor and it was just a one-off prototype thing the twike 2 came about 5 years later in 1991 it did have a motor to assist with your pathetic pedaling interestingly the pedaling in the twi 2 was done through a belt drive CVT the twike 2 like the original twike was also
Just a one-off prototype thing but it was built to to develop the concept into something more daily usable and to gather interest from investors in 1992 the company twike was formed and in 1995 they finally began producing a twike for people to buy the twike 3 this is the
Twike 3 and look I understand why it’s called the three but don’t you think it’s a little confusing this is TK’s first model the twike originated from and was originally built in Switzerland in ’98 a German arm was set up and in 2002 production moved completely to
Germany where they are still produced to this day in rosenal Germany because mine is a 98 model that means mine was built in Switzerland I think and by the way if you’re wondering twin bike in German would be sing Rod twike is a silly name
But I prefer it to sing Rod oh and by the way this is fully street legal not as a low-speed vehicle as a regular Auto cycle according to the state of Missouri Peak power is 9 Kow that’s 12 horsepower although nominal power is only 3 Kow four horsepower which isn’t a lot but
Also you can pedal it and my feet are slightly too big for the pedals twight claims an averagely trained Rider can input 100 to 200 Watts through your meat sticks that number sounds High to me but let’s just go with it if the motor is outputting its full 9
Kow and you’re adding 200 Watts through the pedals you’re contributing 2% pedaling the twike is a bit like being a toddler and helping your mom bake a cake you feel like you’re helping granted that motor is rarely if ever going to Output the full nine kilowatts
So you’re generally going to be making a bigger difference than just 2% but not by much the main reason this has pedals isn’t so you can add range to the thing it’s to give you exercise and it does that very well and as I found out the
First time I took this out on a public road you get cardio not just from the pedals but also from the imminent fear of death hello this video is sponsored by Factor because the twi is the twike I’ve dragged it out here to what cannot inaccurately be described as the middle
Of nowhere so I don’t have to battle things like traffic or other people and to show you just how remote this location is we’re going to have a street picnic Factor meals are never Frozen and delivered straight to your door in a refrigerated box all you have to do is
Pick your meal in my case Urban crusted chicken stab the film to vent it and microwave for 2 minutes as I always say these Factor meals are delicious and my favorite are the chicken breast meals which I don’t know how they mass-produce chicken breast meals having be cooked in the
Microwave and have them come out better than I could do it myself but they do and it’s almost magical this Urban crusted chicken is some of my favorite there’s no road traffic right now but there is a plane flying directly overhead you can probably hear
It anyway if you want to try Factory for yourself and I highly recommend you do go to factor75.com and use code aging Wheels 50 at checkout for 50% off your first box you won’t regret it the controls in the twike are not like anything you’ve ever seen before unless
You’ve seen another twike obviously steering is done with this tiller in between the two seats and you can change the amount of steering resistance through this adjustive damper right here in the front of the twike that’s all the way loose which is not how I prefer it
The previous owner told me that the steering can get a little light and Twitchy at high speeds he lied to me it’s light and Twitchy at every speed this is the single most terrifying part of the twike look at this I’m barely moving the steering
Input I feel like a sneeze could end my life right now at the base of the steering tiller is a steering lock for security I guess this rocker switch on the back of the steering tiller is how you activate the stupid sounding Blinkers on the front of the tiller are these two buttons this is your throttle and this is your regen braking and yes it has regenerative braking the region is really good too step one step two and it can bring it to a Full Stop each one of these
Buttons is a two-step button much like the shutter button on a camera that’s all the granularity you get with your throttle and regen controls it has cruise control to engage cruise control you just double tap the throttle button and cruise control is engaged what’s
Funny about this to me is that it has a twep throttle you have low and high that’s it the cruise control is the only way to get an infinitely variable throttle and the steering is still way too Twitchy for me to let go of it good
God to my left is the parking brake up is off down is on you’re meant to hold on to these two inputs while you’re driving the thing there’s three switches on the back of this Bright’s wipers and Horn here’s the horn oh God is it in
Here with me and on the side of this handle is the shifter for the 5-speed bicycle gearbox you likely heard the clicking as I’m driving this thing along that’s the braking Pole to activate the brakes in the twike you backpedal like a children’s bike when you pedal backwards
You engage the braking pole which pushes on the brake master cylinder it has regular hydraulic brakes just an unusual way to use them the front brake is a disc and the two rear brakes are tiny little drum brakes and then in the middle there’s the gauge pot at the top
Is your speedometer it’s just a row of LEDs with increments of 5 mph not very granular but there’s a secondary digital speed readout in the screen below and yes it is in miles I know it says kilm per hour but the sticker is missing below that are various lights that
Indicate various things and five switches they are power window defrost yes it has a window defroster but more on that in a bit hazard lights fog lights which are rear only fog lights and your headlight switch and at the bottom is the twi’s trip computer it shows you various things like battery
Temperature voltage current draw in and out your digital speed I believe it can show you consumption but I haven’t been able to figure that one out yet and I haven’t played with it too much but there’s a few things things that I do know that I’d like to point out the
Reverse and forward membrane buttons at the top of the screen don’t do anything when you turn it on it says welcome twike 3 and when you turn it off it says bye-bye how cute in the middle between the seats is the drive direction selector lever this is drive this is
Neutral and this is reverse Drive is well drive neutral disengages the pedals but you can still drive the twike forward using the motor and reverse is well reverse just ahead of that is the emergency stop switch this doesn’t isolate the high voltage system like you would think that key that’s down there
That you can’t really see did that job but I’ve since disabled that key because it didn’t work reliably and that’s something you need from a high voltage disconnect button oh yeah feel the burn I do mean it it burns these are the Twix seats very basic they sit in kind
Of a recline position they tilt forward and they sit on a rail so you can slide them forward and backward and to adjust the height you pivot this asymmetric machine plastic block the seat sits on that’s your height adjustment by the way this lovely mahogany shelf in the back
That’s not a factory twike piece from Factory there’s a plastic piece of garbage that sits back here I made this and frankly overdid it also not Factory is that charger that’s something I added as well in the back we have well the back this rear window is glued in I know
It might look like there’s some sort of hatch or some way to access the inside of the twike from back here but no it’s glued in this light and this light is original the others are aftermarket replaced by some previous owner this is your rear fog light this is your reverse
Fog light and these are various turn signals brake lights running lights Etc and no it did not originally come with this charge point this is something I added j1772 did not exist in 1998 when this twike was built you might look at this bullet-shaped car bicycle thing with its
Wheel skirts and its underbody Arrow shielding and think that must be very aerodynamic well it isn’t the frontal area is very small but the drag coefficient is only 0.33 for reference a vehicle with a lower drag coefficient of 0.30 is aivan the twike does not have a heater now
Twike would argue you don’t need a heater because you’re pedaling and generating your own body heat which true I’m sweating in here and it’s 35° outside but also a heater in this wouldn’t make any sense the battery capacity is not very much and any amount of heat in here would drain a
Significant amount of energy from the small available capacity but it does have window defrosters in the form of two hair dryers here they are are they literal hair dryers that I don’t know they look like travel-sized hair dryers they’re Braun branded and they’re designed to run off 230 volts ac which
Is standard house voltage in Europe where this thing was built and they must be wired in series because they’re designed to run off 230 volts ac but they’re being run directly off the high voltage battery which is 400 volts DC yes that’s right this tiny thing has a
400 volt battery originally this would have had a nickel cadmium battery pack I don’t know what the capacity of that original pack was was but the previous owner tells me it was very heavy and the range was about 20 mi at some point in the past the previous owner purchased
The factory lithium upgrade from twike here’s one of the modules of the seven that factory lithium upgrade cost him $7,000 and netted him a whopping 3.5 kwatt hours again for $7,000 the factory lithium upgrade from twike was made of seven of these modules in series about 350 volts nominal it’s
Made of 18 650s and there’s no individual cell monitoring if you know what those words mean you’ll know how frightening that is powering this now as a battery pack I built myself 358 volts nominal about 42 volts fully charged 9.3 kwatt hours gross and the pack I built
Does have individual cell monitoring and other safety features to reduce the risk of it you know catching fire while charging the video detailing that new battery pack and all the other work I’ve done to this stupid thing is coming soon so watch out for that
Top speed of this thing is about 50 m an hour maybe if you can get it up that fast it slows down dramatically up hills and it no point does it ever feel stable the previous owner of this thing told me that one time downhill he got it up to
65 m per hour before I have driven this thing I thought it would be funny if I took this on the highway for the video but after having driven this thing no no no way am I ever taking this on the highway I trailered it out here to the
Middle of nowhere so that I wouldn’t have to deal with any traffic whatsoever I’d rather drive this in the river than on the highway range is I don’t know twight claims this can achieve an efficiency of 8 to 15 m per kilow hour I find that hard to believe
But if those numbers are correct then the battery pack I built can manage a range of 70 to 135 miles but again I don’t believe it I’m just going to call it 50 Mi and be happy with it I would do a range test but that sounds exhausting
I said the top speed is 50 mph but I’ve only seen that downhill flat level ground it seems to Peg it about 40 which that’s plenty fast enough the modern day Twi 3 which is almost entirely the same as this one built 26 years ago was available with four different battery
Options 7 11 14 and 18 kws all lithium ion and twight claims that Max battery of 18 KW hours can achieve a max range of 2 50 mil now I think that’s far too long to spend in this plastic exercise depository but you do you this feels utterly pointless to be
Pedaling this fast okay we’re we’re done with that oh my God speaking of the new twg 3 I haven’t yet told you how ludicrously insanely expensive the new twike 3 is according to twi’s website the new twike 3 starts at including 19% vat $37,000 and goes up to
$54,000 for a twike three and now I can tell you I paid 5,000 for this one with a dead battery and it won’t sound expensive anymore construction the frame of the twike is welded aluminum tube like a bicycle and the body is some sort of thermoplastic twi’s website calls
This luron which I’ve never heard of before likely to save weight wherever there doesn’t absolutely need to be a frame there is no frame two examples of that are one back here the window is the upper structure of this when I had the rear window out of this this whole
Section was just floppy there is a tube here though another example is here there’s an aluminum tube here and one on the opposite side of the twike the entire underbody Loop is unsupported plastic because of that when you step into the twike Do Not step onto the
Floor if you do there’s a nonzero chance your foot will go through that floor and if you did that to a twike that someone paid $50,000 for I’d imagine the owner would kill you on the spot it is quite a bit of fun I am focusing on how
Scary it is but once you take away the traffic and the other Perils of the road it becomes a lot of fun the canopy and the rear window are both polycarbonate which is totally fine but there’s a windshield wiper up here and polycarbonate scratches far too easily
For this windshield wiper to ever be used the canopy is lockable the lock is right here but you could just pop open the side windows reach in and open the canopy from the inside so not the best security on a related note these side windows roll up and out of the way if
You want fresh air in your twike this nose piece is removable behind it is the tow hook so you have to unbolt the nose cone to access the tow hook tires are plli motorcycle tires and I just told you everything I know about them if you don’t want these twike now offers 135
Width passenger car tires which look a little weird because they come on steel wheels but I imagine they’re easier to find replacements for than these okay now it’s time to talk about some of the TK’s design flaws I have not not driven this all that much and I’ve
Already found several things that are problematic if you drive the twike with the key in the steering tiller lock it is possible to activate that lock and jam the steering while you’re driving with your butt not only is it possible I’ve done it twice now speaking of the
Tiller it requires a little bit more space than is available to make hard left or right turns if you have a passenger you got to be careful because you could bump up against them and not make your turn cruise control is activated by double clicking the throttle button why is that a problem
Because it has a throttle button what happens when you try to modulate your speed and you only have a button you end up double tapping it and unintentionally engaging cruise control all the time I have not driven the twi very much and I’ve accidentally engaged cruise control
At least five times now at the beginning I thought the the throttle was getting stuck which really it kind of was the pedals sometimes get stuck like they are right now between the forward gear and the braking Pole to unlock them from from this position you just have to pop
It into neutral which is not that big of a deal but this happens like every time I make a three-point turn I don’t know how many Twix have been made but given the ludicrous entry cost and the fact that you’ve never heard of it before I’m going to guess the production number is
Pretty low like I said twike is still around and they’re currently working on their next model the twike 5 as you might have guessed the twike 4 was a oneof prototype thing it was actually a car designed to compete in the automotive X prize in 2010 the five an
Evolution of the four supposed to be more of a real car with actual range speed capability and all that it still has three wheels pedals and no steering wheel but it’s much more of a real car than this four horsepower pedal bike and because the five is a real car with real
Power pedaling it will make even less of a difference than it does in this one can you imagine what it would be like in the twike 5 doing this pedaling dance on a highway you would cause accidents people would be staring at you so much and
That’s the twike in a nutshell it’s a silly little thing now like I said I’ve done a lot of work to this thing new battery new BMS new charger new rear window I reglued the canopy I built a new shelf for the back of it I spent far
Too much money and time on this thing and it’s taken me a lot longer than I thought it was going to I bought this back in June and I thought couple of weeks I’ll build a new battery no it’s January now I’ve been working on this
For the past four months off and on it’s what I’ve been working on this stupid little exercise depository that’s okay it’s much more functional now and the next owner is going to love it I don’t know who I’m going to find to buy it someone probably hopefully anyway thanks
For watching I’ll see you in the next video which is all the work that I’ve done to this twike which will be around in a week or two after this one bye
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