New Panasonic Mid Drive

[JayVee]

The presence of SIB batteries that are identical to those on the Flyer is confirmed.

It means that both the drives and batteries on the Panasonic bikes have been in circulation for about 2 years. That's good news for potential buyers because it means that this isn't a system that's starting off from zero. There's already a lot of experience, and one can surmise that many youth issues have been already corrected. Flyer was probably a good partner for the initial rollout as they usually have pretty exacting standards when it comes to quality control.

It would be interesting to know if Panasonic also intends to incorporate the 3.5" D1 color display navigation system that Flyer includes on some of the higher end bikes. It works with a smartphone app that pushes the maps to the navigation system via bluetooth. It's Nyon-like and is included on many higher end Flyer bikes as a standard display.

A photo of the smaller 12ah SIB battery on the Univega. There's also a SIB 2 battery with 630Wh.

 

[JRA]

You could get some insane lean angle traction our of those tyres!

 

[Thomas Jaszewski]

Panasonic has made mid drive systems for years primarily for the Japanese market. They have been on par with Bosch etc. now for several years but haven't been OEM on many brands, KTM being the exception.

https://www.ebiketuning.com/comparison/panasonic-tuning.html

Their alliance with Kent has shifted gears though it looks like and don't be surprised if that battery doesn't hold the 2170 cells that Panasonic is making for Tesla at the Giga Factory.

https://www.cxmagazine.com/van-dessel-teams-panasonic-release-passepartout-gravel-e-bike

Personally this line excites me more than any other currently available ones from the major manufacturers. I would especially be happy with their eMTB version.

completely missed your post here. What is the best tech resource for Panasonic mid drives? I’ve been poking around an electronics channel and again met a FIT rider. Could this be an answer to China tariffs for someone young and a wallet?

 

[JRA]

Unfortunately not Thomas as although they are making some frames at their facility most of them are for dept. store bikes and still they source their components, which are subject to the tariffs, from China and just do assembly here so no real way around them. I read a piece the other day from the main person at Kent that outlined this but didn't save the link......Unfortunately it seems like that bikes are getting the short shaft here and also unfortunately even if the tariffs are lifted it is my experience that once prices are raised for whatever reason, think the bad peanut year when Carter was president and the resulting higher cost of peanut butter that never went back down (sorry, but I was using alot of peanut butter in those days and noticed the event on a personal level).

Best we can do as consumers is to bend over as far as I can see regarding this whole mess. It would be nice if it was only bike parts that are affected....

 

[JRA]

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/18/724286756/for-one-u-s-bike-maker-tariffs-are-a-mixed-bag