Look and Cixi E-Bike Has One-of-a-Kind Drive System | Electric Bike Report

One of the big questions consumers often ask about e-bikes is why they don’t feature energy regeneration while braking. On paper, it makes terrific sense, but when we drill down on the engineering details the challenges become apparent: People don’t weigh a lot and regeneration saps an e-bike’s ability to coast. That’s not to say engineers have given up, which brings us to a collaboration between two French companies—Look Cycle and Cixi. The Look e-bike is the first to use Cixi’s Pedal-Electric Regeneration System.

Look is best known as the inventor of clipless pedals used by bike racers; they also make a variety of bikes and e-bikes. Cixi is an e-mobility company that has created a drive system that eliminates the need for a chain in an e-bike.

In a normal e-bike, the rider turns the pedals and the attached chainring pulls the chain to turn the gears on the rear wheel. With Cixi’s Pedal-Electric Regeneration System (PERS), the pedals serve as the input to a generator which takes the electricity and either sends it to the direct-drive hub motor or stores it in the battery, depending on the e-bike’s needs at the moment.