Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and it's time for a tech Stuff classic. This episode, originally published on February four, two thousand and fifteen, is titled how E Bikes Work. I hope you enjoy. I remember doing this episode because I also remember taking a test drive on an e bike and nearly wiping out because it has been so long since i'd ridden a bicycle. You know that that phrase, it's like riding a bike. Um, well, I guess for me, it just doesn't take like it does for other people. Anyway, here's the classic episode, how e Bikes Work. You've been around for a while, and you've talked a lot about cars, But this time I thought we'd talked about something a little different. We're gonna talk about bikes, which, as you mentioned before we started recording. Uh, the E stands for the sound you make when you're writing it. That's if you're going downhill really fast. I guess I often follow that up with a series of other sounds, some of which make words that I can't say on this podcast, but we were talking about electric bicycles, various types of electric bicycles and kind of some of their counterparts that are similar to them. And you might have seen stuff about e bikes recently. Uh, there's been a couple of products that have been coming out of the prototype stage that have made it something that is more accessible to the general public. Before I would say there were it was like a very niche audience, like bicycle enthusiasts and uh, some do it yourselfers who really were into this. But now we're actually seeing it where people who are living in maybe city environments can get hold of these, especially if they're try trying to transition from car ownership to something else. I mean, you've probably heard the story about millennials not flocking to car ownership the way previous generations have. In fact, we talked about that a couple of times in previous episodes. So bicycles are becoming more and more important in the United States. They've been important in other parts of the world for ages, and electric bikes are becoming a big part of that. But here's the interesting thing. A long way to go for this, but they're not a new idea. No, no, no, they're far from a new idea. In fact, this goes back oh what a hundred and twenty some years now, say what Yeah, a long long time ago. So went back to uh, I want to say, it's in the late eighteen hundreds, right, right, Um, I think my notes say the mid to late eight d nineties. But the first one that I've actually got an account for, you know, the actual date that was given, it's right around and it had a double electric motor design. Now there may have been one prior to that, I'm not sure, but actually had two electric motors. And we've talked about the complexity of a two motor design earlier. Today it seems like it would be an impossible thing to do, really nearly impossible. At least, it would seem impractical. That's it. Maybe not impossible, but impractical, that's a better way to say it. Because we talked about the pros and cons of different types and how they work and and the characteristics of each one, and what you would have to do to pair two of them together to make them work in tandem. Yeah, what happens if you cut the power to one and you forget to cut the power to the other and then next thing you know, you're doing flips. Well, I have a feeling in it wasn't quite as complex as we're making it out to be. It's probably a lot simpler. But then in uh In, just one year later, there was a drive belt design that came around, which is, yeah, it is kind of cool because that's different than what we're seeing today, which you might think you're seeing that today, but you're seeing probably a version of a moped really or something like that, which we'll talk about the difference of that too. And then in nine this is one that I really wanted to talk about just for a second, there was a patent, you know, pulled for a friction roller wheel design, which is really unusual, and this is one that we haven't seen maybe ever on a bicycle recently. Can I like a guess on what this is? Sure, because I haven't read the patent, so why would guesses? This means that there would be an electric motor that would turn a small wheel that is actually right up against one of the primary wheels in the bicycle, and the rotation of the small wheel is translated into the rotation of the larger wheel. That's exactly right. Now. It seems very inefficient, isn't it to do it that way it was it was mounted I guess, would be behind the rider's seat above the wheel, and it would it would the pressure was a downward force on the wheel, on the surface of the wheel where it would contact the road. And that translated to as you said, the you know, the drive the actual drive wheel, which to me, that would be not just inefficient because obviously the smaller wheel is gonna have to rotate many, many, many more times fast er than the large wheel, right, but also it means adding more wear and tear on that particular wheel of your bike. You're exactly right, and it just seems like it seems like a difficult design to make work. But I just wanted to tell you that, you know, even prior to nine, people are really thinking about this. They're really, you know, considering the idea that an electric bike is something that is necessary to get around town. And quite honestly, you know, where did they have It's not like they were in a crowded city at that point. Probably it's not likely, uh they might have been, but um, it would it would be more for you know, like a country ride or something like that that they would use it for, right, I would imagine. So, I mean, unless you're talking about you know, your your when you see the rise of the city's really because the rise of the automobile. When you see the rise of the automobile, which gave rise to to cities getting larger and larger and more sprawl. Perhaps you could argue that the bike would have been useful for someone who cannot afford a full automobile but still needs to make a commute. But we often here in the United States in particular, we have often thought about bicycles as recreational devices. Right, this is the thing that we use. You want to go out and get some exercise, you want the fresh air, you want a nice relaxing ride. And uh. In fact, when we were first talking about doing this topic, it was only when we started talking about the possibility of using a bike in instead of a car or taking public transportation in order to get around regularly. That's something like an electric bike really started to make sense, because otherwise you kind of want that that exertion, that's part of the experience. Let me let me just for one second go back and kind of defend my, my, my country ride example, because the lay that I I picture UM cities right around the turn of the century, you know, the turn of the nineteenth century, is that they were they were crowded with cars which were relatively new at the time, brand new at the time, UM, carriages, lots of horses, lots of people walking. But I don't necessarily think of seeing a lot of a lot of bicycles in city environments. That's start from photos of that day, of that era or depictions of it, you know, whether it be drawings or whatever, you don't see a lot of bicycle riders. However, today in crowded cities, you do see a lot of bicycle riders. I mean, that's that, and especially in places like China where it's extremely crowded and you know, maybe not everybody can afford a motorcycle, right or or a big scooter, um or that's definitely not a car. Bicycle is a good option. But as you said, UM, they're not necessarily in it for you know, exercise or to get out and you know, to get the get the heart pumping or whatever, especially in places where pollution might be so bad that you don't necessarily want to be breathing are Now this is just like an inexpensive method of transportation, way to commute and uh and also you know, to take up as little space as possible when you're not using that thing, right. Yeah, So now we're starting to see this grow in popularity here in the United States, like I said, in some parts of the world and in parts of Europe. It's all, it's been popular for years and in fact, electric bikes have been around for quite some time in in both Europe and the units aids as well as Asia. But these are uh, you know, we've seen a lot of development over the last i'd say a couple of decades. We've seen really some some interesting development to the point where it's become uh, something that the average consumer can can be aware of as opposed to you know, the bike enthusiasts. Part of that is battery technology. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead of you here, but but part of that is battery technology because lead acid batteries, that's the kind of battery that you typically find in an automobile, a typical and not not one of the newer ones. But um, they're big, they're heavy, they're bulky, I mean it's just it's difficult to carry that kind of weight around on a bike. You're trying to remain as light as possible with this type of setup, as we'll talk about in a moment. But um, you know, with some of the newer battery technology, like lithium ion batteries or even you know, some of the nickel cadmium batteries from you know, or nickel metal hydride batteries, or or even the seal some of these, I guess the sealed lead acid batteries. Some of them are small enough that could you know, you could potentially use them, but the lead acid batteries tend to be a lot heavier than the other types of batteries. Yeah. The other thing that uh, you know, those batteries have been a challenge, not just from a science perspective, but also safety obviously lithium ion in particular. You know, you don't you want to be really uh you don't you don't want to overheat your lithium ion batteries. Well, and it's not a great idea to also be biking around with a box of sulfuric acid. Yeah, that's that's what it is. Yeah, that's that can be a bit of a that could be a bit of a drag if things go wrong. But yeah, yeah, I mean, like I think of here in here, in Atlanta, for example, things can get pretty hot. So imagine that you have a really hot day and you're taking your electric bike for a ride, and you've got your battery or lithium ion battery, and you're you know, you have to hit dead Man's Hill. It's the craziest hill in Atlanta, which I just made up, and uh you, so you kicked the bike into full gear to try and help you as much as it can to get up there. I can imagine that lithium ion battery getting really kind of deteriorating rapidly due to we're operating at such a high temperature. The heat is the worst enemy of batteries. I mean, I know that they die often in cold weather, but heat is where the real damage occurs. And then you don't realize it until it's cold and all those chemical reactions are slowing down, and that's when you really feel that you feel the pain from you know, the damage that was done in the summer months right now. Of course, the nice thing is that most of the systems we're talking about. In fact, all the ones I'm familiar with have replaceable batteries. So worst case scenario as you swap out a dead battery for a new one, obviously you want to preserve the life of your batteries as long as possible for multiple reasons. Financial would be a big one, but also just you know, it's more environmentally friendly to go easy on your battery so that you don't have to have I don't have to worry about, well, how do I dispose of this thing now that potentially has toxic materials in it. But let's be honest, the financial reason is the big one. That's the big one. I mean, it is the big one. I mean. Another thing we need to point out is electric bikes can be pretty expensive. Even the conversion kits where you can turn your existing bike into electric bike, some of those can be some of those can dwarf the price of your original bike. Absolutely. I've seen kits, just conversion kits that that range anywhere from you know, I think it was about seven seventy five dollars up to two thousand dollars, where you're not getting an entire bike, you're getting the kit to make your existing bike into an e bike. And and of course the two thousand dollar kit comes with everything you would ever want, all the sensors. The seven hundred and seventy five dollar kit doesn't even have a battery with it, and I think there's no controller. I mean, it's just it's it's a very basic, basic kit where you're gonna have to add parts to it in order to make that even work. So it can be expensive. But maybe maybe it's better just to buy a bike right from the manufacturer. Yeah, yeah, there there are choices, right, I mean, you can get a bike that is designed as an electric bike from the beginning, and it's got the systems all integrated into it already, so it's going to Those are gonna look the nicest. Obviously, they're gonna cost a lot. They're gonna cost a lot. If you convert a bike, then depending upon the conversion kit you have, if it's one of those where it's a real d I O Y kind of approach, it'll work, but it'll probably also look kind of weird because the bike that you have was not originally intended to be an electric bike. You had to add all these different components on it. You have to put a battery pack somewhere on that thing, and sometimes that means that you have a big bulky section of the middle of the bike. But there are other types of electric bike converter kits as well that um incorporate all the elements into the hub of either the front wheel or the rear wheel. Those are kind of cool. Now, it does mean that the hub of that tire is going to look enormous compared to a normal bicycle tire. But but all the other elements are hidden away, right. You don't have, uh, you know, and there're only a couple of examples of this, but you don't have like a big external battery pack that's hanging off one of the bars of your bicycle unless unless you go back to one of those kids like we've talked about, where you know that you do have a big canvas bag that has a battery attached to it, and that's a speed controller and all the other electronics that go along with this. And you know, I mean that stuff is gonna be zip tied to the frame of your bike. I mean it's not it's going to look like it's a kid that you added onto your bike. It's not going to be as as buttoned up as the as the bike that would come from the manufacturer. Look, because they you know, they drill holes in the frame and they feed the wire through there and it only exits where it needs to. It's very uh, it's very minimally obtrusive, I guess on the on the design of the bike. Yeah, as opposed to have zip ties every couple of inches pulled everything in place. And there's still kind of is that element of these even even with the manufacturer built ones, you know, the ones that come from the factory you know where I don't know how many they build a day, maybe, you know, it depends on the place, I guess, but it would I would think it's very few because these are hand assembled of course. Um, but yeah, they're they're pretty well buttoned up, but they still have a little bit of that you know, uh, a little bit of that look like it was kind of made it a work bench. Yeah, a little jankie, but a little bit, but in a good way, like kind of in that that you know again, like that d I Y sort of approach. And they're getting better and better. Yeah, and so I guess it's good to talk about, you know, the different types of electric bikes as well as to compare them against other powered bicycles. So the powered bicycle I always thought of when I was growing up, it was not electric at all. It was it was gas powered. It was the motorized bicycle, the moped mo. Yeah, so you've got the motorized and pedal p e D the moped or velociped. Some people say that's from the old term for bicycle velocopied, which dates to even earlier in the uh, you know, the the nineteenth century. Uh that was my favorite arcade game philosophy. Yeah, where you had to, you know, to shoot the little Penny Farthings as they came down the screen. Um. Yeah. The the moped is similar in many ways to electric bicycles, except of course it's not running on electric date it's got an actual motor tiny gas engine. I should see a tiny gasolene engine. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And that's what I tend to think of too when I think of of a pedal assisted powered vehicle and I think of that, That's that's the one I go to. Is like that old moped design where you see you would see somebody pedaling like crazy to either get it moving, or more typically, you would just see the pedals, you know, remaining where they are. People would have their feet on the pedals, but it would be all you know, gasoline power that they're using. They're using just the engine to propel themselves forward. Yeah, they've got a throttle control, and the throttle control provides the power which drives the drive train and you don't have to do any pedaling at all to keep it going. It was very rare to see somebody actually pedaling a moped to the point now where the term moped, by at least some people, is used as a generic term for any non motorcycle motorized two wheel vehicle. Okay, this is where we had a little discussion about this at our desks earlier, because we sitting next to each other in the office and we were kind of throwing the back and forth a little bit like, Okay, if if this is a moped, what what is a scooter? And then how do you differentiate between that and a motorcycle? And you know, there's there's traditional ways to do that. By engine size. You can you can say that you know, a moped is between forty nine ccs and all the way up too ccs. But now I think that there's some uh what they call I want to say, they're called like maxi scooters that are bigger than that. They're capable of going faster, but they're still considered a scooter. But they're allowed on roads, but not on highways. And you do sit with your feet forward, you know, on a platform in front of the chairs, so there's like a pass through between the handlebars and where you sit. You're not on you don't have your feet on pedals in other words, or pegs as you would on a motorcycle. It's on like a little just its own little platform. But some of those maxi scooters are capable of you know, eighty miles per hour seventy five mile pur or something like that. Um, that's not the typical scooter that I think of. I think of the old vespas, you know, which we're you know, the older ones, which are creeping along at about thirty miles per hour max. But they did have that traditional seating position where you can you can picture that right with the platform in front, where your your feet are side by side in front of you, And that's what I think of. They didn't have a pedal mechanism at all like a moped does. So that to me was the break between scooters and mopeds. But now I guess there's a blurred line between what's a moped and what's a scooter. Yeah, I think it's just. I think it's just in the use of the term being very casual about it, right, I don't think it's I think if you were to nail someone down and say no, let's let's get to the technical uh distinction between these, they would agree. But I think casually people refer to practically anything that doesn't look like a motorcycle as a moped or a scooter or one of the other. And honestly, it really doesn't matter. We're just trying to to segment these different things into and just find a way to discuss them where everybody can picture the same thing. Now. The interesting thing also about mopeds to me is that some of them are designed so that, yeah, you could pedal and propel them just under pedal power if you needed to, like if the engine died or ran gas. Uh, It's not easy to do. This is a very heavy vehicle. Sometimes it looks like you're peddaling like crazy and you're not really getting anywhere some of them. Really, the pedals were more about getting the engine started right, so it wasn't about providing any form of propulsion. It was just about getting the engine to the point where you could get the ignition going and take off. So uh, that kind of separates it from electric electric bikes in another way. So you've got two big separations. One you're not using gas with electric bikes. But the other is that with a true E bike, you are supposed to be able to pedal and power the bike, or you use some form of pedal assists. That's where you get the ped alex type of bikes, So that's that's often what they're called, where they are providing some of the power to turn the wheel of the bicycle so that it offsets some of the force needed. And then you have power on demand electric bicycles where the electric motor is providing all the power you need to propel the bike forward, and you can you can cut the motor off and then continue to pedal, or if you just want to have a real easy ride of it, you just power the throttle and that gives the electric motor the power to push the bike board on it, so it's you're using it as if it was a scooter. Yeah, not a bicycle at all. Right, for the power on demand systems, okay, And the pedal X when you mentioned that, I think people might be confused by the term. But that's a combination of three words. It's pedal electric cycle and it's pedal X. It's spelled a little weird, but pedal X. I've also heard elect peds simply to say that it's similar to mo peds, so instead of motor pedals, you want to think of it that way, it's electric pedals. But pedal X is definitely the more common of the two that I've seen. And you know, these are these are pretty popular, I think in um Becaus we said in cities, you know, the pedal X systems are the ones that we see a lot of, because those are the ones that if you're peddling, you get like a and I've watched a few videos of these recently. That's why I'm kind of familiar with what's going on here. But when you when you get on them and you're pedaling, it's like you're feeling something that's pushing you, but it's like it's pushing you along because these are rear wheel design things mostly. I mean, we've seen them on the front wheels, but that's more unusual. Usually they're on the back wheel, so it's pushing you along. And a lot of times when you watch these videos of people who are reviewing them or testing them or trying them for the first time, you know, never tried an ebike before, this pedal assist type system. When they get on them and they start writing, they start to giggle. You know, it's like they're laughing because they're they're barely pedaling, but their cruising along as if they were really really pumping the pedals really fast, and you're passing every other bike on the bike path. Um, you know, top speed vary between you know, different models, but you're going move along at a pretty good rate, a pretty rapid rate for the limited amount of pedaling that you're doing. And that's really the benefit of these pedal lex systems. That and you know, let's say you're writing into a headwind, are you're riding up a hill, which would be you know, pretty important here in Atlanta because it's not a flat city by any means, um so that would be helpful. But the pedal systems can be used by law enforcement. You know, if they're on bikes, it's a great thing because it gives them kind of an edge. I guess they're trying to I don't know, catch up to somebody who's on another bike. Um, it assists them in in you know, just having to do less work to get speech exactly exactly right. And there's a lot of different variety of different types of gearings and things that you can get with the different types of motors as well, so they have their own purpose. Like if you want one to go fast, you get this type of of motor. If you want one that's gonna pull a lot of weight, let's say that you're carrying a trailer, small trailer behind your bike. Cargo bikes, Yeah, cargo bikes. That's I'm glad you said that because I had written down somewhere that I wanted to talk about that. Uh, there's a different type of motor than the ones we've been kind of focusing on mostly it's it's a geared motor would be more efficient for heavy loads like that if you're pulling a trailer, if you've got a cargo bike like you said, or if you're a bigger writer, you know somebody who's who's a little heavier on the heavier side, A geared motor might be the one that you want. Yeah, mid drive motors are also really good about pulling a lot of weight or kicking into two gear for something like a real steep climb. So let's say that you live in San Francisco and you've decided that you want to bike to work because you're crazy. Uh, then you may want something like a mid drive electric bicycle because it's going to give you a lot more when you start hitting those really steep hills, those really tall steep hills, I mean they're not just steep, they go on forever. We have more to say about how e bikes work, but first let's take a quick break. This is a long time ago, maybe fifteen years ago. Yeah, when I went to the San Francis called had a friend who you know, I graduated with this this person and he was now working out there with his wife, and I was in town and I had never been there before, was my first time there, and they decided that the way we were going to get around town was on bicycles. So this friend doesn't like you I don't know what was going on, but I was just huffing and puffing the whole time and would have to occasionally get off and walk my bike up the hill. And as it's crazy, well as would they, and you know, they were even accustomed to it. You know, they've been doing this for a year or two years at that point, so they were in a little better shape than then. I wasn't that bike. And honestly, even you know, back I lived in Michigan at the time, Even there, I wasn't necessarily biking all the time, so it wasn't really my thing. But you know, then we're in the you know, these extremely hilly areas. Try we we rode up to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and you don't realize until you're on that bridge that to the midway point is uphill. Yeah, exactly. Coming back was fine, unbelievable. I couldn't. I just could not keep up with it. Treacherous place to ride a bike. And that's that's the sort of like these bikes are really good to help for folks who want to uh use a bike more frequently, but they might encounter these issues or maybe for example, you know, one of the Little Behind the Curtain. The episode we're recording right now, you guys, is the very last full episode of any podcast in How Stuff Works to use the studio building. Yeah, this studio that we are recording and right now is going to be broken down as soon as we're done, and then moved across town. Now, when we go to that new place across town, it's closer to where I live. And I'm thinking about biking to work whenever the occasion merits. It's fantastic, idea, fantastic. I also am really thinking about getting an e bike system, a pedal pedal X system to help me if because I don't want to have the experience of biking to work and arriving at work looking like I just biked to work in Atlanta, especially in the summer. Yeah, I understand, But see, you want a little bit of exercise at the same time, right, and it's going to there's gonna be hills in between you and the office and I'll pill both ways, I'm sure. And uh with you know humidity ranging in the area, you know, you can't get around the sweating. So yeah, and we're talking about several miles. It's not it's not like it's around the corner or anything like that. So it's a good twenty five minute ride from my house. Okay, so that's a that's a reasonable distance. I can completely understand why you would want something like this now. Now me, I'm not a bike rider to begin with. Um, I have one. It's collecting dust in the basement. I think, I think I still have it after the last move. I don't even know. But it's it's just not my thing. I mean, I don't live in town, so I don't really have a use to just quickly grab a vehicle and get somewhere, you know, five blocks away or whatever. But that would be a perfect use for somebody, you know, if if they did have a need like that, or like you say, to get to work, you know, on days when it's sunny and and humid, when you don't necessarily want to, uh to you know, fully exert yourself get in there as well. Right, and uh. We could also differentiate really quickly between electric bikes and electric motorcycles. There are electric motorcycles. Yeah, Harley Davidson is touring around with one, showing it off the kind of a prototype electric motorcycle. Yeah, that's is that the that's live wire is in it. I think it's so it's it's very quiet, you know what. I have done a podcast about this. I should remember the name, but I believe it's the Harley Davidson live Wire. It's it was the concept. They did a tour around the nation and they were allowing people to test drive that vehicle, and people who drove it really or wrote it, I guess, really really liked it. And the difference between an electric motorcycle versus an electric bike is that an electric bike has pedals that you can pedal and you know, operate under manual power, whereas electric motorcycle does not. That's the main desert, and it's extremely powerful. It's as just as powerful as Harley Davidson motorcycle would be, only an electric forms. So you know, all the all the other stuff that goes along with motorcycle ownerships still apply and and a lot of the considerations that you would have to have for a bicycle are no longer part of the thought process, right, You don't need to have you don't need to sit there and say, well, we can't put a motor on that's ex powerful because that it adds so much weight to the bicycle that a bicyclist isn't going to be able to use it. With a motorcycle, you don't have to worry about that as much. Now you just worry about how fast that things canna go. Yeah, right, So let's talk about some of these motors some of the ones. Now, keep in mind, like I said, some of these can be bought, uh completely, like you can buy a whole bike that uses this sort of stuff, or you can end up buying conversion kits or these in hub systems where it's really an e bike inside a bicycle wheel. You literally just replace a wheel with one of these and it'll turn it into an e bike, which is pretty cool. You were talking about direct drive now. The direct drive are the ones that look like a like a pie pan in the middle of your wheel. Yes, and that's the one that everything is housed within that uh that I guess it would be a plastic outer casing, right, Yeah, plastic in most cases, I believe. I think, uh, you might find a couple that do some form of metal as the outside, like an aluminum exterior. But again, you want to have generally speaking, you want to have something that's going to be able to vent heat because it is going to build up heat inside of this thing. Yeah, exactly right. Now that the direct drive is just one type, there's also the geared systems of geared motors that we'll talk about as well. But if you I found a pretty good article that that describes some of the pros and cons of both types of motors. So there's direct drive, there's gear drive. There's pros for both. Now that the pros four direct drive system the piepon type you know that has everything in cased. Uh, they're they're a lot more durable than the geared systems. Uh, they're faster and they tend to be quieter as well. There's actually more pros for the geared systems that we'll talk about in just a second. But they provide less drag, they're smaller, of course, they're lighter, but they do have more torque than the than the direct drive systems. Yeah. I thought that was kind of strange, I would think, And that has to be just based on gearing, of course, I mean, because you can make that work for you however you like. Right, But the direct drive motors that we talked about, one thing we said is that it's got to have a lot of torque in order to to work because the way it's mounted on the wheel, every one rotation of the wheel is one rotation of the motors right and right. That has to be an extremely torquy motor in order for that to work. So, uh, that's the benefit of having gears. Right. You can you can play with how many times the motor has to rotate to rotate a wheel. You can you can use the different sizes of gears to determine the actual speech, so you can you can get it for speed, or you can get it for pulling or for power, so kind of like a you know, like a transmission in a car. Uh. And so you you use these different things for different purposes, like if you want to have a bike where it's just going to be the simplest version. The direct drive makes a lot of sense. Uh. It is as the fewest moving parts of an electric motor compared to the other variations that we've seen, and most of the kits that you'll find or that you'll see have have that direct drive type of sub Now I've seen some that are geared that are still all self contained, which is kind of interesting. But uh, you know it's it's where you see, like essentially, there's a gear that the motor turns, then there are maybe two gears that interlock with that, and then it goes inside a larger casing has a gear mounted teeth mounted on the internal wall of the the hub, and that that's what causes the hub to turn, thus making the wheel turn. Um. So all of that can be completely enclosed too. But you can also have what what I call mid drive motors. Where are you have the external motor. It's not inside the hub of the wheel, it's mounted to the exterior of your bike. Um. It typically uh, it taps directly into your bicycles gear drive train. So you essentially replace the chain wheel that your pedals would attach to. The cranks on your pedals would attach that I think they call that the crank set. Yeah, you would replace that with the motor, the electric motor version. You know that it has the same sort of wheel that you would have to mount the chain to, but the motor helps drive that wheel so that when you start pedaling, the motor drives the actual wheel that you're their pedal cranks are attached to. This sounds a lot closer to the like a motorcycle set up, swapping the gasoline engine for the electric motor, of course, but it's it's closer in position and the way that it drives that rear wheel, you know, with a chain or a belt in some cases. Right, that's interesting. Those are a lot less common then then, would be the direct drive motor, which is the hub one or the other one that the more complex geared system that you described. Yeah, and and these also tend to get really super expensive. These are the ones that can be really efficient because they're already using the ideal gears to turn your bicycle wheel. They're using the gears that the bicycle wheel uses anyway they would use under your normal pedal. Yeah, and that's one thing that the direct drive motor does not provide you with. So you know, the one that looks like the pie pan again, that really turns any bike that you're riding into a single speed bike. But that's really all you need. And that was pointed out in one of the reviews. I know when the guy's right and he's saying, well, you know, I have the ability to switch gears here, but I can't do that now that this is mounted but I don't even need it because this kind of adapts to whatever whatever I need to happen. You know. If I need to go faster, I just pedal a little faster. If I need to slow down, I back it down. And you know, that's one thing that we should mention too, is that, um some of the reviewers were saying that there's that that instant where you need to stop, you know, and this thing is still powering, and it's there's a signal that's that's sent to that that that motor, that direct drive motor, and it's usually by slightly back pedaling, like you know on a tent speed where you can kind of freewheel, you can back backpedal without having to you know, hit a coaster break like you went on an older bike, as long as you're not either on a yeah, like an old single speed bike where you would you would use the pedal brakes and that didn't have any handbrakes, just pedal brakes, or or even a fixed gear bike where you could pedal backwards and that would actually cause the wheels to go. Oh yeah, you know the fixies as the bike bicycle enthusiasts like Dixies that never so, so that's so that's what's going on with this is that when you want to stop, when you want the assist part of this to stop, you back pedal slightly and then you use the handbrakes to bring yourself to complete stop. But there's that the one moment, you know, where it depends on how fast you're going, if it's you know, five ft or ten feet that you travel in that time, Uh, there's that moment where it's pushing you along you would rather be stopping, or you're you're you're trying to you have to kind of plan ahead. I guess a little more with this type of setup Bright and now they haven't quite got it exactly right where it immediately responds to the need. Well, yeah, because when they're cutting power, what you're doing is well, well I'll talk more about what's actually going on inside the motors here. When you're cutting power, you're essentially cutting electricity to electromagnets. But you know, it takes it takes a moment for that that attraction between your the magnets, the permanent magnets or potentially another electromagnets inside the hub of your wheel two um stop being attracted in that circular motion stopp being driven forward. And this isn't so bad by any means that you know, it's not worth buying it or anything like that. It's just it's it's something that everybody noted, like, oh that's a little strange. But once I adjust to that, everything works out fine. Right. So you know, let me talk a little bit about how those electric motors are working and the basis on the electromagnetism. So I've talked about this so many times on tech stuff, and I know you long term fans who have heard the electro magnetic lecture a billion times, so um, you know, go ahead and put this on two time speed and you can get through it. But I gotta I gotta cover it. So the basics of electromagnetism, if you have a coil of a conducting material, if you if you coil that conducting material around a core, like you know, the classic classroom example is you taken an iron nail and you wrap some copper wire around the iron nail, and then you run an electrical current through that wire. Uh, that electrical current will create a magnetic field and it will turn into an electro magnet. You can react with ferress materials, fairest metals, and uh so you can pick up iron filings with this thing. Because now you've got a magnet. If you put alternating current through it, then you've created a fluctuating magnetic field, which gets pretty interesting and is the basis of a lot of important technology. But anyway, if you've got these electromagnets, it creates this magnetic field. It will attract other opposite polled magnet materials. So if you have permanent magnets, let's say you've got a whole bunch of neodymium magnets. Those are very popular for a lot of applications these days, and you set them up around let's say a wheel, a free rotating wheel, and then you've got stationary electro magnets, and you can control which electrode magnets are turning on and off at any given moment, and you turn them on and off in a pattern so that it's constantly attracting and repelling the magnets, so that it creates a rotational force that will cause the wheel to rotate. Now this isn't free energy, because you're pouring electricity into those electro magnets. This is often one of the basics of You'll see people who are peddling something they're calling a perpetual motion machine, but in reality it's using electro magnets, which means that it has to get power from somewhere, which means it's not truly perpetual motion. It means it's perpetual motion as long as the electricity doesn't run out. It's funny you said pedaling, Yeah, exactly, so uh. You know, sometimes the pun is unintended, as in this case, and sometimes it is intended. So with this rotational force, that's what provides the basics of the electric motor. By the way, the reverse is also true. If you put a conductor into a fluctuating magnetic field, then it will induce electricity to flow through that conductor. So in other words, if I have an uh, if I take that wire and I move it to something where there's a fluctuating magnetic field, meaning I'm I've got this polarity reversing over and over and over again, electricity will flow through that copper wire. So the first version I mentioned, that's the basics of the electric motor. The second one is the basics of dynamos and magnetos and even alternators. So uh, with all that in mind, that direct drive system we were talking about is the easiest to imagine. Think of the electro magnets as a a circle of these coils of wire. So the coils of wire are kind of if you're thinking of it in that pie shape. You turn the bicycle wheel on its side, and you you were to pull off the cover, you look at essentially a little columns of of coils of electric wire set up in a circle. Uh. And these would be stationary relative to the rotation of the wheel. They are mounted to the axle, they do not rotate, Okay, so they are they they're going to remain stationary compared to the rotation of the wheel. Around this, you would have a rotating uh wheel rotating or rotating chamber that has permanent magnets mounted on it. All right, Now, these are the magnets that are going to be attracted and repelled by the electro magnets in the center. And because these can rotate, that change in electromagnetism is what's going to make it move and make the wheel turn, whether it's to assist you or to completely take over and act as an electric throttle. So that's where your direct drive system comes in exactly. And there are some that I've seen that connect as both, like the mid drive. Some of the mid drives cann act as pedal assist or then you can switch it to throttle control and then it just completely takes over for you. Um. So this is, uh, this is the very basic version, the easiest one to understand with the electric motors, and that that chamber of permanent magnets when it does one full rotation, that's the full rotation of the wheel, right. And uh, usually you have a multiple phase electric motor, and that sounds really complicated, but it's actually really easy. In fact, I'll give you a very simple example. Let's imagine that we have a clock, an analog clock, round clock, regular old thing you've seen a billion times. Now, imagine that instead of a number at each space where there normally would be one, you've got one of those coils of electric or a copper wire. So you've got an electro magnet at each of the number spots. If you have a phase three motor, that means that one third of those numbers are all going to essentially switch on and switch off. Simultaneously. The other two thirds will do the same with their respective groups. So with the twelve number version for a standard clock, your twelve o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, and nine o'clock positions would all turn on and off simultaneously. Then you would have the one o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and ten o'clock one's doing the same and the two, five, eight, and eleven o'clock one's doing the same. And by switching between these you can have a smoother transition. To keep the bike wheel moving as smoothly as possible, it's not being up, slowing down, speeding up slowly, right right, It's to try and keep that nice and smooth. And obviously the more phases you have than at least to some point, the smoother the the experience will be. Oh you made that very easy to understand. Yeah, so, uh, you know, I I looked at this a lot to try and figure out how I was going to explain it worked. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. So, yeah, that's that makes the direct drive really easy to understand. The geared ones are a little a little more complicated, but not by a whole lot Yeah, they're they're different and they've got some parts that wear as well because they've got nylon gears and as you can imagine those those uh, you know, grinding on each other. Um, they're going to show signs of wear over time and you have to replace parts in them. So they're a little bit more complex than that. There's a there's actually quite a few different things. You know, they're a little bit noisier. Um, they have a lower top speed typically. Now that again, we can talk about gearing again if you want, but I think that everybody kind of understands that that you can play with it gearing however you want for for an increased top speed if you need to, but typically they have a lower top speed. If you buy a bike that has a set up with a geared system, it's more for um the heavy duty applications like the pulling or the towing and um, as we mentioned, durability, right, that's that's one thing that the you know, getting in there to service them, if you have to do this yourself or you know, it could be expensive. I guess probably more expensive in the long run because of because of maintenance. And you're probably talking like bucks at least to bring it into a bike shop to have a service. And honestly, the prices, I mean from the kits that I was looking at. You know, the difference between buying a kit to add to your bike. You know, the difference between a geared motor and a direct drive motor. It was just about identical. So you know, the the added expense that you're gonna have with a geared motor is something you have to consider, you know, somewhere down the road, you know, whether it be a year down the road or I don't know how often it would have to be serviced. I think it depends on use. Really, we've got a little bit more about how e bikes work after these quick messages. Well, one other thing I would mention about the direct drive systems that is a drawback, small one. It's something called cogging. Cogging. I saw a someone trying to, uh, trying to depict this on one of the reviews and I didn't quite see what it was. So, so cogging is where you've got these magnets right inside inside the direct drive. They're constantly rotating because they're in the part that moves along with the rotation force of the wheel. Yeah, if you have your system unpowered, so you don't have any pedal like going, that's the electro magnets are off. Those magnets are somewhat attracted to the materials at the core of that wheel, the stationary part. So that part of stationary with respect to the ground, like with respect to the rest of the bike, and who wouldn't be that's a good looking part, yeah, exactly. So when you're trying to pedal, that means that these magnets are slightly attracted to that stationary part the resisting moving, So you have to overcome that magnetic resistance to get them to move. It's not necessarily a significant like, it's not it's not like you're gonna be like straining to move forward a few inches, but it means you have to work a little harder initially, yeah, to to get it moving because it has this drag effect. So it's called cogging, but really you can think of it as drag in the sense that it's a magnetic drag that is listed as one of the cons on this in this article that I'm kind of following along with here and the the article I mean, it's from a site called e Bite kit dot com, so that's where you can also buy a kit. But it was a review blog post was done by somebody and um, one of the cons that they mentioned for direct drive is drag, drag when you when you pedal. Um. Now, the other ones, you know, the geared systems, I guess don't have that kind of drag, but there's more noise because those gears are constantly spining in there. Um. The other thing, the other cons I guess we should want to just list them now for the DIRECTORIZ system are that it has typically has less range. Uh there are a lot you know, a lot bigger, and they're heavier than the geared systems would because the geared systems can be much smaller. They're they're again it's just based on gearing, how efficient you want to make them. And we've talked about batteries. We've talked and I felt like I missed my chance to mention this, but the size of the battery matters as well. Uh So you want a big, powerful battery, you're gonna go a little bit fatter. It's gonna be able to power that. You know, that that motor, whether it's a direct drive or whether it's a geared system, it's gonna be able to to I guess expel expend more juice to make that thing go a little faster. UM. It's it's very similar to if you think about the like the Tesla cars. UM. You know, there's the version I think it has a sixty kill a lot. Uh. I think I'm getting these numbers right, I hope I am. Uh sixty kill a lot battery, and then there's an eight five kill a lot battery and it's the the higher performance version. So it depends on the battery size and the output of that battery, how fast you're gonna go, Also the size of the motor, the output of the motor. You know, you need to get the right pairing. And there's some other really cool things that we're starting to see paired with these electric bytes bikes, especially the wheel systems that are coming out there too, in particular that I was really interested in. But there's more than that. You actually mentioned another one when we were talking before we came in here, but the Copenhagen or Copenhagen wheel from m I T and the fly Cli wheel, which UH some have suggested might have taken more than a little bit of inspiration from the Copenhagen wheel. But the truth is, these direct drive motors all look the same. It's all the same ideas, so that's hard to say. The implementation is really what's important here because it also depends on the sensors that you include, and that's where we were starting to see more complexity like that. When you break it down, a direct drive in hub system is one of the simplest electric motors that you can have, But the complexity comes in these other sensors that come to play, Like some of these kits you uh, you know, how do they know when to kick in and help give you pedal assystem? For example, some of them, you mount a small magnet on one of the spokes of your wheel, and mounted to a stationary part of the bicycle is a sensor and every time the magnet passes the sensor, it it uh clocks it so it knows, all right, the wheels having this many rotations per minute, therefore they're pedaling this amount. Therefore I will kick in this much assistance. Yeah, you know, about thirty years ago, I had a spedometer on a bicycle that worked the same way. It's it's really simple. It's really basic and a lot of there's a lot of sensors in automobiles that work that same way as well. It's just a counter it's just counting one, two, three's well, it's just more like one one, one, But but it's just every rotation is saying, it's just registering that right as movement. And then there are other ones that are torque sensors, right, These are these are calculating how much force the bicyclist is applying to the pedal and it kicks in the electric motor to help counteract that force to keep it either very smooth or to just say, like, all right, we have a threshold here, and anything beyond this threshold we need to kick in the electronic assess so that way we're not making the bicyclist pedal too hard. And it's a bit more complex, yeah, obviously. Yeah, And then it also means that it tends to be more expensive, Like the systems that have that version of sensor are more expensive than the the ones that just count rotations. And some of these are wired systems and some are wireless systems. And we talked about earlier, We talked about the control of these these systems and some of the readouts, you know, because a lot of the kids come with an LCD dashboard and it'll tell you all the information you need to need to know about you know, the range that you know what you have left, battery power, etcetera. You know just how much help you're getting, like whether it's uh, you know, a little bit of help or a lot of help, that kind of stuff. You can put it in different modes like Eco mode, which is you know, less help and it's it saves the battery I guess you have an extended amount of range, or you can put it in performance mode or whatever they call it by the manufacturer. But some of them are controlled with your smartphone and how this is one of the downsides of this though. I mean, it's really cool that you can do that, and you can mount it right in the center of your of your handlebars, you know, right where you can see it, But you still have to avert your eyes from the traffic or wherever you are in order to look down at that smartphone, and then you have to interact with it. So it's sort of akin to texting and driving or texting and biking in a way. I know, they make the controls very easy. You know, it's it's large buttons. You just touched and swipe and once you get accustomed to where that is, you might be able to do that, you know, relatively quickly. You know, you don't have to stare at stare at it for quite as long as you will when it's new to you. But you know, the more options you have, the more the more complex the interface is going to be. So for example, if you have the Copenhangen wheel, it's got a lot of different options, right, and you have an app that connects to the wheel, and it's using low energy Bluetooth, so it's not sipping a whole lot of power, although in fact, I would say that for your smartphone the most power that's been consumed is just powering the display, like that display is going to suck up more battery power than the low energy bluetooth. However, all that being said, if you've got lots and lots of options, that means you've got to swipe through stuff too, and that makes it even more complicated because your your attention is taken away from your surroundings in the road even more so that you can switch. Uh. They also have options for things like regenerative breaking or regenerating some of that electricity by putting it into exercise mode, which is where you're you're kind of working against the motor. The idea being that, uh, it's it's sort of reversing this this trend. Instead of uh, the electricity causing the motor to turn and thus giving you help, you are pushing the motor, which is causing electricity to flow the other direction and recharge of the battery. It's turning a motor into a dynamo in the words. Yeah, and now one of the one of the models that I saw, um, you know, demode I think it was maybe the Copenhagen wheel is the one that if you're backpedaling as you're in motion, if you're so so the motor, you're you're saying to the motor you don't want it to assist you in pedaling at this point, and you backpedal. That's the regenerative mode. That's what it's. It's you're gaining battery power, I guess by doing that. And you can also make a hill work for you in the same way. Right, Yeah, when you're going down the hill, you put an exercise mode, which normally would mean you'd have to pedal harder to get to wherever you were going. Let's say you're on a totally flat surface. You've got everything turned off and you and you ride across this flat surface. You're using a certain amount of energy in order to do that. If you turned on exercise mode, you'd have to put in a little extra energy because now you're working against that motor to kind of regenerate electricity. If you're going down the hill, you let gravity do that extra work for you. So you switch from pedal assist to exercise and you can regenerate some of the electricity, giving your battery a little bit extra juice that you can make it all the way to work. But that means having to switch modes in mid ride. And that's where we're getting into this, like how do you do that in a way that's not distracting the bicycle. We'll see what that one. You're not looking down at the screen and swiping through. You're just physically doing something. And I thought that was a great way to handle that. And then you know, you just slightly backpedal. Everybody can remember that, and you don't have to look down to do that. And I was thinking, why don't they start to incorporate some of these controls in the handlebars as if it would be a game controller. Because once you learn a game controller, and you know what, it takes you ten minutes or if it takes you ten weeks to learn that game controller, you know, maybe not ten weeks, but you understand where it is. You don't have to look down, you know, find out where the X button is or where the A button is. It becomes natural. It's a it's a you know, um memory, muscle memory. That's the term. So once if you if you were to have a system that was universal, you know that all design all e bike designers used it, you know, that used the same hand controls on the on the not the pegs on the handlebars, handle grips. It would be something that I think everybody could benefit from because you know, you could sure you can still have your your phone there and you could have that you know, set up so that yeah, I'm gonna I'm just gonna put it in eco mode and I'm gonna leave it there, but every other control, you know, from that point on, I can use hand controls without looking down. I think that would be great for somebody who's in traffic and crowded cities like what we're talking about now, most of them aren't as advanced as that we were talking about. That's that's the top end, really expensive ones. The ones that I'm sure that you know most of you know, the people in these crowded cities that have these kind of early versions of e bikes, they're not that complex. They they respond more to the physical commands like what we were talking about with the back pedaling for the generation and things like that. And some of them do have things like thumb throttles or thumb controls to either said on uh you know, pedal assist, or they might have a twist throttle for the fully powered electric bikes sure like a mini biker a motorbike would have. Yeah, so there there are those versions. But the ones that I've seen, like the fly Lie in the Copenhagen both of those are completely one wheel systems that then hook up like once you once you detach your existing rear wheel and then install the the Copenhagen wheel or the fly Lie wheel. Uh, then all you do is you hook it up to your smartphone and then that's what it activates. It. So it also has some interesting safety features, like you can deactivate it so that if someone were to take your wheel, it wouldn't be of any use to them because they couldn't turn it back on again. You mentioned theft, right, because that's uh, that's something that a lot of people would be concerned with if their back wheel of their bike is where is now worth two thousand dollars just one wheel? Right? I mean it's just a matter of two bolts to get that thing off of there, right, So you park your bike and it's worth two thousand dollars the back end and then whatever else the rest of the bike costs probably an expensive bike, I guess. So what what prevents somebody from just either walking away with your bike, which I guess they could do anyways, or just taking that that that wheel off. I mean, you have to be very creative about how you chain this thing up or or what you do with it. But there's there's a safety in place, I guess if it does walk away, right. Yeah, there's a couple of them, right. There's one that has the electric motor turn off and it doesn't turn on again until it recognizes the handshake with your particular smartphone because you've paired it. Uh. There's also some that have GPS in them, so that should the wheel go wandering, you can track down where it is kind of similar to like where's my iPhone? That sort of stuff will alert you if it's moving when you're not near it. Yeah, which is interesting like that, and it's a useful feature. Uh. The Copenhagen one, I think is seven and I think the fly Cli is something like six hundred. Uh they're they're about a hundred dollars off, I remember that. And uh so they're both pretty expensive. I mean, if you're looking at a brand new bicycle, depending upon what market you're in, it could be the same price as your bike, and that's just a wheel. So and and the e bike Kits that I was I was mentioning, you know, that's that that I keep saying that side. I hope you don't mind. But it's the bike kit dot com because they have a lot of good information there as well. And again they range from about seven d and seventy five dollars up to about two thousand. Was the top one I saw. But you're talking about different um completely different packages like that seven seventy five kid, it doesn't. It has no battery and it has no charger. Um, so you're gonna have to add on to that thing, right. The other one has everything as I mentioned. But the difference, one of the biggest differences is in the top speed and the range of these things. So you know, the lower kids tend to have a lower top speed and in a slightly less range you know, or lower range, I guess. And as far as the distance you can travel, um, you know, maybe maybe the low end one is like, you know, twelve to fifteen miles with power assist, and the upper arrange one can go all the way up to about fifty four miles. So a fifty four mile bike ride on one charge. That's pretty good, I mean. And you know, top speed of about twenty eight miles per hour. Now you might be limited in some cities to what speed you're allowed to travel because there are restrictions on some of these things. And the UK it's an hour, which is about fifteen yeah, and here it's a little bit faster in the States here I think it was what twenty is. And then there's that odd strange thing. It's not it's not so odd really when you really think about it, because everyboy's gonna want to go a little bit faster, right, There's it's gonna be the group that wants the sport version, right. So there's the s pedal X for those people, and that stands for Speedy Pedal X. And the difference is there they have a more powerful motor. Um. You know, of course you can do unlimited pedal assists if you want, so it can be kind of like a power on demand type system. Um, oh, you know what, I'm going to take that back again. I don't know if it will do that, but it has unlimited what I'm saying it now, I'm understand it. It's a it's unlimited pedal assists. So you know, once you reach that twenty miles per hour, it doesn't kind of cut out like the ones that are limited, so you're capable of powering it further. It will continue to assist, and you would be because it's one of those things where like you, because it's a pedal assist system, you would be able to get up to twenty miles per hour no problem. And then once you continue, it's like you're putting out less energy to go faster, and then you put out just a little bit more and you can go way faster and it just carries on. And I'm sure there's got to be an upper limit. There has to be a a top limit, but really the speed cutout is set far far higher. And for this type of system, uh, you know, things like um, you know, helmets and protective gear are required because they realize that it's closer to a scooter or a motorcycle even in some phases depends on how fast you can go. But the speedy pedal X or something for you know, the people that want to kind of take it to the next level, right, I don't think I'm gonna need anything quite at that level if I if I do invest in one of these, uh, And I gotta say that something else we should mention is that the in hub systems do have other other things. You gotta remember. For one, it's going to offset the weight of your bicycle, like it's going to put a lot more weight on whatever wheel you're replacing. Yes, and we're talking like ballpark ten pounds. I mean that's right around where it is. It's that you know, I've seen nine pound systems and I've seen thirteen pound systems, So somewhere in there. Yeah, so that's gonna be something to keep in mind. The as opposed to some of the other like the mid drive systems, they kind of balance the weight out across the frame of the bicycle, so you don't have one section of the bike that is, uh is heavier than it otherwise would be. But you know, it's it's well, it's important for riding, you know, for the the way it feels on the road, but it's even more important when you're trying to carry it up the stairs and put it in your house at night. Yeah, so I'll be I'll be sure to keep all of my listeners posted if I if I invest in one of these things, I would love to see it if you were if you ride that into work, I would love to come down to the parking structure or whatever and maybe even take it for a quick sure. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's funny because it will mean that my wheel will be much more valuable, or at least cost a lot more than my bike did because I got my bike for free, so so automatically the wheel will be more expensive a free bike. Yeah, that's nice. There's a thing called free cycle Atlanta where people give away stuff when they don't have space for it anymore. And you found a bike and the guy was given away his bike. Wow, so I got a bike. It's not it's not fancy, it's not it's not a super fancy bike, but it's it's a bike. Do they have any boats there? You know? I like a boat, but I don't necessarily want to buy a boat. The second happiest day of my life was when I bought my boat. Happiest day of my life was when I sold it. All right, Well, Scott, thank you for coming on the show. Of course, my pleasure and and in in addition to the website you mentioned, I also want to mention electric bike review dot com which has some great articles and some great videos. If you are interested in buying an electric bike or buying a conversion kit, they have everything you would need to know, and they also review them so you can actually look and see if they've reviewed the system you're interested in and see what they have to say about it. Always helpful. Yeah. They had like a fifteen minute long review of the Copenhagen Wheel for example, which was very interesting. They went into great to tail about it. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode on how e bikes work and maintain your balance all the way through. Um, I would love to get an e bike. I've talked about it a couple of times about about picking one up, just haven't done it. Back when I was making regular trips into the office, I thought man an e bike would really make things a lot easier for me to get to and from work because it's an hour long walk, which you know, I often took as a way to catch up on podcasts and sort of, you know, get into the right mindset. But it would be like a twenty minute bike ride, and just getting those forty minutes back would be really nice. However, I've been working from home for the last like two years, so I guess it really doesn't matter now, though I still kind of would like one. So maybe one of these days I'll pick one up. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W on Twitter, and I look forward to hearing from you. You'll hear from me because I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart radio production for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.