I'm probably gonna buy an e-bike soon, mostly as a way to shield myself from fuel shortages in the near future and ensure a certain degree of mobility, probably will use it for occasional sport too. Also there's juicy subsidies right now so it's the perfect moment (for context I live in Spain).
Unfortunately, capitalism will capitalism and most e-bikes come with the integrated battery in the chasis, of which I'm 90% certain there's no standard among manufacturers, and even many of the pedal-type motors run with proprietary wiring and even protocols that only allow certain batteries to be installed.
Given this, I'd like to shield myself from this (and also increase repairability) by purchasing a bike with a normal battery outside the chassis, something like the Zazawork CF29:
These e-bikes feature the non-proprietary generic batteries and hub motors that increase repairability and don't keep you forced to an ecosystem that you're not sure will have replacements in 5 years.
However, these batteries are also much easier to steal, and they're not cheap to replace. I can mitigate this to a degree installing an alarm on the battery, but idk if that's enough. My use case isn't the bike sleeping on the street overnight, but rather being able to leave the bike worry-free for some hours during the day if I go to, say, the cinema, or something akin of duration.
What do y'all think?
Even the “proprietary” built in ones are almost certainly available on alibaba, and they’re simply chock full of 18650s (which you probably know) so it’s all doable if you’re enterprising enough.
Tbh I'd rather buy a cheap replaceable non-proprietary battery from a reputable Chinese manufacturer like Hailong than buy nondescript alibaba listings for weird e-bike standards that will be more expensive and don't guarantee cell quality.
As for re-celling the battery, it's something I may consider in the future, but for now I feel kinda anxious dealing with spot-welding the fuckers, I'm quite confident in my soldering but I've never done the spot-welding and I would feel afraid to leave the bike unsupervised in case of flames.