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?
There is a French battery brand, Gouach, that sockets rather than welds the 18650s, but they recently decided to only do business fleets now instead of individual customers. However, it might be possible to get an old stock or used one. I am hopeful other brands will take up cell socketing instead of welding.
Bear in mind you have to configure the battery management firmware to recognise the cell brand and type, bluetooth needs to phone home to the company for it, and Gouach's support is lousy. That's why I hope someone else does it better, or someone comes up with a firmware hack that allows local setup.