Well the response to my "Tale of Twelve Batteries" was lukewarm, compared to how excited I am about the LiGos. Even my brother Harold on the phone from Montreal last night, said he sort of read the page but failed to play the wonderful Christmas Lights video. And it gets worse.  My beloved Dodie said she started to read this page and quickly gave up. What is a "controller", and who cares, she says! If even my own family is blasé about these pages, how will I ever become a famous bicycle journalist?

So you too might skip over this page. But fear not, it will be followed quite quickly by our real life experience riding these bikes today in the rain and on the hills. You will learn what Dodie has to say about it, something I expect is far more compelling for the general public.

Just five additional parts distinguish an electric Bike Friday from a regular one. These are the batteries, the motor, the motor controller, the console, and the crank sensor. We don't want to get too technical (actually we don't know enough to get very technical) but here is a brief rundown on each of these bits.

The batteries - the previous page goes on at some length about the LiGo batteries, and Justin's video there gives a really good overview. There is also a video on Youtube from Bike Friday, but Justin did a way better job.

The prime place to put lots of batteries on a Bike Friday is behind the seat post. We have two decks of three batteries on each bike, with the decks stacked end to end. As it happens a bikepacking frame bag from Banjo Brothers is just the right size to hold them. Compared to standard ebikes, it's a bug though, because the Banjo bag hangs on with 6 velcro straps that take time to undo. It's really designed to hang under a diamond frame.

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The motor - in general a motor can be placed in the rear wheel, the front wheel, or midships at the crank. Most high end/European bikes have a mid motor. But because of the way a Bike Friday folds, we did not want to monkey with the area under the cranks.  We then chose to put the motor in the rear, because this would make it easy to route the various electric cables. Together with rear panniers, this does make the bike back end heavy. At least for my bike, then, we are keeping panniers on the front as well.

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Our idea of an electric bike is something that can give a little assist, and do it over a long range. So we chose the absolute weakest motor available. We want it to just sip power. As for the throttle that came with it - we threw that away. The amount of motor power used will depend only on how hard we are pushing the pedals (torque sensor in the crank) and the percentage of assist chosen on the console. Even a weak motor can actually assist you well up a hill when it needs to.

The motor controller is a little box that holds a central position among the motor, the batteries, and the console. Basically it takes its orders from the console, sucks power from the batteries, and sends the package to the motor for action. Ours is strapped on the seat tube way down by the cranks, with lots of wires going in and out. On those slick ready made centre drive ebikes, the controller is built into the motor housing so you never see or have to think about it.

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If the controller is the heart of the system, the console is the brains. Here is where you set the assist level and find out your current speed, battery status, distance travelled, and much more. We got the colourful, capable Bafang 860 C. I love it, Dodie says it is too garish.

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And with that, folks, there is no Alp or Pyrenee that in principle can stop you! Tune in to the next page to see if all this equipment actually worked for us.