The ALSO TM-B is one of the most technologically interesting new electric bikes to hit the road in years, largely because it eliminates one of the most fundamental parts of a bicycle: the mechanical connection between the pedals and the rear wheel. With just copper cables connecting the pedals to the rear wheel, the TM-B is one of the most revolutionary new e-bikes in years.
But that raises an obvious question. What happens when the battery runs out?
One of the Launch Edition’s first owners, Aaron Draczynski, decided to find out by deliberately running his TM-B to empty to see if ALSO’s ride-by-wire system would leave him stranded.
He shared the experience on YouTube and discovered that the answer is surprisingly complicated and involves something called “Infinite Turtle Mode.”
First, the TM-B slowly takes away your power.
Unlike a conventional electric bicycle, where the rider’s pedaling mechanically rotates the rear wheel via a chain or belt, the ALSO TM-B uses a pedal-by-cable transmission. Pedaling generates electricity, while the rear wheel is electrically driven.
That arrangement allows for all sorts of cool features, including electronically simulated gear shifting and the Launch Edition’s massive Level 10 boost mode, which can multiply the rider’s action up to 10 times.
But it also means there’s no traditional transmission to fall back on when the battery dies.
Fortunately, the bike doesn’t simply go from full power to dead.
The owner began his experiment with a 31% charge and quickly watched the bike progressively restrict its maximum assistance as the battery depleted. From 23% to 13%, the maximum boost dropped from level 8 to level 5 when it started conserving battery.
At 10% load, the bike was limited to Level 4. At 8%, it dropped to Level 3, followed by Level 2 at 5%. Shortly after, only Level 1 remained. Then, with 4% battery, conventional electric assistance disappeared completely.
Interestingly, the normal electronic shifting of the bike’s software-simulated gears continued to work for most of that process. But when the battery reached 4%, things changed and the bike started having problems. The first sign of trouble came when the bike began shifting gears seemingly at random while in manual mode without the rider even touching the gear lever. Several times a second, the bike seemed to want to change gears.
Note that the TM-B has no real physical gears (no chain or derailleur, in fact), but instead simulates several gears using predefined software so that the rider feels like they are working more or less hard to pedal the bike.
Enter ‘Infinite Turtle Mode’
Once the TM-B reached its final low battery state, an infinity symbol appeared on the screen and the bike entered what the owner called “Infinite Turtle Mode.”
Instead of using the battery’s stored energy to provide significant assistance, the system effectively attempts to pass the rider’s pedaling energy through the electronic transmission to keep the rear wheel spinning. It is similar in concept to those old hand-cranked flashlights, which, even with a dead battery, would continue to illuminate as long as the owner kept them running.
And on flat terrain, the owner reported that infinite turtle mode apparently worked surprisingly well.
Draczynski described the experience as roughly equivalent to pedaling a normal bicycle in fourth gear. There was resistance in the pedals and I could maintain a reasonable pace without feeling like I was just spinning my legs uselessly.
Then he reached a hill and found the limitation of that effectiveness. Even a slight incline transformed the experience, with the bike feeling more like it was permanently stuck in seventh or eighth gear. Getting home through his mountainous neighborhood became, in his words, a “truly grueling ordeal.”
Manual shifting was also disabled in this mode, meaning there was no way to electronically select an easier virtual gear for climbing, as again, there are no physical gears on the bike. Everything in the pedaling experience is simulated by software.
That’s a major limitation for a bike that relies solely on a cable drive. Infinite Turtle Mode can keep you moving with significant effort on flat terrain, but it doesn’t turn a dead TM-B into a conventional bike, unless that conventional bike is riding on beach sand.
The low power state apparently also disables some other functions. The owner could no longer lock or unlock the TM-B via the ALSO smartphone app, although he reported that the bike’s touchscreen controls were still working and assumed the bike had turned off connectivity to conserve power for its key systems to function.
There is another battery issue to consider.
Perhaps more concerning than the low-battery driving experience was what happened when this particular TM-B was simply sitting in the owner’s garage.
Describing another scenario he encountered, Draczynski says he left the bike unplugged in his garage with about 70% charge. The next afternoon it had fallen to 40% and a day later it was down to 18%.
When he returned the next morning, the TM-B displayed the message “A problem with the bike has been detected” followed by “Install the battery for travel.”
There was only one problem: the battery was already installed.
Plugging in the charger didn’t help at first because apparently the bike couldn’t detect its own battery and therefore charging didn’t start. Worse yet, the battery refused to eject via the normal ejection process, leaving the owner unable to remove and charge it off the bike.
In the end, Draczynski used the physical reset button under the frame, which brought the system back to life. The bike recognized the battery again and started charging normally.
That degree of battery drain overnight is obviously not something we would expect from a normal e-bike, so hopefully this is an isolated software issue or something that can ALSO be fixed with an update. For his part, Draczynski suspects that the bicycle could be using so much battery at rest due to the lack of cell phone signal in his garage. “I was quite surprised by the drop from one day to the next,” he explained on Reddit. “If I had to guess, the bike might be looking for a cellular signal, but there’s no reception in my garage, so it’s just draining the battery.”
But the experiment offers an interesting first real-world look at one of the biggest questions surrounding ALSO’s unusual transmission.
A normal electric bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike. Instead, the TM-B becomes something much stranger: an electricity-generating exercise machine that uses your legs to generate current, sends that current electronically through the bike, and then uses it to spin the rear wheel via the rear hub motor.
And according to these tests, it actually works. Just try not to be at the bottom of a hill when you find out for yourself.
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