Hmm, excellent advice! Thank you.

Thought about the inverter option but didn't know what wattage to look for; thanks for that info! I'm starting to wonder if a bike frame will hold all this weight, but so far I haven't spent a dime so things are looking good.

I understand that the purpose of a DC controller is to allow for selection of 0% to 100% volts available in my system, but will using a controller over NOT using a controller limit the power of the motor? You stated 1080W of power using a 36V/30A controller, using W=V x A. If I do NOT use the controller what would my peak power be with 36V? Would it be 36V x 18A (motor rating), giving me 648? My understanding of controllers and that wattage of motors is very limited.

I'm considering possibly a 48V system (I now have 10 of those 12V batteries to play with) which would give me a bit more power, but I guess my range would suffer as there would be 4 batts in series. I only need 10km round-trip max, so I'm not looking to go extremely far on this machine.

As for the motor's power, with a 48V system I'd get ~2300rpm and ~1440W with a 48V/30A controller, it seems. That doesn't sound too bad to me considering other ebikes have 500W motors and spin at ~350rpm.

Well, after I figure out a way to attach and gear the motor to the bike I'll be looking more closely into the electronics, but as it stands now I'm willing to try it out like it is and see where it takes me.