I have put about 3,000km on my E-bike in the last 1.5 years. It's limited to 25km/h, because then I don't need a license, it's fast enough for city traffic (mostly in bike lanes anyways) and I get to tow a trailer for my kid.
Biggest advantage: Hills don't exist for me. We live in a city with quite a few hills and day care is about 70-100m below our appartment. Doing this trip twice a day with its 15% slope would take way longer and exhaust me, before the day even started. The way downhill to day care is now something like 10 minutes and back up 11 minutes.
Biggest disadvantage: If you drive on mostly flat terrain, there's no real benefit – it might even slow you down. I get my regular bike to 25km/h easily. An E-Bike accelerates until it hits 25km/h and then it's just a damn heavy bike (17-20kg) that is slower than a regular bike (if you're a somewhat fit person).
Anyways, I love the E-Bike for the simple fact that I go almost anywhere by bike, can take my kid with me and don't have to think about any hills at all.
I'm on my second converted (bafang) e-bike, been riding about 4000 KM the past two years all year (Norway). I love it! I use it as my main means of transportation, both to work and for other transport needs.
My first one was a cheap/old 26" dirtbike with hydraulic brakes. It was OK but the front shock and relatively skinny wheels were a limiting factor.
My second bike is a mid/high quality 27.5" dirtbike with a good front shock and good hydraulic brakes. And it's a really good bike all year. I highly recommend getting fairly large wheels with wide tires and a good front shock for a conversion bike.
I've read about motorized doping in bike races, with motors hidden inside the gearing, I wonder whether anyone's thought about this sort of thing for consumer bikes, and what sort of benefit you could get for, say, 1kg or half a kg of extra weight. E-bikes at the moment seem to have reconciled themselves to being twice the weight of ordinary bikes.
> I think the problem is range, you won't be able to hide much battery, the one on my bike weighs 6LBs and is quite bulky.
Interesting, that seems to be exactly what I was thinking of. The good thing is, it seems you could use it without a battery, or with differently sized batteries depending on need. If I'm reading this right, the motor, wiring, etc, weighs about 1000g, then a 6Ah battery another 850g, or a 9Ah battery 1250g. So only an extra kilo if you just wanted to use it as a normal bike, and if you're commuting, you might know exactly what capacity you need, and could just take that. Especially in cities, there's a lot of carrying bikes up and down stairs.
You can; it's called "pedal assist", and usually, the motor controllers can be set to do it at different levels of pedaling intensity. It's usually implemented by spacing magnets around the crankset and then calculating how fast they're passing by a sensor.
I think it’s the closest you’ll find to a bike the looks and operates almost identically to a traditional bike. No wires, no display, excellent weight, etc. Obviously the price is out of control, but still the right idea I think.
4) cars drive just fine in strong wind / rain / snow
5) cars are a lot safer on roads
There are obvious disadvantages too, but, regardless, ebikes are not car replacements. They are good for relatively short trips in places with good bicycle infrastructure.
Yes, but not a big city in Germany. Many bike lanes and speed limit of 30-40km/h. Also several roads with two lanes. If there is no bike lane, I take the entire lane to prevent cars from passing by closely. I certainly wouldn’t drive with a trailer everywhere though.
"Biggest disadvantage: If you drive on mostly flat terrain, there's no real benefit – it might even slow you down."
I'm from that country with the bikes 'n dykes (The Netherlands) and lately it seems a trend that elder use e-bikes instead of whatever else they were using (car, moped, bicycle, legwagon). They're severely slowed down if they were to use a regular bike. This way, they can get some fresh air and actually see some of nature and adjacent cities/village.
The biggest disadvantage to me is the high price. Combine that with these elder who'd also use these e-bikes to go for longer routes but then they'd not put their bike locked securely (and you should use some good locks). Cause yeah, losing 1-2k EUR from just doing groceries is a shame. They're also a bit more difficult to transport in public transport than a regular bike and more so a folding bike (latter is freely used on Dutch railways called NS).
I also notice that the e-bikes can pass me on longer courses, but if we're going from traffic light to traffic light I accelerate way quicker on my regular bicycle than e-bikes. If I do my best, I can slowly pass an e-biker.
If you wanna take your kid with you, a "bakfiets" (a bicycle with a way to transport items in the front of the wheel see [1]) also works. Especially common in Amsterdam.
The Cube Design Museum in Kerkrade had an exhibition (in NL/EN/DE language available) about bicycles with all kind of bicycles of the past and the future, including experimental designs. When I went, IIRC in september 2017, they also had an exposition about toilets, and a floor about past failed designs (a lot of electronics but not solely), There's World of Bricks (Lego) as well in the Continuum Museum nearby. Recommended! (Disclaimer: not affiliated.)
Do people give you trouble for riding in bike lanes? I know here in Toronto people hate the Vespa-like ebikes. They’re too slow for cars lanes, endangering the rider, and too fast for bike lanes, endangering bikers.
Personally, i feel like you should just not have the 25kmh limit and need a license.
I love the idea of an e-bike but the 25kph limit just kills it. I already average over 25kph on a typical non-winter commute and there are no hills to speak of in my area. There aren't that many stoplights either.
Another difference between e-bikes and scooters is that e-bikes do not require a license to drive while scooters do. One of the reasons for the speed limit on e bikes is to avoid this license requirement.
It would be good if they went 30-35, so that you don't impede traffic on streets with a 30km/h limit. I don't think the additional 15% speed would make that much of a safety difference, compared to cars overtaking you.
It'd be dangerous to pedestrians and non-motorised cyclists though.
Of course, fit cyclists can cruise at 30+. But to get to that level, you've to put in serious effort and by the time you got the power, you know your responsibilities too. But giving anybody 30km/h vehicle that is legal on shared paths ain't good idea.
If you're afraid of cars overtaking you, get a small motorcycle.
I wonder if sth. like an electric Vespa would be feasible. You would be able to pack in more battery than an e-bike, but the last mile would be a problem because you can't just pedal the rest of the way.
The problem in Singapore is you need to get a COE for motorbikes. They cost at least 5x what am ebike would cost. I want an electrical assist bicycle that goes 50kmh and is nimble not a scooter that goes 80kmh, costs an order of magnitude more and rides like a death trap. I'd be happy if they provided some sort of intermediate license with a test for faster ebikes.
I figure it this way, I would want it for boosting on take off and going up hills. the limit on speed is not an issue to me as if I am maintaining a pace higher than that it is because I am on favorable terrain.
Under good circumstances, yes. When you are cycling recreationally, you get to pick a nice day. But if you are cycling to work every day and deal with strong wind, elevation differences, maintaining 20-25 km/h is going to be tough.
Sustaining 20-25 is easy for me on a calm day. But on steep roads or windy days it's definitely more in the 10-15 or 15-20 ballpark.
(This is from experience. I am fit, cycle 22km every working day (roughly 5200km per year) with elevation differences and have an excellent bike.
> But if you are cycling to work every day and deal with strong wind, elevation differences, maintaining 20-25 km/h is going to be tough.
That is true when you're riding uphill and/or into a headwind, but that should also be made up by the fact that the headwind/ascent becomes a tailwind/descent when you ride in the other direction.
The speeds I attain on my conventional bike range from 25 to 30 km/h on flat ground, 10 to 15 km/h going up 5% grades, but between 30 to 40 km/h going down the same grades. Headwinds on flat ground reduce my speed to 20 to 25 km/h (15 to 20 km/h if it's strong), but with a tailwind, I can maintain 30 to 35 km/h (or even up to 40 km/h if it's strong) on flat ground.
The only thing I don't like when riding are side wind gusts, but I suspect that a motor wouldn't make much of a difference in that case :)
> > But if you are cycling to work every day and deal with strong wind, elevation differences, maintaining 20-25 km/h is going to be tough.
> That is true when you're riding uphill and/or into a headwind, but that should also be made up by the fact that the headwind/ascent becomes a tailwind/descent when you ride in the other direction.
Not a great comfort when you are trying to get to work.
And in my experience, after several hours at work, the wind dies down or changes direction by the time I want to go home.
> side wind gusts
I would expect the greater mass of the motorized bicycle to help the rider stay grounded.
> I would expect the greater mass of the motorized bicycle to help the rider stay grounded.
That might be the case when riding a motorcycle (since it weighs quite a bit more than the rider), but even the heaviest e-bikes would still be lighter than the rider.
If you commute on flat ground, you can use a lightweight racing bake and narrow tires. Unfortunately, that does not work for forest roads on my commute, so I need a heavier trekking bake with wide tires (with a lot more friction).
Moreover, if you can do 50 km/h of sustained speed, you should become a professional cycler. The world record is around 55 km in an hour. Pro cyclers can only sustain > 50 km/h speeds for shorter periods:
Of course, short stretches of 40 or 50 km/h is doable, but most fit cyclers cannot sustain that for 3 mile stretch. So, either you are near-pro or overestimating your average speed ;).
Ps. I pass the vast majority of (clearly non-recreational) cyclers (> 95%).
I always had a trekking bike, not that it was necessary for a concrete cycle lane.
The speed is not overestimated. The overground and the car have a well defined speed for comparison. Sometimes a friend would happen to drive along on the road on his way home and be surprised that I keep up with his car.
I cycled every day for a decade. That's a good training I guess.
>>> If the ride is so great and economics so favorable, why haven’t I seen more adoption here in US and Canada?
The author's answers to this question focus solely on the bike technology itself. This is a common thread in a lot of discussions about cycling: If we only built the right bike, more people would ride. This is usually followed by a CAD rendering of the perfect bike, that looks like nobody would want to ride it.
I don't think it's the bike. I think that there are a lot of cyclists who are simply not candidates for e-bikes because riding under their own power is part of the attraction. I'm one of those people. A friend of mine who loves his e-bike finally gave up trying to understand why I don't want one.
So you have to reach the same people who were deterred from cycling in the past for reasons good and bad. The motor addresses the issue of effort, but not safety, weather, or a variety of other factors, including the fact that driving a car is fun for a lot of people. The e-bike could produce a marginal uptick in cycling, in the short term, but not a revolution.
> I don't think it's the bike. I think that there are a lot of cyclists who are simply not candidates for e-bikes because riding under their own power is part of the attraction.
You should not be asking why bicyclists are not riding e-bikes. You should be asking why motorists are not riding e-bikes.
0.6% of Americans bike to work.[0] 86% of Americans drive, 89% of them alone. If even 1% of motorists switched from driving to e-biking, that would increase the bicycling population by over 100%.
> The motor addresses the issue of effort, but not safety, weather, or a variety of other factors,
The US has a really bad built environment.[1]
> including the fact that driving a car is fun for a lot of people.
Automobile manufacturers spend billions and billions on advertising, convincing people that driving is fun.
> including the fact that driving a car is fun for a lot of people
Hmmm... Communting to work is fun for people? I want to live where they live.
Keep the car for weekend cruising, the bike probably makes the boring commutes more fun than a car would.
I built an bike 6 or 7 years ago but only took it once to work (a 20 mile commute). It was underpowered and under-batteried but it was an interesting starting point. I mean to try it again.
Additional factors are distance and climate, for instance compared to the cities in northern Europe that are famous for bike use. Most of the US gets hotter and colder than those cities, and we have social customs that discourage being sweaty when you arrive at work. Also, our typical commuting distances are longer. When people in Amsterdam have commutes longer than a few miles, they park their bikes at the nearest train station, and ride the train into town.
Thus the "infrastructure" could include public transportation. In my spouse's case, public transit encouraged her to ride her bike because it provides an alternative on days when it's too crappy to ride.
The biggest attraction it me would be, not getting all sweaty. But at the same time, wouldn't it be better for me if I trained my body until I didn't get all sweaty on a regular bike?
It's worth keeping in mind that riding a bike isn't necessarily better for climate change. Presuming that you aren't actively losing weight, you're eating extra calories in the form of food to power your bike. And the ecological impact of that food can easily be greater than that of biking.
For example, buying 1kg of beef has the same ecological impact as driving 63 miles in a car[0]. However, that 1kg supplies you with only 2,500 calories[1]. At ~50 calories per mile[2], you get 50 miles of biking out of the beef--less than what it took to get the beef to you. It feels like you're saving the environment by not driving, but you're actually doing the exact opposite!
Of course, most environmentally conscious people aren't going to have a diet that meat-rich. But it's something to keep in mind if you're trying to reduce your carbon emissions by biking.
>It's worth keeping in mind that riding a bike isn't necessarily better for climate change.
Don't be absurd. Nobody should worry that they're hurting the planet by riding a bike. Your calculation omitted the impact of creating and disposing of the car. Your calorie projections assume riding at a strenuous pace, most bike commuters don't. You assume a nearly all beef diet which is ridiculous. There is no reasonable calculation that would show biking worse than driving for the environment.
This seems like more of an appeal to not eat beef, than about the relative merits of cycling and driving. In my case, I eat mostly foods from the bottom of that carbon footprint table, which is a factor of 10 reduction.
I commute 38m/day, and tried an e-bike. Since it was speed limited to 19mph, it didn't save me any time compared to self-powered riding, and it provided considerably less exercise - about the same as walking.
Here in India I see a few people cycling to work. A "few" (we have a LOT of people).
I can't see adoption increase. I myself won't ride a cycle, because
1. There's way too much pollution on the roads. I'll die breathing that air
2. If I don't die breathing that air, some car or bus driver who doesn't give a shit about other people's lives and is on their phone while driving will hit me and perhaps kill me (or worse, leave me disabled for life)
I want to cycle to work everyday. I want the exercise. I want to live, and to be healthy, and to protect the environment.
Is 1 really all that different from driving in a car with the AC on? If I understand correctly, car filters typically only filter very large particles that would damage the engine.
Engine air and cabin air are two separate intake paths.
The cabin air in modern cars is highly filtered.
"
Most dust filters will stop 100 percent of all particles that are 3 microns or larger in size, and 95 to 99 percent of particles 1 to 3 microns in size. The combination dust and odor filters have a layer of activated charcoal or baking soda to absorb odors and air pollutants. Some of these filters may even be lightly scented to enhance the driving experience."
For most commutes the car would still win even if the air inside was the same as the air outside, because the car would be faster so you would have less total exposure.
As far as car interior air goes, I've noticed that when I walk to a nearby market during times when there is a fair amount of traffic I can really notice the smell from the cars, but when I myself am driving on that same road in similar traffic I cannot smell it.
My guess is that the rate of exchange of air between the car and outside is low enough that at least for short trips (a few miles, say) it mostly remains air that was from my neighborhood, which is half a mile away from any heavy traffic road.
1. Nano titania filters, a UV illuminated volume, after the microfiber dustcloth large-particle filter inlets and reactive nano silver filters, for the mouth; same for the nose but with damp cloth filters too, for larger volume draws, in case something needs be smelt. Or hills. Totobobo spares, I suppose.
1.5. Rain and particle riding shawls
1.5.5 Neem oil/piney spray soap for those if they have to air in a hall.
2. 600Hp tata drone circling you defensively. JK. Sprung banners outside any rear panniers with waxed or superhydrophobic finishes all the way up to head height, and laserfoil (diffractive) finishes and automatic illumination there, in case of bespoke drivers; spares monthly just to stay shiny as a new, narrow bus?
The police departments have to fill a quota so they will give an official fine to some people, once they fill the quota for that month, they are free to ask for a bribe.
I'm surprised the author spent so much money building on top of a base bike of such low quality. That department store bike is what bike snobs would call a "bicycle-shaped object". You certainly shouldn't not be cheaping out on the actual bicycle for an e-bike, as you're putting the bike (and particularly the brakes) through forces they were not properly designed for. The author even admits such:
> The brakes are often too soft to handle continuous elevated speed. What ends up happening is that I spend more money overtime to upgrade the bike to my desired state. So far I spent about $1500, including parts and tools, this is accounting for a fairly cheap used bike on craigslist ($200). Had I bought a new bike, I would have had to spend probably close to $1900. To make it exactly the way I want it, I estimate that I have to spend an additional $800 to get install IGH, bigger brakes, and more efficient tires with less rolling resistance.
Frankly, the author's setup just sounds dangerous. The several-$K all-in-one bicycles that they refused to get on grounds of cost are expensive because they are actually built to handle the rigors of e-bike usage, and have incredibly useful features like hydraulic disc brakes. The brakes on that department store bike are "disc" brakes, but they're certainly not hydraulic, or even good, at that price point.
Since 3 years and >10.000km I use a self made eBike based on a 250€ bike from Decathlon with a self made controller [1]. It is a sturdy bike with properly functioning brakes - and I have gone up to plenty of mountain passes including the Col de la Bonette (2800m) [2]. The reason to take a low budget bike is that it is less likely to be stolen - and if it happens I'll just buy a new one.
The advantage of a DIY eBike is that you can repair it yourself. Plenty of ebike dealers have no knowledge of the electronics and if something stops working, then the bike gets send back to the factory. As it is a seasonal business you may be without a bike for weeks in summer time.
Yup, the brakes is definitely the limiting factor currently, but other parts of the bike have held up surprisingly well. I didn't really know anything about bikes before starting this, so it was a cheap way to learn. I figured I can always upgrade the parts over time if needed. I had set a max budget of $1500 for the initial purchase and had to make tradeoff somewhere.
You can't easily replace the frame though. You're right that the other parts can be replaced, but you should have at least used a good frame to start with. For only a few hundred bucks more you could have gotten a substantially better bike to work with. The bike you have has a cheap aluminum frame, which will accumulate stress fractures over time from the high speed electric bicycle use exceed its design specs that it's seeing. It may eventually catastrophically fail on you.
At your given budget I would have used a better bike and a smaller motor/battery. The combination of beefy motor on an inferior quality bike could be flat-out dangerous.
It took him ten hours of work the first time. Yes, it'll take him less the second time because he's gotten better at it, but it's still by no means easy or trivial. And we haven't gotten to how much he values his time yet.
People love to go on about the value of their time, but most people cannot arbitrarily decide to work another hour and get paid for it. Most people either have their schedules set by their employers or are on a salary that doesn't change if they add an additional hour.
Don't weight ten hours of learning about bicycle assembly as though it were ten billable hours if it isn't. Compare it against the ten hours you were going to do other things in: reading, watching TV, going out for a walk, whatever.
I think I'd rather read a book than keep monkeying around with a bicycle, though. That's the value of the time I'm referring to. I know some people like endless tinkering with things, but not me; I just want them working. Mechanical repair isn't a leisure activity for me.
Two types of people and all that. OP is clearly a tinkerer. Telling them that they shouldn’t value their time this way seems silly.
If I was the OP, I would do this exact thing: after putting some more miles on the bike and saving up that gas money, get a nicer bike and swap the motor. Better yet, sell this e bike for $2k now that it’s all upgraded and use that money for a full upgrade.
I don't think he'll be able to get $2K for it. It's still built around a bad bike, and any prospective buyer will easily find that out. It's probably worth most as parts.
I got a Liberty CXD and have been using it for over a year now with only some slight modifications -- I replaced the pedals (they were trash) and added fenders, a rear rack, and lights. I chose that bike as a good compromise between performance and not breaking the bank too much if it got stolen.
Were I to do it over again I'd get a nicer model, because in practice I almost never lock up my bike outside anyway so the theft concerns aren't an important factor.
My bike is around 50 lbs. I weight about 150 lbs. I often carry a bag about 20 lbs. So all in, it's about 200 lbs or ~90KG. I think my battery pack can go about 50 miles per charge, but I never went that far on a single charge. I usually charge after 30 miles to ease strain on battery, but that should still be plenty for you to get to work and back.
I can comment on the range. I have a similar bike with a 540Wh battery. Total weight close to 20 kg, maximum practical range approx 30-40 km. Slightly less when sub zero C temp.
Edit: I would consider an extra charger and charge at work for that range, in case you want to stop by somewhere on your way to or back from work.
I get 40km out of a 400Wh battery with similar weight.
About half in cold weather with snow and studded tires. The tires seem to be the main reason for the reduced mileage. This is in sport mode with maximum assistance and going full speed.
You'd be surprised at how little extra momentum (speed or weight) you have to add before disc brakes become essential. For me, the aha moment came when I started pulling a 40 lbs bike trailer - then you really don't want soft brakes when approaching a junction with cars. I installed some Avid Juicy's on 180 mm rotors and they're awesome - even now when the bike trailer is 70 lbs.
They also don't bleed as much braking power when they heat up from repeated or long braking, which is more common at the high speeds seen in an electric bike.
I bought a pretty basic no-frills bike (https://www.feltbicycles.com/USA/2016/Bikes/lifestyle/Urban/...) and used the same conversion kit that the author of this post uses (Bafang BBS02 from LunaCycle - less than $100 for a local bike shop to install). I've been riding my e-bike to work for several months and the caliper brakes that came with the bike have held up fine. They have enough braking power that it feels safe, and don't seem to be wearing too badly. So I don't think you need disc brakes at all.
The only problem I've had with the underlying bike is one incident where I slammed on the throttle from a full stop and the motor wrenched the whole back axle out of its alignment and jammed the wheel at an angle to the body of the bike. I guess the nuts securing the axle had worked themselves loose. Luckily I was close to work and was able to walk my bike in, and bring some tools the next day to loosen and re-tighten the nuts.
Overall I think it's been great. I wouldn't go back and buy a more expensive bike if I could. The nearly car-like prices of "good" bikes are too much.
Good steel frames are not necessarily significantly heavier than aluminum frames but they ride much much better (have more flex). They also can be repaired if required while aluminum is probably toast after anything that damages the frame. In anything that is not a race or cargo bike I’d always prefer a steel frame.
Steel frames are only easy to repair if they're lugged, i.e. the tubes are brazed into lug sockets. This was once a common method of hand building frames, but it's now rare and expensive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugged_steel_frame_constructio...
Compared to aluminum frames, all steel frames are more easily repaired. They can be welded without special equipment, put back in shape when slightly bent etc. They also fail less catastrophic - if an aluminum frame or fork receives even a slight bend in a dooring accident it needs replacing since it may just break clean though at the next inconvenient occasion (like hitting a slight bump downhill with high speed)
Cargo bikes require significantly thicker frames to sustain the load, so the weight difference is much more pronounced. They’re also quite heavy to begin with, so shaving an few kilos off is most often worth it. There are some bikes that actually have mixed steel/aluminum frames, Douce bikes for example use steel for the back part of the frame where the rider sits and aluminum for the front cargo section.
It works great. I was specifically looking for a bike without gears since I read that many people with e-bike conversions just leave it on one gear all of the time anyway and I didn't want the apparently-unnecessary additional complexity and failure modes of a derailleur.
Besides, the pedal assist power is adjustable so if I hit a hill I can just press the + button on the controller on the handlebar and I get more power. That functions like shifting into an easier gear, without having to pedal like mad to get anywhere.
This. For the $1500 the author spent, he could have bought a decent bike instead of strapping a motor on a $200 piece of cast-iron junk.
Plus, a 1000-watt motor is ridiculous: that's the kind of power generated by a pro sprinter, and over twice what a pro climber generates on average. A 100-watt boost would be enough of an advantage to make most hills easy, and would probably weigh and cost far less.
I don't think you have tried out an eBike before, 1000W is just about enough to make most inclines easy. If I drop my BLDC controller down to 250W it makes things rather difficult. Remember you are carrying around the extra weight of a battery pack and motor.
Its a DC rear hub motor, I can throttle it fully up and still hold my bike in place. It accelerates poorly and has relatively little torque. I can get my bike up to the same speed manually with the benefit of the gearing all bikes have.
On even terrain I don't have any reason to be driving around at over 15mph (and I don't), but we do have morons who will, and that's why the law is so restrictive in the EU.
They don't bother with ebikes anyway, so they're reckless with a moped, which is way more dangerous.
The 250W limit in Europe is stupid (plus it shouldn't be a European law, it's not the correct scope).
Finally, you can be reckless with rollerblades or a bike, you don't need a motor. I guess it's more a problem of "250W is more than enough for people" just like 640kb was, for politicians.
Lots of things have a boundary, even if the boundary is somewhat arbitrary. In most places there is a voting age, there is an age of consent, and there is a drinking age. These ages differ, because there is no clear-cut boundary.
Do you think there should be no power limit, or that it should be a different power limit?
I don't see why the regulations for electric bikes should be much different from gasoline bikes (aka, mopeds). If your e-bike is powerful enough, then it's comparable to a more powerful moped.
Do you think we prevent people from drive on the sidewalk because they will be reckless? I think the greater the momentum disparity, the more likely it is that an error, like loss of control, results in injury or death. This is a wider brush than "reckless".
Are those two figures comparable though? Is an electric bicycle motor measured by its power draw or by its output? And either way, it's still not the same because at most that'd be measuring at the crank, whereas an ergometer measures at the pedal. So if I had to guess I'd say that a 1000W electric motor is roughly equivalent to, say, 500W output from a human on an ergometer (which of course is still way better than the average person can perform for any length of time).
It's hard to build an inefficient electric motor, and I'd think the headline figure is the motor power rating.
But even if we assume it's the power draw and the motor itself is terribly inefficient, we're still talking 80% efficiency? Chain drive is 95% efficient if badly maintained, but then the human power loses that, too, so we don't need to consider it. So we're still talking 800W, which is 3-4 times as much as needed to sustain 20 mph on flat ground, and utterly out of range of any human for any time period beyond a minute.
The power and speed limit of normal ebikes is a feature. It keeps us from making the same mistake we have with cars, which only ever got faster while driving discipline declined and were at any point beyond human ability anyway.
Correction: The headline figure is the motor’s maximum power rating. I tried an electric bike with a 350W hub motor, and on a moderate hill it did not have enough torque to move. Power = Work ÷ Time, Work = Force × Distance; 0 distance ⇒ 0 power.
I understand that mid-drive motors can deliver much more torque than hub motors. Maybe the OP is being realistic about what he needs in the Arizona hellscape where he lives.
100 watts would turn it back into a manual bike with some electrical assist. There's a place for that, but it's clear the author was looking for something more.
Yeah, I'd count the author's bike as being pretty close to being a moped. Except that it might get regulated as an e-bike, and it is possible to use it as a normal heavy bicycle if he wants or if the motor fails.
The law in many US states and most European countries views the machine in this article as a moped or motorcycle. It is throttle-operated, instead of being proportional to pedal torque, and it has no speed limiter. If it was limited to 20MPH, it could be a "class 2" or "type 2" e-bike in many jurisdictions. If it was pedal-operated and limited to 28 MPH, it could be a "class 3" e-bike. But as built, it's a moped. You need a license, registration, insurance, and a helmet to operate it.
I see a lot of deliverymen around here with beefy e-bikes who never pedal. The question of whether you can pedal seems academic if you never do. These e-bikes I'm talking about are functionally identical to electric mopeds (same power and speed capabilities); they just have pedals that go unused instead of a footrest.
The law recognizes this too, which is why e-bikes are primarily regulated by power output or top speed.
Mechanical disc brakes certainly do not work nearly as well as hydraulic disc brakes in high-power-output electric bike applications. What they "worked" on is manual bikes, but even for manual bikes, hydraulic brakes are superior; it's just that a manual bike isn't pushing the limitations of what mechanical brakes can do as often.
hydraulic mostly provides improved actuation via greater modulation resolution. Think about it - It's a hydraulic system vs mechanical. No cable stretch and no friction along brake housing. However greater modulation resolution is not a major benefit in the context of ebike. The bike is heavier so you just need sufficient braking power. A larger rotor radius would help more than going from mechanical to hydraulic.
hydraulic alone doesn't provide greater braking power vs cable pulled calipers.
I get what you're saying, but in practice, cheap mechanical disc brakes also suffer from less braking force, whereas there aren't particularly cheap hydraulic disc brake systems, so all the hydraulic disc brakes do have better braking force in addition to greater modulation characteristics.
So to simplify the point I'm making, he needs better brakes.
My bad -- the name "IRON HORSE" threw me off. Still, the thing supposedly weighs 37.75 lbs., which is terrible for a bike. For $1500, he could get something with much better parts weighing 20-25 lbs.
That's some heavy hardware! A bike trailer is 3-4 lbs, and a 20-lb road bike is around $1500 new (far less used). You'll pay more in money or weight for a cross or mountain bike, but 40 lbs is still pretty painful.
EDIT: Pro deal is 50-60% of retail, so you can buy a used bike for about half of the sticker price.
You may well pay more in aerodynamic penalty on the bike trailer than you would in extra weight on the bike itself, though. It merits calculation.
Also ... biking with a trailer just isn't fun. I'd much rather bike on a loaded-down heavy bike than on a lighter bike dragging a trailer behind it.
And there's the fact that I'm sure you must be underestimating something, because a bike trailer has additional weight from its frame, wheel, and tire to add on that a fully-loaded bike does not. I don't see how it's possible that, for equal carrying capacity, adding a trailer could somehow reduce total mass.
I don't bike particularly fast, so I'll bring up other factors.
The wheels of the bike trailer add additional rolling resistance, and more I think than putting the same weight on two wheels. That is, the trailer wheels are smaller, which means there's more force against the direction of travel.
Most bike trailers have two wheels side-by-side. If you are biking down a dirt road, then odds are there are packed ruts side-by-side, with a grassy strip in the middle. With a 2-wheel bike, it's easy to go along one of the ruts. With side-by-side wheels it's more likely that one of the wheels will be in the grass.
(My spouse uses a trike, and has this problem.)
I think username223 doesn't understand where the weight comes in, and is estimating what the weight "should" be based on a road bike + trailer combo.
A bike like mine, for bike camping, is heavier than a road bike. I also use it for dirt roads, so it needs to handle more shocks and vibration. The racks and fenders, and of course the gear, adds more weight. There are also not one but two kickstands on mine - the one on the front tire is needed if I'm carrying front panniers, because otherwise the wheel may twist and the weight pulls it down.
This then calls for a stronger frame, which adds even more weight.
Can I just say, it seems weird to me that that bike doesn't have disc brakes given its intended uses for bike camping? How does it handle long descents and/or rain? The serious bike camping bikes that I've seen have both disc brakes and caliper brakes, for redundancy and ability to handle long declines under heavy load that might burn out just a single set of calipers.
In an e-bike assisted context, the extra 10-15 lb, most of which is non-rotational weight is negligible.
A 20-25 lb steel bike with sufficient robustness does not really exist for $1500. Something like a surly ogre is about 30lbs. To shave off that extra 5-10 lbs you're looking at some very performance oriented parts and/or construction with extremely elevated prices.
Yeah, some people don't realize that what you want to electrify is more akin to a hardtail mountain bike. You want big sturdy tires that can handle hitting an imperfection in the road at high speed, and front suspension helps for the same reason. Bigger tires allow for better braking, too.
Riding an electrified road bike at 30 mph all the time sounds terrifying and potentially dangerous.
"Most of the commercial E-Bike uses 250W or 350W motors, because that’s what the European specs are. While that amount of power is able to achieve 20MPH range, it does take its time to get there. In the US, with the open roads, that’s simply not enough power to keep up with traffic. Quite frankly, they still feel like a plain bicycle and it’s a bit boring to ride. Higher adoption require more power."
As I understand it, the EU standard says there's supposed to be no power assist past 25km, which is about 16mh. That is, for e-bikes which don't require a license.
I agree. If you want a more powerful e-bike, you should have a license.
Yeah, in the US, my understanding is that the regulation is much looser relative to the rest of the world. You can have a maximum of 750W with a top speed of 28 MPH without pedal assist, which in my view is plenty fast for a bike. The problem is that because US is such a small market for EBike that most are imported with European specs. In the US with straight and open roads, they just aren't fast enough
I've found with mine drivers can be surprised, especially on inclines They expect you to slow to a crawl but you keep going and they find they haven't left enough room to pass.
This! I was a semi-professional (CAT 1/2) racer in college and routinely road in the 22 to 30+ MPH range. 30+ MPH is surprisingly easy on busy roads with a good draft coming off traffic. A day wouldn't go by while riding in the city that I didn't have a close call with a car and in fact a bus hit me once while passing me on a corner (the driver cut the corner, going over the white-line). In order to not die I did a lot of accident avoidance training and in fact this was something our team routinely pushed as part of our training. We'd focus on one particular aspect each month like learning how to crash by renting out some time at a gymnastics gym (foam pit).
I can't imagine anything past 15 MPH for the general public is a safe thing based solely on the bike handling skills of the majority of the general public. I literally put hundreds of hours into developing top-level bike handling skills that 99% of the population will never reach in order to ride quickly because once you reach a certain speed threshold, the threats (drivers not expecting you) and risks (more kinetic energy between you and the ground and you and a vehicle) go up significantly.
> I can't imagine anything past 15 MPH for the general public is a safe thing based solely on the bike handling skills of the majority of the general public.
It's pretty easy for most riders to get to 25 MPH or above when going downhill. That's why I take the lane in those situations and keep an eye out at every single intersection.
I think a lot of the situations that you describe could be prevented by taking the lane (riding between the center and left tiretrack position of the lane you're in) to discourage car and bus/truck drivers from passing you when it's not safe to do so. It will also make you more visible to passing traffic as well as traffic at intersections.
That's pretty much where I road most of the time when I was racing but never underestimate how much road rage that causes. It was fine when I was training in Bend, OR. Those drivers were very polite and in fact would always move into the other lane to pass. I honestly can't say enough good things about the people of Bend back in the early 90's. Beyond polite. Boise, ID on the other hand is a completely different world. I've had drivers call the police on me for doing this and the police take this stuff seriously in that if you do this, you are the problem. Oh, how they love to lecture about how you MUST ride as far to the right as safe & if that's in the wheel track of a vehicle, that's not safe. On one stop I had an office try to take me to the station for not having a drivers license to 'prove' my identity to him. He decided not to only after I explained to him how much my bike cost and that if he scratched the carbon fiber frame I'd be filing a claim with the departments insurance.
You're right in terms of one's experience being highly dependent on where they ride.
> Oh, how they love to lecture about how you MUST ride as far to the right as safe
Fortunately, my state (Virginia) has an exception (based on the Uniform Vehicle Code wording) to the keep as far right as practical rule that states that it doesn't apply if the lane is too narrow for a bicycle and other vehicle to safely travel side by side within the lane. If you take the width of a cyclist (2 ft), the distance between the end of the handlebar and edge of the road (minimum 2 ft), and the distance between the edge of the handlebar and the passing vehicle (at least 3 ft in most states), then you can argue that the cyclist needs a minimum of 7 feet. A typical passenger vehicle is about 6 ft wide. At typical lane is anywhere from 10 ft to 12 ft wide.
So for most lanes, you don't have to keep right at all. I haven't checked to see whether that's the case in Oregon or Idaho though.
Slightly OT, but if you want crash training, go mountain biking somewhere with sand. You'll endo a few times onto nice soft sand and learn a lot. That's all the 'training' I've had and it's gotten me through a couple 25+mph spills on the road with just scrapes. MTB is great for bike handling as well.
> While that amount of power is able to achieve 20MPH range, it does take its time to get there. In the US, with the open roads, that’s simply not enough power to keep up with traffic.
If you're talking about keeping up with traffic going more than 35 MPH, then the e-bike should have its brakes upgraded. I've gone down steeper hills before on my conventional bike at speeds up to 35 mph. With my cantilever rim brakes, it takes some distance to stop (quite a bit more than a car since you're effectively limited to a single wheel and a smaller contact patch relative to a car).
So if you have an e-bike that could keep up with 35 to 40 mph traffic, you'll still have to allow more distance to brake and leave plenty of following distance.
I have an ebike with 500 watt motor and I generally love it.
That is the way it works, you need a license, plates and insurance for more powerful ebikes(Speed Pedelec Fietsen), which can go quite fast; upwards of 50kph.
> Under federal law, an electric bike with a maximum assisted speed under 20 miles per hour can be sold as a bicycle, not a motor vehicle. Under New York state law, riders would need to register these as they would a motorcycle, moped, or car. But there’s no clear way to register them. Because of this regulatory patchwork, e-bikes are legal to sell as bikes anywhere in the U.S. but effectively illegal to ride in New York, since they can’t be registered as motor vehicles.
I actually worry about the "something must be done" crowd cajoling lawmakers into lazily shoehorning electric bikes into the "motorcycle" category and erasing much of their advantages to own as a bicycle.
This happened with boats here as my little plastic kayak with a tiny electric assist has to be registered and taxed as if it was a full sized bass fishing boat with a v8.
You're lucky to merely have to pay some money for your "power kayak".
In my state, to actively discourage the construction of home built boats, if I want to build a 15 foot sailboat, I need to work with the coast guard and state DMV (spoiler, they don't actually work together, the finger pointing is hilarious) to get a hull number assigned, then fight the DOT to get it titled (boats are titled where I live, and its agonizing although it only costs $5) and its quite a fight involving official inspection because most "homemade" boats are people trying to register are Crestliners with the serial numbers filed off, then I can fight the DNR to register myself obtaining a DNR customer number, and then fight the DNR to register the boat, essentially linking my CG hull ID number to my DNR customer ID number for a mere $17/yr, ironically the total cost of all of this for the first year would only be roughly $30 but it takes like 100+ hours of phone calling and meeting people and filling out forms. I pay $35 for a quart of good topside marine paint so the point is not the expense but the bureaucracy agony. All that for basically an inland lake dingy with a sail on it.
That sounds like insanity. My country by comparison is too far at the other end of the scale. Anyone can buy (or make) a boat, with a 200 horse motor, grab a six pack and a tank full of fuel and hit the water and go anywhere, into any harbour, with no training whatsoever.
Many e-bikes are perilously close to motorcycles, with similar power and top speed to a 50cc motor scooter. Brushless motors and lithium batteries can put out a phenomenal amount of power and torque. There's a line between "bicycle with electric assist" and "electric motorcycle with vestigial pedals" - I see an awful lot of the latter these days.
I would hope that they're equipped with disc brakes at a minimum. Wheel rim brakes on a conventional bicycle will slowly wear down the rim, but even when riding regularly, should last for quite a few years. On an e-bike with the faster speeds and greater braking needs, it may shorten the life of the wheels significantly.
This isn't enforced in New York. Every delivery guy in the city is now riding an e-bike. They're a menace. Their bikes weigh a ton and they occasionally utilize the sidewalks. I had a friend who was knocked to the ground by one.
I was going to build a ebike with my teenage son last summer, however it would be illegal for him to ride it in our state regardless of power output until he gets his drivers license. Also during the electric skateboard/scooter fad about a decade ago my home town banned them from city sidewalks, city property (aka parks and trails) and city roads, and the anti-e-skateboard code would cover e-bikes. So I'd only be able to ride it out of town, and my son could only ride it out of state.
The BBSHD is available from many places and seems to be a good kit with a good rep. Kits are modular and most battery packs are quick swap so if you're willing to fill backpacks and bike baskets with spare batteries you could go thousands of miles between charges if you're willing to pay for that kind of ridiculous privilege. Before I found out state law prohibits it, I was hoping to cruise some of our rural completely empty state bicycle trails purely for fun, requiring more range, so I'd likely need a slightly larger battery, but its all modular and very easy to install as large of a battery as you're willing to pay for. Being modular it doesn't matter that OP didn't like his electronic controller, luckily there are plenty to substitute, including all manner of software patches, and OP did not list the exact controller and firmware OP has and is dissatisfied with, unfortunately. The ebike battle seems to start with discovering what is even possible, first, and of course that changes from month to month...
I find it interesting that OP wanted higher efficiency tires, whereas I was interested in the idea of lower efficiency larger tires to make potholes more survivable. I don't really care if my drive to the food store takes 16 minutes of battery charging or 17 minutes of battery charging, but I would like to avoid flat tires and wiping out on the way.
Of course law enforcement is spotty, much like every other law, especially driving. I didn't see any point in putting my son (or myself) in some cops crosshairs so I gave up on that project. Oh well.
I'm all for e-bikes. I've been DIYing e-bikes for myself for over a decade. But I also see the argument for needing a license. With additional speed and distance, kids can outpace their understanding of traffic flow, shooting themselves through intersections without understanding how drivers will/will not see them. Here in Utah, where parents tend to let kids ride dirt bikes on roads, or ATVs on roads, there are a few fatalities EVERY summer, from kids who didn't understand what actions put them in danger and which did not.
Now, I think waiting for kids to be 16 and get a license is overkill. But I would support a drivers ed program for kids to teach them how to be safe on e-vehicles, and requiring that course to be completed before kids can ride at 25-30mph in traffic.
I don't understand. If there is no clear way to register the vehicle, then how do moped and motorcycle owners figure out how to register their vehicles?
I also completed my first 100 miles on an ebike this past week, on a bike I bought two weeks ago. I splurged and bought a top of the line pre-built[0]. Call it a mid life crisis.
It is a class three bike. The electric motor will only activate under 28mph. There is no throttle, the motor multiplies your pedal force by 55-200% depending on the setting (eco-turbo).
I can beat the bus on a few bus routes. I use to take the bus if the route had too many hills but now I maintain 17mph without getting winded on steep hills. An electric shortens and flattens any bike trip, I'm never sloughing up a hill, and I'm never asking myself if it's worth riding the bike. Even if bus or uber is faster it wont be twice as fast. Biking is still fun and still a workout, I'm a out of breath with sore legs after a ride.
I'm sometimes self-conscious about 'cheating'. I'm not sure how fast I should be going on a mixed use bike path. I'm afraid this bike will get stolen one day, even with a ulock and cable. If not stolen, vandalized.
I think that electric bikes could be the future of city transit if the price comes down. Secondary problems include theft and weather.
I also bought a top of the line pre-built (https://www.stromerbike.com/en_US/e-bikes/st2.html) almost 2 years and 7500 miles later, I have zero regrets. My goal is to break even for car cost for the price ($0.55 cents per mile). It hasn't happened yet, but I would already call it worth it due to the peace of mind of not having to sit in traffic every day.
> My third favorite thing is that I can get to work in basically the same amount of time as driving. On my E-Bike, it takes 22 minutes to get to work (7.5 miles). It takes me 15 minutes to drive there.
I live about 6 miles from where I work in Los Angeles. I ride my bike (not an E-bike) in three or four times a week. It takes me 25 minutes on average. By contrast, it takes me at least 35 minutes to drive, not including time to park and walk to the office.
I ride on neighborhood roads most of the way for safety, I have to do some personal cleanup when I get there and Los Angeles is particularly bad where traffic is concerned. With all that in mind, it's still worth considering for others in a similar situation.
Daily, year-round bike commuter in Seattle - I think electronic bikes are awesome for the hills in Seattle for folks new to biking. I'm concerned with the possibility of this increasing accidents, however.
My commute is mostly on roads with cars. I don't ride as fast as I can. Driving defensively, you want to be able to break and avoid a collision.
I witnessed a really bad accident, where a car t-boned a cyclist. This has cured me of riding as fast as I can into work.
I see a lot of normal bikers as well as e-bikers going faster than is safe and I think e-bikes contribute to riders putting themselves into jeopardy.
Also year-round commuter in Norway w/ an e-bike. I agree that the increased speed increases the probability of an accident. I've personally had several close calls vs cars in roundabouts and on bike lanes (!).
I also have a motorcycle license and I've been riding motorcycles for about 5 years in traffic. A lot of the risks are very similar to the ones you experience on an e-bike in my opinion.
Edit: The best tip I can give to two-wheel riders is to increase visibility as much as possible, and be observant of cars. Lights and bright colored clothing helps a lot.
I bought a Pedego electric bike this summer to replace a car.
I work from home, and there are many stores, restaurants, my Dr, etc. within a 30min e-bike ride, so we tried this experiment.
It's working out rather well in Myrtle Beach, SC.
My bike did cost me over $3k, however I too went through the process of evaluating what it would cost to build my own. aconsidering my weight (300lbs) The Pedego Stretch was one of the few bikes designed to handle that weight, and has the largest battery in the Pedego lineup. I've been happy with my purchase (including 0% APR financing for 1 year - making it a cheaper monthly payment than the lease I traded in - and that cost goes to $0 this coming summer).
It definitely opened up possibilities beyond a standard bike, and removed the feeling of being 'trapped' while working from home with no car while my wife has it at work.
For the author, I'm really curious about the section "Economics of owning an E-Bike relative to car". Would you mind sharing your rough math on how you came to those numbers? The IRS rate for expensing milage is $0.54/mile which (in theory) is supposed to cover standard maintenance and fuel.
However mostly it just seems really high for the bike to be $0.14/mile. My back of the envelope calculation for electricity cost is: ~$0.10 per KWHR. The battery pack is sub 1 KW so even with charging inefficiency should cost no more than $0.10 to charge. Divided by roughly 50 mile range means an electricity cost of $0.002 per mile. I could be way off, hence why I'm curious.
I think he gets to that $0.14/mile by including the cost of the complete bike (assuming 500 charge cycles of the battery, which at 30 miles/charge should last him about 4 years with a 15 mile commute).
Over those 4 years, he'll ride 15 miles/day * 253 working days/year, or 4000 miles/year, or 16000 miles.
So.... $1400 / 16000 = $.09/mile
He also included maintenance, so if he spends $200/year in maintenance (not unreasonable if he takes it to a bike shop for maintenance), that gets him up to $0.14/mile.
Author seems to think an internal drivetrain for a bike would be more reliable. Maybe somebody more mechanical can chime in, but my understanding was that the opposite was true: only reason cars have to use an internal drivetrain is for cooling and external ones are generally more reliable?
Internal gearhubs are drastically more reliable than derailleur gears and require almost no maintenance. They use an epicyclic gear train in a sealed oil bath, so most of the mechanical parts are protected from moisture and foreign objects. The use of a gearhub also facilitates the use of an enclosed chaincase, or a belt or shaft drive.
The Sturmey Archer 3-speed gearhub has existed largely unchanged since 1938 and is faultlessly reliable, even when horribly neglected. As long as they're rebuilt every 10,000 miles or so, they'll last a lifetime. They're the standard gearing option on Dutch utility bikes and were once the most popular of all bicycle gearing systems. The only real downside of the Sturmey Archer gearhub is that it offers a narrower range of ratios than a derailleur system, although it's more than adequate for utility cycling in moderately hilly areas.
Newer gearhubs offer eight, eleven or fourteen ratios, matching the gear range of a mountain bike derailleur system. They're less popular than derailleur gears because of the higher cost and marginally higher weight, but I think that they're a vastly superior choice for utility cycling. One great advantage for casual cyclists is that gearhubs change smoothly and instantly, even under heavy pedal load or at a complete stop. Changing gears on a derailleur system requires a degree of finesse to avoid jerky changes and dropped chains.
Rohloff manufacture the most sophisticated of all gearhubs, which have been successfully used on several round-the-world tours.
I commute on a bike with a Shimano Nexus, and I feel I should push back a little on the greatness of internal hubs.
You have to change the oil in the hub once a year or every five thousand km. The OEM oil costs seventy dollars a quart, but some people say ATF works fine. A bike shop will do it for you for forty or fifty dollars.
If you use chain drive, the chain will stretch. This is largely invisible on a derailleur bike, since it has an automatic chain tensioner, but on a gear hub bike it has to be done manually, by moving the wheel backwards a couple millimetres in the frame. This takes two wrenches and ten minutes, and must be done monthly or biweekly, or else the chain will fall off when you hit a bump. (Ask me how I know) Belt drive and shaft drive bikes do exist but I have never seen them in person.
For the first year of my bike's life I used a Hebie Chainglider: a plastic slimline chaincase that rides directly on the chain. It didn't seem to do anything at all, after twelve months the chain passed 0.75% stretch, so both the chain and the chaincase went in the trash. A conventional Dutch-style chaincase might work better, but I'm not confident.
Yes, although they can be somewhat hard to find in some markets. Any Dutch or German bike shop will have a wide selection of bikes with gearhubs, but in the US you might need to speak to a dealer that specialises in urban utility bikes. Some department store cruiser and hybrid bikes have Sturmey Archer 3-speed gearhubs, although the rest of the bike may be mediocre.
Dahon and Tern are both manufacturers of folding bicycles and both offer a good range of bikes with gearhubs. Folding bikes can be a very practical choice even if you don't use the folding feature very often - they're compact, agile and easy to ride.
One of the problems with external drivechains on bicycles is that they're exposed to all sorts of harsh elements like rain, mud, and road salt in winter. Even ignoring that, unless you have good parts and you're really on top of your maintenance and constant adjustment, it's pretty easy to have the chain slip or not engage properly on the chainring/cogset when shifting.
Bearing faces? Most bikes have sealed bearings these days, so there's no need to overhaul your bearings after riding in the rain. The chain and cogs need some cleaning and lube, but modern dry chain lube also makes that much less onerous.
Just because bearings are sealed doesn't mean debris can't get inside of them. This is particularly a problem for bottom brackets bearings since they are so large (more area for stuff to sneak in) and because it is easy to force material inside of them when spraying a bike off with water.
Internal gears in bicycles need no service at all for typical use. External gears on the other hand require you to swap chain and cogset regularly. (But if well serviced, they are more efficient)
Internal gearhubs are marginally less efficient than a clean and well-maintained derailleur system, but they're considerably more efficient than a dirty and neglected derailleur system.
This is a better article than I thought it would be; it's a bit scattered in that it discusses buying an ebike vs retrofitting one, and then also the user experience of being on an ebike: propensity to pedal rather than throttle, 1 gear being sufficient for flats, and 3 gears for hilly terrain, the comfort factor of biking faster when merged with traffic, and not being sweaty upon arrival when commuting.
I wish there were the political capital to put in more physically separated bike infra in American cities. Sharing infrastructure flat out does not work here, we are not mature or disciplined or standardized enough in our driving competency. A huge part of this is generational, my mom is all "This traffic sucks! Rip out the trees, rip out the sidewalks, put in more road lanes!" even though she bikes once a week to go play bridge with friends, and my dad won't even get on a bike. Millennials probably would like to rip out roads and put in more public transit and bike infra, and get rid of cars. I for sure would like to get rid of death by cycling, and single occupancy vehcicles. But there really isn't the political capital right now to do anything but piecemeal approaches.
I don't grok e-bikes. I like them and I'd like to get one but I just don't know how I will manage the charging. I am livinig in a big city and have no garage and no wall socket in front of my street door. And 100% of all destinations I ride to don't have wall sockets for charging neither.
So, I would need to carry every time the heavy battery upstairs (3 floors)? I am anyway always full-loaded with bags or whatever and don't want to carry every-time this stupid battery as well.
Then, the really beautiful e-bikes have an integrated battery in the frame, a bit like the iPhones. How should this now work?? I carry the 17-20kg bike upstairs every time?
Ok, only if you have a house with a garage in some suburb you can ride those bikes but then you are usually so far way from the city center that you need a car again.
As a final note: These bikes are so much heavier (17kg and up) and I am wondering if it's that much more effort to ride a light 10kg bike without any electrical motor.
So, I am really curious about the real use case of e-bikes.
Maybe it's because you've said you don't understand e-bikes for the ridiculous reason that they don't fit your very specific living situation like what kind of housing you have, which floor you live on and how many bags you're prepared to carry.
Other people have different living situations, and e-bikes suit them. It's not a mystery.
Then again what is the living situation ('use case') where an e-bike works? I also made the example with a house and garage. I don't see any killer use case but are happy to learn relevant use cases.
I mean just to look at one part of the world, but which many of us will understand, look at somewhere like San Mateo, the sub-urban area halfway between San Francisco and San Jose in Silicon Valley. Imagine living in a house with a garage somewhere like Foster City.
A family could get all around this area very nicely on an electric bike. Maybe you bike to an office in Redwood Shores, your wife teaches the College of San Mateo campus up the hill and she can get there on an electric bike there as well. She basically recharges it on the way back on the down hill. Your daughter goes to Hillsdale High School where she can electric bike to and works a part time job at the Whole Foods Market there which can bike to as well.
Your suburb example was flawed because not everyone is trying to get into a big city centre.
(1) Having a town house with some wall socket at the entry or a garage and (2) not trying to get into a big city centre might be a use case, yes. Thanks for elaborating your example but I don't think that this use case is strong or ubiquitous enough (maybe in SF) to lead e-bikes to mass adoption. I still think the concept of an e-bike, in particular the charging, is super flawed. If the battery is removable you can charge this thing but you have to carry a fat battery pack back and forth and your bike looks super clumsy (and yes, all bikes with removable batteries look clumsy) or if it's integrated it looks nice but it's hard to charge that thing.
I mean, I see that all bike manufacturer start to produce e-bikes and they form a large part of their revenues because they are much more expensive than normal bikes but if I'd make a mini poll here, how many of you guys have an e-bike, how many a normal bike? I bet the rate is 1:10 (e-bike:bike) or even lower.
When I lived in SF, I parked my bike in the apartment parking garage (where (I think) there were no power outlets). However, my primary biking destination was work, where I brought the bike into the office where I could have charged it if I had an eBike.
In the apartment where I live now, there's a dedicated card-access bike room with power outlets, so eBike owners can charge up there. (the room wasn't designed for eBike charging, there are only 2 duplex outlets, but a couple power strips mean that everyone with an eBike can plug in at once.
Though SF is small enough that an eBike is probably not necessary for most people - I lived near the top of Nob Hill and managed to commute on a regular bike for 8 years (2 of those years I was commuting to Marin). When I moved out to the Sunset, then there was an easy route to downtown (the "wiggle") to avoid the hills)
I'm having trouble believing that you're making a serious argument against eBikes, since you dismissed the solution to your problem (removable batteries) because it "looks super clumsy". As a recreational cyclist, I've always looked for reasons to ride a bike rather than looking for reasons why I can't.
I've stayed away from eBikes up till now because I haven't had a commute that really needs it, but I'm contemplating moving to where my bike commute will go from my current flat 5 miles to 15 miles with some short steep climbs in the middle. That's a commute where an eBike makes more sense to me. (but not a 1000W semi-motorcycle, just looking for a bit of boost for my aging knees to get up the hills)
My battery is easily removable and has a handle. When you are riding a bike you usually don't carry stuff that you have to use your hands to carry. I always have a backpack. In any case I always have at least one hand available to carry other stuff.
I charge the battery in my entry at home every day, but I could probably charge it only once or twice a week and that would still be sufficient.
I swear the best commuter ebike is the Revelo Flex (https://www.revelo.ca/pages/flex-electric-folding-bike). It's like someone shrank a penny farthing and put a motor in the back wheel: the front wheel is 20" and has pedals attached to it (so you can help the motor when uphill), the back is 16" and has the motor inside (torque!). You can order it with bike ABS as well (https://www.bikerumor.com/2012/11/27/hands-on-sabs-antilock-...). Since it's folding and rolling folded you can easily carry it on public transit. It's only 15kg which is just about the lightest possible (those batteries are heavy). There's no chain to maintain, no grease, nothing. Just hop on, zip along and stop when the situation warrants -- the stopping distance of the SABS pads is nothing short of incredible (I have been rearended by another cyclist once when I fully engaged them to avoid a collision with a car -- normally when riding in a bike lane I don't grip them like my life depends on them because I know how they behave).
With such a small front wheel and your feet on the front wheel, how do you climb a curb? That just looks like designed for a OTB. That funny one foot down maneuver kickbike-riders do to jump might work but doesn't look easy.
Question to e-bike owners - did you have to handle any sort of negativity from non e-bike riders? Stuff like "oh you are lazy", "this is unhealthy" etc?
Every group has its snobs. There are also people who think that car drivers are lazy and unhealthy.
I'm a conventional cyclist, but some of my friends have e-bikes.
For the most part, people get along. While cyclists don't know what to expect as e-bikes get more popular, we also recognize that e-bikes provide access to cycling for a larger population. The hope is that the overall popularity of cycling will be better for everybody. There's a general observation that car drivers behave better towards cyclists as cycling gets more popular in any given locale.
At least in my locale, e-bikes are arriving on the scene gradually enough, that people can have a wait-and-see attitude about how they will mix with conventional bikes as they get more popular. For now I have a laissez-faire attitude unless or until problems emerge.
Now and then I'll get a "that's cheating" comment. To be honest I spend far more time worrying about what car drivers are going to do than an odd comment from another cyclist.
I had my own ebike startup 2 years ago (Lectro). What killed it was the fact that large lithium battery packs were classified with hazmat status. This classification might have been spurred by the exploding hoverboards. Product shipping and liability became too high for profits. I would assume big box retailers have similar concerns. If the BMS in the battery had an issue, It was very difficult for the customer to ship back.
I left a comment on the author's page (awaiting moderation), but I'll copy it here: if you're going to try this at home familiarize yourself with local laws. I'm all for getting more people on bikes, but some of the suggestions he makes are illegal in my state. Be aware of power limitations, braking requirements, and how the resulting vehicle would be classified (and should be labeled).
Logging all your e-bike miles on strava is kind of lame. Even in your screen shots you can see you're taking KOM segments that others enjoy competing for from people, and I doubt those are other e-bike users. The whole point of the site is to act as a athletics tracker, and using a motor driven cycle here undermines that.
I still think the opportunity cost of not having a car is greater than whatever you pay to make it instantly available, should you want to take that trip during poor weather, or sufficient distance to make the ebike non applicable.
Unless you are content with the daily patterns that are constraint by the range of your e-bike.
A parking space where I live (London) would cost 1100/month. I find it very hard to imagine getting that much value out of a car - what would I ever use it for? I mean sure it would make it easier to make a spontaneous trip hundreds of miles while carrying lots of luggage for some reason, but how often do I want to do that?
that's also assuming from your house to your final destination, the combination of battery range, leg strength, and public transportation is sufficiently diverse to get you where you want to go.
I live near the mountains, and you need a vehicle to go into the mountains. riding an e-bike into the mountains and then relying on muscle power to move the heavy bike is not realistic.
I'd like to understand e-bike usage from a user perspective. Why does it appeal to a traditional biker to use an e-bike in the city (not talking cross country)? Why not „just bike“ or the opposite as in scooter/e-scooter? How come there is such a big market in between?
I recently built an ebike like the OP to commute. Up to now I would bike commute sometimes and ride my non-ebike or take transit for most non-work trips, but for work commuting there was too much extra friction -- too far, too much to carry (I work in construction) -- to bike consistently. However I enjoy biking and it's a great way to commute in my car-congested city (if I solved the friction problem).
The extra watts of the ebike removes the friction.
scooter is a legally different class. E.g. in Germany you need insurance, can't go on bike paths, and a small scooter in car traffic is dangerous.
vs bike: you are less exhausted/sweaty (e.g. important for the morning commute if you don't have a shower at work). Many users are older and suddenly can go up hills again. City often means lots of stopping and getting going again, which is nicer with electrical assist.
> In order for E-Bike to really take off, I think there is a need to design it from the ground up. Instead of building the motor and battery pack around the frame, the right way to design an E-Bike is to build the frame around the motor and the battery pack.
That's a motorbike. So is an e-bike really, but regulations allow it to be classified as something different so that you don't need a license.
EDIT: should clarify I enjoyed reading the article, and I think electric motorcycles and e-bikes have a bright future. I use a motorbike for my daily commute; non-riders should realise that they are far more vulnerable on two wheels. If you realise this and ride appropriately I think it is a reasonably ok thing to do. Having a bit of power actually makes things safer in an urban environment as it means cars aren't pushed into attempting dangerous overtaking maneuvers.
I worry about the safety of 20-30MPH and trying to stay with car traffic. e-bikes make more sense to me as an assist for riding at normal bike-like speeds than as a way to ride at moped speeds.
I should clarify that on the bike path, I generally do stay in the 15-20 MPH range, as there are many pedestrians traveling at low speed. On the road however, staying at typical bike like speed actually feel more dangerous to me. It kind of feels like driving on the highway at 45MPH when everyone is going 75MPH and a bit nerve wracking.
I've imported my european bike for $800. It lasted quite a while, until I tried to fix a flat tire in the Lance Anderson bike shop in Austin, TX. They've got coffee, but have no idea about e-bikes. They broke it (short circuit), but thanksfully there was an e-bike repair in Austin. They could repair it to 95%. There' was still some leakage.
I think there's one repair shop every 1000 miles. There's none in Houston. It was stolen after 2 years, which was expected.
My imported bike was far better than any $1000-2000 bikes in the states. They are all a scam.
That attached battery would get stolen in a pinch. Not practical unless you have closed/safe parking at every destination, i.e. won't work in Europe where we mostly park on the street.
I'm curious about the second picture: it looks like the motor is in the way of the pedal crank arm?
For those looking for a totally integrated electric bike company in North America, checkout out https://www.radpowerbikes.com/ and they are less expensive than cobbling a retrofit together.
Biggest advantage: Hills don't exist for me. We live in a city with quite a few hills and day care is about 70-100m below our appartment. Doing this trip twice a day with its 15% slope would take way longer and exhaust me, before the day even started. The way downhill to day care is now something like 10 minutes and back up 11 minutes.
Biggest disadvantage: If you drive on mostly flat terrain, there's no real benefit – it might even slow you down. I get my regular bike to 25km/h easily. An E-Bike accelerates until it hits 25km/h and then it's just a damn heavy bike (17-20kg) that is slower than a regular bike (if you're a somewhat fit person).
Anyways, I love the E-Bike for the simple fact that I go almost anywhere by bike, can take my kid with me and don't have to think about any hills at all.