381–390 of 476 posts
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I don't. I don't need a bicycle at all. The only reason most Americans outside NYC and Chicago ride a bike is leisure. Well, that or too many DUIs if we're being honest. Ideally though if I had something like this it would encourage me to use my bicycle more.
If you don't need it then why do you write that you are the target group?
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And, don't forget: easy to steal off even a well-secured bicycle.
That's not a problem in Asia.
They will even steal a helmet off a parked bike and that's way cheaper. Just look how many helmets are left on bikes in different parts of different towns (because there is literally no advantage to take your helmet anywhere other than for theft protection)
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Wow, $2k? You could get a decent ebike for that money. And the installation doesn't look any easier than a hub motor... Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike. I think of friction drives as being aimed at budget-conscious commuters, not serious mountain bikers.
I was shocked by the price, too. I mean a motor and a battery can't be so expensive, especially such a "small" battery (300Wh). That being said, having driven electric bikes for a while, here in France they're ridiculously limited in speed and power. 25km/h limit on flat land usually makes sense (except on long straight lines), but when you get climbing even slightly you get down to ~10km/h and have to provide more e…
I've ridden bikes with Bosch 65Nm motors and with a 80kg rider plus 20kg of cargo they're perfectly fine even up steep hills. As in 18kmph or more with only a moderate amount of effort from the rider. Your bike was really underpowered (50Nm?).
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It's less of an issue for this device. The reason is that the motor is further from the axle than a hub motor would be. Thus, there's less force on the frame for a given amount of torque.
A lot of extra force when slowing down from faster speeds though, no matter where the motor is added.
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it's also likely mildly more dangerous than a standard ebike, as ebikes typically overprovision their brakes. A customer putting this on a standard bike (especially a disc brake bike) might have less stopping power than they want on an ebike.
Why “especially a disc brake bike”? They’re the most reliable and resilient system so far, especially compared to rim brakes (V-brakes or cantilevers).
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I think in nyc I'd prefer to lock my $100 dumper of a bike on the street and be able to take the expensive component with me, if this thing is as detachable as it seems
Hadn’t even considered this regional requirement. That makes sense.
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I'd be quite worried about breaking it in the not unlikely event of a crash, additionally it looks like it could quite significantly limit how low you could put your seat down on a mountain bike, so that would get in the way. Even if you got your seat down, it would add a significant amount of height above the tyre so you mighn't be able to move your arse far enough back to shift your weight property. It's also addin…
When going downhill, any bumps which result in severe movement in the frame that bring the rear wheel closer to the saddle might be problematic, even without full suspension. Hard to say. I’m a road bike guy but I’ve definitely seen some forms of non-full suspension when working on mtbs which would result in that kind of movement. I think the tyres would limit the power output most. Probably quite annoying to have no…
The biggest issue to me is the inability to put the seat all the way down given that's quite important, and obviously this won't work at all with a dropper post (which are fairly common nowadays), honestly actual ebikes are quite popular in the mountain biking scene at the minute and they seem like a significantly better fit to me.
I wonder how much torque the motor could put out though without putting a lot of wear on your (probably fairly soft material on mtb) tyres or slipping on knobby, possibly dusty/muddy, tyres; that itself might kill it off for offroad climbing.
https://www.frandroid.com/marques/asus/3158393_meme-asus-se-...