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First 100 miles on my E-Bike

yilunzh.com

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Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#151

Post by WA »

whiddershins wrote: post #117
WA wrote: post #6

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 tak…

Do you bring your kid in a trailer in city traffic? I’ve seen people do similar and it gives me a nervous fit. Looks insanely dangerous from a bystander POV.

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#152

Post by semi-extrinsic »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #125
yilunzh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

V-brakes would have been more than suitable without the pointless disc brake faddishness.

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#153

Post by CydeWeys »

dsr_ wrote: post #121
CydeWeys wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#154

Post by CydeWeys »

username223 wrote: post #131
eesmith wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem. Speaking with mock outrage, as someone who goes bike camping with front and back panniers and a tent, I'll point out that my bike is about 40 lbs, unloaded. Eg, https://www.koga.com/en/bikes/trekking/collection/worldtrave... . ;) 'Course, my average speed is about 8mph. I like to stop, look at things, and read the signs, and sometimes travel along hard-pack dirt roads. Their e-trekking bike is about 54 lbs. I k…

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#155

Post by Decade »

analog31 wrote: post #59

>>> 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…

> 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.

[0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2015/acs/acs-32....

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/slowthecars/

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#156

Post by cmurf »

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#157

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

patcheudor wrote: post #29
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#158

Post by IgorPartola »

CydeWeys wrote: post #153
dsr_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#159

Post by Decade »

revelation wrote: post #104
CydeWeys wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 n…

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.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#160

Post by ShakataGaNai »

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.

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