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 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
It may just be that I’m comparing to the Bay Area, but I’ve never been that concerned about bike theft in NYC. If you lock your bike with a good lock and leave it somewhere with plenty of foot traffic, it’s quite unlikely to be stolen. Most people don’t even bother locking the wheels! Just a U-lock through the frame.
In the linked page it shows the battery as easily removable.
If the potential thief , realizes the battery has been removed, "I think" it would sharply reduce?? the attractiveness of ebike theft to the thief ?
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 effort. I guess that's where the 750/1250W 70Nm unrestrained motor comes in handy, and if you live in a place with lots of small hills the choice is either that kind of motor or a car, not the 1000€-total Decathlon/Carrefour electric bike.
The whole European Union has that limit. Without it it's not an electric bicycle anymore, it's a moped or electric motorcycle, that sort of thing, and you have to register it, have a driving license and so on.
Switzerland lets 45km/h bicycles on bike lanes. The requirements are higher, but boy, do they dart through the city. They seem to make long commutes (or fast shorter ones) appealing to a lot of people.
Vienna bike-rider checking in.. we get those e-moped guys on our bike paths too, and they are becoming a real menace.
There is some sort of complacent attitude that results from, what is normally a road-only moped device, exploiting the privileges of the bike paths. I hope this law changes - I ride a 'normal' electric moped and motorbike also, so I guess I'm a bit biased, but I'd like to see those 45km/h limited e-mopeds classified for road only. It makes no sense to let them use the bicycle paths, in my opinion. They're road-ready, so let them stay on the roads.
do they enforce it? California has similar laws but they are not enforced. People ride 40mph (64kph) down bicycle trails and bicycle lanes. And, they still ride like most cyclists here, ignoring red lines, stop signs, and all other traffic laws.
The Romanian police is kind of lazy and does not enforce a lot of other things like cars or motorcycles using the bicycle lanes, cars parked on pedestrian crossings which hide pedestrians from drivers etc.
Though sometimes they take action.
They also organize prevention PR stunts where they check lots of people passing by.
In my experience the issue is one of torque, not of power. Most cheaper electric bicycles (including most Decathlon models) have a hub-mounted motor which cannot deliver power effectively at low speeds -> it stops assisting when you most need it. For hilly terrain you need a motor that's mounted on the crankshaft so that it can take advantage of the gears.
To compare: a tour de france runner outputs 400-500W on mountain climbs while keeping up to 20-25km/h. So a 500W motor (plus 100W power output from yourself) should be enough for smaller climbs!
My Koga has an Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission, which frees me from thinking about shifting, so I can pay more attention to riding safely and effortlessly.
DonHopkins 44 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]
Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission (never manually shift again, accelerate while continuously shifting under load), with a carbon fiber belt drive (maintainance free, silent, never get grease on your pants or hands again), and Bosch Performance Line mid-motor (strong zippy performance from the geniuses who paid a €90 million fine for Dieselgate), plus GPS tracker with "recovery service" (required for insurance).
It's a dream bike, optimized for comfort and city riding, but Koga is not available in the US, though.
Here's an American bike that has similar features (not as nice as the high-end Koga Evia Pro Automatic though), the Harley Davidson Rush/CTY (step through model is easiest to mount/unmount/ride):
The Enviolo Automatic also come in a heavy duty version paired with high performance motors for bakfiets (cargo bikes), for 3-4 children, big dogs, and groceries:
Fair, they're ideal for city bikes, stop-and-go traffic, and the flat Dutch landscape where they're produced, where the biggest "mountains" you encounter are the bridges over canals. Their city model has 310%, trekking 380%, and the new utility hub has 400% gear range, which you can use on a normal bike, bakfiets, or speed pedelec.
Simple. There is this thing in psychology called "Cognitive Load". Automatic transmissions and continuous transmissions reduce it. That's why most people don't drive a stick shifted manual transmission car any more. It works the same for bikes.
Have you ever ridden a bike with a geared derailleur, and forgotten to shift into low gear at an intersection, or had to suddenly stop before you had a chance to shift into low gear, so it's more difficult getting started again?
Did you notice how it's impossible to shift while you're stopped, and how tricky it is to get it from high back into low while you're starting, especially up hill, and how you can't shift while you're applying force, so you have to push yourself forward instead of pedaling to get it rolling enough to downshift while gently pedaling without accelerating?
A continuous hub fixes those problems, and an automatic transmission shifts you into low when you stop (even if you're not moving), and smoothly and continuously shifts back up while you're accelerating, and the continuous hub allows you to apply power while it's shifting (note I didn't say "changing gears" -- it's continuous, and doesn't have gears. It has planets and fluid instead. It can shift while it's stopped, and accelerate while it's shifting.
You have a lot more important things to worry about when you're accelerating from a stop at a busy intersection than pushing off and shifting without applying acceleration and only pedaling forcefully once you've finished shifting into low gear.
If you're riding a bakfiets (cargo bike) with your kids and a dog in the box, then you definitely have things you need to worry about more than shifting gears, and because of the mass and precious cargo, it's even more important to be able to accelerate from a stop without performing a derailleur dance in the middle of a busy intersection.
It's a trick you have to learn just like using the parking break when starting a manual transmission car facing up hill. Manual transmissions have a much higher cognitive load in both cars and bikes.
This kind of stuff should be intuitive if you've ever ridden a bike with more than one gear, or driven a stick shift car. Sure it gives you "more control", but more control = higher cognative load, and you're probably not a NASCAR race car driver who needs to optimize for control.
If I stop in the wrong gear the most dangerous part is that I stopped, not that I'm in the wrong gear.
If I'm moving the bike by directly motivating the drivetrain with my foot, all this talk about "more control" feels very silly because I am already directly exposed to whatever is happening on the chain and at the wheels. I don't ride an ebike but because my tires are skinny I can definitely slip out if I start too fast in a low gear. The "fix" for that isn't to pick a different gear or rely on some fancy shifter to try and increase my mechanical advantage, it's to feel the tires slipping at my feet and just... pedal slower.
Ditto for going up hills. Is "the bike got hard to pedal" cognitive load or literal load?
I get the argument for riding a cargo bike but IME cargo bikes are almost always ebikes now because derailleur or not, not many people are going to accelerate quickly with kids and dog. Considering that fancy non-deraileur gearboxes cost nearly as much as cheap ebike conversion kits it seems like an uphill battle.
> Have you ever ridden a bike with a geared derailleur, and forgotten to shift into low gear at an intersection, or had to suddenly stop before you had a chance to shift into low gear, so it's more difficult getting started again?
Yes, it's an annoyance, not an insurmountable obstacle. If one is bothered by it, there's the hub gear, invented more than 100 years ago.
I have a heap of ebikes, all 250w and 25km/h limited. A Bosch performance line motor on a MTB going up a steep hill is effortless compared to a budget shimano motor where it can barely make it up no matter how much effort you put in to pedalling. Torque makes a big difference.
I’ll add that none of these motors are actually “250 W” in any meaningful sense. That’s just the nominal figure, the average power over something like 30 minutes. That’s why there are such differences between the lines and makes of e-bike motors, even though they’re all legal and within the 250W limit.
> but when you get climbing even slightly you get down to ~10km/h and have to provide more effort
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?).
Not a single country in the EU limits a speed or power of the EV motorcycles. They do limit these vehicles to an appropriate places which are called "roads" and do require a proper vehicle license and registration. A person can ride their Suicide Killer 9000 Pro Max with any motor power and any speed in the whole EU area really, no problem. On. A. Damn. Road. Where. It. Belongs.
There's a big difference between an "ebike" and an electric motorbike.
Ebikes are pedal assist, power limited, and limited to only assist up to a certain speed. You can go as fast as you're able, but if you're above (commonly) 25km/h the motor won't help you. They're allowed anywhere you're allowed a non-assisted bicycle.
Electric motorbikes may be limited by the manufacturer in order to achieve a certain license class, but once you get past the low power classes, they're only as limited as their petrol cousins. They're only allowed on roads.
Any middle ground, including things that look like bicycles but don't require the rider to peddle, fall either into the "electric motorbike" category or into the "not roadworthy" category. Riding them without a proper license, insurance, and equipment is illegal.
Somewhat unfortunately, much of the press seems to want to class the non-roadworthy motorised vehicles as a special case of "ebike" rather than the general case of "motorbike".
(And to your first point: yes there are speed limits but it's fairly common for cars and motorbikes to be able to go much faster than the limit. In first gear, even, for motorbikes.)
Mountain bikes one level down from professional tier start at 6-8k. If I could pay 2k and get a nice electric bike from my nice muscle bike it would be a bargain.
However bimotal is not that nice - adding a motor to rear triangle alters weight distribution and adds unsprung weight. Also unlike actual nice MTB e-bikes it cannot use chain/casssete for gearing, so gearing is fixed at the factory. If you’re used to nice bikes you will want your ebike to be dialed in just right.
One place where it makes sense is as an alternative to shuttling on forest roads / lifts for downhill-focused riding. F you’re going strictly downhill you can move the motor to the backpack after finishing the climb to reduce unsprung weight. This opens up a large number of trails where forest roads are blocked to car traffic. It also allows dh riding on trail where motor bikes are prohibited.
Your existing bike hopefully fits you great rather than having to modify a low-mid grade ebike. Perhaps you don't have space for more bikes. Perhaps you want a bike made of good components that are easy to repair. It's a significant amount of money but there are absolutely reasons.
I have a ebike that cost ~1500 in 2018 and is probably comparable to what $2k would buy you these days. It's very heavy and while the drivetrain is repairable, there are important pieces of it that I would struggle to repair/replace if they died today.
I have a steel touring bike that's significantly lighter, has standard sized parts that can be repaired, replaced and upgraded (many of which I have already upgraded in the last 15 years) and fits me like a glove. If I didn't own an ebike and you asked me whether I'd rather spend $2k buying something like my ebike or adding a 750W motor to my Surly, I'd upgrade my touring bike.
It really depends on your standard for "good." Some people spend $5-10k+ on their mountain bike. If you're looking at getting an ebike of similar quality, then I could see this being an attractive alternative.
Bike equipment is ridiculously high margin. Motorcycles and mopeds are extremely common commuting vehicles in much of the world, yet i'm surprised motorcycles aren't more popular since they offer much more capability and are a better value.
Bimotal is removable after the installation: the motor and battery can both be taken off in under 30 seconds and you're left with just the cables and a specialized brake disc. I'd say that's its main differentiator. It is definitely more for premium bikes though and even then isn't for everyone.
