Another new TQ motor: hpr40

[Rás Cnoic]

Where I live, the wind is constant. It's more of a factor than elevation, because I like to ride fast.

Yes one advantage of the narrow twisty lanes I ride is shelter from the wind. When I raced, and lived in a flatter area, on long winter training rides against the bitter cold and gusting wind I used to grumble to myself that at least the feckin' hills ended, the wind felt eternal.

 

[Rás Cnoic]

First in-depth review of the system:

TQ HPR40 On Review: Stealth Motor for Drop-bar Bikes

TQ HPR40 motor on review: ultra-lightweight e-drive for road and gravel bikes with a natural ride feel, quiet performance and top-class integration

granfondo-cycling.com

 

[mschwett]

First in-depth review of the system:

TQ HPR40 On Review: Stealth Motor for Drop-bar Bikes

TQ HPR40 motor on review: ultra-lightweight e-drive for road and gravel bikes with a natural ride feel, quiet performance and top-class integration

granfondo-cycling.com

a really, really nicely integrated system. drivetrain and lights powered by the internal battery, options for expansion, no big displays on the top tube or bars!

odd that the review didn’t mention the overrun issues others have, and the end result of the very different strategy for crank / motor / clutch / chainring / etc.

would love to try one of these out, if they come to the US and are at least 20mph. since it’s mid drive, class 3 could be in the cards too!

 

[Rás Cnoic]

a really, really nicely integrated system. drivetrain and lights powered by the internal battery, options for expansion, no big displays on the top tube or bars!

odd that the review didn’t mention the overrun issues others have, and the end result of the very different strategy for crank / motor / clutch / chainring / etc.

would love to try one of these out, if they come to the US and are at least 20mph. since it’s mid drive, class 3 could be in the cards too!

Yes that little battery display at the end of the drops was a surprise! It needs more road testing for sure. Efficiency of motor & battery to see real world battery range for instance. And I'm curious about potential overheating on sustained climbs. The also new TQ60 has cooling fins underneath, to compensate for the extra power I guess.
But they seem to have thought deeply about lightweight road bike use and issues with cut off point/weight of bike.

 

[Rás Cnoic]

On the power side, I bet 40nm is plenty of torque for a bike that light-- at first I couldn't believe the listed potential range, but when I thought about it, it seemed less crazy. I mean, I guess... if a 47 pound 250W 40nm eMTB can do about 45 miles with 4,500 feet of vertical, it makes sense intuitively that a 22 pound bike with a 200W 40nm motor could do 62 miles with 6,500 feet of vertical, though I think the gearing and grade of the vertical would be significant variables (as well as rider fitness!) (I am noticing that the Grizl's range is significantly better for a given amount of vertical if the grade is more gentle.)

The concept of a 22-pound electric road bike is fascinating and vaguely terrifying. I don't know if I'd like being on even an acoustic bike that light except someplace where there are no cars. I know professional riders and racers must do this all the time, it just scares the hell out of me.



I think my 1974 531 Reynolds Raleigh Competition is over 23 pounds, might be 24, and I only had it up to about 38 or 39 MPH once or twice when I was young and crazy, 34 or 35 were more normal speeds. Even then, I was rarely going over 30 MPH when there was any traffic, usually only in the park with other cyclists, which was scary enough.

I have not had the Grizl:ON over 37 MPH on descents because-- even with the dampening from the front shock & the seatpost and the CF-- I still don't feel confident (yet) going that fast on a 36 pound bike, though I'm comfortable taking the 46.5 pound eMTB up to 43 MPH. Descending on the Hollywood side of the Cahuenga pass, I feel this weird safety-related cognitive dissonance because on the one hand, I want to go faster so the difference in speed between myself and the cars is decreased, but slower because I don't know how the bike will react if there's a crack or pothole that I don't see in time, so I held it to around 34.

I'm sure there are roads where you can ride a road bike without encountering this problem, just very few that I am aware of near where I live!

I wonder what a 22 pound CF bike with no suspension and thin tires, with or without motor, feels like on bad pavement over 30 MPH. I'm sure it feels better than a steel or aluminum bike does, but still...

Very good points! Also thumbs up for your Raleigh Competition- I had one as my winter training bike mid 80s. Remember it clearly, dull grey and silver colour, 501 tubing, but a tough workhorse, it lasted years. No idea what happened to it.

 

[stompandgo]

Motors such as this TW HPR40, the Maxon, and the Watt Assist, are designed to be not just light and minimal, they are also designed to be stealthy, with frame colored covers to hide them. This is going to be an issue in US local and regional racing. As an official, that scares me. Someone is going to show up at one of the races I'm running, and cheat. There's no way that I can check every single bottom bracket in every single field throughout the day. National events have FLIR and bike tech inspections, local and regional do not. The rules state that e-bikes are allowed, but must be in a separate category with a separate start. You cannot race an e-bike in an analog bike field, even if the rider "has the motor shut off".

 

[mschwett]

the range issue really comes down to

1) efficiency - any modern mid drive should be about the same

2) if going flat … speed. assist past 17 or 18 mph is going to eat watts FAST

3) if going uphill, rider weight and power. unfortunately for a 200lb total package, 5lb of bike weight isn’t really meaningful.

200w total is a perfectly solid amount for recreational riding, most fairly athletic enthusiast riders don’t average more than that. 100w from the rider and 100w from the bike gives you close to 3 hours on these bikes, 50 miles or so.

 

[stompandgo]

TQ claims their system is more efficient than its competitors.

 

[mschwett]

TQ claims their system is more efficient than its competitors.

of course they do

with modern mid drives in the low 80s, even a big improvement (say 80 to 85% - a quarter less wasted energy!) wouldn’t make much difference.

of course any increase is good.

 

[Catalyzt]

It feels like a proper race bike. My last race bike, a Felt Fc, shod with Zipp 606 tubulars, weighed 14#. I raced it mainly in American criteriums, on downtown streets, full of cracks, potholes, sunken manholes, and whatever the city threw at us, at 28mph+ average. It was fine, until a 50+ mph wind blast blew me and the bike off the road as I was setting up a sprint. That ended my career. No fault of the bike.

I've been going through this equation a lot lately. I need to ride roughly 75-80 miles with 2,000 feet vertical on my longest day trip here. I love my Tesoro, but it's a truck. In order to do that distance, I need both batteries, so it weighs 63# dry. If I was able to drop that to 33# dry, which would include the rack and trunk bag, could I do that with a TQ HPR50, a 400Wh main battery, and a range extender? Two range extenders? It's fun to think about.

That sounds terrifying. I had a much milder version of this happen to me once when I was riding on the sidewalk, making a fast right turn from 89th St. onto Madison Avenue. The north east corner of that block had a double-wide sidewalk that no one used, but it created an odd wind pattern which I'd noticed but never really paid much attention to... until a gust of wind picked me up, at maximum lean for that turn, and moved me maybe a foot or two downwind. The lean was key; I probably was only lifted an inch or so off the ground, I landed in the same orientation, and kept riding like nothing happened. I was about 145 pounds and six foot two at the time.

I knew I had just been lucky; a bigger gust, or even the same one, if I had been upright would have been catastrophic. About 1975 or 76, so no helmet of course.

The motor for bikes like these probably makes almost no difference in any risk caused by lighter weight. But yes, what a nightmare for a race official! I thought professors had it bad with AI cheating!

Very good points! Also thumbs up for your Raleigh Competition- I had one as my winter training bike mid 80s. Remember it clearly, dull grey and silver colour, 501 tubing, but a tough workhorse, it lasted years. No idea what happened to it.

I did not know the Competition was every made with 501! I'm not doubting you; I looked at Sheldon Brown, and I see that not all of them were 531. The key difference, in the early 70s, between the Professional and the Competition was that the fork of the Competition has no kink in it, it's a gentle continuous curve. The idea was that the bike was more oriented for touring on roads than for the track; the kink-less fork was supposed to absorb more road chatter than a standard fork, though this was thought to mean that the bike would be a bit slower. I think the Professional was a pound or so lighter, too.

The Competition lives in New York at my friend's house, and I was just riding it in March; I was also in the city in November and last summer. I'm on it for at least a couple of 20-minute fitness rides every trip; in November, I took it from the lower 100s on the Upper West Side up to the George Washington Bridge. The bars are hell on my hands-- many of my trips back east are to play guitar in a band of '80s survivors who return to the scenes of our crimes for a handful of shows every summer, so this is a problem. I had been considered the heresy of going to straight bars but now... I'm wondering if hoods are possible, or a good idea, given my unexpectedly great experience with hoods on the Grizl. Here it is in the North Woods of Central Park in 2021.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Glad there's still this much manufacturer interest in lightweight and nimble small-motor, small-battery ebikes that ride well with the motor off. My beloved Specialized Vado SL 1 — a somewhat heavier flat-bar member of this class — is now effectively irreplaceable. Gives me hope that I'll have good alternatives when the time comes.

 

[stompandgo]

I want to see more flat bar lightweight e-bikes like the Pinarello Nytro Allroad E and the Scott Silence with the HPR drive unit and range options.

 

[mschwett]

Glad there's still this much manufacturer interest in lightweight and nimble small-motor, small-battery ebikes that ride well with the motor off. My beloved Specialized Vado SL 1 — a somewhat heavier flat-bar member of this class — is now effectively irreplaceable. Gives me hope that I'll have good alternatives when the time comes.

i think you'd really like the skitch. 31lb, 10-50 cassette, fazua 60, 400ish wh battery, 31lb!

hopefully your SL will never need a replacement, but ride one of these if you have a chance it's in stock at lots of stores here in the bay, i'm sure it's easy to find in SD also.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

i think you'd really like the skitch. 31lb, 10-50 cassette, fazua 60, 400ish wh battery, 31lb!

hopefully your SL will never need a replacement, but ride one of these if you have a chance it's in stock at lots of stores here in the bay, i'm sure it's easy to find in SD also.

View attachment 196030

Looks right up my alley! Ha, wife's going on a trip soon — she'll never know I looked! If asked, we never had this conversation.

 

[mschwett]

Looks right up my alley! Ha, wife's going on a trip soon — she'll never know I looked! If asked, we never had this conversation.

what conversation?

 

[Rás Cnoic]

That sounds terrifying. I had a much milder version of this happen to me once when I was riding on the sidewalk, making a fast right turn from 89th St. onto Madison Avenue. The north east corner of that block had a double-wide sidewalk that no one used, but it created an odd wind pattern which I'd noticed but never really paid much attention to... until a gust of wind picked me up, at maximum lean for that turn, and moved me maybe a foot or two downwind. The lean was key; I probably was only lifted an inch or so off the ground, I landed in the same orientation, and kept riding like nothing happened. I was about 145 pounds and six foot two at the time.

I knew I had just been lucky; a bigger gust, or even the same one, if I had been upright would have been catastrophic. About 1975 or 76, so no helmet of course.

The motor for bikes like these probably makes almost no difference in any risk caused by lighter weight. But yes, what a nightmare for a race official! I thought professors had it bad with AI cheating!



I did not know the Competition was every made with 501! I'm not doubting you; I looked at Sheldon Brown, and I see that not all of them were 531. The key difference, in the early 70s, between the Professional and the Competition was that the fork of the Competition has no kink in it, it's a gentle continuous curve. The idea was that the bike was more oriented for touring on roads than for the track; the kink-less fork was supposed to absorb more road chatter than a standard fork, though this was thought to mean that the bike would be a bit slower. I think the Professional was a pound or so lighter, too.

The Competition lives in New York at my friend's house, and I was just riding it in March; I was also in the city in November and last summer. I'm on it for at least a couple of 20-minute fitness rides every trip; in November, I took it from the lower 100s on the Upper West Side up to the George Washington Bridge. The bars are hell on my hands-- many of my trips back east are to play guitar in a band of '80s survivors who return to the scenes of our crimes for a handful of shows every summer, so this is a problem. I had been considered the heresy of going to straight bars but now... I'm wondering if hoods are possible, or a good idea, given my unexpectedly great experience with hoods on the Grizl. Here it is in the North Woods of Central Park in 2021.

View attachment 196021

Fascinating about your Competition! And great you still have it and ride it. When I got mine I was mid teens and racing as a junior in Ireland. It was second hand from a fellow club cyclist who'd saved up and imported an amazing Tommasini frame from Italy, Columbus tubing, chrome lugs, extraordinary cross hatch paint job, a true thoroughbred. I raced on the Competition a bit then it became my training bike after, again through the club, I got a used but in pristine condition Peugeot Perthus ( with 531 professional tubing- the red coloured decals). Gorgeous F&F, same as the Z Peugeot team raced at the Tour (Though the pro team bikes were 753 lightweight tubing). My other road bike when I raced was a Sean Kelly cast off, a Vitus glued aluminium frame. Very light. Kelly, as the canny farmer's son he was, would sell off all his team bikes end of season. My Vitus had probably 5 other club cyclist owners before I got it! That was the way back then, few cycling shops in Ireland stocked high end racing frames, everything came through word of mouth in the club or via friends, no eBay, no internet. Nobody used high end road bikes just for exercise back then, only people who raced or used to race. All the dentists played golf back then, not obsessing over carbon fibre €4000 wheels like today!

Bikes from that era look so 'thin' now; thin elegant steel tubes, thin rims, thin tyres, simple rim brakes not chunky disks, parts polished alloy not anodised black. Different times. Anyway google is great- I put Raleigh Competition 1987 501 in and out it spat my exact bike:

 

[stompandgo]

i think you'd really like the skitch. 31lb, 10-50 cassette, fazua 60, 400ish wh battery, 31lb!

hopefully your SL will never need a replacement, but ride one of these if you have a chance it's in stock at lots of stores here in the bay, i'm sure it's easy to find in SD also.

View attachment 196030

I looked at one before I bought my Tesoro. It's a great looking bike, but $6,500 with Apex? $7,500 with AXS? Nah.

 

[Base]

We had some team bikes around in the office

 

[mschwett]

I looked at one before I bought my Tesoro. It's a great looking bike, but $6,500 with Apex? $7,500 with AXS? Nah.

i don’t like SRAM anything, but the pricing is pretty comparable to what others do in the space, the $7850 skitch has the same level SRAM drivetrain as the $8999 creo 2, right?

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

i don’t like SRAM anything, but the pricing is pretty comparable to what others do in the space...

How come, and what do you prefer?