Cargo bike comparison for steep street. RadWagon vs Flyer or ???

[pamiro]

Hi everyone, i am trying to decide between some cargo bikes, but i am a total rookie about ev bikes.
This bike will be used by my wife and my 2yo as cargo for fun the only thing is we live in over a hill and theres a very steep climb on our way home .
I checked the

https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-bikes/products/radwagon-electric-cargo-bike

https://blixbike.com/products/packa-electric-cargo-bike?variant=39338590437551

and

https://flyer.radioflyer.com/flyer-l885.html

I like the flyer a lot but it looks like the other bikes have 750W motors and the flyer has 500W motor ...
I am not sure how that power is delivered or if it really makes a difference .... so i wanted to ask here .
I would appreciate if you can share what you think ? Feel free to make other suggestions also .
Thanks alot !
Pamir.

 

[JRA]

I'm sure the you can't climb a hill without a mid drive folks will be along shortly and I don't know much about long tail cargo bikes in general but I do like the looks of that Radio Flyer for some reason also. I had a gas engine cargo bike that had a similar wheel discrepancy. The smaller drive wheel has aids in torque and the bigger one helps with controlling the front end.

 

[indianajo]

I'm sure the you can't climb a hill without a mid drive folks will be along shortly and I don't know much about long tail cargo bikes in

He may not be able to but I can. I use 1000 W geared hub motor to drag 330 lb gross up 15% grades without help. 15% is 7/8" rise on a 6" level from K-mart. My grades are 100'. What geared hub motors will not do is climb 1000' in an hour: they overheat.
That radioflyer shows no specifications but "fat tire". Real fat tires 3.0" or bigger are limited to 30 psi or so, which means a lot of drag from the tires. They are puncture resistant too, which means a thick carcass & even more drag. I use 2.1" kenda knobbies on my bodaboda, shown in the avatar. They air up to 55 psi, and the knobs if tall enough prevent flats. I wear out 3 of 4 tires without ever having a flat.
Rad is great if you are not going to ride it much. Check the known problems list on the brand forum for rad. Big wheel cargo bikes with shorter lists of problems reported are yubabikes, extracycle, pedego stretch, blix packa, eunorau. Other brands stretch cargo bike with medium length problem lists are magnum & M2s. Reiss & Mueller are high end, very expensive. Tern has 20" wheels if you don't have any teeth to rattle through the potholes.
The wire harness burnt off the Mac12t 1000 w motor with ASI controller in the rain, and I can't buy another. I've converted to 500 w bafang geared hub motor, but didn't finish installation until it got too cold to use the battery. I will let community know how it performs with 330 lb on 15% next May. I was making good progress up a steep hill last September when I burnt out the 48 v to 36 v converter. Higher wattage converter is installed now, but the battery is in the garage under a heat pad to prevent freezing.

 

[AHicks]

Power is a BIG difference, especially regarding heavy loads and hills. Hub driven bikes (like the RAD) are pretty common and do OK on hills. When talking big HILLS though, it's time to consider a mid drive. They'll climb about anything.

Some guys were talking about a mid drive cargo bike here the other day, but of course when I go to look for it I can't find it. So the only thing I can share for sure is that there IS a reasonably priced mid drive cargo bike. Hopefully somebody will post a link to it....

 

[Wakawaka9]

He may not be able to but I can. I use 1000 W geared hub motor to drag 330 lb gross up 15% grades without help. 15% is 7/8" rise on a 6" level from K-mart. My grades are 100'. What geared hub motors will not do is climb 1000' in an hour: they overheat.
That radioflyer shows no specifications but "fat tire". Real fat tires 3.0" or bigger are limited to 30 psi or so, which means a lot of drag from the tires. They are puncture resistant too, which means a thick carcass & even more drag. I use 2.1" kenda knobbies on my bodaboda, shown in the avatar. They air up to 55 psi, and the knobs if tall enough prevent flats. I wear out 3 of 4 tires without ever having a flat.
Rad is great if you are not going to ride it much. Check the known problems list on the brand forum for rad. Big wheel cargo bikes with shorter lists of problems reported are yubabikes, extracycle, pedego stretch, blix packa, eunorau. Other brands stretch cargo bike with medium length problem lists are magnum & M2s. Reiss & Mueller are high end, very expensive. Tern has 20" wheels if you don't have any teeth to rattle through the potholes.
The wire harness burnt off the Mac12t 1000 w motor with ASI controller in the rain, and I can't buy another. I've converted to 500 w bafang geared hub motor, but didn't finish installation until it got too cold to use the battery. I will let community know how it performs with 330 lb on 15% next May. I was making good progress up a steep hill last September when I burnt out the 48 v to 36 v converter. Higher wattage converter is installed now, but the battery is in the garage under a heat pad to prevent freezing.

So how’s the bike doing?

 

[indianajo]

The 500 w 36 v bafang salvaged from the Uber rental fleet is really wimpy. Doesn't help I could only find a 500 w 10A controller to replace the 25A 2018 ebikeling that errored out 08. My connectors are rectangular, not round julis that are stock in 2022. The bafang 500w will help me get up a 12% grade without stopping, but at 2 mph in 32:28 ratio pedaling hard and panting the max. Had to give up the hilly safe route to summer camp, 70th hill or so shorted a turn on the bafang. Humm and no torque after shorted. I am using bafang at 48 v instead of 36, these motors were ultra wimpy with .5 ohm series phase dropper resistors I tried at first. Used bafang motors were $37 apiece so I had 3 more in garage, got power again next trip to town, but looking for something better. May have to buy a pallet of Mac12t 48v 1000 w: no US dealer will stock them. What happened to the Mac, the clutch was bad when I bought it from Luna, slipped 1 time out of 10, which deteriorated to 2 times out of 3 by the time 7/18/21 rainstorm burnt the pins of the ASI controller into the MAC wire harness. Got about 3000 miles out of it. I could replace the connector on the MAC with ebay connectors, but can't get the cover off the mac12t to see about repairing the clutch.
I seriously don't want a mid drive. I pedaled the shorted bafang motor home 3 days after failure, no drag. Plenty of times rain has taken out the throttle until I dry it, so I don't view mid-drives as a suitable car replacement. Besides most mid-drives don't have a throttle, and I need the exercise of no power biking when I'm not struggling up hills with 60 lb groceries. I've panted off 7 lb this summer alone, and the exercise from May on has steadied out my heart that was skipping 1 beat out of 3 sometimes this winter.

 

[oavdn17]

I've been riding both the Flyer & RadWagon (with a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old as my cargo!). The RW has higher wattage listed (750w vs 500w) and no torque specs are listed but the RW does seem like it handles hills betters...for me it's not a big concern bc i live in an area without hills (Santa Barbara, California) but if you're going to be riding up steep hills or a hilly area on a regular basis, I'd recommend a mod drive although those will cost more than a RW or the Flyer.

Btw I publish YouTube videos as a hobby and I'll be publishing a video on the Flyer here shortly...i also plan to publish one of the Flyer vs RW. https://youtube.com/c/Top5ebikes

 

[Wakawaka9]

I've been riding both the Flyer & RadWagon (with a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old as my cargo!). The RW has higher wattage listed (750w vs 500w) and no torque specs are listed but the RW does seem like it handles hills betters...for me it's not a big concern bc i live in an area without hills (Santa Barbara, California) but if you're going to be riding up steep hills or a hilly area on a regular basis, I'd recommend a mod drive although those will cost more than a RW or the Flyer.

Btw I publish YouTube videos as a hobby and I'll be publishing a video on the Flyer here shortly...i also plan to publish one of the Flyer vs RW. https://youtube.com/c/Top5ebikes

So between the Radwagon and the Flyer is it basically a toss up? I don’t live in a hilly area. You haven’t happened to try out a Magnum Payload Cargo Bike? Those felt pretty good too in comparison to Flyer at a test event in Long Beach. Trying to decide between the Flyer and the Radwagon but the Magnum is also on sale and looks to have a larger 21ah battery, hydraulic brakes, but also only a 500watt motor. I think it’s also only rated for 300lbs.

 

[ElevenAD]

If i were on steep roads i would avoid both the above Cargo bikes like they had the Kooties! Its simple, if you intend to climb hills buy a middrive bike, hub motor bikes are NOT ideal for climbing hills.
For hills maybe checkout something like this, its a 500watt middrive with a torque sensor.

 

[indianajo]

If i were on steep roads i would avoid both the above Cargo bikes like they had the Kooties! Its simple, if you intend to climb hills buy a middrive bike, hub motor bikes are NOT ideal for climbing hills.

Another hill=middrive zombie. Some of us like to ride the flats downhills or windless days without power, which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet. Some of us like to roll the bike to change flats or maintain derailleur or brakes, which requires protecting the stupid display, which some hub drive controllers don't require. Some of us hate changing chains. Took me 2 weeks with the bike chainless to acquire all necessary chain tools last time, then promptly the burglar stole those so I have to buy them all again. I get ~5000 miles per chain, 2 1/2 years.
Don't climb from Newport Beach to Lake Arrowhead with a geared hub drive in one ride, you'll cook it. Some of us don't live in CA, WA, OR, MT or ID. It is not the steepness that hurts geared hubs, it is how long you lug it at maximum power.
BTW the OP has been gone for months.

 

[AHicks]

Another hill=middrive zombie. Some of us like to ride the flats downhills or windless days without power, which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet. Some of us like to roll the bike to change flats or maintain derailleur or brakes, which requires protecting the stupid display, which some hub drive controllers don't require. Some of us hate changing chains. Took me 2 weeks with the bike chainless to acquire all necessary chain tools last time, then promptly the burglar stole those so I have to buy them all again. I get ~5000 miles per chain, 2 1/2 years.
Don't climb from Newport Beach to Lake Arrowhead with a geared hub drive in one ride, you'll cook it. Some of us don't live in CA, WA, OR, MT or ID. It is not the steepness that hurts geared hubs, it is how long you lug it at maximum power.
BTW the OP has been gone for months.

Total complete horse puckey. Spoken like one that's never ridden a mid drive.

1500 miles on the original chain which is still showing good as far as wear. This chain is being used on a 1500 watt bike, with a 300 lb rider, ridden in an area just full of hills. They're the rerason I went mid drive with a lot of power.

 

[Wakawaka9]

Total complete horse puckey. Spoken like one that's never ridden a mid drive.

1500 miles on the original chain which is still showing good as far as wear. This chain is being used on a 1500 watt bike, with a 300 lb rider, ridden in an area just full of hills. They're the rerason I went mid drive with a lot of power.

I think his point was, not everyone is a 300+ lbs rider who needs a 1500 watt motor and can get by just fine with less, and it will also result in less hassle for them.

 

[Wakawaka9]

If i were on steep roads i would avoid both the above Cargo bikes like they had the Kooties! Its simple, if you intend to climb hills buy a middrive bike, hub motor bikes are NOT ideal for climbing hills.

For hills maybe checkout something like this, its a 500watt middrive with a torque sensor.

I wish there was a bigger community for the Eunorau G20 but there isn’t. There are almost no reviews that I can find from people who actually own that bike. While comparable in price to Radwagon, Blix Packa, and the new Flyer L885 they have basically no customer reviews (like 4). By far rad has the most with over 1700 Blix and Radioflyer have over 100 each.

 

[m@Robertson]

I think his point was, not everyone is a 300+ lbs rider who needs a 1500 watt motor and can get by just fine with less, and it will also result in less hassle for them.

No. He's right. Here on this forum there are not a lot of cargo bike people, and one of them is an evangelist for his hub bike and insists beyond all evidence to the contrary that a less powerful motor that powers a bike thru the axle and is thus single speed is somehow the equal of a bike that uses gears to conquer hills, for all the same reasons gears were invented to help people. Oh and the motors have roughly double the torque output on the most generous comparison (80 Nm for a geared Bafang fat hub vs. 160 Nm for a BBSHD or Ultra mid drive; 120 Nm for the diminutive BBS02).

I have built and still own 2wd hub bikes with those 80Nm motors; one on each axle. Coupled to a great big 52v battery and with twin 35a-each controllers. You know what? They struggled here in the hills of the Monterey Bay area. I didn't want to put an expensive build like that into an early grave so I built a mid drive and it ran up hills like they weren't there. Not fast (thats what you get when you gear down) but the motors weren't even strained.

And as for cargo bikes, I have a mid tail, a long tail and a frontloader (Mongoose Envoy, Surly Big Fat Dummy and LvH Bullitt). I just put about 15 miles on the BFD on a run out to Home Depot. 1/3 of it was screaming down hill and that last 1/3 was toodling along at 12 mph back up to the top of the hill I live on.

As someone who can build what he wants, I tried it both ways and I moved to a mid drive for a practical, sensible reason (knowing the difference from experience).

Of the three compared below, check out the Mongoose and look at the section where I discuss and lay out the parts list for low-cost builds.

Mid Tail, Long Tail or Front Loader (which cargo bike do I choose)?

I never planned on building three different classes of cargo bike, but I did. What are their strengths and weaknesses?

talesontwowheels.com

 

[m@Robertson]

I wish there was a bigger community for the Eunorau G20 but there isn’t. There are almost no reviews that I can find from people who actually own that bike. While comparable in price to Radwagon, Blix Packa, and the new Flyer L885 they have basically no customer reviews (like 4). By far rad has the most with over 1700 Blix and Radioflyer have over 100 each.

Kyle over at Area 13 did a video review on it and I know he liked it. I believe it was labeled something else (generic) but it was the same bike.

 

[AHicks]

which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet. I think his point was, not everyone is a 300+ lbs rider who needs a 1500 watt motor and can get by just fine with less, and it will also result in less hassle for them.

There are times to talk, and there are times to listen. So you know, I'm a big geared hub advocate, but having owned and ridden geared hubs from 500 to 1000 watts extensively, as well as a couple of larger Bafang mid drives, I have a good idea of what to expect from each.

My point was, and still is, this is total horse puckey - "which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet." Same story with chain wear he speaks of, even when heavily loaded and ridden in the hills with the biggest motor you can buy. That's NOT true at all. He's WAY off base here! I've given up on getting him to understand that, was posting so others might not have to learn an expensive lesson the hard way. FWIW.....

 

[fooferdoggie]

My point was, and still is, this is total horse puckey - "which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet." Same story with chain wear he speaks of, even when heavily loaded and ridden in the hills with the biggest motor you can buy. That's NOT true at all. He's WAY off base here! I've given up on getting him to understand that, was posting so others might not have to learn an expensive lesson the hard way. FWIW.....

the old Bosch drives had a small amount of drag but when the weight of a big Allen wrench can overcome its its pretty low.

 

[Wakawaka9]

So is there a good longtail cargo bike that can carry two kids that isn’t +$2800 and handles hills adequately where a few modest hills a day won’t burn out your engine? Would this do the trick or is it most likely junk? https://www.bpmimports.com/shop/bik...bike/f-16-fat-tire-electric-bike-2-batteries/

 

[Wakawaka9]

Kyle over at Area 13 did a video review on it and I know he liked it. I believe it was labeled something else (generic) but it was the same bike.

Yeah I saw that and it got me interested but the company doesn’t sell them anymore and reviews are sparse like I said. Who knows how they handle the daily after a while. He called it the Hercules but online it’s the Eunorau g20 and you can buy it from other dealers but not on the Eunorau site.

 

[Wakawaka9]

There are times to talk, and there are times to listen. So you know, I'm a big geared hub advocate, but having owned and ridden geared hubs from 500 to 1000 watts extensively, as well as a couple of larger Bafang mid drives, I have a good idea of what to expect from each.

My point was, and still is, this is total horse puckey - "which for 90% of mid-drives sold requires dragging the motor with your feet." Same story with chain wear he speaks of, even when heavily loaded and ridden in the hills with the biggest motor you can buy. That's NOT true at all. He's WAY off base here! I've given up on getting him to understand that, was posting so others might not have to learn an expensive lesson the hard way. FWIW.....

So would you say you prefer a more natural bike ride feel you get from a Bosch or you like more of a scooter/dirt bike feel like a Super 73 or an Ariel rider Grizzly with AWD/front and rear hub motors?

There’s a guy JohnnyNerdOut who does mid drive conversions for bikes. He is a total middrive advocate but he says if you aren’t more of a seasoned rider good at shifting, the powerful double motors ebikes can do what a middrive can and more but it will cost more.