Sorry for my late follow up on my test ride of the DŌST Kope CVT. As I mentioned earlier, I am relatively new to the world of eBikes. I have been riding road bikes for some decades… I am well (very) into my 60’s… and I live in the hilly side of Oakland, CA. Even modest rides here involve 1-2k feet of climbing. So I am real interested in gearing and smoothness which are especially important dealing with the hills.
Overall the DŌSTs are well build, solid, capable and not bad looking. The folks selling them are courteous and helpful. I had a great time meeting Dave & Cory (major forces in the company) on the Roadshow tour where they drove a van through souther Cal and Arizona … bringing their bikes to people’s driveways. A very sweet concept.
I was mainly interested in the CVT… but I rode the regular geared version too. Definitely plenty of power from the 750w mid drive Bafang motor. The system is cadence sensing. And that’s where, as a rookie, I was a bit unsure of what to think. I was not enamored with the sort of “detached” feeling of how the power assist was applied. As with all cadence sensing (I’ve come to learn) there a small delay between when you start to rotate the pedals and when the assist kicks in. That took some getting used to. And then it is only the speed of your pedaling (and, I assume, the speed of the bike) plus the assist level you have set (DŌST gives you 5 or 9 levels of assist) that are used to calculate how much assist you get. So there was no relationship with how hard you pressed. Also you don’t get that instant assist the moment you begin to press on the pedal. They do have a finger controlled throttle (a relatively rare thing I hear on mid-drives)… so you can get started using that and then start pedaling. But, as most of you must know already, waiting a pedal or two to get the assist feels a bit unnatural. A major upside of the cadence sensing in a bike with a strong motor is you can haul up hills almost mindlessly. You can get all the power with as much or as little effort as you want to give. And with the throttle… it’s even easier.
As far as the ENVIOLO CVT hub goes… It had a nice feel. And, of course it has an infinite number of gears as you smoothly twist the right grip. And the wonderful biproduct of the internal rear hub is you can have a carbon belt… which I love! Another benefit of the Enviolo is you can shift when not pedaling… particularly useful when you’ve come to a stop and had forgotten to downshift. You just twist the grip and you are in low… before you start pedaling. It’s important to understand that shifting to lower gears is easy and can be done anytime… while pedaling or not. But shifting up to a harder gear needs to be done with no pedaling or, at least diminished pedal force. Kinda of like in a manual transmission car, where you let off the gas and press the clutch before you shift. So what happens is: let’s say you are climbing a grade and accelerating… when it comes time to shift to a harder gear, you have to briefly stop pedaling to up shift. I’m theory this is fine. But what seemed to happen with the cadence sensing system is this: first you stop peddling, then a moment later the cadence sensing system notices you slowed your peddling so it stops providing assistance, then you twist the grip to shift the gear, then you start peddling again but the cadence sensing waits a moment before it realizes you are peddling faster again, and then finally it applies more assistance. Of course this doesn’t take a very long time but, still, there are enough momentary delays in that process that you wind up losing a little more momentum then you would have preferred… Remember you’re going up a grade… so you wind up slowing a bit more than you wanted and it makes you a little nervous about whether it was a mistake or not to shift gears. And that’s not really something you want to deal with on a hill with a supposedly infinitely variable transmission.
So when I got back from my test ride I was a bit perturbed. Partly I wasn’t sure if it was just me not quite understanding how electric bikes normally feel. But I wasn’t super happy with the relationship between the cadence sensing and the power application in the Enviolo hub. I also found the twisting of the grip to be a little bit straining on my right hand. So I told myself I wouldn’t rush to judgment until I got to test some torque sensing systems.
Which I did upon my return home over the subsequent weeks I tried a few other brands including the Serial 1 from Harley Davidson and a few Gazelle bikes. Each of those bikes had the Enviolo hub. One of them (the Seial 1) had an automatically shifting Enviolo. The Gazelle had the same shifter as the DŌST. My feeling, once I rode those bikes, was that in fact my problem with a Dosts was the cadnece sensing. And with how that interfaced with the Enviolo. With the two torque sensing systems the application of power felt much more intuitive and natural and the need to “back off” on peddling in order to shift up the Enviolo was nowhere near as dramatic. The upshift could be done more quickly and to some extent it could be done without even fully stopping the application of pedal pressure. Just sort of backing off a little on the pressure was enough to allow an easy shift to a higher gear.
So I am sad to announce that I made the difficult decision to cancel my pre-order of the DŌST CVT. The company and their culture is great and it’s been a pleasure to interact with them. But they made a decision to go with cadence sensing and I’m sure for reasons of power, dependability, cost and potential customer demographics, etc. But it seems inevitable that at some point in the next year or two, they will announce other models which will, no doubt, include other type motors and controllers. I am still feeling my way along in this new world of eBikes. But at this point I know I want torque sensing. I’m still not 100% sure I’ll get a CVT (Tho I do have my eye on the Gazelle C380+!).
I hope this helps. I’m sure I left some stuff out of my report. Questions are welcomed.
Attached are 3 photos of the three bikes I test rode: DŌST Kope (not the CVT in this photo), Serial 1 Rush/City Speed, Gazelle C380+ Ultimate
~Victor
