Ebike For Hills

[indianajo]

Many jurisdictions limit the sale of ebikes to 750 w. Thus it is hard to find a 1000 w one for sale.
It is still legal to sell a 1000 w or 2000 w hub motor, just not a bicycle. So conversion of an existing bike matches your budget. I had a 1000 w Mac12t that was a great performer on the >80 hills of my weekly commute. Unfortunately it had an ASI controller that burnt a pin off in the rain 7/14. I'm having trouble finding a replacement in country. I've seen an opinion that EM3EV has some if you don't mind your debit card # being on a foreign server & database.
I had my motor on the front of the bike left. Don't power a front hub motor on ice, wet metal plates or wood decks, slick rock, or similar low traction situations. You might fall down. I have a brain & pedal or push the bike with my feet in those situations.
Geared hub motors overheat on slow hard climbs of 30 minutes or more. Mac has stated so. If you intend to climb the rockies or sierras, 1000' or more, a direct drive hub motor is less likely to burn up. It will chew up vast quantities of watt hours doing it. I had one.
The inevitable choir of mid-drive pushers has not dropped in here yet. To most posters here, hill=mid-drive. They chew up chains and require pedaling against resistance if the electricity or chain fails, say in a heavy rain. Brose Yamaha & shimano steps have an internal clutch that solves the drag unpowered problem, but they can't power you home after a chain or derailleur fault the way my geared hub motor will. I destroyed a deraiilleur takeup running over a stick in June. Oh, well, humm all the way home. Throttle only, of course.
My Mac12t was good for about 23 mph on the flat with 26" wheels. They have a 10t model if you want to go faster, at the cost of less efficiency on the hills. My watthours used decreased by a fourth or third when I went from a ebikeling 1300 W geared hubmotor, to the Mac12t. Wore out the gears on the ebikeling motor, about 4500 miles.
Be sure to use a substantial torque arm with a high torque motor like the mac. No carbon fiber forks or suspension forkes, either. My fork is steel. There are Mac motors for sale on e-bay with the wires twisted off. I use a sawed out piece of bed frame rail about 4" long x 1" wide. I made the axle hole by drilling 2 5/16" holes and connecting the dots with Nicholson files. I capture the arm to the fork with a clamp made of box fan shell. There is a video on u-tube of some idiot who twisted the wires off his mac by using a commercial torque arm 2 1/2" long captured by a worm type hose clamp. Ha!

 

[Fatknee]

Thanks for replying. I am still searching for an ebike. How much torque does your bike have?

 

[Al P]

Thanks for replying. I am still searching for an ebike. How much torque does your 500w bike have?

I have no idea how much torque it has but I have ridden up some pretty steep hills. I would agree on the scooter or emotorcycle if you don’t want to pedal.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

The inevitable choir of mid-drive pushers has not dropped in here yet. To most posters here, hill=mid-drive.

When I read "$1000", I thought it would be futile to contribute to this thread.

I was on e-bike vacation to the Czech Republic, which is a montane country (still, their mountains are not even remotely as high as the Alps). One day, I and brother climbed on our expensive e-bikes the equivalent of 3000 ft to reach a mountain pass.

When we were enjoying our beer, three "cyclobuses" arrived, each of them carrying 30 bikes.

90% of bikes brought by the buses were relatively inexpensive mid-drive e-bikes from Haibike, KTM, or Polish Kross. No single hub-drive e-bike.

Now I wonder what is wrong with North America in that respect.

 

[ElevenAD]

I can tell your new to this so im going to save you some trouble, Get A Middrive!
If your not going to be pedaling while you climb you need a middrive.
The amount of gears on a hub motor bike wont matter if your not pedaling and hub motors in general are just not ideal for throttle only climbs.
Your budget is another issue, you cant find a Middrive for $1000, maybe 1500?

 

[ElevenAD]

I have no idea how much torque it has but I have ridden up some pretty steep hills. I would agree on the scooter or emotorcycle if you don’t want to pedal.

This is the best option for the OP imho, E scooters and E motor cycle have huge motors a batteries and are made for throttle only ridding, you will just overheat a 500watt hub motor trying to climb with just throttle.

 

[retiredNH]

When I read "$1000", I thought it would be futile to contribute to this thread.

I was on e-bike vacation to the Czech Republic, which is a montane country (still, their mountains are not even remotely as high as the Alps). One day, I and brother climbed on our expensive e-bikes the equivalent of 3000 ft to reach a mountain pass.

View attachment 98515
When we were enjoying our beer, three "cyclobuses" arrived, each of them carrying 30 bikes.


View attachment 98514
90% of bikes brought by the buses were relatively inexpensive mid-drive e-bikes from Haibike, KTM, or Polish Kross. No single hub-drive e-bike.

Now I wonder what is wrong with North America in that respect.

Unless I misunderstood, you saw these at the TOP of the pass? I suspect cheap hub drives are great at going mostly downhill, no?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Unless I misunderstood, you saw these at the TOP of the pass?

Right. Czech people are practical. If their e-bikes can be carried to the top of the pass, why suffer the long and boring climb with the traffic. They simply collected their e-bikes and set off for easier and harder trails in the mountains (and the number of bike trails is impressive there). Me & brother liked the harder way, so we actually climbed onto the pass with our Specialized and Giant e-bikes. Important to mention, Czech people we met were riding low-end Euro mid-drive e-bikes (the nation is not that rich). I would say only 10% of the bikes brought to the pass by buses were traditional MTBs (for sporty types), and we also overtook three roadies climbing together with us on traditional road bikes.

I cannot say anything about cheap hub-drive e-bikes vs mountains as I haven't seen one wherever on our trips, and I wouldn't dare to take my hub-drive for any montane rides.

Why so many e-bikers in Czech mountains? The country has a long border with Germany, and the Czech started imitating their neighbours (Germany is the world leader in e-bike use if we don't mention China).

 

[retiredNH]

Right. Czech people are practical. If their e-bikes can be carried to the top of the pass, why suffer the long and boring climb with the traffic. They simply collected their e-bikes and set off for easier and harder trails in the mountains (and the number of bike trails is impressive there). Me & brother liked the harder way, so we actually climbed onto the pass with our Specialized and Giant e-bikes. Important to mention, Czech people we met were riding low-end Euro mid-drive e-bikes (the nation is not that rich). I would say only 10% of the bikes brought to the pass by buses were traditional MTBs (for sporty types), and we also overtook three roadies climbing together with us on traditional road bikes.

I cannot say anything about cheap hub-drive e-bikes vs mountains as I haven't seen one wherever on our trips, and I wouldn't dare to take my hub-drive for any montane rides.

Why so many e-bikers in Czech mountains? The country has a long border with Germany, and the Czech started imitating their neighbours (Germany is the world leader in e-bike use if we don't mention China).

This could well be a good use case for inexpensive hub drive mountain bikes. I suspect the routes these folks are riding are more easy to mid trails rather than true mountain riding, so they don't need a huge amount of assist, and the assist is intermittent. They're probably not doing any trails with big climbs.

Anything that gets more folks out in the countryside is a good thing, IMHO, at least until such countryside gets overwhelmed like our US National Parks. Of course, what's overwhelmed our parks is cars, not bikes, so maybe ebikes are a solution for our parks, too?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

See the 3D map. Czech e-bikers were carried to the pass, and now see where they went later (these hills are true mountains). We were climbing the road, and the Czech people went to explore the mountains themselves.

The red line is a part of our trip (on road).

 

[m@Robertson]

Thanks for replying. I am still searching for an ebike. Seems like I need an escooter or emotorcycle to get up those hills with only throttle.

No you don't.

All you need is a class 2 ebike with a mid drive, which will let the bike use its gears to get you up the hill. This is no problem at all until you throw in a $1000 budget, which is about the level of the cheapest ebike on the market with the least amount of performance.

The stuff about chewing up chains is only on a homebuilt bike that was poorly executed. Same with difficulty pedaling manually. The DIY motors you could end up using in a build all have clutches so forward resistance is zero. But really if your planning is poor enough that you let the bike run out of battery power I promise you your life will suck incredibly and it won't have anything to do with what kind of boat anchor you attached to your heavy tugboat. Hint: Don't let the battery run down. Its easy to never do that so don't worry about it.

Forget about the "750w to be legal" thing. Strictly speaking NOTHING is legally compliant because the rating on the motor is not indicative of the power output. Power is volts x amps = watts. Even a measly 36v battery - which is actually 42v when fully charged - cannot comply with the 'legal' limit when we give it a very common 20 amp controller. 42v x 20a = 860w. And if its the 48v battery you typically get, which is 54.6v when fully charged, then peak output for the bike would be 54.6*20=1092 watts... NOTHING is strictly compliant with US or the individual state laws and there is no such thing as the Wattage Police so don't worry about it. Also, if this is not bad enough, all the laws state the legal limit is "less than 750w" which is 749w... so no 750w motor is legal either if you just read the label on the motor.

Save up some money and get yourself a mid drive bike. Forget about the wattage issues. And consider taking a normal bike and doing a conversion yourself, considering the budget constraint you have and especially since you do not want to be hobbled with a pedelec-only bike with no throttle.