Hope you are enjoying your bike.
I think you have had the bike for around a couple of weeks now. Do you mind sharing your experience a bit?
How is the acceleration and average speed of bosch gen 4 compared to stromer when you put the same effort? Which assist levels do you use and how is the battery consumption?
Once again enjoy your new bike.
Turns out that my bike had an odd problem, the belt had somehow shifted so that it was only tracking on half of the rear sprocket.
Obviously, that was not good so I brought it back to Propel where they replaced the belt and aligned the wheel.
I picked up the bike today and rode it around town for some errands & fun.
The acceleration of the bosch gen 4 is definitely below that of a Stromer ST2 or ST5. The ST2 can accelerate pretty quickly because it has smaller wheels; the ST5 was a wee bit more sluggish but the ST5 had at least 2 miles per hour more of top speed than the ST2.
With the ST2, I could easily accelerate to 25 mph and reach 28 mph with a bit of effort.
Although the ST2's top speed is at least 2mph below that of the ST5,
the acceleration was a wee bit better because of the smaller wheels.
With the ST5, I could easily reach 28 mph without breaking a sweat and hardly a change in breathing.
The cold-start acceleration was a bit more sluggish than the ST2;
however, the DI2 shifting made the whole affair very pleasant.
With the R&M and the E-14, cold-start acceleration is definitely much slower than the Stromers.
Chris suggested starting in a lower gear -- sure but one has to upshift very quickly to reach higher speeds.
Clearly, there's more skill required to accelerate fast w/ an R&M and the E-14 but I doubt that one could
match the raw acceleration power of the Stromer's rear hub motor with the bosch gen4 mid-drive.
With an ST2/ST5 & stopped at a red light, I could easily reach the other side of the intersection before most gas-powered cars on other lanes would catch up to me (hybrids and electrics have much higher torque/acceleration). With the R&M, I've yet to reach that level of acceleration: I start ahead of everyone else but by the middle of the intersection, other cars have caught up with me. That's a wee bit too slow because I feel that cars behind me get impatient. That's not a good thing.
On the other hand, it's hard to imagine how much of an impact the E-14's linear gear range has compared
to the uneven gear range in a conventional cassette. The chain & cassette of my Stromer ST2 were very worn off
(the chain used to get stuck between gears) and Propel replaced those as well. Now, my ST2 shifts very smooth
again, like new. Yet, despite that, I hadn't noticed the uneven ratio between the top gears -- 8/9; 9/10; 10/11.
I had to ride my ST2 for a week while my R&M was fixed and that I uneven ratio frankly bothered me.
I don't recall whether there was a similar uneven ratio in my ST5.
For me, the main advantage of the R&M and E-14 is improved cardio-vascular exercise as David Berry commented before. To get the most of the Bosch gen 4 motor, one has to maintain a high cadence and to do that, one has to upshift & downshift frequently according to current speed, grade & wind resistance.
Regarding power consumption: Interestingly, ST2, ST5 and Supercharger 2 have really large batteries: 814, 983, 1000 respectively but they use power very differently. The ST2 is perhaps closest to the Supercharger 2 in that most of the power goes to the motor. The ST5's Supernova M99 Pro drains the battery a lot. The M99 Mini on the Supercharger 2 is considerably brighter than the ST2 but doesn't drain the battery as much as the M99 Pro did on the ST5. With the ST2/ST5, leaving the bike in lock mode was a big drain on the battery. A few times I had the unpleasant surprise that Omni had drained my battery completely.
Even though my daily commute is short (~ 2 miles one way), there are a lot of stop & go with bursts of intense acceleration in between. Although the Stromer's rear-hub motors are regenerative, that feature doesn't do much in urban commuting in my area because the "hills" are too short and regen before stopping at a light or traffic sign amounts to noise compared to the drain that the next cold-start will do. To avoid draining the battery below 50 %, I had to recharge about every 3 days with the ST2 & a bit more often with ST5. I haven't had a full week's worth of commute yet with my R&M.
Regarding power levels: When I ride w/ my wife for leisure, Eco or Tour is enough. When I commute, I ride always on Turbo. Although I haven't had much experience with the R&M yet, it seems to me that the level of assistance between Eco, Tour, Sport & Turbo is more even than w/ the ST2/ST5 where the difference between level 1 & 2 feels much greater than between 2 and 3. With the ST5, the "S" level after 3 quicked the bike into a whole new level of assistance where it felt like riding a racing horse.
- Nicolas.
