Here are my thoughts after my first ride.
I've not ridden a crank drive before, and I'm left with mixed feelings about it. Obviously I'm not going to judge anything until living with the bike for a good few months, but compared with the silence of a hub drive, the noise of the motor compared with a hub drive is very pronounced, I also had to work much harder to maintain anywhere near the same assisted pace of the BH with it's hub drive. I also feel that Bosch are pulling a sales stunt in relation to the amount of power settings. The lowest ECO setting should be scrapped in favour of making Tour the ECO setting.
One interesting thing that I did notice when comparing the crank drive to hub drive, is that when using hub drive in assisted mode, you instantly drop two gears when turning assist off. With the crank drive this doesn't happen, which is nice. The Bosch display console is very nice to use and is hard to fault in anyway.
Yesterday when I unpacked the bike and saw the Shimano SDD3 rear hub, I was kind of disappointed. This disappointment was forgotten with the first gear change today. I have to say that every change was super smooth and silent, and whilst I thought that I wouldn't like SRAM, I now think that it's superb.
The bike hides it's weight incredibly well, and is a pleasure to ride in unassisted mode, and progress can be made very quickly indeed. The bike felt very much faster than the BH, but there is a conflict; when I checked my average speed etc after the ride, the average speed was nearly 4mph slower. Which is very odd given that I only ever use ECO mode on the BH, but used Tour and Sport on the Haibike. Some of this might also be down to my riding style today, as I didn't know what to expect from the battery life, so perhaps didn't use as much assisted mode as maybe might have done normally.
Now for the tyres. These are fantastic. According to the spec sheet they are Schwalbe Marathon Modial, but I haven't checked this. They roll brilliantly, run silently, and road grip is very confidence inspiring. The ride on the wet and muddy cycle way was also just as much fun. I like a lively feel from a tyre, and these deliver that. The brakes are very good rather than superb, but they are new so I don't expect them to make the bike stand on it's nose.
Speaking of standing on it's nose, the forks are adequate but have sadly added much weight to the front end of the bike. This is one area that I might think about changing at some stage, but I don't think that there are any forks out there to suit. That is me just being picky, and is no way a reflection of the product.
I had written much more but lost it, so I'll add to this at a later stage. The main thing is that I'm still smiling.
Not bad for a first ride. 42.7 miles and only half of the battery capacity used.
I should add that I don't intend to kill this bike by using it off road, this is simply just how muddy that our rain sodden cycle paths are now.
