High Mileage - How do you do it?

[gljoe]

I've seen some posts (I forget which thread) where riders have reported super high mileage on a single charge...... I'd love to hear how such high mileage is possible

The first obvious thing is - ride with the assist off!
Ok, seemingly dumb answer, however .....
I've also seen threads where people claim seemingly ridiculously high mileage as well. Often, when pressed to describe their riding style, you discover that many of them do stuff like ride for a large percentage of the time at say 18mph on a bike with a 15mph assist cutoff!
Also - using things like the Yamaha PW motor. Max power of that particular motor is around the 70rpm range. Above this, the power available falls off really rapidly due to the back EMF of the motor opposing the battery voltage. If you cycle with a cadence of around 85-90rpm or more (easily achievable for a fit cyclist), then the even in the highest assist modes, you're getting very little assistance from the motor and thus very little battery drain. (note - stuff like the Bosch CX has a much higher cadence support, so this won't be as applicable).

 

[PDoz]

The first obvious thing is - ride with the assist off!
Ok, seemingly dumb answer, however .....
I've also seen threads where people claim seemingly ridiculously high mileage as well. Often, when pressed to describe their riding style, you discover that many of them do stuff like ride for a large percentage of the time at say 18mph on a bike with a 15mph assist cutoff!
Also - using things like the Yamaha PW motor. Max power of that particular motor is around the 70rpm range. Above this, the power available falls off really rapidly due to the back EMF of the motor opposing the battery voltage. If you cycle with a cadence of around 85-90rpm or more (easily achievable for a fit cyclist), then the even in the highest assist modes, you're getting very little assistance from the motor and thus very little battery drain. (note - stuff like the Bosch CX has a much higher cadence support, so this won't be as applicable).

This is the irony of the yamaha motor.

I was attracted to it because of the high torque at low cadence - that seemed to match my low cadence riding style. I naturally pedal at 50-60 cadence but within a few hundred k's the giant had changed my riding style- I was automatically spinning the cranks at 70-80 because that felt right on the giant- more like a back up assist for when human effort isn't quite enough. Now I automatically spin at 70-80 on my oldbike and keep slamming pedals into rocks

 

[larry-new]

Battery life is not a concern in my road rides, as they are mainly 20-30 miles. I typically return home with a 50% charge remaining on my battery, the longest I've been so far is 38 miles, and I still had 30% left. If I were to plan a longer ride, and I will be doing that soon, I'll just take the second battery along.

Today ride was 24 mi., almost all in Pas 2, riding a 75+85" gear at 17-19 mph. 60% of charge.remaining.

 

[michael mcvey]

That is a nice ride, I have heard of 16-18% grades. I don't think I could pedal up that even with assist. Beautiful scenery.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

If you really want to trash your range ride off the pavement.

Seriously, I've found that even riding butter-smooth gravel has about a twenty percent range cost. For rougher roads that premium gets even larger.

Kind of a bummer because I love those long gravel rides.

 

[WilliamT]

To save battery life, I now try to lower my assist to what I really need.

On one part of my commute back, the road has a very slight descent. I was going 18 mph already and with initially 200 watts of assist. I then lowered it to down to 125 watts and still kept the speed of 18 mph. Then I lowered the assist even more to about 68 watts and was able to comfortably maintain my speed of 18 mph.

All that time I was using 200 watts was a waste when all I needed was about 1/3 of that.

 

[TAZMANIMAN]

We rode on the Erie Canal from Little Falls to Fultonville and then back of course. It was paved the entire way we were in our last bar but could have gone a little further. We logged 47.4 miles. We were quite pleased.
By comparison we've got a local trail that was lots of loose sand and we would've been lucky to get 30 miles. There are a lot of variables when it comes to longevity.

 

[RabH]

Accurate and detailed Information displayed to the rider in one form or another is key to helping the rider manage the battery life and achieve higher milage.

I have seen and heard about displays that provide next to nothing. An example is a display that shows 4 bars representing battery remaining. The display goes from 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 as the battery drains.

The Giant Road-E that I ride has a very useful metric that helps me tremendously with managing my effort and battery consumption. It will be difficult to achieve high milage without this metric.

The metric is a percent remaining in the form 100%, 99%, 98%,.......03%, 02%, 01%. This metric is very accurate and moves very smoothly from 100% - 01%.

Disclaimer - Once it hits 12% it starts behaving erratically and moves from 12 to 0 quite rapidly. Giant needs to address this. But none the less the metric is very useful.

Heres how it helps me:

On a training ride I have a goal to achieve ~100 miles per charge. Doing simple math equates to 1 mile for every 1% of the battery. I watch the metric closely as I ride. At 5 miles I want the display to show 95% remaining, at 25 miles 75% remaining.

There are times when I'm doing better then the goal and the display shows (as an example) 70 miles and 50% remaining. This tells me I have a 20% or a 20 mile buffer. I'm always trying to build up the buffer, its kind of a game with me.

When riding grades I will notice the bike is using 2%-3% per mile, and 0% on the downhills. So the average usually evens out over the course of many miles.

When I have a buffer like the 20%, I can be lazy and use more power on the next grade, If I don't have a buffer I work harder on the next grade. Its kind of fun to manage the ride this way and its been very helpful over the last 3,000 miles on this bike.

This metric is perfect for me, and I could not manage to achieve the high miles without it. When I go to replace this bike this is a must have requirement for the next bike.

Manufactures - if your watching, take note - accurate and detailed information displayed to the rider is very important.

I also have a Giant Road E and I find when I hit 20% battery remaining it drops off very quickly (my bike is only 6 months old), it will show 20% remaining and something like 16 miles range but if I get another 5 miles of assist I'm very lucky. It did catch me out at first but now I know what to expect. I have achieved 152 miles on one charge but a good percentage was with no assist, on eco ( I have 5 levels of assist) I can achieve over 70 miles easily though and the terrain is very up and down.

 

[AHicks]

My display (LCD3) has the typical 4 bar type battery icon, but it will also display real time battery voltage to a tenth of a volt. I've learned to use that if I'm really interested in what I have remaining.

If I had the option available, it would be a cadence sensor. Though I feel this display is pretty informative, I have no idea of how fast I'm actually pedaling. Next bike maybe....

 

[larry-new]

Count to six-one thousand, in other words six seconds, or look at a watch dial. Count revolutions and multiply by ten.

Works for pulse, too.

 

[6zfshdb]

It's been nearly 3 weeks since the OP's original post. In that time, I've ridden almost 300 miles with battery conservation in mind. Based on my experience and conversations with other ebikers, I found that most of the comments made in this thread are valid. The two major factors seem to be the type of bike you ride and where you ride it. I'm stating the obvious here but mile for mile, lower wattage mid drive bikes are more economical than higher wattage hub drives. Riding either on smooth, paved and level surfaces consume far fewer watts than hilly, rough uneven trails.

During my recent rides, I discovered the best I could do on my 500 watt hub drive Pedego Platinum Interceptor with 720 watt battery was 70 miles on a single charge. This was using minimum assist and maximum pedal effort on a level paved trail, keeping speed below 10 mph. The second thing I learned was this is no fun at all and not the reason I bought the ebike in the first place!

For you younger folk out to set a Guinness world record I say, go for it! For me, at my age, 40 - 50 miles on a charge is just fine. I'm out to enjoy the ride thank you very much!