Lots of Misinformation Being Used

[Cowlitz]

This from a hiking forum where folks do not want to share bike trails with ebikes for various reasons of what "might" happen. I find it amazing that we ride up steep hills at 35mph. This is an example of folks wanting to influence policy who have no inkling on the topic. They google bits and pieces and use whatever supports their ideas no matter how outrageous it is. Only a couple of us on that forum have ebikes and just a few more have actually ridden one.

http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8030440

 

[rich c]

What part of that is surprising? It's the way the entire world works today. Everyone has an agenda, and will invent facts to support their belief. And with social media, it flies around the world in seconds. The curious part is that anyone believes or trusts anything since we are flooded with misinformation. Shows up here all the time. Mid drives are constantly bashed by people that don't own or ride one.

 

[indianajo]

Mid drives are constantly bashed by people that don't own or ride one.

The drag of 90% of mid-drives unpowered (bosch has huge market share) is not a myth. I won't own one, I mostly pedal unpowered. I took my battery off to store for freezing weather, but still ride ~ 4 days a week. And posters are always bragging that their chain lasted a whole 2000 or 3000 miles. Mine is 5000 miles old, and I'm not going to bother to measure it.
The quickest way I could try a mid-drive out I didn't own is ride a Greyhound 7 hours to Chicago, then 7 hours back. The e-bike dealer that posts here is not downtown Chicago, but 30 miles out in another county. Long walk without a bike.

 

[PDoz]

The drag of 90% of mid-drives unpowered (bosch has huge market share) is not a myth. I won't own one, I mostly pedal unpowered. I took my battery off to store for freezing weather, but still ride ~ 4 days a week. And posters are always bragging that their chain lasted a whole 2000 or 3000 miles. Mine is 5000 miles old, and I'm not going to bother to measure it.
The quickest way I could try a mid-drive out I didn't own is ride a Greyhound 7 hours to Chicago, then 7 hours back. The e-bike dealer that posts here is not downtown Chicago, but 30 miles out in another county. Long walk without a bike.

Nice parody

 

[Feliz]

None of my mid drives has any noticeable drag, I don't know what mid drives people are buying.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

The drag of 90% of mid-drives unpowered (bosch has huge market share) is not a myth. I won't own one, I mostly pedal unpowered. I took my battery off to store for freezing weather, but still ride ~ 4 days a week. And posters are always bragging that their chain lasted a whole 2000 or 3000 miles. Mine is 5000 miles old, and I'm not going to bother to measure it.
The quickest way I could try a mid-drive out I didn't own is ride a Greyhound 7 hours to Chicago, then 7 hours back. The e-bike dealer that posts here is not downtown Chicago, but 30 miles out in another county. Long walk without a bike.

I believe you are referring to this.

The best eMTB motor of 2021 – The 8 hottest motors in test

Which ebike motor is best? We tested seven of the most important motors in our group test and tell you what it’s all about on the trail.

ebike-mtb.com

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

This from a hiking forum where folks do not want to share bike trails with ebikes for various reasons of what "might" happen. I find it amazing that we ride up steep hills at 35mph. This is an example of folks wanting to influence policy who have no inkling on the topic. They google bits and pieces and use whatever supports their ideas no matter how outrageous it is. Only a couple of us on that forum have ebikes and just a few more have actually ridden one.

http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8030440

There is a great Netflix documentary called "The great hack" and it shows the way data is used in the digital age.
The very fabric of society is altered by the way data is used.

 

[fooferdoggie]

my bike with a dapu drive is a slug when the power is off. I had a problem with the speed sensory and the bike would turn off every 5 minutes. it would become a slug.

 

[Feliz]

That's strange, the magazine article posted by Ravi say they found a lot of power off pedalling resistance with the Shimano and Yamaha motors, I have both and find no resistance, at least none I can notice. I also have a Brose and find no resistance. My Bafang BBSHD and ultra have noticeable resistance, I would say moderate, I'm sure I could pedal both home in the event of a power failure. However, I did have a Bosch CX in a Haibike Xduro Trekking 9 and it had a terrible amount of resistance, so bad it was the main reason I sold the bike the other being the difficulty in removing the battery. I have a couple rear hub drives and I've never pedalled them power off, I'll have to try. I have a BionX DD in a bike and as expected it has some drag.

Edit: I just remembered my eProdigy Magic Pro with the proprietary mid drive, it has no resistance what so ever and is one of their selling features for the bike. It's a wonderful torquey motor invented by the owner of the company, an older Chinese engineer, there's rumours the new TQ motor is based on patents held by this gentleman and in fact there are similarities apparent in these two motors.

 

[Daffyh]

The drag of 90% of mid-drives unpowered (bosch has huge market share) is not a myth. I won't own one, I mostly pedal unpowered. I took my battery off to store for freezing weather, but still ride ~ 4 days a week. And posters are always bragging that their chain lasted a whole 2000 or 3000 miles. Mine is 5000 miles old, and I'm not going to bother to measure it.
The quickest way I could try a mid-drive out I didn't own is ride a Greyhound 7 hours to Chicago, then 7 hours back. The e-bike dealer that posts here is not downtown Chicago, but 30 miles out in another county. Long walk without a bike.

Ride a normal bike then

 

[rich c]

The drag of 90% of mid-drives unpowered (bosch has huge market share) is not a myth. I won't own one, I mostly pedal unpowered. I took my battery off to store for freezing weather, but still ride ~ 4 days a week. And posters are always bragging that their chain lasted a whole 2000 or 3000 miles. Mine is 5000 miles old, and I'm not going to bother to measure it.
The quickest way I could try a mid-drive out I didn't own is ride a Greyhound 7 hours to Chicago, then 7 hours back. The e-bike dealer that posts here is not downtown Chicago, but 30 miles out in another county. Long walk without a bike.

You sure took the original post for a ride!

 

[Daffyh]

Not much point riding an Ebike if you dont use the energy it provides, just pointing out the ludicrous logic.
My legs are pissweak due to ill health and i know theres some drag there but i can still ride it unpowered if i choose.
This whole drag scenario is blown out worse than the battery charging/life drama..

 

[Mass Deduction]

Ride a normal bike then

I'm not 100% sure, but I think what you replied to is a parody post. It was identified (and celebrated) as such by another poster, which might help confirm it.

 

[Mass Deduction]

None of my mid drives has any noticeable drag, I don't know what mid drives people are buying.

I believe you are referring to this.
[…]

I've never found the drag on any prominent/popular mid-drive to be particularly noticeable. I own bikes they say are prone to it and ones that supposedly aren't, and I can't tell any drag difference between them. I don't notice Brose being awesome and Shimano being crappy when riding with the motor off, in other words; instead, I'm noticing the overall weight of the bike, how aerodynamically I'm positioned on it, and other factors that are far more significant to ride quality when riding without pedal assist.

So my theory is that there's probably some drag there on most units, but that it's a minor part of the whole. At any rate, no quality mid-drive that I've ridden has as much drag as the drag added by the extra rotating mass of a typical hub motor. And that's to say nothing of the typical weight advantage of a mid-drive over a hub motor. You see that on these forums here, with many hub motor owners talking about bikes that weigh 55-75 pounds, and often saying they don't care what their bikes weigh. whereas I'm used to mid-drive bikes in the 40-50 pound range (and there are mid-drives pushing into the 27-35 pound range, even with large batteries in some cases). Of course there are exceptions both ways, but these exceptions are rare enough to prove the rule. Is there any popular hub motor bike that gets more km per Wh than a good mid-drive bike?

Always important to remember that even when something is true, it's all too often not the whole story.

 

[PDoz]

I just want to know what miss information is being used for.

Oh, and is she a cheater?

I really don't care if she's in drag.

 

[Solom01]

Mass Deduction, you may want to take a look at https://www.bikeradar.com/news/cannondale-supersix-evo-neo/ ; some of what you're saying may be a bit out of date, or at least needs clarification. Cannondale is no stranger to ebikes, and when they built one for the normal ebike rider who wants lots of power and isn't too concerned about handling they did, in fact, use a mid-drive Bosch system. But their new top of the line bike for cyclists who are concerned about weight and feel uses the ebikemotion rear-hub pas system. It's not like Cannondale isn't aware of the Bosch system, they just felt it was too clunky, heavy and not the right choice for people who are cyclists first and want a bit of assist. Of course a $700 bike with a hub drive isn't going to be too great, it's built to hit a certain price point - but when money is no object there are some awesome bikes that use the Mahle ebikemotion system.

 

[Mass Deduction]

Mass Deduction, you may want to take a look at https://www.bikeradar.com/news/cannondale-supersix-evo-neo/ ; some of what you're saying may be a bit out of date, or at least needs clarification. Cannondale is no stranger to ebikes, and when they built one for the normal ebike rider who wants lots of power and isn't too concerned about handling they did, in fact, use a mid-drive Bosch system. But their new top of the line bike for cyclists who are concerned about weight and feel uses the ebikemotion rear-hub pas system. It's not like Cannondale isn't aware of the Bosch system, they just felt it was too clunky, heavy and not the right choice for people who are cyclists first and want a bit of assist. Of course a $700 bike with a hub drive isn't going to be too great, it's built to hit a certain price point - but when money is no object there are some awesome bikes that use the Mahle ebikemotion system.

I'd be interested to ride an ebikemotion system for sure. I'm leery of start-ups and e-bike-only plays, since we've burned by BionX and others. I'd be curious to be a fly on the wall while Cannondale was deciding between ebikemotion vs. Fazua vs. Bafang M800, etc. Was it cost? Was it delivery dates? Was it which company was willing to provide the biggest incentive to Cannondale?

I agree that Bosch isn't the right solution for the bikes that Cannondale is speccing ebikemotion on. More interesting for me would be a comparison to some of the other ones I listed.

I guess I should research this side of things more. I have the ability to bring in an Orbea Gain or a Cannondale, so maybe I will. But their small batteries are such a downer for me (generally only 200-250 Wh, when Specialized and BMC have bikes that weigh nearly as little but with batteries twice the size or more).

 

[Solom01]

I get what you're saying, I wouldn't worry too much about ebikemotion, they're owned by Mahle which is a fairly large German company. These bikes won't make much sense to the normal user of this forum, you can definitely get more battery capacity from other units. They are very much geared towards cyclists who would never want a bike that handles differently because of things like mid-drives that have wonky q factors, and see the electric part as a supplement to help them be able to keep cycling when their age or health has become an issue. I know when I use my Gain my HR is much higher then when I use my other ebike, which is exactly what I'm looking for. But I think it's great to have a choice based on the potential user. I compare it to buying a Miata instead of a Ford 150. The Ford carries more and you get more pounds of steel for your dollar, but their purpose in life is totally different.

 

[Mass Deduction]

I get what you're saying, I wouldn't worry too much about ebikemotion, they're owned by Mahle which is a fairly large German company. These bikes won't make much sense to the normal user of this forum, you can definitely get more battery capacity from other units. They are very much geared towards cyclists who would never want a bike that handles differently because of things like mid-drives that have wonky q factors, and see the electric part as a supplement to help them be able to keep cycling when their age or health has become an issue. I know when I use my Gain my HR is much higher then when I use my other ebike, which is exactly what I'm looking for. But I think it's great to have a choice based on the potential user. I compare it to buying a Miata instead of a Ford 150. The Ford carries more and you get more pounds of steel for your dollar, but their purpose in life is totally different.

I agree with everything you said, except q-factor. STePS 8000 has the exact same q-factor as an XT bottom bracket. I've never ridden a mid-drive bike with a q-factor that I found undesirable, actually. I remember FSA citing that in their hub motor launch, and it left me scratching my head then too.

Good to know that ebikemotion has good backing. I get that there's a market for a bike that is lighter with a smaller level of assist. I myself have a bike set to only 25 km/h and only 50 Nm of torque, for rides when that's what I want from it. But I'm also a 20-80% person (I try to avoid draining my battery below 20% or charge it above 80%) so a larger capacity battery is desirable for me to improve the odds that I can do that. So even if I only use the motor on hills, a 200 Wh battery would force me to regularly use more of the battery than I wish, or do shorter rides than I'm hoping to do, or carry multiple batteries, or something else equally undesirable. But someone looking for light assist and who doesn't mind fully charging and/or fully draining the battery every time, I can see how they might be content with a small battery.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

At any rate, no quality mid-drive that I've ridden has as much drag as the drag added by the extra rotating mass of a typical hub motor.

Small geared hub motors (250W) have very low drag compared to direct drive motors. It is one of the reasons companies like Bianci are using a small geared hub motor in their E-road.
Pinarello also used a small geared motor.

Quality mid-drives started appearing only in 2014 and Bosch Gen 2 motors had quite a bit of drag above 15mph or 20mph speed limit. When Shimano released their motors with minimal drag and Bosch started losing market share rapidly, that is when they switched from small chainring +reduction to bigger chainring .
The latest iteration has much lesser drag and no reduction gearing inside.

In fact, back in 2016, I used to train using Bosch Gen 2 motor E-bike in no-assist mode to strengthen my quads.

Slowly, we will begin to see lighter and more efficient motors but what is currently present in the market is not the ultimate by means. We will continue to see evolution of E-bike tech for many more years.