Mid drives vs Hub drives ???

[Mass Deduction]

The view on speed is probably a major factor in the debate.

'Tis true. Unless I specify otherwise, my comments are always limited to street legal e-bikes that fall neatly into one of the three classes of the 3 class system.

 

[tomjasz]

I didn't even know Whipperman had e-bike chains. I was referring to KMC's heavy duty e-bike chains, which work fine on narrow/wide chainrings in my experience (dozens installed successfully on a variety of bikes).

Good to know, I'd nt run into them. Off to find....

Front forks aren't warrantied for front hub motors, so front hub conversion kits are a problem. I've personally seen forks that failed from conversion kits. However, as I acknowledged in my original post, a bike built, engineered, and warrantied around a front hub motor is a different thing entirely.

I don't think any kit builders look for warranty on an installation. But certainly there are MANY front conversions, when done thoughtfully and with proper torque arms are safe and sane

What is improper about these builds?

IME it's a quality controller issue. Cheap labor and poorly calibrated robotic wheel builders are the issue. NOT hub motors in wheels.

I dismissed hub motor *kits* for quality and safety concerns.

It's not fair to dismiss all front kits as doomed to fail. There's hundreds if not thousands of safe, sane, and successful front kits. Suspension forks and alloy forks are the first disqualifying parameters.

EDIT OK now I see. You are an LBS. As an LBS I wouldn't install a kit, any kit, on any bike. Liability would run me off instantly!

That said I have dealt with literally thousands of support emails since 2015. I just don't hear about the spoke failures you do. I've never seen a failure on a Grin wheel or any from the LBS I have used and have suggested others use. A little 250W-350W geared hub motor as a front or in a 2wd is quite the nice conversion. Again, a steel fork with dual torque arms, motors up to 750W is typically what those with a decade of building experience suggest as a limit. Having done support for the largest and the smallest of kit sellers, my experience isn't in line with yours. Reading about failures is, as you pointed out to Joe, largely anecdotal and limited typically to some idiot imagining himself smarter than design engineers.

We'll have to generally agree to disagree as regenerative braking is applied to eBikes. My experience is very positive and in thousands of miles of daily use.

Thanks for the great discussion! We need more insight into how LBS approach the business. My view is admittedly myopic given I have no LBS experience other than supporting mechanics doing BBSxx repairs.

 

[Mass Deduction]

<<<What do you define as a properly built wheel? I regularly see broken spokes in a variety of hub motor applications. BionX, Rad Power, Pedego, you name it. What is improper about these builds? >>>

Regarding the Rad's, they are pretty well known for loose spokes. Hard to assume this is a well built wheel.

A well built wheel doesn't always stay that way. How often is the wheel trued? How frequently are people hopping off curbs? A tonne of variables there. The torque emanating from the hub through the spokes doesn't so much create problems, it more exacerbates existing problems. If you have a quality wheel, watch for potholes, don't hob off curbs, and true it regularly then you may never get a broken spoke. But is that level of fastidiousness the norm? I think it probably isn't.

 

[Mass Deduction]

Good to know, I'd nt run into them. Off to find....

They're awesome, and reasonably priced. Typically available in 8spd through 11spd.

I don't think any kit builders look for warranty on an installation. But certainly there are MANY front conversions, when done thoughtfully and with proper torque arms are safe and sane

IME it's a quality controller issue. Cheap labor and poorly calibrated robotic wheel builders are the issue. NOT hub motors in wheels.

It's not fair to dismiss all front kits as doomed to fail. There's hundreds if not thousands of safe, sane, and successful front kits. Suspension forks and alloy forks are the first disqualifying parameters.

There are millions of people who smoke, and don't get lung cancer. I don't necessarily think that a high proportion of front forks with motors fail. But I have seen several failures, so it makes me uncomfortable. The most recent one was on a steel fork too (though, admittedly, a cheap one, not a high-end chromo one).

EDIT OK now I see. You are an LBS. As an LBS I wouldn't install a kit, any kit, on any bike. Liability would run me off instantly!

We've installed rear hub BionX kits many times in the past. We've more recently assisted a customer in installing a Bafang mid-drive, and last summer did a Pendix mid-drive install too. We're not against kits in theory, and have done it several times. In practice, though, we find the end product with conversions isn't as good as a purpose-built alternative.

[...]
We'll have to generally agree to disagree as regenerative braking is applied to eBikes. My experience is very positive and in thousands of miles of daily use.

Not necessarily, I acknowledged my experience was limited to BionX and that leaves the door open to something newer and better.

Thanks for the great discussion! We need more insight into how LBS approach the business. My view is admittedly myopic given I have no LBS experience other than supporting mechanics doing BBSxx repairs.

I'm learning a lot here, and I appreciate both your responses and your politeness!

 

[Mass Deduction]

All of them.
Early Bafang models had quite a notable drag. Recent versions are better. Expensive mid drives like Yamaha are better yet, though technically they all have motor-induced resistance when un-powered. You can't trick physics laws.

Brose claims zero drag with the motor off due to it being belt-driven internally.

In my experience, the extra rotational mass of a hub motor is a bigger drag than any internal drag in a high quality mid-drive motor. When I send people out on mid-drive or hub motor test rides and encourage them to try the bike in all the modes of assist, including off, they invariably prefer the mid-drives with the motor off than they do the hub drives with the motor off. And that's without me suggesting in advance which I think they'll prefer. But that could in part be us selling higher-end mid-drives than we ever sold hub motors (as most people in our market get hub motor bikes if the budget is tight, or get OEM mid-drive if it's in the budget; high-end hub motor bikes like Stromers are barely a factor in my local market).

I'm very curious to try, of all things, the iGo Bafang mid-drive endurance road bike. It's only 27 lbs! However, it's class-1 and I've been spoiled by class-3, so that's my only hesitation.

 

[ElevenAD]

i have found one of each is the only solution.

 

[Mass Deduction]

i have found one of each is the only solution.

N+1 for the win!

(Is that a well known expression on this forum?)

 

[Feliz]

But since someone appeared to insult me by saying "Why do you waste your time Tom?", I thought I'd give more context to my response. I'm no fanboy, and come to this forum to learn and to share what I've learned. I appreciate those responses that I got that were polite, like Tom's. Let's all be a little less quick to judge, shall we?

My comment to Tom had nothing to do with you or your posts, I usually ignore your long ranting posts and when/if I do read them I generally disagree with your comments. Tom is the most knowledgeable poster on this forum and a good friend, I was just teasing him due to his always threatening to leave the forum in frustration. Tom will never leave......

 

[Mass Deduction]

My comment to Tom had nothing to do with you or your posts, I usually ignore your long ranting posts and when/if I do read them I generally disagree with your comments. Tom is the most knowledgeable poster on this forum and a good friend, I was just teasing him due to his always threatening to leave the forum in frustration. Tom will never leave......

Ah, gotcha. Thank you for the clarification. And long posts? Guilty as charged, I do tend to be verbose. As for ranting? Well, I guess that's subjective so not for me to say how it appears to you.

 

[Feliz]

Ah, gotcha. Thank you for the clarification. And long posts? Guilty as charged, I do tend to be verbose. As for ranting? Well, I guess that's subjective so not for me to say how it appears to you.

I'm sorry you interpreted my comment to Tom as an insult, that wasn't my intention. This has turned into a great thread thanks to you and Tom, of course anything beats the usual "what kind of suspension seat post should I buy" threads that run rampant on this forum. I hope this informative thread continues for a long time, thanks for your input.

 

[AHicks]

A well built wheel doesn't always stay that way. How often is the wheel trued? How frequently are people hopping off curbs? A tonne of variables there. The torque emanating from the hub through the spokes doesn't so much create problems, it more exacerbates existing problems. If you have a quality wheel, watch for potholes, don't hob off curbs, and true it regularly then you may never get a broken spoke. But is that level of fastidiousness the norm? I think it probably isn't.

My bad. I should have mentioned the Rad loose spoke issue I was speaking of is from the time they are pulled out of the box. Whoever is building the wheels for the Rad Bikes is doing a terrible job. They're straight, but the spokes are way loose - to the point they can be noisey. I get the fact maintenance, or the lack of it, can be a factor long term, especially with the hub drives. I still don't agree broken spokes are much of an issue, or an issue that applies only to hub drives.

The other thing I'd like to mention is that when you are mentioning rear hubs, it seems like you are referring only to direct drive rear hubs, or at the very least lumping the DD with the gear driven together. This hardly seems fair. Comments regarding one don't necessarily apply to both. Those following should know that.

And last, after reading more from you, I see you're not just another fan boy. You're just predisposed toward mid drives. While that's a fair opinion for sure, I would have hoped a dealer would maintain a more objective presence. The fact that you would rather ride one, and that your techs would rather work on one, means nothing when noting the hub drives outnumber the mid's by quite a bit. This reminds me of the attitude I see when walking into a shop that sells high end bikes only, or maybe don't sell e-bikes at all. As one that doesn't appreciate high end bikes much, they aren't likely going to get my business, or even see me again any time real soon.

I am of the notion I can buy a pretty decent inexpensive bike, ride it for 2-3 years, throw it away, and go buy another like it (with all recent technology changes and a brand new battery), and STILL be money ahead when comparing what I've spent to what some high end bikes cost.

In any case, your tip regarding the better chains is well taken. -Al

 

[tomjasz]

we find the end product with conversions isn't as good as a purpose-built alternative.

Brose claims zero drag with the motor off due to it being belt-driven internally.

In my experience, the extra rotational mass of a hub motor is a bigger drag than any internal drag in a high quality mid-drive motor. When I send people out on mid-drive or hub motor test rides and encourage them to try the bike in all the modes of assist, including off, they invariably prefer the mid-drives with the motor off than they do the hub drives with the motor off. And that's without me suggesting in advance which I think they'll prefer. But that could in part be us selling higher-end mid-drives than we ever sold hub motors (as most people in our market get hub motor bikes if the budget is tight, or get OEM mid-drive if it's in the budget; high-end hub motor bikes like Stromers are barely a factor in my local market).

I'm very curious to try, of all things, the iGo Bafang mid-drive endurance road bike. It's only 27 lbs! However, it's class-1 and I've been spoiled by class-3, so that's my only hesitation.

If I finally get busy and finish projects, my folder with a BBS01 250w is a sweet conversion. I’ve gone full dork.

 

[tomjasz]

I'm learning a lot here, and I appreciate both your responses and your politeness!

As am I. This is why I really like this forum. I learn something! You’ve had a positive effect, and I’ve learned from you. Thank you for continuing the discussion. As I wrote, I’m somewhat myopic, only supporting and working with kits.

 

[FlatSix911]

I have found one of each is the only solution.

N+1 for the win! (Is that a well-known expression on this forum?)

This is the correct answer... N+1 always wins!

 

[FlatSix911]

Another good review... balanced pros and cons for each type.

Electric bicycle hub motors vs mid-drive motors: Which should be on your next e-bike?

Electric bicycles are becoming increasingly popular forms of two-wheeled electric transportation for both commuting and pleasure riding. The two most...

electrek.co

One of the biggest advantages of hub motors is that they require little or no maintenance.
They are an entirely independent drive system that retain all of their components inside the motor casing, leaving nothing for you to mess with or maintain.


The single largest advantage that mid-motors have over hub motors is their gear ratio.
They allow the rider to power the rear wheel via the same chain and gear set as the pedals, which means that a low gear can be selected for powering up steep hills or accelerating from a stop with massive torque. A mid-drive motor in low gear can climb steeper hills than a hub motor of similar power, and can climb hills for longer than a hub motor, which could overheat on long steep hill climbs.

 

[tomjasz]

I'm sorry you interpreted my comment to Tom as an insult, that wasn't my intention. This has turned into a great thread thanks to you and Tom, of course anything beats the usual "what kind of suspension seat post should I buy" threads that run rampant on this forum. I hope this informative thread continues for a long time, thanks for your input.

FeliZ is a favorite poster. For me. We started off not quite appreciating each other’s view. But once we really communicated and came to understand we had a common passion the discussions became fun and we both learned from each other. Misunderstanding is perhaps the biggest struggle on forums. Once we see we’re all on the same path the quips are no longer insults. Just friends doing what friends do. Challenging and growing our knowledge base. Thanks to Court we have a well lit clean room for discussions.

 

[Mass Deduction]

Thanks for the great discussion! We need more insight into how LBS approach the business. My view is admittedly myopic given I have no LBS experience other than supporting mechanics doing BBSxx repairs.

Because you expressed an interest in it, I'd be pleased to let you know what I see and hear both in my LBS and from talking to other bike shop staff about the business. Just fYI, if I say "IBD" I'm meaning the same as LBS. IBD means independent bike shop, and is the term typically used inside the industry. And where many in the EBR forums refer to acoustic bikes, we in our shop usually refer to "muscle bikes" (this is the common term for a non-electric bike in Germany, meaning a bike with a muscle motor instead of an electric motor). And warning @Feliz, verbosity alert!

The number one e-bike frustration for bike shops is someone buying something that the bike shop can't fully service, and the customer being reluctant to understand/accept this. The customer buys something online (whether a kit or a complete bike), and then wants the bike shop to put it together and make it all work. But like anything unfamiliar, it can take longer and customers often don't have a realistic expectation of the amount of labour (and therefore cost) involved. Also, since the bike shop hasn't sold any parts and it's a labour-only proposition, if the repair shop is busy (or has other priorities) then this can be unappealing to the shop.

Worse yet is that these online-only options often have proprietary parts, so the risk/reward formula is out of balance. The potential reward is charging the customer a relatively small amount of labour (as people going the online route are often doing so in the hopes of saving money, the customer is rarely willing to pay what the labour is really worth). The potential risk is something goes wrong and the customer demands you repair or replace their kit, or their complete bike, at your cost. And when you're working on something unfamiliar, the risk of something going wrong is significant. We once had a rear hub motor e-bike in our store that had some visible cables that clearly needed to be removed from the rear wheel, but it also had an additional cable that was very hard to see that also needed to be removed. Had we missed that additional cable and dropped the wheel out of the frame, we might have ruined the system at significant hassle/expense. That's one of many examples. With an OEM mid-drive system, there's very little the bike shop can do wrong, even if they've never seen the system before.

The final liability point is the "coincidental timing" risk. A customer drops off the e-bike and believes the electric system is working fine. The most common requests are flat repairs and tune-ups on the bike parts of the bike, with the customer usually fine with us ignoring the motor/battery/electronics. The customer later picks up the bike, tries to ride it, and something about the electric system doesn't work. We didn't touch the electric system, but how do we prove that? The customer's reaction might be "Well, you must have done something to it!" Maybe we did since it was an unfamiliar system and we didn't know what we didn't now, but maybe it's also just coincidental timing. Is the small amount we might charge for a flat repair or a tune-up worth the customer demanding we repair or replace their $2k-ish online brand e-bike? Many shops say no, and won't work on bikes like that. We are willing to work on them, but we struggle with it as there's so much potential liability for so little potential reward. The reason we do it is that, if we treat the customer right, when they wear out (or tire of) their current e-bike then we stand a good chance of selling them their next one. Especially if being expert on their maintenance lets us point to ways in which the bikes we offer might be a lower maintenance experience for them. And cheap online e-bikes tend to have shorter service life spans in our experience, so we tend to think they'll need a new bike in the near future if they're riding it a lot.

There are some IBDs that are slow to get with the times. They lean too heavily into the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" mantra. The problem with that is by the time you identify it's broken, it's often too late to switch course (or doing so is very disruptive). To that end, my bike shop started selling e-bikes in 2003. "Muscle bikes" weren't broken yet, but we could see the writing on the wall that e-bikes were going to be important. The thing that differentiates us from a lot of bike shops is our willingness to bring in brands that are either e-bike only, or e-bike focused. We've brought in Merida, Panasonic, Toba, Raleigh, iZip, Haibike, Felt, and others over the years either primarily or exclusively for their e-bikes. But that's not common. What's more common is for an IBD to only bring in the e-bikes of the brands they were already selling. So if they're a Trek dealer they sell Trek e-bikes, if they're a Kona dealer they sell Kona e-bikes, etc. This can lead to the perception that the store isn't very into e-bikes because they just don't have the same wealth of models to offer. That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't excited about e-bikes, they might be really into it and wishing their suppliers offered a bigger range of models.

Most bike shops prefer mid-drive e-bikes. From talking to other shops, most believe mid-drive is a better technical solution because they tend to be lighter weight overall, they tend to have less rotating mass in particular, they tend to have less wiring to deal with, and they believe warranty problems will be both less frequent and easier to deal with when it does happen. The lighter weight of mid-drive e-bikes is very appealing for bike shops as many/most bike shops also sell car racks, and the lighter weight the bike the more car racks can hold it. Most car racks can handle at least 35 lbs per bike. A fair number can handle as much as 45 lbs. Most brand name mid-drive e-bikes with the battery removed can be held by the 45 lbs racks, some even by the 35 lbs models. If a bike shop also caters to the inexpensive end of the e-bike market you now need to carry racks with 70 or even 80 lbs weight limits.

Another consideration is loading and unloading the bike. It's more appealing to load a 45 lbs bike into a repair stand than one that's 75 lbs, and that presumes the bike shop's even confident that their repair stands were even engineered for very heavy bikes. Many shops help customers load and unload bikes from cars and trucks too, and again a 45 pound bike is far more appealing than something in the 55-75 pound range.

Since most bike shops are selling bikes made available to them by suppliers with a bike shop focus, the majority of bikes they're selling are street legal bikes that neatly fall into the 3 class system. They're typically selling bikes with a maximum of 500w in Canada and a maximum of 750w in the U.S. The kinds of hub motor bikes that bike shops are typically offered are very low priced ones, to hit price points that mid-drives OEMs don't go down to. Most companies supplying bikes to bike shops are going to make all their high-end bikes mid-drive. This creates and perpetuates the idea that mid-drive is high-end and hub drive is low-end.

I think the prevailing wisdom within the bike industry, rightly or wrongly, is that if you're making a bike with a 500w maximum then you want it to be light weight and you want it to be a geared motor. You want to keep the wiring to a minimum to keep the bike attractive. You want to keep the maintenance and warranty to a minimum. The prevailing belief is that going with a supplier like Shimano, Bosch, Brose, or Yamaha does all of the above. Many small and medium-sized suppliers go with Shimano STePS as they're already dealing with Shimano for gears and/or brakes, so going with them for motors is simply the path of least resistance (I'm thinking of companies like Devinci, Opus, Felt, Kona, and many others). Others may have gone with Bosch because they were "the brand name" before Shimano really stepped up their game with the release of STePS 6100 (which was a gigantic improvement over what had gone before).

As a bike shop, if I'm offered a bike with a Shimano motor then I know what to do and who to talk to if I have a warranty question. If a shop has already have been dealing with Di2, then as a bonus they already have all the software and hardware that they need to do diagnostics and software updates for STePS. If a shop is considering bringing in bikes with Bosch and Yamaha for the first time, there may be a steeper learning curve than with Shimano, but those are names with a good pedigree that offer a high degree of confidence that they'll stand behind what they sell. If I'm offered a bike with Bafang, or Promovec, or something else "no name" then I don't know what it means if I have a problem. And I'm less confident that I won't have problems. And problems cost money in a bike shop. Bikes are low margin, and any warranty service eats into that already low margin so I need to avoid that whenever possible.

Interestingly, there is an exception to all of the above. Some bike shops target the low end in their muscle bikes, selling brands like Raleigh, Miele, or Garneau. They will often target the low end with their e-bikes too, and will then almost always offer mostly or exclusively cheap hub motor bikes from companies like iGo, Evo, Garneau, etc. This further reinforces the idea within IBDs that hub motors are for "cheap" bikes and mid-drives are for "good" bikes. When you look at iGo's line-up, most of their models are hub motor but their highest-end model is mid-drive. Ditto what Garneau and Evo are doing, the cheaper bikes are all hub motor and the highest-end models for 2020 are mid-drive (no info online for these new mid-drive models last I checked, so this is a spoiler for 2020!). This fits into and reinforces the LBS world view.

The final nail in the coffin are the people coming in which cheap online e-bikes with weird problems. This is self-reinforcing as the bike shop sees both the good and bad of the bike shop brands, but only sees the bad of the online brands (as the people having success with their online brands are out riding rather than taking it into the shop). We see a front hub bike with a fork that's failing, we don't see the hundreds that are doing just fine. We see the rear hub bike with the broken spoke, we don't see the ones without the broken spokes because they had no reason to bring it in.

Most of my staff ride e-bikes, and we all ride mid-drive e-bikes. Would some of us be more open to hub motor bikes if in the past we'd sold, say, Stromer instead of bikes with BionX motors? Maybe yes, maybe no. It's an interesting question, actually. With FSA having decided to go hub motor, that has provided a jolt of legitimacy to the idea of hub motors into the IBD parlance. Up until now the narrative has been "All the good companies [Shimano, Bosch, Yamaha, Brose] went mid-drive, and most of the companies known for hub motors [Bafang, etc.] are working on adding mid-drives to their line-up, therefore mid-drive is the future." FSA is the first really respected company in the traditional bike industry to go with a hub motor option, so it'll be interesting to see how FSA's options compete with Fazua and Bafang's road bike mid-drive options. Having looked at the three, I've ordered a Fazua system for myself, and continue to evaluate iGo's road bike with a Bafang M800. But I've had a few customers ask about Orbea's road e-bike options (which use an Ebikemotion hub motor). But the people asking about Orbea's bikes typically do so citing their low cost, not because they've carefully evaluated hub motor vs. mid-drive and concluded the hub motor is better for their needs. So, there again, the Orbea option feels like it's the "cheap" hub motor option vs. the "good" mid-drive options from Look, etc. So everywhere you turn, that idea of mid-drive being desirable and hub motor being for people who can't afford mid-drive keeps cropping up when you're looking at it from the LBS perspective.

That's more than enough for now. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts, and answer anyone's questions about all this.

 

[AHicks]

Much easier to see where you are coming from, and why. I just hope you keep an open mind regarding the hub drives. We do agree the gear driven motors do a good job in a lot of different applications.

 

[FlatSix911]

Because you expressed an interest in it, I'd be pleased to let you know what I see and hear both in my LBS and from talking to other bike shop staff about the business. Just fYI, if I say "IBD" I'm meaning the same as LBS. IBD means independent bike shop, and is the term typically used inside the industry. And where many in the EBR forums refer to acoustic bikes, we in our shop usually refer to "muscle bikes" (this is the common term for a non-electric bike in Germany, meaning a bike with a muscle motor instead of an electric motor). And warning @Feliz, verbosity alert!

The number one e-bike frustration for bike shops is someone buying something that the bike shop can't fully service, and the customer being reluctant to understand/accept this. The customer buys something online (whether a kit or a complete bike), and then wants the bike shop to put it together and make it all work. But like anything unfamiliar, it can take longer and customers often don't have a realistic expectation of the amount of labour (and therefore cost) involved. Also, since the bike shop hasn't sold any parts and it's a labour-only proposition, if the repair shop is busy (or has other priorities) then this can be unappealing to the shop.

Worse yet is that these online-only options often have proprietary parts, so the risk/reward formula is out of balance. The potential reward is charging the customer a relatively small amount of labour (as people going the online route are often doing so in the hopes of saving money, the customer is rarely willing to pay what the labour is really worth). The potential risk is something goes wrong and the customer demands you repair or replace their kit, or their complete bike, at your cost. And when you're working on something unfamiliar, the risk of something going wrong is significant. We once had a rear hub motor e-bike in our store that had some visible cables that clearly needed to be removed from the rear wheel, but it also had an additional cable that was very hard to see that also needed to be removed. Had we missed that additional cable and dropped the wheel out of the frame, we might have ruined the system at significant hassle/expense. That's one of many examples. With an OEM mid-drive system, there's very little the bike shop can do wrong, even if they've never seen the system before.

The final liability point is the "coincidental timing" risk. A customer drops off the e-bike and believes the electric system is working fine. The most common requests are flat repairs and tune-ups on the bike parts of the bike, with the customer usually fine with us ignoring the motor/battery/electronics. The customer later picks up the bike, tries to ride it, and something about the electric system doesn't work. We didn't touch the electric system, but how do we prove that? The customer's reaction might be "Well, you must have done something to it!" Maybe we did since it was an unfamiliar system and we didn't know what we didn't now, but maybe it's also just coincidental timing. Is the small amount we might charge for a flat repair or a tune-up worth the customer demanding we repair or replace their $2k-ish online brand e-bike? Many shops say no, and won't work on bikes like that. We are willing to work on them, but we struggle with it as there's so much potential liability for so little potential reward. The reason we do it is that, if we treat the customer right, when they wear out (or tire of) their current e-bike then we stand a good chance of selling them their next one. Especially if being expert on their maintenance lets us point to ways in which the bikes we offer might be a lower maintenance experience for them. And cheap online e-bikes tend to have shorter service life spans in our experience, so we tend to think they'll need a new bike in the near future if they're riding it a lot.

There are some IBDs that are slow to get with the times. They lean too heavily into the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" mantra. The problem with that is by the time you identify it's broken, it's often too late to switch course (or doing so is very disruptive). To that end, my bike shop started selling e-bikes in 2003. "Muscle bikes" weren't broken yet, but we could see the writing on the wall that e-bikes were going to be important. The thing that differentiates us from a lot of bike shops is our willingness to bring in brands that are either e-bike only, or e-bike focused. We've brought in Merida, Panasonic, Toba, Raleigh, iZip, Haibike, Felt, and others over the years either primarily or exclusively for their e-bikes. But that's not common. What's more common is for an IBD to only bring in the e-bikes of the brands they were already selling. So if they're a Trek dealer they sell Trek e-bikes, if they're a Kona dealer they sell Kona e-bikes, etc. This can lead to the perception that the store isn't very into e-bikes because they just don't have the same wealth of models to offer. That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't excited about e-bikes, they might be really into it and wishing their suppliers offered a bigger range of models.

Most bike shops prefer mid-drive e-bikes. From talking to other shops, most believe mid-drive is a better technical solution because they tend to be lighter weight overall, they tend to have less rotating mass in particular, they tend to have less wiring to deal with, and they believe warranty problems will be both less frequent and easier to deal with when it does happen. The lighter weight of mid-drive e-bikes is very appealing for bike shops as many/most bike shops also sell car racks, and the lighter weight the bike the more car racks can hold it. Most car racks can handle at least 35 lbs per bike. A fair number can handle as much as 45 lbs. Most brand name mid-drive e-bikes with the battery removed can be held by the 45 lbs racks, some even by the 35 lbs models. If a bike shop also caters to the inexpensive end of the e-bike market you now need to carry racks with 70 or even 80 lbs weight limits.

Another consideration is loading and unloading the bike. It's more appealing to load a 45 lbs bike into a repair stand than one that's 75 lbs, and that presumes the bike shop's even confident that their repair stands were even engineered for very heavy bikes. Many shops help customers load and unload bikes from cars and trucks too, and again a 45 pound bike is far more appealing than something in the 55-75 pound range.

Since most bike shops are selling bikes made available to them by suppliers with a bike shop focus, the majority of bikes they're selling are street legal bikes that neatly fall into the 3 class system. They're typically selling bikes with a maximum of 500w in Canada and a maximum of 750w in the U.S. The kinds of hub motor bikes that bike shops are typically offered are very low priced ones, to hit price points that mid-drives OEMs don't go down to. Most companies supplying bikes to bike shops are going to make all their high-end bikes mid-drive. This creates and perpetuates the idea that mid-drive is high-end and hub drive is low-end.

I think the prevailing wisdom within the bike industry, rightly or wrongly, is that if you're making a bike with a 500w maximum then you want it to be light weight and you want it to be a geared motor. You want to keep the wiring to a minimum to keep the bike attractive. You want to keep the maintenance and warranty to a minimum. The prevailing belief is that going with a supplier like Shimano, Bosch, Brose, or Yamaha does all of the above. Many small and medium-sized suppliers go with Shimano STePS as they're already dealing with Shimano for gears and/or brakes, so going with them for motors is simply the path of least resistance (I'm thinking of companies like Devinci, Opus, Felt, Kona, and many others). Others may have gone with Bosch because they were "the brand name" before Shimano really stepped up their game with the release of STePS 6100 (which was a gigantic improvement over what had gone before).

As a bike shop, if I'm offered a bike with a Shimano motor then I know what to do and who to talk to if I have a warranty question. If a shop has already have been dealing with Di2, then as a bonus they already have all the software and hardware that they need to do diagnostics and software updates for STePS. If a shop is considering bringing in bikes with Bosch and Yamaha for the first time, there may be a steeper learning curve than with Shimano, but those are names with a good pedigree that offer a high degree of confidence that they'll stand behind what they sell. If I'm offered a bike with Bafang, or Promovec, or something else "no name" then I don't know what it means if I have a problem. And I'm less confident that I won't have problems. And problems cost money in a bike shop. Bikes are low margin, and any warranty service eats into that already low margin so I need to avoid that whenever possible.

Interestingly, there is an exception to all of the above. Some bike shops target the low end in their muscle bikes, selling brands like Raleigh, Miele, or Garneau. They will often target the low end with their e-bikes too, and will then almost always offer mostly or exclusively cheap hub motor bikes from companies like iGo, Evo, Garneau, etc. This further reinforces the idea within IBDs that hub motors are for "cheap" bikes and mid-drives are for "good" bikes. When you look at iGo's line-up, most of their models are hub motor but their highest-end model is mid-drive. Ditto what Garneau and Evo are doing, the cheaper bikes are all hub motor and the highest-end models for 2020 are mid-drive (no info online for these new mid-drive models last I checked, so this is a spoiler for 2020!). This fits into and reinforces the LBS world view.

The final nail in the coffin are the people coming in which cheap online e-bikes with weird problems. This is self-reinforcing as the bike shop sees both the good and bad of the bike shop brands, but only sees the bad of the online brands (as the people having success with their online brands are out riding rather than taking it into the shop). We see a front hub bike with a fork that's failing, we don't see the hundreds that are doing just fine. We see the rear hub bike with the broken spoke, we don't see the ones without the broken spokes because they had no reason to bring it in.

Most of my staff ride e-bikes, and we all ride mid-drive e-bikes. Would some of us be more open to hub motor bikes if in the past we'd sold, say, Stromer instead of bikes with BionX motors? Maybe yes, maybe no. It's an interesting question, actually. With FSA having decided to go hub motor, that has provided a jolt of legitimacy to the idea of hub motors into the IBD parlance. Up until now the narrative has been "All the good companies [Shimano, Bosch, Yamaha, Brose] went mid-drive, and most of the companies known for hub motors [Bafang, etc.] are working on adding mid-drives to their line-up, therefore mid-drive is the future." FSA is the first really respected company in the traditional bike industry to go with a hub motor option, so it'll be interesting to see how FSA's options compete with Fazua and Bafang's road bike mid-drive options. Having looked at the three, I've ordered a Fazua system for myself, and continue to evaluate iGo's road bike with a Bafang M800. But I've had a few customers ask about Orbea's road e-bike options (which use an Ebikemotion hub motor). But the people asking about Orbea's bikes typically do so citing their low cost, not because they've carefully evaluated hub motor vs. mid-drive and concluded the hub motor is better for their needs. So, there again, the Orbea option feels like it's the "cheap" hub motor option vs. the "good" mid-drive options from Look, etc. So everywhere you turn, that idea of mid-drive being desirable and hub motor being for people who can't afford mid-drive keeps cropping up when you're looking at it from the LBS perspective.

That's more than enough for now. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts, and answer anyone's questions about all this.

Very informative review from the IBD perspective... thanks for posting.

 

[tomjasz]

Much easier to see where you are coming from, and why. I just hope you keep an open mind regarding the hub drives. We do agree the gear driven motors do a good job in a lot of different applications.

It really is a shame to eliminate hub drives from any selection. There are very small and quite powerful hub drives thst are lighter than some mid drive motors. The simplicity, repairability, easy parts access, and reliability are perfect for less expensive yet great bikes.

I’ve got a little aluminum body 250-350w MXUS GEAR DRIVE that makes for a great level 1 EBike. It’s really a shame to suggest every customer get into the cost and complexity of a mid drive.

These make very good conversion kits. Making a favorite muscle bike a great assistance ride. These simplified kits are doing well in some IBD. I have a dozen shops that are doing well with good quality conversions. My little MXUS kit adds less than 20 lbs and with a decent Alex wheel build, low maintenance.

I wish we still sold them. Easy install, easy to support as well.