My Son's Neo Carbon

biknut

biknut

Active Member
Today was the big day. My son's new Neo Carbon arrived from, Electric Bikes of New England. We picked it up at the freight terminal this afternoon in my van, and drove straight to my shop to put it together.

The shipping container (box) was totally unscathed. When it finally saw the light of day, I couldn't find one scratch on it. It was very easy to assemble. Assembly consisted of fitting the handle bars to the neck, and screwing on the pedals. I put the battery on the charger as soon as we got it out of the box, and it took about 20 minutes for the light to go green. The only tool need was a 4mm allen wrench, and a 15mm box end for the pedals. I made a small adjustment to front derailleur, but no tools were needed. The brake calipers were perfectly installed. The only thing left was to slap the battery on, and clip the computer onto the handle bars.

Hitting the start button, it fired right up, and off he went on his first ride. He rode it up and down block a few times. I could tell he was digging it by the stupid looking smile on his face lol. He didn't really need any practice because he's 30 years old, and already been riding bicycles, and motorcycles half his life.

These are my observations. First off I was impressed by the silence. Next thing I noticed was the zippy acceleration. Even in eco more it zooms away from a stop. Justin tried all the power settings, and said he didn't notice a huge difference between them. He questioned why anyone would need more then eco mode.

After we convinced ourselves everything was running well, I got my bike out, and we went for a ride around the neighborhood. I'm impressed with the Carbon. It doesn't have tremendous top speed, only about 25 mph, but it get's there very quickly. In what seems like about 2 pedal strokes, it already up to 20 mph, and the silence is deafening. My bike is also very quiet, and it seems strange to be riding along at 20 mph carrying on a normal conversation. It looks more like a expensive carbon fiber bicycle, than a eBike. I'm pretty sure Justin is going to be very happy with this bike.

Now that I finally got him hooked on eBikes, next I going to get him to go on some inner city rides with me, like the Critical Mass, and rides with some other bicycle riding groups I like to annoy.

 
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Sweeeet! Great story, excellent picture. I think an Easy Motion is in my future too (though a different model).
 
The TRON wheelset is awesome! Just hope he does not turn in front of you. I've got reflective marathon racers but have never seen what I look like at night from the side.
 
My son went on his first long ride yesterday. He's loving his bike, and hasn't had any problems. He rode 25 miles round trip on eco mode, and said he had 1 bar left when he got home. This is with a 9 ah battery.

He said it feels like the motor cuts out at about 25 mph. I'm just curious if that's the same in all the power modes? I thought 28 mph was supposed to be the top speed?

I really like the way the bike looks. It has the look of a more expensive bicycle that it actually is. Bikes such as this one are going to have a major effect on regular bicycle riders that use their bikes to commute on. If I was in that situation I'd have to be thinking WTH not.
 
Shea N Encinitas said:
The TRON wheelset is awesome! Just hope he does not turn in front of you. I've got reflective marathon racers but have never seen what I look like at night from the side.
Click to expand...

The only problem with those tires is, you can't get a good photo with them, without lighting up the picture.
 
biknut said:
My son went on his first long ride yesterday. He's loving his bike, and hasn't had any problems. He rode 25 miles round trip on eco mode, and said he had 1 bar left when he got home. This is with a 9 ah battery.

He said it feels like the motor cuts out at about 25 mph. I'm just curious if that's the same in all the power modes? I thought 28 mph was supposed to be the top speed?

I really like the way the bike looks. It has the look of a more expensive bicycle that it actually is. Bikes such as this one are going to have a major effect on regular bicycle riders that use their bikes to commute on. If I was in that situation I'd have to be thinking WTH not.
Click to expand...

The Carbon is the same as other Neo bikes. The motor cuts out about 25 or 26 mph. I love mine, but am secretly eyeing the Nitro line with 48v motor and 28 mph cut off.
 
Vern said:
The Carbon is the same as other Neo bikes. The motor cuts out about 25 or 26 mph. I love mine, but am secretly eyeing the Nitro line with 48v motor and 28 mph cut off.
Click to expand...

We got to ride together about 10 miles today. I was riding my own eBike.

Justin says the motor cuts off about 25 mph. He tops out about 26.7 mph with moderate effort in mode 2. He says he likes mode 2 the best.

He said in Turbo mode he can pedal up to 23 mph with almost no effort.

Both of us agree that the acceleration is about the same in any power mode. He says the amount of effort is the only difference. My observation is based on riding beside his bike, when he's accelerating.

I personally notice that the acceleration is really fast to 25 mph. To bad that's where it suddenly stops. I'm impressed with the factory speedo calibration. Both our speedometers agree almost exactly. I know mine is calibrated carefully because I did it.

There's a small socket with 2 conductors sticking out from the frame just above the bottom bracket. It seems to have about 4.6v on it. It this for fighting ?

The Carbon continues to impress me with a look and feel of quality.
 
biknut said:
There's a small socket with 2 conductors sticking out from the frame just above the bottom bracket. It seems to have about 4.6v on it. It this for fighting ?
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If you can get a 4.6 volt buzzsaw then I suppose it is. Nice you two have e-biking to share. -S
 
Justin has about 70 miles on his bike now in 3 days. Absolutely no issues. He rides it around at top speed, 25 mph most of the time. It's really a nicely built bike. I'm surprised how powerful it is for only 350w. It's just a pity it doesn't have about 10 mph higher top speed. If it would do 35 it would be a fantastic bike. As it is, it's just too limited to be considered a serious contender, but it's still a great little playbike, bike if all you want to do is ride around the neighborhood, and on bike trails. Not that you couldn't ride it across town. You definitely could, but you would have to try and stay off the big streets.

One area where it can compete with my Bomber is quietness. My bike is no slouch in that area, but with it's fat tires it makes a fair amount of tire noise. His skinny tires are definitely quieter. The carbon's brakes are quieter than mine to, even after I replaced my brake pads with a softer compound. His motor is as quiet, and maybe a little quieter than mine, but where the Carbon makes a ruckus is shifting. I've never cared for paddle shifters. My riding bicycle has twist shift, and it's quieter than the Carbon's paddles. My Bomber's 9 speed VBoxx is silent, except for the snick sound the twist grip makes. Still that's getting pretty nit picky, because the Carbon is a very quiet bike.
 
biknut said:
My son went on his first long ride yesterday. He's loving his bike, and hasn't had any problems. He rode 25 miles round trip on eco mode, and said he had 1 bar left when he got home. This is with a 9 ah battery.

He said it feels like the motor cuts out at about 25 mph. I'm just curious if that's the same in all the power modes? I thought 28 mph was supposed to be the top speed?

I really like the way the bike looks. It has the look of a more expensive bicycle that it actually is. Bikes such as this one are going to have a major effect on regular bicycle riders that use their bikes to commute on. If I was in that situation I'd have to be thinking WTH not.
Click to expand...

23ish is the top speed on Neo Carbon. It is a great bike at 44lbs.
upgrading to a 12Ah battery provides 30+miles, as they use higher density Li-ion cells.
 
But nothing would prevent Justin from pedaling harder and faster to get a higher speed than 23mph, right? It's just that the motor wouldn't be doing the work past the Carbon's cutoff limit?

Someone going 23 mph on a regular bike over a long ride is considered a fast cyclist. For instance, sporting group rides set their fastest group (the 'A' group) at around 20 or 21mph. So already the Neo Carbon allows a rider to be in the fastest group should they ever decide to join up with others doing paced group rides.

As a point of comparison: my moped (actually a "no-ped") in college, a 2-stroke gas powered Yammahopper, had a top speed of 25mph and it got me where I was going quickly and easily. And with that I didn't even have the option of riding on a sidewalk or anywhere but the road. It felt plenty fast for what it was.
 
PowerMe said:
But nothing would prevent Justin from pedaling harder and faster to get a higher speed than 23mph, right? It's just that the motor wouldn't be doing the work past the Carbon's cutoff limit?

Someone going 23 mph on a regular bike over a long ride is considered a fast cyclist. For instance, sporting group rides set their fastest group (the 'A' group) at around 20 or 21mph. So already the Neo Carbon allows a rider to be in the fastest group should they ever decide to join up with others doing paced group rides.

As a point of comparison: my moped (actually a "no-ped") in college, a 2-stroke gas powered Yammahopper, had a top speed of 25mph and it got me where I was going quickly and easily. And with that I didn't even have the option of riding on a sidewalk or anywhere but the road. It felt plenty fast for what it was.
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Maintaining 23mph on any E-bike will drain your battery quite fast. Whereas on a normal human powered bike, it is the muscle fatigue but the weight difference is a huge factor.
 
Understood, but there's nothing other than the muscle and strength of the rider that prevents the Carbon going even faster than 23mph. Agreed the range will be lower at the electric powered speed limit, but I was just speaking of the basic mechanics of the bike. It's not like the pedals stop rotating for the cyclist when a max speed of 23mph is reached. He may decide he needs to upgrade to a faster ebike in the near or far future. Or there's always a motorcycle for true speed.
 
According to Justin it goes 25 mph in every power mode before the power cuts out. I'm pretty sure his speedo is accurate, because it agrees with my CA, that I personally calibrated. In Turbo mode he says you only barely push on the pedals to go 25. Pedaling on top of 25 he gets it to about 26.7 mph on level ground.

I think it does really well for such a little motor. It seems to get to 20 mph with just a couple strokes of the pedals. He easily does 25 in number 2 mode.
 
The Stealth Bomber and Fighter are awesome to ride (4500, 3500w respectively), however they're very illegal on the road in Australia ;-(
 
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