Do have a source or evidence for this suggestion? I mean, "some have suggested" is about the weakest statement possible. It this is true, it would be a serious issue, so it seems kind of reckless to suggest this without providing any more info.
ebike range estimates seem sorta like the wild west right now, with few rules. Minimally, I think most ebikes assume you'll be pedaling at the same time. And for hub-drive bikes, I suspect your gear choice matters, and with all bikes, velocity makes a HUGE difference (power goes up with the cube of velocity). So if you cruise your CC at the same speed you ride your RadRover, you'd probably get better range from a charge.
Here's a fun bike power calculator:
https://www.gribble.org/cycling/power_v_speed.html
Using the default parameters, cruising at 15mph takes 88.18 watts, while cruising at 25mph takes 326.16 watts.
So if you have a 1000Watt-hour battery, at 15mph you can cruise for 11.34 hours and cover 170 miles.
But at 25mph you can only cruise for 3.1 hours and cover 76.6 miles.
Obviously those specific numbers won't match your specific bike, but the point is that cruising at 25 instead of 15 reduces your range by more than half.
Some observations on the Frey CC battery and some early range measurement results
I ordered my CC with an extra battery. Both have a serial number spec manufacturer’s sticker label with serial numbers within 5 digits of each other, probably indicating that they’re from the same production run.
Apparently Frey outsourced this run of CC batteries to TurnLife with some chatter over on Endless Sphere that they spec’d pure Ni buss bars of sufficient gage for no voltage sag worries. This could be true --- maybe some enterprising soul will verify this some day; what is true for sure though that the battery case lock detent design seems very robust with no discernable rattling as others have observed with the AM1000 where some seem to have resorted to ACE bandage like velcro wraps to stabilize/mitigate rattling. It’s early days though and entropy always increases with time.
In the two weeks I’ve owned the CC I’ve only managed to put on about 50 miles in a series of shortish 10 mile or so rides when the weather’s been good. The 10 mile range limit has to do with my butt’s incompatibility with the stock seat more than anything else. I live in the suburbs of Minneapolis with access to an extensive hiking/biking trail system that wind their way around neighborhood backyards, and a myriad of glacial lakes and ponds and marshy wetlands characteristic of Minnesota. So the terrain is mostly flat, but somewhat hilly because of random moraine deposits. The trails are also well used both by people and random wildlife so I tend to ride at a leisurely pace especially after a close encounter of the third kind with a not quite in control teenager on one of those one wheel electrified skateboards which has an Ultra comparable powerful hub motor.
I have a GPS data logging smart watch (Amazefit 47mm GTR) which can record all the details of one of these typical rides as shown below.
So on average I travel 8-9 mph about half the time on the flats and roughly a quarter of the time going up, and then down.
After 50.7 miles (well correlated CC odometer reading with the GPS track data) with an indicated 49% remaining, I recharged the battery to its initial 54.5 v 100% state using a Grin Satiator. The interesting thing about the Satiator is that it has an integrating power meter that records how much energy in amp hours or watt hours are needed to fill up a battery from its discharged voltage to full voltage. In this case, starting at a 49% tank reading correlated to a 49.7 volt level required 7.84aH or about 376 Wh to return to 100%. Since 7.84aH is about 45% of the battery’s nominal 17.5 aH capacity, this implies that there actually might be 55% left in the tank, rather than the indicated 49%. This also could be just a conservative safety measure to keep any cell in the pack from falling below the minimum charge threshold voltage.
So the upshot of all of this, with my typical route and riding style, in 50.7 miles I consumed 7.84 aH or 376 Wh of energy assistance which works to about 7.84 Wh/mile, which seems way low for the oft quoted 10-25 Wh/mile industry average.
To check that these numbers are at all reasonable, I’ll use the handy-dandy Gribble spreadsheet calculator referenced by forum member “Seabeast” above, with all its adjustable parameters set to the CC and me (185 lb me weight, 73 lb bike weight, 8.5 mph average, all other parameters as is although the rolling resistance of the CC could be higher if the default rho is for an 80 psi slick). So:
- On flat ground 8.5 mph requires 33 cw watts. Compared to my Fat tire bike, the CC is easy pedalling so mostly my PAS is at zero or 1-2 if I neglect to hit the minus button after going up a hill. According to the data logger, I rode half my time or about 3 hours in this mode. So the max flat riding assist consumption is 99 Wh with the actual number maybe 20% of this.
- For the 25% of the time/1.5 hours I’m going downhill, I coast as much as possible so consume zero assistance energy.
- For the 1.5 hour uphill bits, according to Gribble, if I maintain the same 8.5 mph pace (I generally do):
10% grade requires 475 watts
15% grade requires 615 watts
20% grade requires 825 watts
So the upshot of the Gribble estimates is that clearly I’m spending the majority of my assistance energy defying gravity in ascending. While it’s not clear what or how the Amazefit distinguishes flat from uphill (i.e., is it derived from barometric data or from GPS TOPO elevation data and convolved with inclinometer data for thresholding, etc.), the observed 376 Wh consumed is reasonable and almost certainly mostly composed of uphill assistance.
I realize this is all well plowed ground and of course it’s just obvious most of the energy goes into conquering hills. But in doing the actual numbers for my bike and battery I can conclude its performance is at least average and perhaps a bit better for my first sample TurnLife battery. If the same performance holds true for the second battery, I would conclude this is as good as it gets for the Ultra implementation in the CC.
Does anybody have any idea how many CC’s are actually now in the USA? Maybe no more than a dozen or two??
Stay Well
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