I totally understand. There is actually a dealer in Denver called Best Electric Bikes, but I know very little about them. Maybe you should give them a shout or stop in.
Visited Best Electric Bikes today, and test rode the DeLite, of which they have the high speed dual battery belt drive on the floor as a demo. It is *very* nice! Between the relatively fat tires and suspension, it is a very luxurious ride. The belt is silent, so the only noise is the motor, which is pretty quite at ECO and TOUR, and more noticeable at SPORT and TURBO, perhaps heightened for me by the lack of drive-train noise that I'm used to. Having ridden many thousands of miles on a Bosch speed pedelec (Felt NINEe) setup for commuting duty in similar tires, fenders, rack, but a significantly lighter bike without the full suspension and second battery, it does seem like ECO is not so practical on the R&M, while it's required on the Felt by the lack of battery capacity. However, my interest in twice the battery capacity is to be able to run at higher speeds on higher assist, so not feeling like ECO works as well seems an acceptable tradeoff. I am curious how much efficiency is lost due to the belt and Nuvinci, though again this to me is an acceptable trade-off for lower maintenance.
At this point, I am ready to pull the trigger, and will probably place an order in the next week, but not necessarily for the DeLite. I'm still drawn to the Charger. I'd love some feedback from anyone regarding maintenance and reliability of two models and trim levels, as follows:
- DeLite with full suspension vs Charger hard tail. The charger is bound to be lighter, and more efficient, and simpler, which means lower maintenance. Any thoughts on how the extra roller in the belt on the DeLite will effect belt life? How about suspension care?
- Each of these models is available in either chain/Rohloff or belt/NuVinci configurations. I'm drawn by lack of need to clean and lube the belt and the long duty cycle of the belt to go with the NuVinci config, despite reservations that it will hold up like the Rohloff. But I'm afraid with the Rohloff I'd wind up doing frequent chain maintenance, and/or need to replace the chain and sprockets frequently.
My riding is all commuting, year round, on relatively smooth, clean paved paths and roads. I'm used to a hard tail, and rode the last 30k miles on one, so the full suspension has more future use case appeal than any daily justification. So I'd happily trade simple, lighter, and durability for suspension, but what really is the impact of the suspension on reliability? And with the price difference of the NuVinci and Rohloff, I'd be happy with the NuVinci provided it lasts something in the neighborhood of 15k miles or more...
As nice as the DeLite is, I'm leaning toward the Charger because I'm aiming to put 1500+ miles per month on it, and my preference is for reliability. Thoughts on reliability between the two configs? And is there any justification to consider the Rohloff, given the chain drive?