So, how many miles do you get on a charge?

Ddiloreto2

New Member
I have been reading about all the variables that extend your range on a single charge or limit your range from weight/size of rider, big battery capacity, most assist to least assist, hills or flat trails. But from the 30,000 foot view, generally when you go out for a typical ebike ride, how many miles did you cover round trip? When I demoed an ebike the battery was 80% charged, we road 20 miles and had about 25% remaining. I figured I could easily be able to consistently ride 35 miles from a charge...so I bought an electric bike...taking delivery this week. How about you, what your average mileage on a single charge?
 
Have two Pace 500's, we did 21 miles on Saturday, really windy but mostly flat except for overpasses which are fairly steep. Had 50-70% battery left when we arrived home.
I used PAS 1 for the 1st half and mixed PAS 2-5 on the way home (about 50% remaining). Wife had closer to 70% left but is much lighter than me :)

Thanks Mike...still new to this ebike stuff : Yes, standard battery, both of us are in good shape
48volt 11.6 ah battery capacity. That equals 556 watt hours
 
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I've got 1000wh and a Bosch Performance CX attached to a Rohloff.

Typically for home use I ride 20-25 miles per day and charge every other day (usually the battery is at around 40 percent at that point, so in theory I could charge every third day during normal use cycles). On journey I typically ride 50-60 miles per day and charge every day, again usually ending with under 40 percent on the battery display.

All of that goes out the window on gravel and crazy elevation gain. It can go even crazier on spooky, slippery, and steep roads. Both of those tours are relatively short and used 80%-plus of my batteries.
 
I have never completely run my battery down, but based on past rides and remaining range/capacity shown on the display, my maximum distance (in ideal conditions … flat, no wind, Eco mode only) seems to be about 70 to 75 miles. This is on my Gazelle Arroryo with the Bosch Performance motor and 500 battery pack. The farthest I have actually ridden on a single charge is just under 60 miles. The Intuvia display had just dropped from 3 bars to 2 bars on the battery meter and indicated a range of 21 miles for Eco mode.
 
I have been reading about all the variables that extend your range on a single charge or limit your range from weight/size of rider, big battery capacity, most assist to least assist, hills or flat trails. But from the 30,000 foot view, generally when you go out for a typical ebike ride, how many miles did you cover round trip? When I demoed an ebike the battery was 80% charged, we road 20 miles and had about 25% remaining. I figured I could easily be able to consistently ride 35 miles from a charge...so I bought an electric bike...taking delivery this week. How about you, what your average mileage on a single charge?
Good question. It helps though if people state what type of drive they have (mid or hub) and voltage and ah capacity of their battery. For example, unless they bought the larger battery, the couple with the Aventon Pace 500's have a 48volt 11.6 ah battery capacity. That equals 556 watt hours. If people don't tell you that, any comparison will be apples and oranges, and meaningless.

Also you don't know how strong or in shape anyone else is versus your strength and endurance. Makes a huge difference, is terms of how much assist you are asking the motor to do, versus what you apply. Wind will generally have a greater effect than weight difference within plus or minus 40 lbs. Steepness, length of hills , and how many on a ride, will also have a big effect.

Lastly whether someone has torque sensing and more or fewer gears will effect range too. And if they have gears are they using them efficiently at the right times. Yes, there are many variables, and they all affect range.
 
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I have been reading about all the variables that extend your range on a single charge or limit your range from weight/size of rider, big battery capacity, most assist to least assist, hills or flat trails. But from the 30,000 foot view, generally when you go out for a typical ebike ride, how many miles did you cover round trip? When I demoed an ebike the battery was 80% charged, we road 20 miles and had about 25% remaining. I figured I could easily be able to consistently ride 35 miles from a charge...so I bought an electric bike...taking delivery this week. How about you, what your average mileage on a single charge?

Congrats on your new wheels. Looking forward to a photo!
Range.... hmmm, short answer; my battery lasts longer than my legs!
Vado 6.0, 604 wh, 90 nm torque. I’m around 135 lbs, so on Eco with flat trail, no wind, 85-100 mile estimated.
However, I hardly ever ride in Eco, because going faster & easier is so darn fun.
Mostly ride in the mid assist, Sport, which will give me 60 miles easily.
 
Congrats on your new wheels. Looking forward to a photo!
Range.... hmmm, short answer; my battery lasts longer than my legs!
Vado 6.0, 604 wh, 90 nm torque. I’m around 135 lbs, so on Eco with flat trail, no wind, 85-100 mile estimated.
However, I hardly ever ride in Eco, because going faster & easier is so darn fun.
Mostly ride in the mid assist, Sport, which will give me 60 miles easily.

Marci: Do you use the Mission Control app's Eco mode? How does that compare to just using the default level 1 assist for efficiency and extending the battery charge?
 
Good question. It helps though if people state what type of drive they have (mid or hub) and voltage and ah capacity of their battery. For example, unless they bought the larger battery, the couple with the Aventon Pace 500's have a 48volt 11.6 ah battery capacity. That equals 556 watt hours. If people don't tell you that, any comparison will be apples and oranges, and meaningless.

Also you don't know how strong or in shape anyone else is versus your strength and endurance. Makes a huge difference, is terms of how much assist you are asking the motor to do, versus what you apply. Wind will generally have a greater effect than weight difference within plus or minus 40 lbs. Steepness, length of hills , and how many on a ride, will also have a big effect.

Lastly whether someone has torque sensing and more or fewer gears will effect range too. And if they have gears are they using them efficiently at the right times. Yes, there are many variables, and they all affect range.


Mike: Didn't understand your answer...can you usually get 35 miles on an average ride? Just wondering...
 
Both my battery and legs seem to last longer than my butt, at this point; good for about an hour in the saddle then it's time for 5-10 minutes of stretching, walking around and drinking water. I'm on a Magnum Metro (hub drive), 185 lbs, owned it for less than a month, riding often limited by wx so short miles so far. Typical ride is around 22-25 miles, paved flatish trail with a number of noticeable hills. I use 6th gear of 8, Normal (middle) mode, PAS 1 go to 2 on hills or wind. Longest ride so far was 26 miles, had 48.9v left on battery.

There are several 50-60+ miles rides here I want to try; they're close enough to my range limit that I'm a little nervous. Want to start using Eco mode more this summer to extend the range. Does anyone know how much difference this makes?
 
I've got 1000wh and a Bosch Performance CX attached to a Rohloff.

Typically for home use I ride 20-25 miles per day and charge every other day (usually the battery is at around 40 percent at that point, so in theory I could charge every third day during normal use cycles). On journey I typically ride 50-60 miles per day and charge every day, again usually ending with under 40 percent on the battery display.

All of that goes out the window on gravel and crazy elevation gain. It can go even crazier on spooky, slippery, and steep roads. Both of those tours are relatively short and used 80%-plus of my batteries.
i have the 500w battery and performance line motor. It looks like I’d get about 60 miles out of it on streets and bike trails, although longest I ride is 20 miles at a time. That uses 25-30% of the battery so it looks like 60 is about right.
 
48v 10.4ah battery on 750w rear hub bike.
I used higher Assist a lot more in the beginning (Mar-2018), when I was 60 pounds heavier (303lbs then) and had no fitness/ stamina for sustained biking early on.
5,200 miles later, I ride almost 100% of the time in Assist Level 1 (of 5 max), and I use Level 2 sometimes for short but unpleasant hills, depending on how long I've already been riding when I encounter them ;)
Though even some of those routine hills on my regular routes, I've taken to sucking it up and staying in Level 1, for a bit more exercise value.

In good weather I tend to max out around 30-mile-rides in a day, mostly at a leisurely pace; like yesterday. I started yesterday's 30-mile ride on a 100% new, full charge, and when I got home only 1 bar had disappeared (of 5 bars in the digital gauge. Not very scientific, I realize...) I will probably ride this existing charge cycle down to 2, or even 1 bar, remaining before recharging back to full.

So with the low-Assist riding habit I've grown into over the last year of biking, relying on gear-changing more (10-speed) I've logged 85 miles on a single charge (though I still had 2 bars on the battery gauge showing when I finished, but decided to recharge for the next day's commute.) I haven't tried that exercise since then -- so maybe I'll ride this cycle to 1 bar, just to see how many miles I can get at this point...

I ride paved surface trails almost exclusively, and some roads. Northern Virginia here, which is not at all mountainous... (for example, the highest point of land in D.C. is only 410 feet above sea level.)
 
My last charge lasted 5 months. So about 500 miles? I only use the electricity to cross 6 lane streets in 8 second green lights, or against >12 mph winds. I'm a charter member of :"the more you struggle the more T-cells you have" club.
 
I'd also recommend playing around with the Bosch Range Calculator -- even if you don't use a Bosch e-bike, because it can give you a pretty good feel for how various factors will affect your range.

As an added note on my own figures, I live in a very hilly area and consider any ride with less than 2000 feet of elevation gain as basically "flat". A more typical full day of riding will be 3000+ feet of elevation gain. On the rare occasions when I ride in gentler terrain I find that in low levels of pedal assist I use about 10wh per mile of travel, so it would be reasonable to imagine that I could ride 100 miles on a full charge, more or less. As long as it was in Nebraska and I had a tailwind.
 
Every week there is a post like this here it seems. There are too many variables to be able to extrapolate what amount of range you will get until you spend time on your terrain and bike set up riding at the pace you are comfortable with.

Similar to the mpg estimates that cars are rated by the use of wh/mi ratings are as useful a tool as anything to make an estimate of what an individual can expect range wise.

I would say that using 15 wh/mi as a starting point is probably about the average for a rider that pedals and wants to travel at a speed faster than riding a regular bike would allow.
 
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Speed. Temperature. Wind. And weight.

Just did 12 miles with my wife. Our bikes have identical motors. Just for fun, I put wattmeters on both bikes. I used 40% more amp-hours than she did, but I weigh 60 pound more (after a long slothful winter) so total weigh difference in what the motors had to push was also 40%.
 
Marci: Do you use the Mission Control app's Eco mode? How does that compare to just using the default level 1 assist for efficiency and extending the battery charge?

Great question. I do not have the Mission Control fix. I am a former software tester and have learned not to jump into a software fix. So, I have the the original Bloks system. I may or may not get the fix. I just simply ride the bike and keep half an eye on the battery level.
 
Both my battery and legs seem to last longer than my butt, at this point; good for about an hour in the saddle then it's time for 5-10 minutes of stretching, walking around and drinking water. I'm on a Magnum Metro (hub drive), 185 lbs, owned it for less than a month, riding often limited by wx so short miles so far. Typical ride is around 22-25 miles, paved flatish trail with a number of noticeable hills. I use 6th gear of 8, Normal (middle) mode, PAS 1 go to 2 on hills or wind. Longest ride so far was 26 miles, had 48.9v left on battery.

There are several 50-60+ miles rides here I want to try; they're close enough to my range limit that I'm a little nervous. Want to start using Eco mode more this summer to extend the range. Does anyone know how much difference this makes?

Have you thought of a different saddle? Or perhaps a paddle covering? Many available on the market. Oh, and I’m assuming you are wearing padded cycling shorts for longer rides.
 
The best I've done is probably on my Class 1 Haibike (Bosch) where I've had a pace to achieve around 55-60 miles riding mostly Eco. Average probably around 45. On my class 3 R&M (Bosch) just today I had a pace for about 45 about 40/60 Eco/Tour (I rode fast today but also aided by tailwind). Average for that bike about 40. Both examples using 500 wh and flat terrain.
 
Sadly we don’t get great advice when first buying. I’Ve always regretted the 11Ah battery on my first build. Especially on a 48v bike. But my 110lb wife gets crazy mileage.
 
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