Sometimes you feel like a mid, sometimes you don't....

[usclassic]

Sure a few short rides is not enough to overcome the mid drive learning curve after riding hub drives for months. But...

I will continue to ride the cargowagon Neo mid drive bike and make a grocery run this week. Still for my street riding all the shifting seems like unnecessary wear and tear on the chain and derailleur. Perhaps I will end up liking it, perhaps not for grocery runs. It is much more nimble, smaller and light feeling than the Radwagon 5 and I look forward to riding it.

 

[mrgold35]

I went from "fall off a log easy" 750w 7 speed hub drive Radrover to a 1000w 10 speed mid-drive Himiway Cobra Pro. It is similar to going from an automatic transmission to manual gear car. I really have to think about my mid-drive gear changes and downshift when slowing down so I don't put too much stress on the chain when accelerating (way more up shifting also for slower acceleration). I could get away with a rear hub staying in 4th-7th gear only and bumping the throttle as needed for a little speed in any gear.

Still on my original chain on my hub drive after +3500 miles. Already snapped a chain on my mid-drive a few months later. I purchased a spare chain and keep it in my rack bag. I don't have the option to just throttle home with the mid-drive like I can with my rear hub ebike.

One huge advantage with having 160Nm of mid-drive tq is I only need PAS 1 to reach 16-20 mph compared to needing PAS 3-4 on my 80Nm hub drive. My battery charge cycles are cut by more than half with the mid drive.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Do you ever bog down to low ground speeds — say, well under 8 mph on long, steep hills or against high, sustained headwinds? Do you ever face running out of battery?

If no to all, you have no real need to keep up motor efficiency — in which case, a hub-drive should serve you as well as a mid-drive for most purposes.

Otherwise, motor efficiency becomes something to manage. And you'll have much more success at that with a mid-drive.

Why? Because keeping up a mid-drive's efficiency is only a matter of keeping up your cadence through gear changes. With a hub-drive, you have to keep up wheel speed instead, and that may not be possible on a long, steep hill — even with low gearing.

All ebike motors are more efficient at higher motor shaft speeds. As the shaft slows and efficiency drops, less of the electrical power input goes to forward propulsion and more to motor heating.

Heat the motor enough, and it'll go into thermal shutdown — hopefully before any damage is done. Much more chance of that happening on a hub-drive, where motor shaft speed is tied to wheel speed, not cadence.

Consider my recent ride up Double Peak with neighbor DB — he on a quality 500W hub-drive, and I on a 250W mid-drive. The last 2-3 mi steepen steadily from maybe 5-6% to a final half-mile pushing 20%.

I had the gearing to keep my cadence above an efficient 70 rpm the whole way up, and my mid-drive did just fine. But he got bogged down to a crawl halfway up, and his hub motor shut down from overheating before he even got to the 20% finale. Took 20 minutes of cooling before he could ride again.

 

[fooferdoggie]

unless its really cheap components, shifting is long-lasting. I have 20,000 miles on my original derailer. I shift a lot because I used to ride recumbents, but even then, I get over 8k on shifting housing or cable.

 

[gromike]

I run a geared front hub motor in a bike and have had no problems climbing with it. Though you do need to put some effort into pedaling on steeper hills. It's a light ebike with good gearing.