Bipolar SL tuning
My riding on the SL is becoming increasingly bipolar all on its own. That means splitting much of my saddle time between OFF and SPORT.
If my subconscious has a rationale for this trend, I haven't been informed. But really enjoying the result: One minute, the serenity of OFF without motor noise. The next, the thrill of substantial assist with carrot effect and the speed that brings. Totally on whim. Good workout either way.
Q. Does anyone else ride an SL like this??
Going with the flow, I'm now testing this equally bipolar Universal tuning. Hereafter, E will stand for the graph's ease setting, and M for the motor power setting. In the Specialized app, E and M can change only in increments of 5.
For comparison, the factory Universal tuning I've been using since purchase. These factory modes are evenly spaced in a proportional sense, and probably not by accident.
Spreadsheet analysis: Upper teal panel holds the relevant SL 1 motor parameters. The middle blue panel calculates what an evenly spaced SPORT would look like given the ECO and TURBO settings I chose to test.
Symbols: Pm = mechanical motor power at the crank, Pr = rider power, Prs = saturation Pr, where Pm hits the cap set by M. Pedaling above Prs will get you that much more power at the crank but no more help from the motor.
The lower coral panel shows the closest approximation I could program with the app. Looks very linear but still pretty close to proportionally even spacing.
Really liking the new 40/60 ECO. Significantly zippier than the factory 35/35 — especially above the previous Prs of 133W. Quieter, too. At current fitness, no problem sustaining the new Prs of 200W.
At 60/80, SPORT now summons up to 33% more Pm than the factory 60/60 at Pr > 133W. Powerful carrot effect trigger.
Lowered the E in TURBO from 100 to 80 to make this mode more useful in less extreme settings, but kept the M =100 to retain access to peak Pm at Prs = 167W and above.
Early days still, but this new bipolar tuning feels very promising for my new bipolar riding style. Battery range will surely go down, but with the OFF segments, probably not enough to impact local rides.