Additional impressions after a week:
Doing a day 1 review is silly. I am guilty of both rushing to conclusions and frantically asking people for their opinions right after they got their bikes. This is my first 'real' bike, that is, the first one I care enough about to pay attention to. What I learned this past week is that it takes time to get used to a new bike. More than a week, even! Riding this bike daily in the past week, every ride was better than the prior. Whether it is learning how to better use the gears, getting using to the geometry, the motor, I feel much more positively about the bike than I did on the first day. This also says something about test rides. They can help you find obvious mismatches, but if I had test ridden this bike only for a day, I probably wouldn't have liked it as much as I do now.
For my use, class 3 isn't a requirement. Sure, it is nice to have. It is nice to speed up on a long stretch when it's available. However, as much as I've tried, I haven't found the opportunity to ride at 28mph for more than a few seconds. When commuting in the city, it's downright impossible - parked cars opening their doors, people crossing away from the crosswalk, stop signs every block, I am lucky if I hit 20mph occasionally. Under those circumstances, 28mph would endanger me and others. It is not hard to reach 28mph on flats. With PAS-5, 5th gear and a healthy (accelerated) pedaling cadence, 28mph is very attainable. Of course, you won't be able to use it like a cadence sensing hub bike, where you half-ass pedal and the hub alone propels you to the top speed, like a disguised throttle, but the cadence isn't uncomfortable if you enjoy riding bikes. At that level, power consumption is huge! I lose battery bars by the minute. Even if I had the whole city for myself, I imagine I'd run out of battery very very fast at that rate.
I need a bell/horn. As I mentioned before, the bike is very silent. All I can hear is the high pitched humming from the motor and the rolling tires. A fast and quiet bike is a dangerous combination in a dense urban environment. Bell choice is very personal, but I definitely need one for safety - being heard is important.
I'm still finding the perfect position for comfort. I raised the adjustable stem to 60 deg. This gets me to a satisfactory degree of upright. I am still not fully upright, like on my cruiser, but I don't feel the need to raise it more than that. However, this often gets me weird looks at bike shops - maybe it affects handling. I plan on potentially getting handlebars with a bit more raise/backsweep, and lower the stem a bit.
You can't turn the bike on while pedaling. This isn't a complaint - rather, an observation. I often turn the bike on after a few meters, because I forget to do so before riding. My street is flat, so when I do that, I am usually coasting. Once, however, I realized I forgot to turn on the bike when I was a few meters up a hill. I tried turning it on then, while pedaling, and although the display would work, the motor wouldn't. Probably a safety feature in the controller. I had to stop pedaling, turn it off and on again. In the future, I'll remember to turn it on before going up a hill.
I am more satisfied with the power now. After I've become significantly better at making use of gears, I've felt more satisfied with the power delivered by the motor. I have nothing to compare to. I wish I could have tried a bike with a Bafang Ultra, for example, to understand what that feels like. If downshifting and turning up assist, I can easily take off from a complete stop while going uphill. I can also climb hills better (see below). I think power is something we will always wish for more, so yeah, I'd love to have more so I had the peace of mind of not having to plan my routes to avoid the abundant 20%+ hills around me. But still, it gets the job done.
Here's how I use each PAS level:
- PAS 0: Used for exercise, for saving battery in flat areas, for learning how to use the bike better. The latter has become very important to me - in the past, I've either biked exclusively on flats (before moving here) or ridden rental ebikes, which always give you all the assist they've got. As a result, I am not very good at using the gears effectively. Learning how to do so makes such a huge difference! When riding around at PAS0, I am forced to make optimal use of gears or I will die. Of course, I can't climb anything serious on that level, but I can still overcome moderate inclines by downshifting a lot.
- PAS 1: Used for regular riding, when no huge hills are expected. Good to get a moderate workout for moderate inclines.
- PAS 2: My comfort setting. If I want to get from A to B as effectively as possible, while conserving some of the battery, this is my choice. It provides more than enough power to cruise at higher speeds on flats without me putting much effort, and enough power for me to overcome moderate inclines with little effort, making smart use of gearing.
- PAS 3 & 4: I haven't found good use for 3 & 4 yet. In my experience so far, if I'm somewhere where 2 isn't enough, I likely need everything the bike can give me, which leads us to...
- PAS 5: Use it for steeper hills. Usually for those I want to leave them behind as quick as possible, so I don't waste time trying to find the perfect balance of power and exercise. I can climb a 14.5% hill easily at gear 1. I climbed at 17.5% with lots of effort at that level. I could not climb a 20% yet, even with lowest gear + highest assist.
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