So the Giant will be used and sold through rentabike.com, they rent their bikes for a season and then have an end of sale season in October. Located in Ottawa. I have bought a Giant Toughroad SLR 2 from them and love that bike. Browneye, you personally would not purchase the NCM Moscow Plus at 1450?
The problem is that I don't know anything about them. They may well be a very good model. I have tested a plethora of hub-drive bikes, as well as all the modern mid-drives. IMO there is no comparison. But it all depends on usage and personal preference.
I put a 500w Bafang hub drive in wife's Specialized Roll - a comfy crank-forward cruiser, rigid fork, disc brakes, balloon tires. She loved it. After about 4 or 500 miles the motor quit. Did a lot of troubleshooting and threw some parts at it, and finally got the motor replaced under warranty from the China supplier, but it took 6 weeks.
In the meantime we wanted to ride, and were fed up with the hassle, so I bought her the sister bike to the Explore, of which I already had and absolutely love the bike.
So her side by side comparison is that the rider interface with the mid-drive is much much smoother. The hub drive is more of an off/on switch, which is partly due to the cheap controller. When it switches on it does it's best to power up to the speed level of the particular PAS setting you have set, whatever that speed is. She thinks more core strength makes up for some of this jerkiness, but core strength also assists with a more aggressive ride stance for pedaling at speed. So that's kind of a tradeoff too. The mid-drive provides more assist the harder and faster you pedal, it's much more variable, and much smoother the way it engages - it's nearly transparent. Both are virtually silent, and both have similar range. Some of the hub-drive systems have better controller programming for smoother operation. That would be a consideration for me. Again, I have zero experience with the NCM bikes.
The Giant has 700c wheels vs the 27.5 or 650b wheels on the Roll - and that comes into play somewhat as well. IMO bigger wheels are always an advantage, but not everyone sees it that way. In fact, there are plenty people with 20" minis and folders, fatbikes, and 26'rs like the RadCity. They all have their place. Overall the Giant is a much more refined bike in almost every way. Pic of both below.
A mid-drive augments all of your derailleur gears, making them very good for hill climbing. A hub-drive doesn't care what gear you're in - it provides the speed assist for whatever level your PAS is set for. The mid-drives are class-1 bikes, a throttle makes them class 2, but generally they get lumped together for permitted path riding.
She really likes the new bike, but still likes the old one too, wants to keep them both. And now we have a couple of extra bikes for guests.
Hope this helps...but probably muddies the waters further. LOL
And my Explore...
