Community > Non-Thorn Related
Don't buy an eBike
Templogin:
It is 18 miles from my house to work, and roughly the same distance to my partner's house. Shetland is a windy place, I am old, overweight, unfit and asthmatic, the eXp is heavy and I am usually carrying at least 12kg of stuff. This leads to a journey time of about 2 hours and 15 minutes, plus or minus 15 minutes depending on wind speed and direction. One night the wind was so bad that it was difficult to go fast enough to be able to maintain my balance. When I finally arrive I usually feel like a wrung out rag. The solution had to be an eBike for trips into work (only on the finest days) and the eXp would be used for local rides to the shop (6 miles away) or the local ferry terminal (4 miles away) where there is wifi available.
I was amazed with the AARC Moulton TSR8 as it would cut my 18 mile trip down to as low as 1 hour 10 minutes, and I didn't feel like I needed a few hours to recover. Gradually though I found that I was barely using the eXp and the Moulton was becoming the bike for all journeys. I recently rode the eXp to the ferry terminal and found it quite hard going without the assistance. I had the wind behind me as well. Riding it back into what was a light wind for Shetland, somewhere between 12-18mph, I found it even harder, having to stop for a couple of minutes to get my breath back.
eBikes are wonderful things, really slashing journey times, but there will be hell to pay if you don't mix this with normal unassisted cycling. Eventually you realise that although you have been giving your eBike assistance (it's a pedelec) to move along, I suspect the effort is probably around 25-30% of what you would be using on an unassisted bike.
So my advice to you is put off eBikes until you are really struggling to ride a normal bike. Fitness is hard to build, but oh so easy to lose.
jags:
That's a terrific post i never looked at it that way ,one of the main reasons i was thinking of Ebike was getting up hills easier,i haven't been on the bike for months kinda lost interest long story. ::)
a very experience cyclist told me one time if you want to go faster for longer get the lightest bike you can afford CARBON works well on that score really good set hoops and rubber and your away in a hack ;D.He was 100% correct mind you i still like to give an ebike a blast see how we get on.
anto.
Danneaux:
--- Quote ---Fitness is hard to build, but oh so easy to lose.
--- End quote ---
There is wisdom to this.
Some other thoughts on the topic:
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/the-surprising-health-benefits-of-an-electric-bike-2/
https://theecologist.org/2013/jul/31/how-electric-bike-improved-my-fitness
Recently, I've been back riding Fixed again on an old 1970 road racing frame I converted. It is a great way to build fitness quickly. Hasn't improved my form as I usually ride my Nomad and other freewheel bikes without coasting at a high, light "hummingbird" cadence, but oh! for downhill resistance training, it is hard to beat a true Fixie for quickly ramping up to full-on tour condition. Now it has done its work for me, I'll bench the Fixie while I take the heavily loaded Nomad out for some remote self-supported tours.
Best,
Dan.
Templogin:
Thanks for the comments folks. Using eBikes to get the unexercised moving is a great idea.
Andre Jute:
--- Quote from: Templogin on June 30, 2018, 03:28:56 pm ---Using eBikes to get the unexercised moving is a great idea.
--- End quote ---
After considerable experience on an electric-assisted bike, and watching the people who stop me to talk about cycling or even getting an e-bike, I don't know that I agree.
In my small town the only successful electric bike is mine. And I was already an experienced and committed cyclist (gave up the car altogether in 1992) when I electrified for health and geographic reasons (two heart surgeries, then moved up the steepest hill in town). The rest fall into two categories of failure:
The unfit, who don't hear when I tell them the pedelec they can buy ready-built only assists their pedaling. They hear "electric motor bike". Their e-bikes have the same fate as standard pedal bikes bought by such people: after a few rides they end up in the garage, unused and unloved. Some of my pedalpals never service their bikes: they just buy a hardly-used expensive bike out of such a person's garage for a maximum of fifty euro -- many will pay you to take the thing away -- and ride it into the ground.
The hopelessly untechnical, who don't hear when I tell them to buy the biggest battery they can afford (and this is an affluent area, Range Rover heartland, so they can all afford a humongous battery) and that they should treat the battery like a venerable object in their religion, recharging it after even the shortest ride. They complain that the dealer promised them x miles, when I know bloody well that the mickey mouse battery they bought because the dealer said it would be lighter is only good for one-third x, and then they rode it flat, repeatedly, and grudgingly recharged it, and in short order ruined it.
To operate an e-bike successfully (success being defined as adding to your fitness and longevity), you need to be informed about what it can do for you, and how it does it. It does the e-biker no harm to know what a coulomb is and how it affects what is possible on his e-bike and what he can and should demand of it if he is not to wreck the battery and burn out the motor. Secondly, discipline is required, as in any sport; it's a hard thing to be forced to learn late in life, and most falter at this high bar; it helps to have been an athlete of some kind earlier in life, again in order to have reasonable expectations. Third, there's a lot to learn: not only about electronics but about physiology (how will you measure the effects and results?); some people just can't help getting a migraine when one brings up gear ratios. Fourth, but not finally, it actually helps to have considerable experience of unassisted cycling, because that inculcates the right attitude; without it, in my experience, failure through overblown expectations is just about guaranteed. There are other contributory factors to failure, but these mainly intangibles are, I think, the main causes of e-bikes -- in fact, bikes in general -- ending up unused and unloved in garages, and their owners dying before their time.
I think the OP is fortunate in that he at least has from general cycling experience a yardstick against which to measure e-bike outcomes so definitively.
Interesting thread: it forces one to clarify vague suspicions.
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