Author Topic: Don't buy an eBike  (Read 25210 times)

RST Scout

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2018, 12:42:04 am »
Oooh, I hope so😃
Scout & Bettina's slave!

Dave Whittle Thorn Workshop

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #31 on: September 21, 2018, 09:06:01 am »
Quote
sooner or later sjs will have a simple conversion for all of us thorn  users who wan to go electric  ;)
and at a price we can afford.

Never say never but I cant see it, to conform to the regulations it has to be pedal assist, have a max speed of 25mph and every component of said electric vehicle MUST meet EN 15194 (vs ISO 4210-2) for EPAC (25km/h e-bike), whilst most bike components probably do, its a matter of checking with the manufacturer for every component on the bike that it does, some modern components will have test reports, other stuff wont.

But why does any of that matter I hear you ask? Well from our point of view insurance, if we make something that doesn't conform we've effectively created an electric moped out of type approval, further to that by handing it to a customer we could fall foul of cause and permit regulations (causing another person to ride an unregistered, uninsured vehicle - an absolute legal offence).

I've seen bikes converted (sadly some of ours) where the customer has signed a deceleration that the bike is now only for use on PRIVATE land... i'm not sure the customer understands the implications of this certainly the ones I've talked to didn't... I very much doubt any of these disclaimers have been written with enough legal understanding that they would stand up in court.

Think that you wont get caught? Your more than likely not to, the Police don't have the time or resources to check, well except if your involved in an incident such as this:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/14/e-bike-crash-death-prompts-debate-over-safety-on-uk-roads

Even a proper Pedelec bike could be take out of type approval just by radically changing the tyre size.

25kph Pedlec's enjoy a very privileged place in law they are treated exactly like a normal bike.

Just to be clear though, i'm not saying anything as rash as all ebike retrofit kits are illegal, just you have to be very careful when fitting them.

As a side note all the kits we've tried don't react quick enough to unloading the pedals for a Rohloff hub to shift smoothly. Of the dedicated pedlec's we have tried only Bosch Yamaha and Brose do.




Mike Ayling

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #32 on: September 22, 2018, 05:06:17 am »
Another thing to consider is that a nice low step through makes life much easier as one grows older.
A bloke that I used to ride with now deceased bought a "sporty" DF ebike and found as he became more infirm that he could not get his leg over the topbar.

There are a number of people posting ebike tours on Cycleblaze and even the CrazyGuy has created an ebike ghetto on part of his site.

Mike

martinf

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #33 on: September 22, 2018, 08:45:52 am »
Another thing to consider is that a nice low step through makes life much easier as one grows older.

Yes.

Two of the family bikes have step through frames, my wife's Thorn Raven Step Through and her previous bike, now used as the "small" visitor bike at our island flat. The latter has a very low stepover height and can be used by people that couldn't manage the previous small visitor bike with its twin-lateral frame.

As its resale value is negligible I kept the twin-lateral frame bike and took it back to our home on the continent. It now gets occasional use by my wife when she doesn't want to leave the more valuable Thorn locked up in town. Twin-lateral is not really step-through but still easier than a diamond frame.

All these bikes have rather small frames, but with suitable stems I can set them up to be comfortable for me, they already have long enough seat posts.

We also have our Brompton folding bikes, so I won't be stuck if one day I can no longer get my leg over the top tube on my other bikes.

geocycle

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #34 on: September 22, 2018, 04:10:15 pm »
Rode up a big hill today with a guy on an Orbea. The motor seemed to be in the rear hub. Otherwise it looked like a standard drop bar bike. He was older and had a stroke earlier in the year so this set up allowed him to get back into cycling. He only used the boost on the steepest sections of the hills. Looked good to me.
 

tyreon

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #35 on: November 21, 2018, 03:34:03 pm »
Have been forced to stay in due to tradesmen doing there thing back here. I just wanna get out: 'wasting ' days refurbishing the house seems not so important as the days shorten. (I mean,I'm getting older)


'Killing time' I dropped in here and fell across this thread. Excellent. Can and do agree with all on here. At the mo I still cycle,but for winter and the same geography curtailing some of my enthusiasm. (I now knock up most miles credit card cycling abroad)


Am I wrong here: read most recently that Holland's bike accident deaths have gone up considerably...because of the increased use of e bikes! It appears some (non-cyclists?)are getting on them,letting loose on cycle paths,and ending up crashed into street furniture or trees or cars when cycling -at a more reasonabale speed as age and experience would dictate - would have reduced the threat.


I was quite un/ surprised  when I thought it and when you havent been a regular cyclist

tyreon

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #36 on: November 21, 2018, 03:41:04 pm »
Apologies for some of the above garbled English. Brains working faster than the fingers,and both are ageing!

bobs

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #37 on: November 21, 2018, 05:25:42 pm »
I don't know  of anyone in the Netherlands who doesn't cycle or own a bike :D. Perhaps it's the tourists causing the problem if there is any. My son lives in Rotterdam and they now have electric scooters that you can hire using an app on your smart phone just like you can in big cities here.

jags

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #38 on: November 21, 2018, 07:33:05 pm »
i seen on facebook today SPA cycles just done there first EBIKE
it was a customer bike converted they done a fantastic job on it.
if they get enough interest they said they will start making them.

love to get my Thorn Audax converted tis a great bike.

anto.

John Saxby

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #39 on: November 21, 2018, 08:19:14 pm »
Go for it Anto!  You'll get a charge out of it, I'm sure of it.

(Ah, jeez...can't believe I just said that!  Sorry-o, must be the weather, it's crazymaking:  -18 windchill as I write, forecast low tonight -20, so nobody riding just now, electric or otherwise.)

Cheers,  John

jags

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #40 on: November 21, 2018, 08:47:29 pm »
hah very good John  ;D
ah man i could not afford it ,i had a guy look at my dolan yesterday offer me 600 i was nearly letting it go but thought better of it.
the top end ebike are crazy money, reise and muller are class seem to be really well made and look good but big money .

dream on anto.

Mike Ayling

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #41 on: November 21, 2018, 09:51:06 pm »
H


Am I wrong here: read most recently that Holland's bike accident deaths have gone up considerably...because of the increased use of e bikes! It appears some (non-cyclists?)are getting on them,letting loose on cycle paths,and ending up crashed into street furniture or trees or cars when cycling -at a more reasonabale speed as age and experience would dictate - would have reduced the threat.


I was quite un/ surprised  when I thought it and when you havent been a regular cyclist

I was talking to a bloke of Dutch descent while setting up for the parish fete last Friday and he confirmed this.
His take was that some of the elderly riders were not used to the  the surge of power provided by e bikes in certain circumstances.
Not so sure about the deaths but definitely a lot of crashes.

Mike

Danneaux

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #42 on: November 21, 2018, 11:06:10 pm »
Quote
I was talking to a bloke of Dutch descent while setting up for the parish fete last Friday and he confirmed this.
His take was that some of the elderly riders were not used to the  the surge of power provided by e bikes in certain circumstances.
Not so sure about the deaths but definitely a lot of crashes.
Good points, Mike.

It seems the real picture is somewhat mixed. A good deal of "press" has been given to the issue...

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/07/electric-bike-injuries-mount-102-e-cyclists-have-died-since-2014/
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/09/more-fatal-accidents-as-e-bikes-grow-in-popularity-in-the-netherlands/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/older-men-using-e-bikes-behind-rising-death-toll-among-dutch-cyclists
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/22/older-dutch-cyclists-warned-surge-electric-bike-deaths-police-netherlands
...and one particularly tragic case here of a not-ebike:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45586492

While e-bike users have incurred injuries (particularly the subpopulation of older users due to increased exposure), the overall rate of injury across all populations may not differ much overall compared to conventional (unassisted) bikes according to a recent study ( https://www.itf-oecd.org/safety-e-bikes-netherlands ) which concludes...

Quote
...Crash risk and injury consequences were compared between users of EBs and CBs. From the results we conclude that use of electric bicycles is not associated with an increased risk of being treated at an emergency department (ED) due to a crash. Among victims treated at an ED, EB users are about equally likely to be admitted to hospital as CB users.

The present study only looked at the risks for individual users. The overall impact of EBs on road safety are complex and requires more research. There is some evidence that EBs may lead to a modal shift from driving but also new (recreational) kilometres by older cyclists .... Even though cyclists are not more at risk on EBs than on CBs, the EB enables relatively vulnerable elderly to cycle more often and longer. Due to the elevated risk of older cyclists this increases the number of serious road injuries (an exposure effect). These injuries need to be weighed against the
health benefits of more cycling within this group.

When I toured the Netherlands extensively in 2008, some motorized traffic used the bike paths  -- mostly large numbers of petrol-powered scooters in and around large cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The scooters I saw were often modified and driven flat-out without regard to the general flow of traffic and I witnessed some nasty scooter-bike injury accidents as a result.

Best,

Dan.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 11:26:26 pm by Danneaux »

Andre Jute

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #43 on: November 22, 2018, 12:56:36 am »
I'm not surprised to hear about increasing accidents with increasing e-bike usage. Even for sensible people like us (OK, y'all anyway) there's enough torque in a perfectly legal bicycle mid-motor like the Bafang 8FUN BBS01 to do a wheelie from a standing start if you're careless with the throttle or the starting gear on a Rohloff-equipped bike. Slowing down and stopping is also fraught until the cyclist learns to let go of the throttle and to stop pedalling when he brakes for a standstill. In addition some motors have overruns, i.e they keep turning for several seconds after you let go of the throttle and stop pedalling, and the cyclist has to learn to allow for this, especially in traffic or when stopping. Front wheel motors, rear wheel motors and mid motors also behave differently and have to be adapted to by the cyclist. In addition, the size of and remaining charge in the battery is a factor because because the urge in the motor, whether controlled by throttle, electronic selectable program (stronger or weaker response), or pedelec built-in response (i.e. your cadence and the gear you're in), varies with the state of the battery, so that for the same power delivery with a half-full battery as with a full battery you must, for instance, mash the throttle a little harder, and when you slow down, the battery suddenly can deliver more coulombs because less is demanded of it, requiring a different braking pattern and distance. If the last sentence sounds baffling to you, take heart, it is damned counterintuitive; see
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=12916.0
or search passim for "coulomb" without the curlicues. Note that even a throttleless, single-program, German-nanny-state-type pedelec with a relatively limp battery has its torque very substantially multiplied by gears 1 through 7 on the Rolloff.

The Bosch/Panasonic mid-motors used by many e-bike makers have torque-responsive software built in; Bafang claims the same, but what they have is a software simulation, not a direct measurement like the Bosch/Panasonic motors.  But many of the reported rash of crashes must be on bikes with Bosch motors with the torque-management software, which to me points to a complex of further reasons for the crashes, including misdirected expectations of e-bikes.

One likely reason is speed that people are not used to. I read here and there about senior tourers who maintain 25kph or even 25mph, but my average speed with the motor is about 15kph/10mph, same as it was before I fitted the motor, because we talk as we ride; each ride is a social occasion. Dutch bicycle commuter traffic moves at about 15kph, and that is what most of the e-bike converts would be used to; they would have no or little experience of 25kph which almost every pedelec is limited to. 10kph faster may not sound like much on a Thorn tourer-board but it is 67% faster than they went before under leg-power -- for a lifetime. For the elderly, and especially the non-athletic elderly who are lifelong bicycle commuters in The Netherlands, 25kph is probably an adrenaline surge too far, very likely well outside their reflexes. Medical staff are often amazed at the speed of my reflexes, but reflexes that you learn as a young sportsman, especially if learned under stress, are never forgotten: they're like the ability to ride a bicycle; on the other hand, if not learned young, forget about learning good reflexes when you're already old.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2018, 01:02:28 am by Andre Jute »

bobs

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Re: Don't buy an eBike
« Reply #44 on: November 22, 2018, 02:22:27 pm »
I have a Giant E bike fitted with a Yamaha  mid motor similar to the Bosch.  It has no throttle and any increase in speed is directly dependant to the power input to the pedals. The are no sudden surprises , the assist  drops off at 25 kph and if you want to go faster than that it solely depends on you pedalling unassisted. 
As an OAP who is still able to cycle my Thorn Nomad  unassisted  I am finding I'm enjoying going out on my Ebike as much as I can. I might not be using as much energy  on my Ebike  but if I'm going out twice as much  I'm getting twice the fun.

Today's ride , very cold and wet.  Distance  25km duration 01.18m  energy 1031 Kcal.
 Average speed 19.7 km/h  Elevation gain 407.8m

No way I would gone out today  on the Thorn given the weather.

Bob