Cycling UK Forum

A friend is intending to ride at Easter from Edinburgh to Inverness over 4/5 days say around 50 miles a day
Rider age 80 plus and six foot and 15 stone
The route is likely to be the Sustrans route 7
They have Giant Hybrid Cycle it is to reco fitted with electrical assistance by

Whoosh, at 42-46 Queens Road, Southend SS1 1NL.
http://wooshbikes.co.uk/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw ... LqEALw_wcB
with the following
BBS01B CD Kit with 17.5AH 36V HL battery
Category: CD Conversion kits | Product ID: 178-bbs01-17AH | Price: £ 769.00
View full details
8-Fun BBS01B crank drive kit for bikes with standard bottom bracket.
The BBS01B CD KIT
easy installation for most bikes with standard 68mm or 73mm bottom bracket.
battery: 17.5AH HL bottle downtube battery with Panasonic cells, with charger. Range: about 55-60 miles.


This kit is sold subject to special terms and conditions
Please read full details before ordering

Only £768 including delivery to UK mainland.


http://wooshbikes.co.uk/cart/#/product/ ... hl-battery


Question

They are worried that the battery charge will not hold for an entire day?

Comments

I'm no expert (they'll be along later) but my guess is that it will struggle. It's at the limit of its range but then you will have hills, headwinds and luggage to consider and the fact that as an older rider he may wish to use the power more than others.

Some people plug it in during the lunch hour stop and if planned for, that might do the trick.

I'll wait to see if my guess is confirmed.

The Bosch Range Assistant is pretty good, even for non-Bosch.
It got my Raleigh/Bosch solo and my Woosh XF07 tandem conversion figures pretty much right.
https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant/

You need to do a bit of interpretation as it isn't a Bosch system.
* Put in the Bosch 500 battery, then multiply the range result by 6/5 (add 20%) for the bigger Woosh battery.
* In the eBike section choose Active Line Plus. That's a bit of a guess.
* He'll probably want assistance about equivalent to Tour setting on the Bosch ... maybe some Sport for the hills.
* Make sure you set miles or km as you prefer

The rest, like weight, bike type and environment will be the same Bosch or non-Bosch.
I agree with horizon: I think the result will indicate that it would be pretty close.

You will get more detailed answers if you ask on https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/

I am not an expert and don't have the same model. Your friend needs to do trial runs.

I carry full camping kit and can do 40-50 miles if not too hilly and I can keep support to lower settings. I usually locate pubs etc beforehand and get in touch and top up if necessary. Perhaps an hour at lunchtime.

My BBS01 and battery came from Woosh in 2014 and was able to do 52 miles with 14,5ah/522wh battery, this was 19 mile road/'off-road to the South Downs & and the rest a jaunt on to the downs. The battery is still going well and gets me about 32 miles still but the BBS01 I find is a bit pants long term and mine has suffered two controller failures and other niggles.

If he uses low assist as much as poss and only higher assist for inclines then 50 miles should well be within reach with I reckon 20% to spare, what he will need to do though is to make sure he can charge the battery for 8 -9 hrs a day to get a full charge.
Most chargers are 2a so 17.5ah will take 8.75 hours for a full charge.

17.5ah is 630wh if he is a regular fit rider he should manage 8 - 12 wh/m so range could well be in the 53 - 78miles range.

Recently purchased Cannondale Synapse Neo
Battery voltage measured for five rides over similar terrain on Eco setting

westofsouth wrote:Recently purchased Cannondale Synapse Neo
Battery voltage measured for five rides over similar terrain on Eco setting

For the extra gained going below 32v doesn't make much sense as the DOD of the cells will shorten the battery cells life, ie capacity loss sooner.

Agreed, but unfortunately there is no convenient voltmeter on the handlebars. It was an experiment.
Still somewhat short of the range predicted by the Bosch app for the 500wh battery.

westofsouth wrote:Agreed, but unfortunately there is no convenient voltmeter on the handlebars. It was an experiment.
Still somewhat short of the range predicted by the Bosch app for the 500wh battery.

Problem is with the Bosch app or any app when it comes to range is the criteria they use for the range finder.
They will have exhaustively tested the range by human endeavour, the rider/riders will likely have been a super fit person and testing done with minimal assist on a windless flat test best which probably means an indoor windless track.
The range used by all is a marketing ploy and one they most will likely never get close to.

hemo wrote:Problem is with the Bosch app or any app when it comes to range is the criteria they use for the range finder.
They will have exhaustively tested the range by human endeavour, the rider/riders will likely have been a super fit person and testing done with minimal assist on a windless flat test best which probably means an indoor windless track.
The range used by all is a marketing ploy and one they most will likely never get close to.

I absolutely agree that most quoted 'up to' figures on bikes are marketing ploy.

However, the point about the range assistant is that you select details such as speed, assistance level, windiness and hilliness. You can set it for optimal conditions and see what the effect of different settings is. For example, it gives the optimal I might expect (if the bike and I were both much lighter than we are) for my bike is 113 miles. If I put in more realistic settings it drops to 36 miles (summer) or 30 miles (winter); which is a pretty fair estimate of what we actually get.

It is still a bit open to interpretation; especially the range of hilliness: I think it is hilly here in Winchester, but some of our peaks or Devon friends may well not agree. Also note the average speed makes a big difference ... it really means average speed so if it is hilly that may be very different from your typical speed on the flat.

Even if the values are not as exact as you might like, it is still a really useful tool to see the effect of the different parameters and to underline why the 'up to' may not be reasonable in your situation.

By the way, the range assistant is a very different kettle of fish than the 'range' given on the realtime Intuvia display. That range is based on actual conditions, but it uses such a short history that it can easily drop to just over half after a modest climb of 100m in 2 or 3km, and then back to a big estimated range at the bottom of the hill.

I managed to get it down to 12 miles (see other thread) by tweaking the parameters. But I'm wondering if it's a non-problem for, say, commuters? OTOH, it begs the question (again, but just musing) why have a motor if the motor is always following in the footsteps of the human i.e. great on the flat and lightly loaded, struggles on the hills with a load. Somewhere I suspect there is a sweet spot for e-bikes.

horizon wrote:Somewhere I suspect there is a sweet spot for e-bikes.

I think it is a pretty big spot. Yes, there is a huge difference between the 100 miles optimistic, and the under 20 miles actual for some. I think for people who are willing to put in some effort and don't want to keep at maximum speed all the time it will come in around 30 miles, even allowing for some weight, some hills, some wind, etc. And that covers a huge number (I'd say most, but ???) of utility, leisure and commuter cyclists needs. Main areas losing out are cycle touring, long club runs, long commutes and wild off-roaders. And maybe the original need, 80 year old who wants to do 50 miles in a day (good for him).