kwackers wrote:CJ wrote:but electrical assistance was never intended to keep you up with a group of stronger riders intent on riding as fast as they comfortably can
What was it intended for?
I thought it was a generic thing, meant to apply for a wide range of purposes...
Speaking as the CTC Technical Officer and representative on BSI and CEN committees at the time of transition from the original UK regulations to the current European Standard, now recognised by ISO... Electrical assistance was conceived as something to help less able people to cycle as easily as a typical able-bodied rider, to lower the bar of entry into everyday cycling, so that less fit individuals might more easily use cycling to improve their health and to broaden the appeal of cycling from areas that are flat, also to places that are not. For it is a fact that even in cycling-friendly countries like Germany, cycling is far less popular in hilly cities like Stuttgart than flat ones like Bremen. E-bikes are changing that rapidly.
We were deliberately careful not to let EAPCs be particularly attractive to young and able-bodied people. The motor cutout speed was nevertheless set at quite a high speed compared to the typical speed of an able-bodied person riding on a flat road (in countries where cycling has NOT been boiled down to a hardcore of cycling enthusiasts, but remains an everyday movement of the masses), which is actually closer to 20kmph than 25. It was envisaged (and the Standards were written on this assumption) that the motor's contribution would taper off over those last five km per hour. I remember the difficult discussions in which specifying exctly how power should taper off turned out to be too controversial, so we ended up with a fudge of good intentions in which there is nothing actually to stop a manufacturer delivering the full 250W up to 24.9999kmph! So in general, you're already getting more push at a higher speed than you were intended to get.
Nobody, as I can recall, initially envisaged how electrical assistance would overcome the sweaty clothing problem of cycle commuting by able-bodied riders, or enable them to commute further than they already did. But I agree that's a worthy additional benefit.
It was certainly not envisaged that electrical assistance would have any particular role in group riding. But if it helps some people keep up with some groups, that's no bad thing either. The way it works with groups is that whilst the e-riders may be a bit slower on the flat, they are a whole lot faster up the hills! Whether the e-bike is faster or slower overall, depends entirely on the terrain and the level of cooperation between the e-rider and the group. If the group does not moderate its speed on the flat so you can keep up, maybe it's not the group for you! If we wanted to specify an e-bike for group riding it probably would have a higher motor cut-off speed, but also a much less powerful motor, so as not to outpace normal riders too badly uphill. Such assistance would obviously have to be geared just like human pedalling, which was hardly an option when these regulations were first envisaged, but commonplace now. A hundred watts should be plenty with a wide range of gears and a bit of input from the rider too. Is that what you want? Whatever, nobody is seriously looking at changing these basic parameters.
With the benefit of hindsight, looking at how e-bikes - even with the current restrictions - are replacing regular bicycles in the streets and on the cyclepaths of Europe, we seem to have set the motor power and cut-off speed a bit too high already. But the genie is out of the bottle and will not be put back.
So it's a good thing that recent studies show e-bikes, far from reducing the amount of excercise people take, tend rather to increase the number of hours spent cycling. Probably not the effort though. For now I'll continue to get the full workout of hauling my body up the 1:5 hill on which I happen to live; and you can't tell me that does not keep me stronger than a motor would! But I'm glad that motors are there for me when I can't do that anymore. I'm hoping to hold that off until I'm 70.