Electric Bicycle Purchasing Advice

Electrically assisted bikes, trikes, etc. that are legal in the UK
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WonderingLeaf
Posts: 1
Joined: 8 Jul 2021, 2:19pm

Electric Bicycle Purchasing Advice

Post by WonderingLeaf »

Hello everyone, my first post on this forum!

I have been interested in cycling for a while but never taken it seriously.

I used to work for Deliveroo a few nights a week on my mountain bike. I am looking to get back into it with an electric bicycle to help with hills. I have had a look around at the huge variety on offer and quite like the look of this one: https://urbanebikes.com/collections/qwi ... 3307302976

It has excellent range and large battery. It is far more than I was looking to spend although will get a lot of use out of the bike and can claim the cost on my Self Assessment anyway. What do people think? I asked for opinions on a facebook group and someone said "I personally wouldn't advise on something that cheap and with a hub motor" - what do they mean by this? It is NOT cheap at all.

Instead they recommended this one: https://www.e-bikeshop.co.uk/Electric-B ... 4HY8IYW5fY

Apparently I would get more for my money. The person claims to have a 2021 cube with bosch gen 4 motor which they have not had issues with.

Please could someone explain to me how and why this is bicycle is better than the one I found? What is a hub motor and how could this person claim a bike costing more than £2,000 than their suggestion is cheap or inferior?

Thanks!
stodd
Posts: 705
Joined: 6 Jun 2018, 10:24am

Re: Electric Bicycle Purchasing Advice

Post by stodd »

You are presumably aware that the Urban is illegal to ride with plates, insurance, etc, as made clear in their advertisement? The pedalec law limits max assisted speed to 15.5mph. Many people get away with riding such bikes, but if you will be doing regular Deliveroo work it might be a risk you don't want to take.

They do have a cheaper 'standard' model that looks as if it is legal: https://urbanebikes.com/collections/qwi ... erformance

A hub motor is in either the front or rear hub and drives the wheel directly.A crank motor is at the crank and drives the bike via the transmission.

I see the Urban bikes both have direct drive rear hub motors. Direct drive motors are generally good for speed on the flat, but inefficient at anything else and not that good for hill climbing, so less range for the same battery. Geared rear hub motors are generally recommended for commuting and general use. Crank drive motors (such as the Bosch) have the advantage that the motor benefits from the gears, but have much more transmission wear and can often be much more expensive to service and fix any issues. This is especially so if it has a proprietary system (such as Bosch) where you have to buy batteries etc to

You can get excellent bikes with very standard good quality parts that are easy to maintain, and cheap to fix and replace parts if needed. For example: https://wooshbikes.co.uk/?gran-camino, but there are many others (Juicy, Oxygen, ...). Reliability is likely to be just as good on that as on either of those other bikes; and Woosh have excellent pre and post sales service.

Also ask at https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/forums ... -i-buy.40/
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