E-bike range

[SupermanVsSnowman]

There is plenty of talk about the range of electric cars and the problems surrounding them. I am interested in your experience with electric bikes*. What kind of mileage do you expect and what do you actually get?

I have never ridden an e-bike and I would not consider one that can't comfortably cover 100 miles between charges. I hear 30-50 miles is about what you get with heavy use. To me this seems poor, especially if you are cycle touring. E-bikes would be great for touring except for this. Is it practical to carry a spare battery? I assume they are quite heavy.

*the pedal assisted ones including s pedelecs but not electric motorbikes.

[freeflow]

You cannot discuss range of an e-bike independently of the combined weight of the rider and bike, and the level of input provided by the rider.

That said, Mrs F has ridden her e-bike for 100km on a flattish route and still had three bars left (out of 5). The range indicator on her bike frequently guesstimates 100+ miles.

What you will get, who knows?

[peterb]

The only range figure that would be useful is the assisted range. Perhaps manufacturers could devise a standard test that would measure this under controlled conditions. Anecdotal reports stating that 'I've done x00 km/x000 feet of climbing/x% battery' mean nothing as one never knows how much of that ride was actually assisted.

[PH]

Bosch have a Range assistant that you can play with, adjust the variables - Rider, Bike, Environment - and it tells you the likely range. I've found it to be fairly accurate. It's Bosch specific, but I'd be surprised if there was a huge variation between makes with similar specification.
https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant

I get about 40 miles from a Bosch Performance Line hybrid bike and a 500wh battery, I'm riding it in a way where the objective is to minimise effort and that range covers the usage. As others have said, someone else's experience would only be relevant in the unlikely scenario where all the factors were the same.

Is it practical to carry a spare battery?

Yes, or even choose one of the dual battery models, though it gets expensive. Plenty of options in battery size, Bosch already do a 625wh and I think I read there's a 750 on the way, I don't know what other brands offer. They are heavy though and there's no point carrying what you won't use.
Plenty of choice, you just need a clear idea of what you want, there's a trade off between how much assistance you want and how you want it to ride with little of no assistance.

[stodd]

The only range figure that would be useful is the assisted range

That may be true for you (and is for me), but for many Cycling UK member who just need some extra help on hills it is useful to know what people get in real conditions.

There is an excellent resource at https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant/
This is designed for Bosch motors, but is broadly applicable to all 'normal' motors. You will see many variations depending on bike and conditions. It is easy to choose friendly parameters (light bike and rider, fast tyres, good road, summer) to get more than 100 mile estimate from a 400wh battery, but make a few changes and it can quickly drop to below 30 miles even keeping to middle (tour) assist level.

You will also see that there is significant but not huge variation between different motors; the main reason a more powerful motor will have a shorter range is that you use it to give more assist. (An exception is direct drive hub motors which are notoriously inefficient.) This means that the range assistant will give very good idea of range for non-Bosch bikes as long as you allow for battery capacity and put in appropriate values for your bike, riding style etc.

Crossed with PH's post above. I meant to say, as well as being pretty reliable about our Bosch driven Raleigh Motus, the values the assistant gives for our tandem+XF07 are also about right.

[peterb]

The only range figure that would be useful is the assisted range

That may be true for you (and is for me), but for many Cycling UK member who just need some extra help on hills it is useful to know what people get in real conditions.

There is an excellent resource at https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant/
This is designed for Bosch motors, but is broadly applicable to all 'normal' motors. You will see many variations depending on bike and conditions. It is easy to choose friendly parameters (light bike and rider, fast tyres, good road, summer) to get more than 100 mile estimate from a 400wh battery, but make a few changes and it can quickly drop to below 30 miles even keeping to middle (tour) assist level.

That's very useful and surprisingly fairly accurate if I input data approximating to my Orbea Gain. As to those who attain 100s of Km range from their ebikes one can only assume that very little assistance is being used. Obviously if I turned off all assistance my battery range would be infinite. Unfortunately as I actually need to use assistance whenever the road begins to rise, my range on an averagely undulating route is around 40 miles, using the lowest level of assistance and riding above the cut-off as much as possible, and using higher assistance only when absolutely necessary. What is often not mentioned is the rapid power drop as the battery approaches exhaustion, in the case of my Gain when the battery drops to below 20% I know I have very little range left . The effective battery capacity available is really only around 80% of the 250 Wh quoted,

[Manc33]

Here's my stats and real-life experience with my Bafang rear hub:

- My bike weighs 60lb.
- I weigh 190lb.
- I only ride on the road.
- I put hardly any effort in, about 50W.
- I have 26" wheels with 1.75" tyres on at 55 PSI (Marathon Plus) also with Tannus Armour inserts.
- I ride up and down hills. Every road near me is a hill. Sometimes a short steep one is thrown in (15% for 500M).
- I use power level 2 out of 5 (average speed is about 12.5 MPH).
- My motor is a 48V Bafang rear hub, that I'll just say is 250W for the sake of argument. Pretend it's double that.
- My battery is 48V/25Ah. It's a LiitoKala from AliExpress, was about £220.
- The battery weighs 5 KG.
- The battery measures 300mm x 115mm x 80mm (now I have it encased in 2mm thick carbon sheets).

The range I get from all of that?

About 50 to 55 miles as long as I keep it on power level 2/5.

If I raise the power to 3/5 I get about 40 to 45 miles, but I tend to avoid using power level 3 because then I am using my highest 3 gears the whole time, which I don't like doing, I still want to get some exercise. I never use power levels 1 (too sluggish) or 4 and 5 (too fast).

I run a triple 48-36-24 with a 9-speed cassette (13-23t) and, while 23t doesn't sound like it's a low enough low sprocket - with this motor on it is. The beauty of it is I have a 16t and even an 18t sprocket. I am on the outer chainring pretty much all the time, which is why I run a longer chain, because I am on big-big quite often on hills. For steep hills I can whack it down to the middle chainring, but it's rare that I ever need to. If it gets steeper than that (20%+) I have the 24t inner chainring at my disposal, although putting these hub motors under that much stress (for more than a few minutes) is not advised!

I have (for me personally) the perfect gearing setup, now I have done all the typical faffing to find it out.

I have never ridden an e-bike and I would not consider one that can't comfortably cover 100 miles between charges. I hear 30-50 miles is about what you get with heavy use. To me this seems poor, especially if you are cycle touring. E-bikes would be great for touring except for this. Is it practical to carry a spare battery? I assume they are quite heavy.

If you want 100 miles before charging you need 10 KG worth of batteries on your bike. It's impractical to do that in that, you need somewhere to put them without it affecting handling in an overly negative way. Any battery should go as low down as it can on the bike.

Let's say you manage to fit a battery like I have got under your down tube (you'd need a rigid fork) then, where are you going to put the other battery? On a rear rack isn't feasible, unless it's a proper one that's bolted into the frame at the dropouts (anything extending from the seatpost won't work, it will just snap off, even the decent quality ones like Topeak have done). Even then on a rear rack, the battery is too high up and handling will be horrible. Look where Tesla puts their batteries, inches off the ground. Look where all those fancy eBikes that cost thousands put theirs - inside the down tube, as low as possible, to make it still feel like you're riding a normal bike, to some extent.

You could do what I did initially and strap a battery to your handlebars but that soon becomes a pain in terms of handling.

I ended up swapping to a hardtail with suspension seatpost, it worked a treat. My battery is inside the main triangle now, on top of the down tube. By the grace of god I have a big fat square down tube so the (5 KG) battery can't rotate around it.

Charging that battery at 2A takes 12 hours and I have been thinking about getting a 4A charger to cut that time in half but I'm still not sure whether it's sensible to be charging my battery at 4A.

[peterb]

What is 25ah/48v in Kwh?

[Jdsk]

What is 25ah/48v in Kwh?

1 A at 1 V is 1 W.

25 A at 48 V is 1200 W.

25 A h at 48 V is 1200 W h, or 1.2 kW h.

Jonathan

[hemo]

Range like a car is dependant on the wh carried, I carry 1496wh of battery on one of my bikes for 162km ride and typically have approx.30% left in each battery at the end.
My wh usage riding can vary depending on mainly weather and the wind but is in the the region of 9 -12 wh per mile.

[yakdiver]

On my trike that weighs in heavy I have a 36v 17AH battery and I get around 56 miles depending on how much I use the throttle

[peterb]

So if I'm getting 45 miles out of a 225 Wh battery, 5Wh per mile, that's not too bad?

[hemo]

So if I'm getting 45 miles out of a 225 Wh battery, 5Wh per mile, that's not too bad?

Yep, that's damn economical for an ebike.

[emleyman]

I ride a bike that I converted myself with a rear hub motor. I only use the motor for assistance on hills, and have reduced the cut off speed to 20 kph so that I can ride on the flat without the motor kicking in. I haven't fitted a throttle so can only get assistance when pedalling.
For the type of riding I do, I think that a better way of measuring range is in terms of height climbed rather than distance ridden.
Looking at the rides I've done and distance climbed, I estimate that with the assistance levels I use, which is usually only level 2 or 3 out of 5, I can get approximately 1800m of climbing out of a 36V, 13Ah battery.

[PH]

So if I'm getting 45 miles out of a 225 Wh battery, 5Wh per mile, that's not too bad?

There's no good or bad, there's happy or unhappy
I'd be unhappy with your bike, with my use I doubt I'd get 20 miles. You'd be unhappy with my bike, because you'd find the riding you do now with little or no assistance would be less pleasant.