Ribble AL e Urban - any good on hills?

[bicyclebelle]

I'm recovering from a broken pelvis so have borrowed an eBike, as I live at the top of a steep hill.
Now I'd like to buy my own ebike but am torn between the Boardman Hybrid 8.9e and the Ribble AL e Urban
The Boardman's crossbar isn't ideal given my injury, and I feel like as I get fitter I may just be duplicating my current road bikes. I rode one around the Tredz car park and didn't get any real feel of the e-assist. I'm assuming it would work properly when riding fast or up an incline, but I'm concerned that at the moment I may not be able to pedal hard enough to feel the benefit.
While the low-step Urban would be a much more comfortable ride (and I like the racks), I'm nervous of buying it and then finding it won't give me the help I still need up hills.

Anyone got any real-world experience of these bikes in hilly terrain?
Is the Boardman going to be too sporty for me?
Is the Urban just a city dweller?
Cheers

[Cugel]

Whilst I know very little about the Ribbe's hub motor, other than its published spec, I can tell you that the Fazua motor in the Boardman bike can have the behaviour of the motor altered by a software application you run yourself, to give you the assistance power profiles that will suit you.

Basically, you can set the rider power input required to give various amounts of additional power from the motor, which amounts you also set. You can do this for the three levels of assistance that the controller switch provides.

For example, you could set all the rider input levels - the power you have to put in at the pedals yourself - to be quite low, say 75 watts for all three assistance levels. For each assistance level, you can then set what the motor will give you when you pedal yourself at 75 watts or more. The lowest (green) setting might be: 75 watts from you gets 100 watts from the motore. The middle setting (blue) could be: 75 watts or more from you gets 200 watts from the motor. The third level (pink) might be: 75 watts or more from your gets 250 watts from the motor.

The ramp-up of power from the motor (0 - xxx watts for each colour/setting) is matched to the ramp-up of your own power. You can set the slope of this ramp-up so that, for example, the motor starts to give you power when you're pedalling at 50 watts and increases power as you increase pedalling power from that 50 watts to 75 watts.

The possibilities are many. As you increase your fitness, you can, for example, change the settings so that you must input 100 or 150 watts to get the maximum power for the motor setting (green, blue or pink) that you've set. Or change the maximum power available from the motor for each of the three colours/settings.

Despite all the words above, the process is very simple to tweak. You can make all the settings by dragging the points on a simple and very straightforward software graph displayed on the PC or smartphone screen.

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The Fazua motor gives 55 - 60 Nm of torque; the Mahle motor about 40Nm.

I can tell you from a lot of experience that the Fazua motor certainly makes a huge difference in how fast you can go up hills! I weigh 81kg and ride many long steep slopes here in West Wales that I can only just manage unpowered (34 X 34). At at a motor-assisted pace, I can climb lots of hill without becoming exhausted or taking forever, as yet another one hoves into view after the 2 minute descent from the last one.

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Can the Mahle hub motors be tweaked by the user with software in the Fazua way? I don't know.

Cugel

[peterb]

Yes, you can adjust the 3 Mahle X35 assistance levels using the SmartBike app. - but perhaps not as extensively as described above. I find the Ribble system gives plenty of assistance on all but the very longest, steepest hills - over 12% + and for medical reasons I have very limited leg muscle power available (that's why I'm using an ebike).

[bicyclebelle]

Wow I did NOT know this about the personalisation!
And the guy at TREDZ didn't tell me even though I explained what I needed...
Thanks very much both of you.

[Cugel]

This video (just over 7 minutes in all) from Fazua describes how the motor customiser application works so that you can either choose some standard assistance profiles for the motor's three power levels or use the "advanced" feature to create your own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTaPePV1Y1w

If you have a smartphone that you can take on a ride, this will allow you to change power assistance profiles on the fly, as you you can create, save and recall/install different powered assistance profiles stored on your device. Such a device can also use the Fazua software app to display all sorts of other data about the Fazua motor performance and battery condition, along with data of the usual cycling gizmo sort.

Personally I'm content to use a PC plugged into the motor/battery module (extracted from the bike) to set one lot of power profiles for all my rides, as I use the motor only to increase my rate of ascent up the longer & steeper hills. Also, I detest the gizmos and their constant data-nags & sneers.

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One other consideration about the Fazua system: if and when you become superfit from all that going out on pleasurable assisted rides, you can take 3.5kg of the system (the motor & battery) out of the bike and substitute an empty motor/battery container stuffed with cake and sandwiches (rider-fuel). I often go out with the motor/battery removed and this "blanking plate" in, if I know the route is not a glycogen-guzzling 1000M-ascent-per-30K of riding.

Cugel.

PS Here's the fazua webpage about the motor assistance customiser software.

https://fazua.com/en/support/help-cente ... ustomizer/

[richtea99]

We have one of each (a HYB 8.9e and an Orbea with a crossbar, not a Ribble step-through, but the same ebikemotion/Mahle system).
Both have 3 basic power levels, and you can adjust via an app, as others have said. We don't bother - 3 levels is plenty of choice.
Both work well with the power off completely - no drag, just the extra weight.

Both are excellent up gentle and moderate hills (< 12% as peterb says) - as unobtrusive as you choose them to be, but neither is designed as a completely free ride - you have to pedal.

The Boardman is better up steep hills because it's mid/crank drive, whereas the ebikemotion system tends to limit the power a little as the speed drops (below around 8mph or so) because the ebikemotion sensor is monitoring the rear wheel turning not the whizzing pedals. You'll still get some benefit, but not as much as from the Boardman, and for hills more than 12% or so you will work up a sweat.

Other considerations:
- The Boardman can also take a rack. It has eyelets for attaching one, and well-hidden eyelets for attaching mudguards too
- you can't remove the ebikemotion battery, so you have to bring the whole bike in to charge it (and charging at sub-zero temperatures, in a shed in winter for example, isn't recommended).

> I rode one around the Tredz car park and didn't get any real feel of the e-assist
You should have definitely felt a kick at the very least. I'd go back and double check it was charged, and not on 'white' (= off)! Level 1 is pleasantly gentle like a strong following wind, 2 and 3 are very noticable.

[stodd]

The Boardman is better up steep hills because it's mid/crank drive, whereas the ebikemotion system tends to limit the power a little as the speed drops (below around 8mph or so) because the ebikemotion sensor is monitoring the rear wheel turning not the whizzing pedals. You'll still get some benefit, but not as much as from the Boardman, and for hills more than 12% or so you will work up a sweat.

I think you are right about the loss of power ion hills effect for the ebikemotion, but wrong about the reason. (I haven't got or seen one, so may need to be corrected.) The most usual reason for hub drive motors to struggle on hills is that as you slow down so does the motor, and this makes the motor much less efficient. Many are around 50% efficient or less at 8mph, and that drops off rapidly when going even slower. That is (probably/possibly/?) the main reason on the ebikemotion.

See https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html? ... c&axis=mph for the motor on our tandem. That site is useful but very lacking in simulations for newer motors.

The ebikemotion has a rather unusual sensor, "the system operates based on the speed of your cassette in relation to how quickly the wheel is turning" https://granfondo-cycling.com/ebikemoti ... m1-review/ From what is says it looks as if as long as you are pedalling fast enough not to be freewheeling the motor is on, otherwise off. Most cadence sensors don't actually operate based on exact cadence, just on whether the pedals are turning (motor on) or not (motor off). It looks as if the ebikemotion just has a slightly more sophisticated version of that, but that pedalling speed still doesn't change the requested motor power.

[richtea99]

The most usual reason for hub drive motors to struggle on hills is that as you slow down so does the motor, and this makes the motor much less efficient. Many are around 50% efficient or less at 8mph, and that drops off rapidly when going even slower. That is (probably/possibly/?) the main reason on the ebikemotion.

You're probably right, stodd. I had always put it down to design - as in you really don't want maximum power when you have just set off at a low speed because it can be quite destabilising.

What does occasionally happen is that you chug up a hill, and then decide actually it's nicer to push harder - get above 8mph - and thus get more assistance. The effect is that you put in higher power yourself, but you get to the top of hill much quicker = not as knackered. That's not an option for some folk though, and probably not the OP in this particular case.

[Janwal]

Also check out the Cannondale Neo quick with Mahle motor. I have one and can’t really fault it and it’s a similar price.
What size are you? Hargreaves’s cycles in Dewsbury have this cannonadle in their shop soiled section.
https://www.hargreaves-cycles.co.uk/m39 ... -DEMO-2020
It’s all alloy rather than a carbon fork with seven speed drivetrain.