Which brands to rent or avoid in EU with mountains?
Posted by catboy519@reddit | ebikes | View on Reddit | 18 comments
I want to rent an ebike on my vacation in aa mountainous country in EU. Because of the mountains, 3 things become especially important; 1. Torque and gearing (so middrive) 2. Power (so any system that works with fixed number of watts, not just torque multiplying alone, for example like cadence sensors) 3. Battery: preferably 800+ wh, especially if the bike has a struggling motor uphills. Regen would be nice to have, too
My problem with many rental ebikes: that they purely rely on multiplying the pedalpower. I cannot pedal many watts so these bikes will hardly give me any assist at all. I need a bike that gives me a serious number of watts regardless of my own pedaling.
Out of all big ebike brands that exist: ehich ones should I look for and which ones should I avoid?
TIL_TED@reddit
Hey, so in EU it is illegal to drive anything with a throttle if not licensed, but that also means renters usually stock proper bikes with quality drivetrain like Bosch or Yamaha. I personally preffer Bosch because their drives use a combination of torque, cadence and speed to give you a truly natural feel, it is not “torque only” or “cadence only”. Yamaha is similar in specs, but doesnt have that natural feel to it.
Regarding your concerns, don’t take this wrong or preachy but to enjoy a bicycle, be it an eBike or classic bike: it is important to use it correctly.
Take driving a car as analogy. Cars have optimal RPM in which they output largest amount of torque. They have gearbox which allows you to keep the engine in optimal range. Same thing is true for a bicycle: if it is too hard for you to pedal, drop a gear or two until you don’t feel strain on your knees. Most cyclists recommend keeping cadence around 90 RPM. If you are slowing down or breaking keep pedaling, but change gears to keep your cadence.
And now take into consideration that said middrive bikes output 75-100Nm. Combined with gears you have more torque than some economy cars, but with tenth the total weight. TLDR: You will be fine with any Yamaha or Bosch middrive bike you rent
catboy519@reddit (OP)
I know how gears work. However my experience with a rented bosch bike was: that there simply was not alot of power, which forced me to be in the lower gears, which limits my speed to about 15 or 16 kph in a slight beadwind.
A motor can have 10000NM rating but thats pointless if the controller only sends like 100 watts to the motor instead of 250.
TIL_TED@reddit
Do you remember which bike you rented and which motor it had? Bosch systems behave very differently depending on the mode and modes can be significantly adjusted through the app. For example: Turbo mode with all settings set to max always gives max output and I can’t imagine anyone would feel the power is not enough to pull them. On my personal bike that mode makes you feel you are pedalling in thin air and can keep you at assistance cutoff limit without any issues. I weigh 104kg and it is able to pull me up a 30% incline at 25kmh sustained while displaying around 150W of power used.
It is possible that renter tweaked down power on all modes available to you to reduce wear on components.
I also believe you have a misunderstanding how power delivery works, but that is not surprising because there is a lot of misinformation on this sub.
Controller is not “outputting power”. It limits the current to control the torque. Torque is what gets you going. Your cadence multiplied by torque is the output power of the motor at any given moment.
Reputable brands advertise sustained power, while peak power is much greater.
Budget brands advertise peak power for wow effect and more often than not those motors are actually weaker than reputable brands. And that is before you take battery and controller into account which have to be able to deliver 30% more than advertised peak power. Even if those are able to deliver advertised peak power, they offen cheap out on connectors and wire gauge which can’t handle the current and then you see posts with burned connectors.
Any Bosch drive unit is able to pull you up a steep incline effotlessly. If not, it is one of: user error, defective unit or in your case renter could have tweaked modes to reduce wear. I am not trying to convince you into anything, but you are missing out on a great experience due to bad first impression.
catboy519@reddit (OP)
You climb a 20% incline at 25kph with 104kg using only 150 watts? Yea something seems extremely off here.
Will reply to the other points later
TIL_TED@reddit
You are correct to call this out, as I am guilty on eyeballing the incline based on feeling and tried to sell it as a fact. I didn’t mean 1500W peak power, I just tool a really bad guess
catboy519@reddit (OP)
I think youre right about Bosch.
I dont know exactly which bosch bike I rode. For rental bikes is it possible to connect them with my phone when I download the app and tweak the settings?
But I dont misunderstood how power works. The concept of torque(amps) times rpm(voltage) is no stranger to me
TIL_TED@reddit
My bike is tied to my own account and if I share the bike via invite, guests cannot change aynthing unfortunately, but they can connect to it and see all live data. If bike is not tied to account, anyone should be able to connect and adjust settings, but I haven’t tried that myself. I guess the best bet is to directly ask the rental place can they adjust it for you.
I see that you are familliar with power delivery, sorry for guessing it and especially because I couldn’t be arsed to validate my own claim with some calculations.
I understand the frustration about not being able to hold 25kmh on flats effortlessly, that shouldn’t happen and something was definitely wrong with that bike.
catboy519@reddit (OP)
Not just rhat buie. So far ive rented 3 ebikes with the low power peoblem so its more common than rare thing
BassesNBikes@reddit
There are mid-drives with cadence sensors, but they're rare enough outside of DIY that you're unlikely to find one for rent.
catboy519@reddit (OP)
So I guess ill have to pick either 1. Cadence sensor but no mid drive 2. Mid drive but not much power
For hills and im not sure which is better
Worried_Document8668@reddit
anything with a bosch sx motor can do both cadence and torque sensor modes
catboy519@reddit (OP)
When I rented a bosch bike earlier, it seemed to only work as a torque multiplier (torque sensor)
Wonder why that was
Worried_Document8668@reddit
because the cadence mode is only found on the Sx motor and is called Sprint. CX and others don't have that one
catboy519@reddit (OP)
Oh ok thats pretty interesting.
Worried_Document8668@reddit
any bike with a bosch cx and 750 or 800wh battery will get you up just about any hill in the high assist modes, even barely pedaling.
But that's a surefire way to drain the battery extremely quick
BassesNBikes@reddit
Sounds like you want to rent a motorcycle.
catboy519@reddit (OP)
No, I want an ebike with a middrive motor that does a consistent 250 watts of power where needed, regardless of my pedalpower.
And since I don´t yet have a drivers license a motorcycle wouldn´t even be an option
Big_footed_hobbit@reddit
They deliver more at peak power, which is legal. Even the cheap banger from decathlon climbs steep mountains.
I also tried those super heavy rental pedelec. They also manage every steep German hill.
If you need quality rent a bike wirh a Bosch kit
Have fun