Bike wanted for short fast commute

[trex]

..
Trex, Ive seen various threads about all 250 w motors not being the same and this continuous versus peak power was what I was thinking they were on about. So does the bpm as fitted to the big bear and typhoon have the highest peak (ignoring one off specials)? Do any others have this motor fitted?...

Yes, all the BPM motors (Kudos Tornado, Kudos Arriba, Kudos Typhoon, Woosh Big Bear, BH Neo Extrem) have the same peak power (700W)
but one may not hold the same peak power as long as another. This is because the battery voltage sags a little when so much power is pulled from its cells. This typical graph shows that the voltage drops more with bigger current draw and less remaining capacity of the battery. It follows that a bigger battery holds peak power longer.

 

[enndee]

I decided to get a Kudos Typhoon in the end. Have been using my old normal bike and suspect that the ebike won't make much difference in speed BUT will hopefully get me out the way quicker at the lights - seem to get followed by a bus each time which is worrying. Will be checking using strava.
One thing though the motor has the markings bfswx08 36v350w, which seems strange as I was expecting it to say something including BPM and 250w, any one know if this is or is not a bpm and legal in the uk?

 

[Deleted member 4366]

If the spoke holes diameter is 120mm, it's a SWX. If they're 168mm diameter, it's a PM.

 

[enndee]

ok in that case it's a PM.

Any particular reason that it has such labels rather than very obvious ones? I work in computing so I know that labelling things in an obvious way doesn't happen very often but just once I was hoping...
My next question is about the battery, how do you tell it's charged, does a green light light up on the charger, as the ones on the battery already light when the button is pressed? Would have been nice to have some instructions (I know I know it's get on and pedal)

 

[trex]

the LED on the charger will go from red (charging) to green (battery full).
You cannot rely on the battery level on the LCD to tell how much you have left in the tank. Just get on and pedal! in the next few days, you'll sense the correspondance between what you see on the voltage indicator on the LCD with what's left. You should get 22-30 miles out of a full charge on that bottle battery.

 

[jackhandy]

If the motor is labelled 350w surely this takes the bike outside of uk legality?

 

[trex]

no, because the vendor says it's EN15194.

 

[enndee]

so any idea how they get a motor labelled 350w to be considered to be 250w? Is there some restriction that can be set in the motor itself?

 

[Alan Quay]

Those motor ratings are a bit arbitrary. 350w rating really means that the motor maker designed it to run continuously at that power consumption, without melting.
They also probably built in a safety factor, so it will probably run at a continuous 500w quite happily.

So it's not really a power rating, more a maximum power safe limit.

It's all about the controller, and how much current it supplies to the motor.

 

[Kudoscycles]

Enndee,did you buy your bike from Kudos Direct or a dealer? Your motor is 250 watts power, because these motors are primarily bought for the USA market they are all marked 350 watts but by judicious use of the electronics we detune this to EN15194 250 watts,we only built a small quantity of Typhoons so had to accept the motor body laser engraved with 350 watt,but a sticker should cover this to the correct 250 watts,it is possible the Chinese failed to fit the sticker on your bike.
If you make contact with your dealer or Kudos,they will supply you with another sticker.
The Arriba,Tornado and Escape models were produced in much higher volumes so it was easier on those models to get the Chinese to laser engrave the motors with the correct 250 watt markings.
Trust that answers your question.
KudosDave

 

[enndee]

Yes that makes sense. It was just all the talk about the motor needing to be labelled 250w which made it catch my attention.