My definition is putting in less leg muscle power because I have not got it to give, so pedalling slow on hills and with much less effort, from everything I have read a crank drive would be a very difficult bike for me to get up hills.
Pedalling more and harder on hills is something I generally regard a much fitter person to do and surely a much fitter person will be able to cycle a crank drive better than I can, do I have this wrong, are crank drives without a throttle easier to ride up hills when you have weak legs?
The thing is, some people don't have particularly strong muscles, so they can't 'grind' up hills by pushing hard and keeping the cadence low. However unless there is a medical reason that precludes it, often they can still spin their legs around at a decent cadence (even though they aren't straining as much) and as long as you have decent gearing on the bike, you go up the hill. Its much easier, but it just takes longer. That's pretty much what gears are for in hilly areas!
With a mid drive, if you can keep the cadence up, then the motor is also going to be assisting you at a very optimal efficiency all the time. As others have alluded to, if you've got a Bosch motor and mountain bike type gearing, you can pretty much climb a wall! Albeit you'll be going slowly. But it will be fairly 'easy'. Just slow.
But there is effectively a minimum human input threshold. If there is some physical/medical reason where the human input is going to be really low, power wise, or the cadence really slow, then that's where any pedal assist only pedelec is going to fail, and that's when you should be considering a throttle system etc.
How exactly would you describe your physical condition?
