Electric Mountain Bikes: No one will buy one?!..

Kudoscycles

Official Trade Member
Apr 15, 2011
5,566
5,048
www.kudoscycles.com
Dinger, had my bike the best part of two years now and whilst it has not been 100% trouble free it's been pretty good, that said I do keep within the service schedules and try to look after it as much as I can. Im pretty anal about keeping it clean. It's been in for service a couple of times with e-bikeshop after the initial free bedding in service.

I did have issues with my motor as it was not engaging properly, don't know the ins and outs but was told it was a problem specific to the classic motor and covered under warranty. Needless to say it was replaced and martin's technicians operate a really quick turnaround so was back out in no time. It's been fine since.

Already looking at the new bikes coming out and pondering over an upgrade. Service has been excellent & I wouldn't consider buying from anywhere else.
Wander....nobody should question Martins knowledge and customer service but he seems to be completely blinkered in his attitude to these dongles...almost out of character with his business ideals.
They must be an important part of his business accepting the legal implications and I must accept that.
KudosDave
 
Last edited:

Gubbins

Esteemed Pedelecer
Phill...the reason why we dealers are anti anyone who sells bikes outside of EN15194 is that it's an obvious selling advantage. We lose a lot of sales to the dealers,who satisfy the 'want to go faster' type customer.
We sell KTM and abide by their request to sell completely legal bikes,we compromised on Kudos by fitting a King Display,which can be modified to button push to achieve more assisted speed but the default setting when it leaves our warehouse is 15.5 mph,changing the speed is a conscious decision by the owner. The problem with dongles and S-class bikes is that they cannot be tested legally at the sellers premises,if the dealer stood back and watched an S-class or dongle equipped bike ride away,he could hardly claim he didn't know anything about the illegality,especially if he fitted the dongle on his premises....but these are small businesses,in the event of a big legal claim,they would surely go bust,leaving the customer to fight the case on his own.
I saw a nice bike at Eurobike that can be programmed 250/350 or 500 watt,also 25-40 kph speed. We may choose to sell this bike as a world bike that can be programmed to suit the laws of the country which it is used. However the bikes UK default setting from our warehouse and tested from our dealers will be 250 watt-25 kph. If the customer chooses to up the power and/or the speed then he does it with the knowledge that he is making the bike into a motorcycle and should register as such....he will be asked to sign a declaration that he is aware of that situation.
Personally I think this whole speed/power thing is against the spirit of what the pedelec was intended...I am out in Greece at the moment,getting fit by exceeding the cutoff speed by pedal power only or relaxing back at 14 mph watching the world cruise by,lovely......doing 20 miles per day on my little Kudos Secret.
KudosDave
I like this post. Although I must say as one who neither knows or cares about all the numbers and what they mean, I find it hard to differentiate between your description of your high powered bikes that can be reprogrammed and a normal bike fitted with a speed up device that can be tuned on or off. Surely they are both the same
 

Kudoscycles

Official Trade Member
Apr 15, 2011
5,566
5,048
www.kudoscycles.com
I like this post. Although I must say as one who neither knows or cares about all the numbers and what they mean, I find it hard to differentiate between your description of your high powered bikes that can be reprogrammed and a normal bike fitted with a speed up device that can be tuned on or off. Surely they are both the same
Phil....I thought I had made it perfectly plain....my bikes when they leave my warehouse are legal,when a customer tests my bike at my warehouse or at any of my dealers they are legal.....if a customers decides to take a bike away and reprogram it,that is their choice,it cannot be done by accident it is a conscious decision by the purchaser.
There is a parallel here...if a dealer sells a Haibike...then the customer goes away and fits a dongle ,that is their choice,the dealer can hardly be implicated.
But a dongle fitted bike,fitted by the dealer,is illegal the minute it is tested by the customer.
An S-class bike will always be illegal,the moment it leaves the shop.
KudosDave
 

JohnCade

Esteemed Pedelecer
May 16, 2014
1,486
736
Phil....I thought I had made it perfectly plain....my bikes when they leave my warehouse are legal,when a customer tests my bike at my warehouse or at any of my dealers they are legal.....if a customers decides to take a bike away and reprogram it,that is their choice,it cannot be done by accident it is a conscious decision by the purchaser.
There is a parallel here...if a dealer sells a Haibike...then the customer goes away and fits a dongle ,that is their choice,the dealer can hardly be implicated.
But a dongle fitted bike,fitted by the dealer,is illegal the minute it is tested by the customer.

An S-class bike will always be illegal,the moment it leaves the shop.
KudosDave
I may be quite wrong here and please feel free to tell me if I am. But I thought the latest regulations made it a requirement that bikes should not be switchable by the rider to be able to go faster than the legal speed; and that the fitting of so called off road switches able to be accessed by the rider was illegal.

Arguably the King Meter’s easy programmability makes it a kind of off road switch.
 

Kudoscycles

Official Trade Member
Apr 15, 2011
5,566
5,048
www.kudoscycles.com
I may be quite wrong here and please feel free to tell me if I am. But I thought the latest regulations made it a requirement that bikes should not be switchable by the rider to be able to go faster than the legal speed; and that the fitting of so called off road switches able to be accessed by the rider was illegal.

Arguably the King Meter’s easy programmability makes it a kind of off road switch.
John.....the speed change on the King Meter is not a simple change,you have to be aware of the button pushing to achieve,it cannot be altered when cycling....please understand this is not a feature of the bike,it's a feature of the display,there are literally thousands of e-bikes out there with King Displays.
I thought my attitude to this speed/power desire was a responsible one but not alienating us from those who wish to buy faster/higher powered bikes....after all,there are areas of the world that such bikes are perfectly legal to use,if on private land (note not off-road,private land) and you can legally use such a bike then you can program it to suit.
If a customer chooses such a bike,after all I am in the business of selling e-bikes,takes it away and programs it into an illegal bike and uses it on UK bridle ways,I don't approve of that but there is little I can do to stop it...it's the same as someone buying a car and reprogramming the ECU of the turbo to give more power,it may make his insurance void,but the dealer cannot be blamed,it would be different if the dealer programmed the ECU.
But any bike leaving our warehouse or being sold or demonstrated by a Kudos dealer will be sold and/or tested as a legal bike.
The so called 'off road' switches were a direct response to an e-bike supplier who fitted a switch that sent much greater current from the controller to the motor,thus exceeding the permitted 250 watt power (200 watt at that time) when the switch was pressed,it had nothing to do with speed.
KudosDave
 

Gubbins

Esteemed Pedelecer
John.....the speed change on the King Meter is not a simple change,you have to be aware of the button pushing to achieve,it cannot be altered when cycling....please understand this is not a feature of the bike,it's a feature of the display,there are literally thousands of e-bikes out there with King Displays.
I thought my attitude to this speed/power desire was a responsible one but not alienating us from those who wish to buy faster/higher powered bikes....after all,there are areas of the world that such bikes are perfectly legal to use,if on private land (note not off-road,private land) and you can legally use such a bike then you can program it to suit.
If a customer chooses such a bike,after all I am in the business of selling e-bikes,takes it away and programs it into an illegal bike and uses it on UK bridle ways,I don't approve of that but there is little I can do to stop it...it's the same as someone buying a car and reprogramming the ECU of the turbo to give more power,it may make his insurance void,but the dealer cannot be blamed,it would be different if the dealer programmed the ECU.
But any bike leaving our warehouse or being sold or demonstrated by a Kudos dealer will be sold and/or tested as a legal bike.
The so called 'off road' switches were a direct response to an e-bike supplier who fitted a switch that sent much greater current from the controller to the motor,thus exceeding the permitted 250 watt power (200 watt at that time) when the switch was pressed,it had nothing to do with speed.
KudosDave
In the early days of reprogramming cars I think it was a little box to be plugged in when desired with little real increase in power but now (and I speak from experience ) the engineer comes with a laptop and does his thing. In my case I was after a better fuel consumption and my diesel Peugeot went to over 75mpg and the side effect was a staggering increase in torque.
Will ebike tuning go the same way? With some clever dik with a laptop or an iPhone making dongles a thing of the past! [emoji12] [emoji12] [emoji12]
 

JohnCade

Esteemed Pedelecer
May 16, 2014
1,486
736
John.....the speed change on the King Meter is not a simple change,you have to be aware of the button pushing to achieve,it cannot be altered when cycling....please understand this is not a feature of the bike,it's a feature of the display,there are literally thousands of e-bikes out there with King Displays.
I thought my attitude to this speed/power desire was a responsible one but not alienating us from those who wish to buy faster/higher powered bikes....after all,there are areas of the world that such bikes are perfectly legal to use,if on private land (note not off-road,private land) and you can legally use such a bike then you can program it to suit.
If a customer chooses such a bike,after all I am in the business of selling e-bikes,takes it away and programs it into an illegal bike and uses it on UK bridle ways,I don't approve of that but there is little I can do to stop it...it's the same as someone buying a car and reprogramming the ECU of the turbo to give more power,it may make his insurance void,but the dealer cannot be blamed,it would be different if the dealer programmed the ECU.
But any bike leaving our warehouse or being sold or demonstrated by a Kudos dealer will be sold and/or tested as a legal bike.
The so called 'off road' switches were a direct response to an e-bike supplier who fitted a switch that sent much greater current from the controller to the motor,thus exceeding the permitted 250 watt power (200 watt at that time) when the switch was pressed,it had nothing to do with speed.
KudosDave
Yes, I know the King Meters are very common, and I had a bike with one once. But I still wonder if they could fall foul of the new regs which I thought effectively banned rider operated switches to change cut out speed.

I would think it will become harder in time to change the cut out speed, and Bosch and the others will find a way to prevent it as they did with the simple moving the sensor and magnet trick.
 

JohnCade

Esteemed Pedelecer
May 16, 2014
1,486
736
In the early days of reprogramming cars I think it was a little box to be plugged in when desired with little real increase in power but now (and I speak from experience ) the engineer comes with a laptop and does his thing. In my case I was after a better fuel consumption and my diesel Peugeot went to over 75mpg and the side effect was a staggering increase in torque.
Will ebike tuning go the same way? With some clever dik with a laptop or an iPhone making dongles a thing of the past! [emoji12] [emoji12] [emoji12]
I was thinking of that sort of reprogramming when I posted the above. But I don’t think e bikes will be likely to have the kind of accessible and reprogrammable ECU that cars do. Dealers can remap motors now, and Kalkhoff dealers certainly can change the cut out speed with a simple hand held device they all have. But e bikes would have to become much more popular for any third party to make much money from a service like that.
 
D

Deleted member 4366

Guest
I'm not sure why you made the comment about lighting... however I've not paid the £113.00 to download the full regulations because I've never needed them. But even in the summary it states: "No requirements on lighting equipment, reflectors and warning devices are specified in this European Standard, due to the existence of several different national regulations applicable in the European Countries."

So I'm not sure why you got the bit about lights making the bike non compliant. If you can point me in the direction of where you've got that, I would genuinely be interested to read it.

Regarding the voltage on the Panasonic hub.... everything I've got from Panasonic and KTM suggests its 46.8v. If you can tell me where you've got 54v from I can look into it. I'd suggest maybe PMing me on this, because we'll be boring people on here.
You missed the point. You don't sell bikes with a dongle, but you're worried about people fitting one afterwars because it makes the bike illegal and can bring liabilities. Equally, you sell bikes without lights, but people can fit them and make the bike illegal, which can also bring liabilities. You don't seem to be worrying about that, though. That's the point.

I'm surprised that you don't you know what's inside your own batteries. Shame on you! I bet Kudos and Woosh can tell you exactly what's in theirs.

13 cell strings at 3.6v = 46.8v, but the cells are hardly ever at 3.6v. Fully charged, you have 13 x 4.2v = 54.6v. Why don't you open one of those batteries that you recalled and have look inside. You can even get your voltmeter out. You might learn something.
 

Gubbins

Esteemed Pedelecer
I was thinking of that sort of reprogramming when I posted the above. But I don’t think e bikes will be likely to have the kind of accessible and reprogrammable ECU that cars do. Dealers can remap motors now, and Kalkhoff dealers certainly can change the cut out speed with a simple hand held device they all have. But e bikes would have to become much more popular for any third party to make much money from a service like that.
Don't underestimate the younger generation... There are quite a few who do things because they can, not to make money. I used to work as a photographer and found a firmware hack for my camera called magic lantern which when installed opened up a host of features that just weren't there before.. And this was all free.. Just a download and install through a memory card. Of course there was a risk of bricking and this would invalidate the warranty, although some say that canon would not be able to tell it had been done if you sent it back for a claim... Sound familiar?
 

soundwave

Esteemed Pedelecer
May 23, 2015
16,998
6,536
dongle the washing machine then call out warranty support to fix it.

was only washing a tea towl and look at it:rolleyes:
 

Izzyekerslike

Esteemed Pedelecer
Apr 3, 2015
455
415
Leeds, West Yorkshire
dongle the washing machine then call out warranty support to fix it.

was only washing a tea towl and look at it:rolleyes:
This video may be little off topic but this thread needs a " time out" as it is getting a little uncomfortable and argumentative. However this definitely beats Sound waves last video of ride in the dark.
 
You missed the point. You don't sell bikes with a dongle, but you're worried about people fitting one afterwars because it makes the bike illegal and can bring liabilities. Equally, you sell bikes without lights, but people can fit them and make the bike illegal, which can also bring liabilities. You don't seem to be worrying about that, though. That's the point.

I'm surprised that you don't you know what's inside your own batteries. Shame on you! I bet Kudos and Woosh can tell you exactly what's in theirs.

13 cell strings at 3.6v = 46.8v, but the cells are hardly ever at 3.6v. Fully charged, you have 13 x 4.2v = 54.6v. Why don't you open one of those batteries that you recalled and have look inside. You can even get your voltmeter out. You might learn something.
ok, last post from me before I shut my computer off for the weekend.

As a business, no I'm not worried about people fitting dongles to their bikes after the point of sale, us and our dealers have no liability at that point.

Personally I'm worried about it because I don't think the vast majority of people really understand what they are doing. They think its like tuning a car, as proven by lots of posts on this forum. Its not.

You've mentioned lights again... where are you getting this idea that adding lights to a bicycle makes it illegal to be used as a bicycle? I thought I'd asked a direct enough question last time, but you clearly missed it.

Some people at some companies might know whats in their batteries and I'm sure many many people at KTM and Panasonic do. I'm not an electric engineer and I have no need to take a battery apart, in 4 years of working with KTM its never come up. Plus I'm afraid to tell you that whilst there might have been a recall on some batteries, the serial numbers were a very small number of the batteries sold and therefore not a single customer in the UK was effected that I know of, so we never had to take any back.

I'll ask the powers that be about the internal cells of the battery, but I'm pretty certain that a company like Panasonic will have a good idea of what they are doing.