After some hardcore testing I can give more feedback and impressions.
In 5 days I made over 8,5km climbs in North dolomites Italy in some serious conditions. I'd say some of the climbs weren't really doable even by experienced bikers with powerful legs
Though I found some very hard for bosch motor as well.
- 11 gears is really must have, I found myself riding on lowest gear a lot.
Not just it makes climbs easy, you have to stay on higher cadence for motor to give away highest torque.
So this was one of the reasons I went for higher level model to get 11 gears and I don't regret it at all.
- 2 batteries are highly recommended. You can do a nice ride on a single battery especially with fresh legs. Though I was right to get a spare battery and ended up taking it with me a lot.
Bosch 2014 battery shape is very nice and it fits in a backpack with a 2L bottle of water perfectly. Weighs just 2,5kg but extendes your drive and relieves tension of getting stuck with empty battery. Also it is nice to swap battery on a 10-15% charge to keep battery healthier. Full discharge kills it faster in a long run.
From my observation single 400watt battery can do 1000-1500m climb no problem depending on legs condition and climb steepness.
I did 2,5 km elevation with 65km distance first day on 2 batteries leaving 15% charge.
- walking assist is insanely nice feature for bosch 2014. I had lots of parts where I had to push my bike up unridable areas and 24kg bike with 8kg backpack doesn't make it easy job. So that small assist button really helped.
Though it is rather weak assist and you have to put bike on highest gear for best pushing power. So overall procedure looks like this. You get stuck on lowest gear, stand and switch bike to higest gear, rise rear wheel and push assist buton for bike to switch to highest gear.
Placement of that button isn't handy as well, considering you have to push that heavy bike on rough stony areas and hold that tiny button on flimsy plastic console.
Had just two small accidents.
1) chain got stuck on that small front cog on a motor. Lower part of chain was catching up on a cog and jamming it up.
I think it was just dirt and stones, cleaning the chain helped.
2) Another glitch I found was motor stopping assistance after some idling time. When you stop pedaling for a bit and resume, the power just not there. No matter how you change assist setting there is no power untill you power down the whole system and power it up again.
Also had an error code once, that could have been caused by overheated motor I suspect. Resting a bit and powering the system down and up helped to solve that.
Some design flaws.
Rear shock is completely open to dirt and flying stones from rear wheel. I've closed it with a sick duct tape which works perfect and keeps it clean.
A small plastic chain guide on a small cog above the motor doesn't only help. If you ride into a bit of dirt it gets stuck on that plastic guide stripping the chain of all lube in minutes.
Here are some photos from my trip.