My wife is getting rid of her car through a car scrappage scheme. The scheme will give her £2000 in vouchers to spend on ebikes but only a specific shops. The options are quite limited and include Halfords. Can anyone tell me if Halfords sell any decent ebikes? I have a cube tourer 400 and would like it to be of a similar ish quality if possible.
Halford's ebikes
- Thread starter Skyb87
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Halfords have lots of great ebikes and some fantastic prices but Halfords service can vary, might be worth checking our reviews for your local Halfords on google maps. I've always had good service from Halfords myself but there are some horror stories. However factor in 25p in ever £ in the UK is spent at Halfords with regard cycling and up to 40% of all bikes sold in the UK is from Halfords, they dominate lower cost mountain bike sales and children's bikes etc as well as having decent volume sales of other types.
Some of the ebikes sold by Halfords have the Suntour HESC ebike motor system which has quite a few reports of faults, typically intermittant cut outs. This seems to have been improved for later bikes but still worth bearing in mind.
The Carrera Impel is in your budget, in fact all three models are well below £2000. The most expensive has the best spec, biggest battery etc. I personally wouldn't be keen on the budget model with a single gear although I guess you can make the case of that being very low maintenance. I should admit I'm not keen on mid-drive motors for a general commuting bike so that is my bias, they wear out the drivetrain more quickly and the motors are far more complicated and often they have proprietary parts that makes long term ownership much, much more expensive.
Some of the ebikes sold by Halfords have the Suntour HESC ebike motor system which has quite a few reports of faults, typically intermittant cut outs. This seems to have been improved for later bikes but still worth bearing in mind.
The Carrera Impel is in your budget, in fact all three models are well below £2000. The most expensive has the best spec, biggest battery etc. I personally wouldn't be keen on the budget model with a single gear although I guess you can make the case of that being very low maintenance. I should admit I'm not keen on mid-drive motors for a general commuting bike so that is my bias, they wear out the drivetrain more quickly and the motors are far more complicated and often they have proprietary parts that makes long term ownership much, much more expensive.
I think your Cube is mid-drive, so you will know the characteristics of that. I find the naturalness of the ride so good I can't imagine living without torque sensor and motor making use of the gears.
For use as a long distance and leisure riding machine rather than just local transport, I would always want mid-drive. A hub motor on a hill it doesn't like will chew through your battery, harming range, and repeated use on such hills shortens battery life.
But the majority manage perfectly well with hub motors, and that brings lower cost, simplicity and in many cases the ability to sort out any problems after warranty cheaply and DIY.
Halfords offer three choices of mid-drive, Fazua which I know nothing about, Shimano which in E5000 I.e. modern but low end is what I ride, and Bosch which in it's most recent and powerful variants seems to be the one with the best reputation.
If I was spending my own money I'd probably be after a Bosch Gen 4 Performance line with big battery. Halfords are not offering that though.
As a car replacement, I would contemplate spending on top of the 2K to have quality to last, the comfort of top brand electrics and forks that don't rust the first time it rains.
For use as a long distance and leisure riding machine rather than just local transport, I would always want mid-drive. A hub motor on a hill it doesn't like will chew through your battery, harming range, and repeated use on such hills shortens battery life.
But the majority manage perfectly well with hub motors, and that brings lower cost, simplicity and in many cases the ability to sort out any problems after warranty cheaply and DIY.
Halfords offer three choices of mid-drive, Fazua which I know nothing about, Shimano which in E5000 I.e. modern but low end is what I ride, and Bosch which in it's most recent and powerful variants seems to be the one with the best reputation.
If I was spending my own money I'd probably be after a Bosch Gen 4 Performance line with big battery. Halfords are not offering that though.
As a car replacement, I would contemplate spending on top of the 2K to have quality to last, the comfort of top brand electrics and forks that don't rust the first time it rains.
An expensive spend isn't necessarily needed as at the end of the day it is more about routine bike maintenance to keep it in tip top working order.
For 9 years I had been using hub kits on a £350 shop soiled Norco for not only commuting but general errand running as well, in all the bike was sub 1k. The more the exp the less the cost per mile in overall running costs, gearing, tyres ,tubes and brakes the main other costs. Maybe every couple of years overhaul/regrease any bearings in wheels , steering or BB.
For 9 years I had been using hub kits on a £350 shop soiled Norco for not only commuting but general errand running as well, in all the bike was sub 1k. The more the exp the less the cost per mile in overall running costs, gearing, tyres ,tubes and brakes the main other costs. Maybe every couple of years overhaul/regrease any bearings in wheels , steering or BB.
Surely mid-drive chews through batteries more quickly on hills. A typical Bosch motor may have peak consumption of 700-800 watts on a hill where as a 250W hub motor peaks at far less on hills maybe 400-500W. Hub motors are less efficient because many people set them to a high assistance level even on the flats so hub motors can feel far more nippy on the flats but don't assist as well for hills. Mid-drive scales power better through the gears but you'd typically have to work a bit harder getting a hub motor ebike up a hill but you can still go much faster up hills than a standard bike. I'm speaking from a purely legal ebike perspective obviously many people illegally use high power hub motors which will burn through batteries more quickly depending on capacity but such bikes massively outclass mid-drive in every category but then they are much more powerful motors with power well beyond legal hub and mid-drive motors.
There is no real issue with hub motors getting up hills in my opinion because a) its still far, far easier than a standard bike and b) you can have a 2x or 3x chainring arrangement to have a wider spread of gears which you don't get on mid-drive. A geared small hub motor is also a far easier to cycle when the power runs out too compared to mid-drive or direct drive hubs.
If you have a direct drive hub motor with regen you can reclaim some power going back down the hill.
A mid-drive is always running near max efficiency if the gears are used correctly, so battery drain per km only goes up on hills because of the hill.
Hub motors get increasingly inefficient as wheel rpm falls, and at a crawl can be under 25%, so climbing the same hill may use 3 times as much battery. For long rides, especially touring, where range is king, that won't do.
Gears on a hub motor don't help the motor. They just let the rider help the motor! I am of an age where I don't want to do that, and I am back cycling because on my setup, unless I get to a sustained 1 in 5, as long as I have some battery left, I never have to work very hard.
For me that is the fundamental thing: ebiking is cycling with the hard work removed.
Yep, the usage of high power setting for a hub on flat terrain I totally agree, the energy is wasted so range is very much compromised. Though if one is using a speed controller the range is compromised in any power level as it will deliver max all the time till the speed limit of that setting is reached.
Currently I'm running a 36v 8ah /288wh lipo set up & a 44v 6ah/264wh lion set up so a combined 552wh's for range and thus far am sitting at 54 miles for the combined total, this currently equates 10.2 wh's per mile all in PAS 1 with a cut off speed of 13.2mph.
I have yet depleted the two batteries, the lipo is sitting at 3.65v av so not much lower to take it but a min of 3.5/3.55v. The lion is at an av of 3.81v per cell and the lion to lvc at approx.3.2 - 3.3v so can expect a good few miles yet.
Currently I'm running a 36v 8ah /288wh lipo set up & a 44v 6ah/264wh lion set up so a combined 552wh's for range and thus far am sitting at 54 miles for the combined total, this currently equates 10.2 wh's per mile all in PAS 1 with a cut off speed of 13.2mph.
I have yet depleted the two batteries, the lipo is sitting at 3.65v av so not much lower to take it but a min of 3.5/3.55v. The lion is at an av of 3.81v per cell and the lion to lvc at approx.3.2 - 3.3v so can expect a good few miles yet.
Might be worth joining the Carrera ebike group on Facebook to gather feedback on the new Impel models, as there do appear to be issues with them from what I have read
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So you believe despite the hub motor having a reputation for being less effective climbing hills compared to a mid-drive motor and using far less watts it still uses more power going up hill?
Take for example a direct drive hub motor, it has no moving parts at all, no cogs within the hub and no loss through the chain, its a pure brushless motor used for the hub of the wheel. It's ultra efficient with regard power but of course it comes at a cost of being heavy. Many mid-drive motors have a series of nylon cogs internally, even a belt for some models and then externally they have a chain so lots of inefficiencies and power loss. As the internal gearing and belt wears there is even more power loss, same with the external chain, a chain getting close to end of life will lose a lot more power and mid-drives wear chains much, much faster.
Just because a hub motor is completely separate from the drivetrain doesn't mean pedalling doesn't massively assist with hill climbing on a hub based ebike. You can select a higher gear and still go up the hill much, much faster than a regular bike. You can select a much higher gear than you could on a regular bike. No different to mid-drive. On many mid-drive bikes you can pedal in a very low gear and rely completely on the motor to get you up the hill or you can use a higher gear and work with the motor no difference. In fact there are no cadence restrictions on a hub motor ebike you can go completely nuts with a super high cadence if you so desire or you can mash/grind its up to you.
The best place to look in more detail at motor comparisons is the Grin motor simulator at ebikes.ca. It is possible to set up a direct comparison of two different setups in the same conditions, and play around to see the effect.
The maths of the comparison is quite simple: if the rider contributes the same effort, a mid-drive at 70% overall efficiency will use less energy than a hub drive at less than 50%. If a mid-drive is really using 700W or more, it will use the same amount of energy to climb the hill, but it will get up in less time: more power, same efficiency so same energy use.
When a hub motor is struggling up a hill, that is because it does not have enough torque to maintain its speed with the increased power demand on the hill. It slows down outside its efficient speed range, pulls more and more current to deliver less and less power. That's the cause of voltage sag.
If hills like that are not going to be encountered, then it is not an issue, and for most people that seems to be the case.
But for those few of us who want the motor to do the hard work so that we don't have to, even on a long steep hill, a mid-drive with a low enough gear is the answer.
I had a look at that but didn't know what values to put in to replace the 97% value to the correct figure for mid-drive on that page. It clearly wouldn't be 97% but how are you meant to work out what to put there?
None of that is relevant though to my point as I'm not arguing for hub efficiency when climbing I'm stating the hub motor doesn't have the same torque or power up hill so the rider is required to make more effort because the hub motor is less powerful for hill climbing. You made a point about hub motors burning through their battery climbing hills when they cannot provide enough power to climb that hill as well. You are stating the hub motor is burning through more power climbing hills but the reality is the rider himself is making more effort and more of the battery capacity is left at the top of a hill compared to mid-drive because mid-drive has that additional power. So in reality when you get to the top of the hill the hub motor still has more capacity in the battery as they were required to make more effort themselves. If one motor is taking 400W from the battery and the other is taking 700W then clearly the mid-drive is exhausting its battery more quickly climbing the hill its as simple as that. Yes the mid-drive climbed the hill faster but no free energy fairy swooped down from the clouds and used a magic wand to provide free energy to it. No one is going to ride their hub motor to stalling speed they will work with what they have and ride as efficiently as they can but of course will have to provide more power themselves. Your claim that somehow the mid-drive climbs faster and also saves power is wrong.
In fact many claim hub motors are generally more efficient because at the speeds most people cycle (without steep inclines) hub motors are in their sweet spot of efficiency. As you can see the figure there for mid-drive is about 76% but wasn't sure if that was fair to put in for that comparison site for motors. I think a Nexus 8 speed hub has its least efficient gear at less than 85% and that is simple compared to a mid-drive motor plus it has a single speed chain which are typically more efficient with less power loss compared to a derailleur based chains.
The 97% is the assumption for chain drive efficiency, no need to change that. The simulator applies that to its knowledge of the chosen motor's power curve.I had a look at that but didn't know what values to put in to replace the 97% value to the correct figure for mid-drive on that page. It clearly wouldn't be 97% but how are you meant to work out what to put there?
None of that is relevant though to my point as I'm not arguing for hub efficiency when climbing I'm stating the hub motor doesn't have the same torque or power up hill so the rider is required to make more effort because the hub motor is less powerful for hill climbing. You made a point about hub motors burning through their battery climbing hills when they cannot provide enough power to climb that hill as well. You are stating the hub motor is burning through more power climbing hills but the reality is the rider himself is making more effort and more of the battery capacity is left at the top of a hill compared to mid-drive because mid-drive has that additional power. So in reality when you get to the top of the hill the hub motor still has more capacity in the battery as they were required to make more effort themselves. If one motor is taking 400W from the battery and the other is taking 700W then clearly the mid-drive is exhausting its battery more quickly climbing the hill its as simple as that. Yes the mid-drive climbed the hill faster but no free energy fairy swooped down from the clouds and used a magic wand to provide free energy to it. No one is going to ride their hub motor to stalling speed they will work with what they have and ride as efficiently as they can but of course will have to provide more power themselves. Your claim that somehow the mid-drive climbs faster and also saves power is wrong.
In fact many claim hub motors are generally more efficient because at the speeds most people cycle (without steep inclines) hub motors are in their sweet spot of efficiency. As you can see the figure there for mid-drive is about 76% but wasn't sure if that was fair to put in for that comparison site for motors. I think a Nexus 8 speed hub has its least efficient gear at less than 85% and that is simple compared to a mid-drive motor plus it has a single speed chain which are typically more efficient with less power loss compared to a derailleur based chains.
We may be a bit at cross purposes here. My point is the bike has to do what the purchaser/rider requires of it, and the most important part of that is when the going gets tough. If it doesn't do what the rider needs in the hard moments, it will not get used, and it fails as a car replacement.
In gentle terrain, hub motors are fine for most users, but as the going gets tougher, their fixed gearing becomes the limiting factor.
The left hand side of the graph illustrates the problem. The hub motor blue line is stuck where it is, so if the conditions bring speed down to walking pace, say 4mph, it is down at 35% efficiency, and the mid-drive is still at 60%. The mid-drive's red curve can also be shifted to the left by fitting lower gears, keeping the motor higher up its efficiency curve.
Climbing a hill at 4mph, then, with the rider doing the same work in each case, the hub motor will use 60/35 = 1.71 times as much energy as the mid-drive. Yes, the rider can work harder to compensate, but that to me is nuts! Why have assistance that doesn't work in the hardest moments? On that we clearly disagree!
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No way with all the complexity of the internal gearing of a mid-drive motor and then the external derailleur based chain system will you get high efficiency I totally accept the high rpm of a mid-drive internal motor can give some efficiency boosts in how the power is delivered but you have to factor in the engineering complexity of mid-drive motors too but you have to factor in chain efficiency drops when you have both the motor power and the cyclist power through the same chain. Ultimately and simply how much power you use when you climb a hill is down to the wattage pulled by the motor for that task. A hub motor bike can have lower gears than mid-drive it has no restriction on the number of chainrings so you can have much lower gearing if you want to. If you are pedalling at the same time the load on the hub motor is massively reduced and its efficiency goes much higher, its efficiency tanks if you don't also pedal.
Lets face it there are benefits to making the effort too on mid-drive bikes, they have internal plastic cogs and belts and you don't want to just rely on the motor that will massively accelerate wear on those components. When you read forums for all the horror stories of mid-drive motors failing it is typically off-road getting some abuse and climbing steep sections etc. Repairs for brands like Bosch, Mahle, Brose etc can be horrifically expensive and in some cases need a full motor replacement. Yes mid-drive can climb hills better but you are maximising the wear rate plus you will be discharging the battery at very high current. Anyway I'm going off on a tangent there the point is if you pedal with the motor on a hub based ebike the efficiency is decent and you will clearly have more remaining battery power if the wattage being used is less.
The gearing losses are not very different between a geared hub motor with one epicyclic stage, which has spindle to three planetaries to clutch gear, and a mid-drive which has up to three spur gear stages (Bafang I think only one, TSDZ2 has two, Bosch / Shimano may have three), so the main difference is the chain. Direct drive hubs are another matter, but 250W hubs generally are not DD.
The hill comparison is about energy, not power. Going up a hill, the weight of rider and machine is lifted through a height, adding to its potential energy. If we ignore aero losses uphill, which is reasonable at low speed, more power just means the energy needed to get up the hill is used faster. It does not mean more energy is used, provided the motor efficiency stays the same.
So my typical touring all up mass of 125kg on a typical modest Scottish hill of 100m requires 125 x g x 100 = 125,000 joules, which is 35Wh, which takes 35 x 100 / 70 Wh = 50Wh from the battery, assuming my mid-drive is managing 70% efficiency.
Suppose the steepness of that hill has reduced me to 4mph walking pace, then the hub motor in the previous post would be at 35% efficiency, and unless I work harder, it will use twice as much - 100Wh.
Can i ask what others are in the list. Halfords dont really have a very good reputation and are known as 'Helfrauds' in many bike forums. If theres somewhere else she can go,I'd recommend she do that, but if stuck stick which bosch mid drives. Maybe as above the carrera crossfuse womans.
There is a very good video by Grin themselves that help explain why many people fall into a trap using that calculator and come to the wrong conclusions and also clearly state how motor efficiency is not that important because it doesn't vary that much between each motor system if used correctly. However if you were making a case just for motor efficiency it would be a direct drive motor hub because you don't have the losses through the cogs and internal belts etc of geared hubs and mid-drive but its not as simple as that.
25p in every £ for cycling in the UK is spent in Halfords and that could represent as much as 40% of all bikes sold. In fact there are more bikes sold in Halfords than the whole independent bike shop sector. The average price of a bike sold in the UK is about £380 including ebikes. You have to understand the market before you can put into context the number of complaints regarding Halfords. I see a huge amount of forum postings for Bosch ebikes failing and yet that is a niche of the market with very low sales compared to entry level hub based ebikes which probably sell at 100 or even 200:1 compared to a Bosch based ebike.
Looking at google map reviews my Halfords is higher rated than my main independent bike shop.
I've only ever bought 1 bike from Halfords myself probably back in 2012 and it was a complicated Nexus 8 based Carrera Subway 8 bike with Shimano roller brakes and had no issues with them setting it up and adjusting both initially and at the 6 week service. In fact I got a free upgrade to a Shimano bottom bracket initially as the supplied model failed on testing (Chin Laur or something like that).
You have to factor the complaints with the huge number of sales or you are creating a very skewed and unfair impression of the retailer.
Ultimately they use the same Asian factories as many other major brands and sell the bikes a lot cheaper.
Saying that I personally wouldn't buy a higher maintenance ebike with a Bosch based motor from Halfords. Bosch is a very proprietary motor system and more complicated to repair and maintain you'd really want to buy such a system from a bike shop that specialises more on Bosch ebikes. Not that I would ever buy a Bosch based ebike myself because I don't like proprietary restrictive ebike motor systems.
Ultra-efficient when running at its ideal speed, which it won't be almost all the time, especially on hills.
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