Help! Which bike for 6 mile hilly commute

[Scott clarke]

I am in love, that looks right up my street!!

Thanks Scott Your a star mate.

Your welcome mate if you do decide to buy it let us know and give us all a review of the bike

 

[trex]

http://cyclotricity.com/stealth-1000w/
that's a direct drive motor, fast but not good for steep hills.

 

[Cyclezee]

At £795, the eZee Sprint Primo is as powerful as you can get with a legal geared hub motor.
http://www.cyclezee.com/ezee-sprint-primo.html

 

[Kudoscycles]

Have you visited Kevin at Leek Cycle Solutions. He is very knowledgable about e-bikes and knows your local area well. He is a Kudos and Raleigh dealer,I think the Kudos Tornado would suit,it is one of the best hill climbers around,many forum members have Tornados.
Good luck
KudosDave

 

[JuicyBike]

And you'd be welcome to a test ride at our workshop in New Mills.
Check out our electric scooter 30mph for 30 miles!
And there you can also try the latest Raleighs and Haibikes

 

[Commuter1]

Thanks all, to be honest I still can't decide between electric Bike and petrol moped, do the electric bikes do 15 mph up the steepest hills? The hills are massive round here!

 

[trex]

No. E-bikes are restricted to 250W to be road legal.
Crank drive bikes can go up 15% hills slowly, hub drive bikes can go up 10% hills, 15% hills with hard pedalling. To go up 15% hills at 15mph, you'd need the BBS02 500W or BBS02 750W.

 

[Scott clarke]

Thanks all, to be honest I still can't decide between electric Bike and petrol moped, do the electric bikes do 15 mph up the steepest hills? The hills are massive round here!

Personally i would go for a 125 motorbike if the hills are that big i don't think you will get an e-bike to do it. After all an e-bike is to assist the rider not to take over completely from the rider for long hard periods of riding. Even if you did find one in your price range it's not going to last that long with the kind of punishment it's going to take.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Crank drive bikes can go up 15% hills slowly, hub drive bikes can go up 10% hills, 15% hills with hard pedalling. To go up 15% hills at 15mph, you'd need the BBS02 500W or BBS02 750W.

Sorry Trex, that's unqualified rubbish. There's hub motors that can go up any hill without pedalling and there's loads of other crank-drives other than BBS02. What about Ego, Cyclone, GNG, Ecospeed and Stokemonkey.

 

[trex]

yes, there are other models but without quoting specific models, it's clear to me that the average CD bike is more capable to climb hills than the average hub drive bike.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

However, you don't have to choose an average one. You choose the motor that suits your requirements. Thankfully, we have a choice.

 

[trex]

that's true. What prompted me to make the remark about what bike can get up 10%-15% (Derbyshire) hills is this:

I am in love, that looks right up my street!!

.

about the Cyclotricity 1000W Stealth bike with a restricted DD motor to make it street legal. To me, that's clearly the wrong setup. He would be less sweaty with any crank drive bike.

 

[Kudoscycles]

No. E-bikes are restricted to 250W to be road legal.
Crank drive bikes can go up 15% hills slowly, hub drive bikes can go up 10% hills, 15% hills with hard pedalling. To go up 15% hills at 15mph, you'd need the BBS02 500W or BBS02 750W.

Trex....you know what you have stated is rubbish,I thought we had educated you away from such unqualified statements.
The truth is that some crank drive motors are very low on power,they have to be ridden like a normal bike to get the best out of them,if you get caught in the wrong gear they may even stop up a hill.
Crank drives have one big problem that the power of the motor and the power of the rider is all being fed through the gear system of the bike-at maximum motor power with a rider standing on the pedals the chain is under considerable strain and a smooth dérailleur gear change is all but impossible. It is necessary to back off the power,especially on steep hill downshifts,Generation 2 Bosch automatically backs off the power,when gear changing,when the chain is under strain but this can result in a lack of momentum up hills. However the better crank drive systems do create an intuitive ride,sometimes the assistance is so subtle that it's difficult to detect the help. Crank drive bikes are not the best hill climbers.
The best hill climbing EN15194 legal e-bike is the KTM Panasonic 48v hub bike,we proved that at the Redbridge test day, but it costs around £2k.
Not far behind that bike are all the BPM hub drives such as Woosh Bear,Kudos Arriba-Tornado,Oxygen e-mate etc etc
The great advantage of hub drive is that the power of the motor is fed into the wheel independent of the rider power so that the bikes gearing system is not being asked to handle the motor power. Obviously that means that the torque of the motor cannot be changed using the bikes gears,but the torque spread of the BPM motor,especially at low road speed is so wide that this makes little difference.
BPM hub drive bikes are the best hill climbers.
There are some hub motors which I would describe as medium power (the SWX type and their clones),these motors are generally inexpensive they do an ok job for many people and the bikes are overal good value,this type of e-bike is probably 70 per cent of the marketplace.
I apologise for being so definite about this but this forum has flogged this subject to death and there is so much misinformation,especially from Trex,which leads customers to buy the wrong type of bike.
Bosch,Shimano,TCM and Yamaha crank drive equipped bikes are often beautifully engineered and delightful bikes to ride but they are not the most powerful legal hill climbers.
KudosDave

 

[trex]

I have ridden your Tonado and all the woosh BPMs, the Ezee bikes, the Oxygens, a bunch of Bosch bikes and a couple of Impulse bikes.
BPM bikes are not the best hill climbers. They are good up to about 10% gradient, after that, their performance peters out. Crank drives are consistent in power delivery at high gradients, some have throttle, lots have Chinese pedelec sensors that require minimal effort from the riders.
That's my view.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

BPM bikes are not the best hill climbers. They are good up to about 10% gradient, after that, their performance peters out. Crank drives are consistent in power delivery at high gradients, some have throttle, lots have Chinese pedelec sensors that require minimal effort from the riders.
That's my view.

That's not true either. I have a BPM motor that will wheelie all the way up a 20% hill without pedalling. I believe that Kudos has one too that out-climb any legal crank-drive. I know that to be true because I've ridden it.

 

[Scott clarke]

Is this discussion relevant to the OP? He wants a hill climber that will do 15mph up hill for less than a grand or as near to a grand as his funds will allow so unless any of the bikes you all are talking about will do what he needs the discussion is irrelevant on his thread.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Of course they do and they're relevant.

 

[Scott clarke]

Of course they do and they're relevant.

So what bike are you recommending to the op that will do 15mph up hills for a grand?

 

[trex]

good question. The OP said it's very hilly, so I take it that the gradient is in the region of 10%-15% for Derbyshire. You can ride assisted at the legal 15mph on a BPM bike like the Big Bear up to about 7% - 8% gradient. It will then start to slow down. Above 12%, you can hear the BPM motor whine like when you force your car up the hill in fifth gear, I prefer the Krieger any day, less cruel to the bike.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Given his level of fitness, I would recommend the Boardman hybrid and the Oxydrive kit. Saneagle has the ex Gadget Show bike now. He's not particularly fit, but he can manage 15.5 mph up some very steep hills at the same speed as me on the 48v Xiongda. Google Earth shows the hills peaking at 15%. The motor is the Bafang CST, which is the same as the BPM except that it has a spline for free-hub gears instead of the freewheel thread.

If OP doesn't mind a bike that's on the boarder of legality, the new Cyclotricity Stealth should do it.

http://cyclotricity.com/stealth-1000w/