Motor Life Expectancy?
- Thread starter sileibo
- Start date
1000's upon 1000's of miles, occassionally but rarely hall sensor's go so need replacing (that said not yet had one go in any of my hubs over the years), sealed bearing wear and need replacing when they get rough/noisy ( quite a simple task once one has opened the hub).
Hubs compared to mid drive tend to be ultra reliable, likely one reason why 95% of the worlds ebikes are hub motored. Reliability and cheaper cost per unit to run and repair.
Mid drives are the domain for serious off roading but nowadays they have crept in to all bike types, for the most part they aren't necessary for day to day road use or tame offroad byways. Like wise mid drives have 1000's of miles on them but they are a newer invention then hubs so not so many are used, we did have the darby mid drive debacle with kalkhoff bikes they were in effect not suiatble for use.
Hubs compared to mid drive tend to be ultra reliable, likely one reason why 95% of the worlds ebikes are hub motored. Reliability and cheaper cost per unit to run and repair.
Mid drives are the domain for serious off roading but nowadays they have crept in to all bike types, for the most part they aren't necessary for day to day road use or tame offroad byways. Like wise mid drives have 1000's of miles on them but they are a newer invention then hubs so not so many are used, we did have the darby mid drive debacle with kalkhoff bikes they were in effect not suiatble for use.
Geared motor hubs maybe last 8,000 to 20,000 miles and this seems to be the same lifespan of gear hubs like Shimano Nexus. The thing is with a geared motor hub is normally you just replace the 3 nylon gears.
On a Carrera like that you have;
1.Battery
2. Controller
3. Motor hub
4. Torque/cadence sensor
Probably the part that gives the least issues is the motor hub and probably the torque/cadence sensor gives the most issues. On ebikes you get occasional wiring issues and on some display issues but I think the carrera has a very simple bubble button LED display which doesn't typically give issues.
Halfords have about 40% of bike sales in the UK of which 11% are ebike sales and the majority of the ebikes they have sold over the last few years has been Suntour HESC based so I don't think reliability is too bad as there has been a few reports of problems but compared to how many have been sold those reports seem insignificant to me. When I spoke to a Halfords person who was being very frank about reliability he gave the impression that occasionally they would get one back and they were struggling to get parts so often had to remove parts from new stock in order to repair bikes and then re-fitted the part to the new bike when it came in. I got the impression they were selling a lot of these ebikes and perhaps seeing one bike back occasionally. Some people were not satisfied with the entry level ebikes Halfords do, they might complain that the ebike was not making it much easier up hills but there wasn't much the staff could do about that. While no models were mentioned the cheapest ebike they sold was a simple 20" wheeled ebike with a single gear and low power motor and small capacity battery and couldn't help feeling this is what he was referring to as a product that was unsatisfactory to many customers.
On a Carrera like that you have;
1.Battery
2. Controller
3. Motor hub
4. Torque/cadence sensor
Probably the part that gives the least issues is the motor hub and probably the torque/cadence sensor gives the most issues. On ebikes you get occasional wiring issues and on some display issues but I think the carrera has a very simple bubble button LED display which doesn't typically give issues.
Halfords have about 40% of bike sales in the UK of which 11% are ebike sales and the majority of the ebikes they have sold over the last few years has been Suntour HESC based so I don't think reliability is too bad as there has been a few reports of problems but compared to how many have been sold those reports seem insignificant to me. When I spoke to a Halfords person who was being very frank about reliability he gave the impression that occasionally they would get one back and they were struggling to get parts so often had to remove parts from new stock in order to repair bikes and then re-fitted the part to the new bike when it came in. I got the impression they were selling a lot of these ebikes and perhaps seeing one bike back occasionally. Some people were not satisfied with the entry level ebikes Halfords do, they might complain that the ebike was not making it much easier up hills but there wasn't much the staff could do about that. While no models were mentioned the cheapest ebike they sold was a simple 20" wheeled ebike with a single gear and low power motor and small capacity battery and couldn't help feeling this is what he was referring to as a product that was unsatisfactory to many customers.
Hi, thanks for the reply. Can you tell me, are there people/companies around that will repair these hubs if/when they do go wrong?
Mostly it is diy, though Woosh bikes may take on repair work.
Ebike shops in general don't have the knowledge to repair hub bikes, that's why they stick to expensive mid drives as they simply are spanner merchants who swap new motors for old.
The PC tells them the fault and then they claim warranty, it not because they are clever knowledge wise.
For the most part it's easier to just buy a new hub motor if one got 20k+ miles usage put of it or say 5 -10 years usage then a new one is approx. £150.
Over the last 8 years hubs have got smaller and lighter and can handle good power so advances are always being made. The AKM128 can supply 60nm of torque.
Ebike shops in general don't have the knowledge to repair hub bikes, that's why they stick to expensive mid drives as they simply are spanner merchants who swap new motors for old.
The PC tells them the fault and then they claim warranty, it not because they are clever knowledge wise.
For the most part it's easier to just buy a new hub motor if one got 20k+ miles usage put of it or say 5 -10 years usage then a new one is approx. £150.
Over the last 8 years hubs have got smaller and lighter and can handle good power so advances are always being made. The AKM128 can supply 60nm of torque.
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