I want to buy an electric bike to take touring in hilly terrain (e.g. the Pennine Cycleway), doing perhaps 50-60 miles per day with laden panniers. My local bike shop is suggesting the Raleigh Motus Grand Tour (I'd be inclined to go for the diamond frame and derailleur gears). Do people think this is a good choice? (Will the battery life be sufficient to cope with the hills? Is the bike robust enough to cope with the sort of off-road conditions that you find on Sustrans routes? Are the gears adequate for hilly terrain?) Any thoughts welcome.
Raleigh Motus Grand Tour - the right touring bike?
- Thread starter Caroline
- Start date
Whatever bike, 50-60 laden Pennine miles is quite optimistic. You can see what the Bosch predictor says:
https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant/
You might just make it on Eco most of the time.
We've got an older Motus, step through with hub gear and 400 battery and I think it would be fine on Sustrans type paths; the crossbar style should be more robust. We take it on offroad bridleways that are worse than any Sustrans path should be, but mostly just on road. However, working mostly on Tour on what passes for hills around Winchester we don't get much more than 30 reliable miles on a charge. The newer bikes may be a little better, and maybe our battery in not quite at 100% any more?
Look at Cube as well; a couple of neighbours have electric Cube tourers and I think they are nicer than the Motus. It won't make significant difference to the range though. Also look at Woosh; not local but good reputation, and selling quite a few bikes with bigger batteries. They'll give good advice by email or phone. http://wooshbikes.co.uk/
https://www.bosch-ebike.com/en/service/range-assistant/
You might just make it on Eco most of the time.
We've got an older Motus, step through with hub gear and 400 battery and I think it would be fine on Sustrans type paths; the crossbar style should be more robust. We take it on offroad bridleways that are worse than any Sustrans path should be, but mostly just on road. However, working mostly on Tour on what passes for hills around Winchester we don't get much more than 30 reliable miles on a charge. The newer bikes may be a little better, and maybe our battery in not quite at 100% any more?
Look at Cube as well; a couple of neighbours have electric Cube tourers and I think they are nicer than the Motus. It won't make significant difference to the range though. Also look at Woosh; not local but good reputation, and selling quite a few bikes with bigger batteries. They'll give good advice by email or phone. http://wooshbikes.co.uk/
I have a new Cube Touring One Iridium 500 and put 102km on it down cyclepaths, forest and farm paths, river banks and canal sides over Xmas (56km was flat down the Mersey and Bridgewater Canal but 46km was a venture up into the High Peak from Stockport with about 1750 feet of elevation).
Total weight of rider, bike and kit carried about 125kg.
The flat 56km used up 25% of the battery.
The hillier 46km used up about 35%.
As there is zero resist on the motor, unless you are very old or unfit you don't really need to use assist on flat tarmac and Eco is enough for things like riverbanks and forest paths if flat.
Slight uphills can be done with Eco or Tour. Gradients above 5% you will likely want a blast of Turbo although you can climb them on Tour. Not sure the steepest it can cope with on Turbo but I expect it to be around 15%. Certainly no issue with 10% gradients.
My figures (for a total weight of 125kg and a rider taking it easy and contributing perhaps 150-160 Watts on average) suggest a winter 'flat' range of 220km and a hillier range of perhaps 130km. So 50-60 proper 'hillier' miles 'might' just be doable.
What I don't know is how much your total weight is or how much hillier your 'Pennine miles' are compared to going up to the High Peak from Stockport (and back again). Or how fit you are (a fit rider could add maybe 100 Watts to my quite leisurely input).
Incidentally, I'm not sure where in the Pennines you are but I bought my bike from a very good bike shop in Halifax:
https://www.ukbikesdepot.com/
Total weight of rider, bike and kit carried about 125kg.
The flat 56km used up 25% of the battery.
The hillier 46km used up about 35%.
As there is zero resist on the motor, unless you are very old or unfit you don't really need to use assist on flat tarmac and Eco is enough for things like riverbanks and forest paths if flat.
Slight uphills can be done with Eco or Tour. Gradients above 5% you will likely want a blast of Turbo although you can climb them on Tour. Not sure the steepest it can cope with on Turbo but I expect it to be around 15%. Certainly no issue with 10% gradients.
My figures (for a total weight of 125kg and a rider taking it easy and contributing perhaps 150-160 Watts on average) suggest a winter 'flat' range of 220km and a hillier range of perhaps 130km. So 50-60 proper 'hillier' miles 'might' just be doable.
What I don't know is how much your total weight is or how much hillier your 'Pennine miles' are compared to going up to the High Peak from Stockport (and back again). Or how fit you are (a fit rider could add maybe 100 Watts to my quite leisurely input).
Incidentally, I'm not sure where in the Pennines you are but I bought my bike from a very good bike shop in Halifax:
https://www.ukbikesdepot.com/
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I think it has the ActiveLine Plus motor doesn't it? My Crossfuse is a somewhat similar bike and gives me an excellent 70+ miles range on the east side of the Pennines here. I intend to use it to do the C2C run so took it into the hills around Alston to check what its range would be like in some serious hills. One of the legs I am planning on doing has 3 long uphill hauls and I worked out the only way I would complete this section of about 30 miles would be to stop for lunch for maybe 90 minutes and get some more juice into the battery. The good news is that the motor is capable of doing Hartside Pass easily. I think it took 25 minutes and 35% of the battery. But there are steeper climbs - in particular Garrigill which for me took an enormous amount of effort to keep going even in turbo mode. The Bosch claims for their motors are conservative (ie you can do better than they say), but I think they are right when they say they don't intend the Active Line Plus for (say) touring in the Pennines.
Mike
Mike
Thank you all for your thoughtful and helpful comments. I think I need to forget the Raleigh Motus as it only has a 400 Wh and look at something that has at least a 500 Wh one (which I can see that some Cube bikes do). As a bit of background, I weigh just under 8 stone (so am fairly light) and I'm an experienced cyclist and pretty fit but beginning to feel my age (67). About 18 months ago I did about two-thirds of the Pennine Cycleway (Derby to Appleby) on a non-electric touring bike with panniers but found that doing the roughly 50 mpd that I had planned was very hard going - so I'm looking for an electric bike that would let me do that sort of thing more easily. But I'm beginning to wonder if I'm being a bit ambitious in looking for a bike that could do climbs like Hartside or Garrigill (those are just the sort of places I have my eye on, Mike) and still have enough juice for the rest of the day's trip (although I too had thought of stopping for lunch somewhere where I could recharge the battery!).
You could get a Motus with the 500wh battery, same as the Cube.
Your relatively light weight will work greatly in your favour in terms of range.
A Bosch bike would do it on Eco setting, but you may find you need to use a higher Tour setting which could be tight for 50 miles, depending on the amount of climbing.
Your relatively light weight will work greatly in your favour in terms of range.
A Bosch bike would do it on Eco setting, but you may find you need to use a higher Tour setting which could be tight for 50 miles, depending on the amount of climbing.
Of course the easy (if expensive) solution is just buying a second battery and putting it on the pannier rack.
You can get a Bosch powerpacks new for £350/£500/£650 (300/400/500) I think. Second-hand or reconditioned ones are obviously cheaper.
So if, for example, you buy the Cube Touring Hybrid 400 Iridium for £1430 and then buy a second powerpack, your range issues are instantly solved for less than £2k in total. Same for Motus of course, although I'm not sure of the price points for those.
You can get a Bosch powerpacks new for £350/£500/£650 (300/400/500) I think. Second-hand or reconditioned ones are obviously cheaper.
So if, for example, you buy the Cube Touring Hybrid 400 Iridium for £1430 and then buy a second powerpack, your range issues are instantly solved for less than £2k in total. Same for Motus of course, although I'm not sure of the price points for those.
Just wanted to thank you all for your contributions! The idea of carrying a spare battery is of course obvious but hadn't occurred to me, so that is an idea I shall play with. I have now ordered a Curbe Touring Hybrid Pro 500 and should be getting it in the next day or two.
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