Kudos had a road show last year on the Manifold Trail,in the Derbyshire Peak District,the climbs away from the trail,either side were really steep.
From memory I think we had the Kudos Arriba (BPM rear hub drive)and the KTM Macina Bold (Bosch crank drive)with Nexus hub.
Artstu may remember the event well,it was the ride on the KTM that was the catalyst to go buy the KTM bike.
I must say that I thought at that time that the KTM would be the preferred bike for hill climbing. I was shocked when one of the Pedelec members came back from testing and said that there was something wrong with the KTM and ,if there wasn't ,he would never buy that bike,he said it was like hitting a wall when you tried to change gear and the bike stopped on him- maybe Artstu will respond because he bought that bike.
Since then I have ridden many Bosch crank drive bikes including Cannondale,Scott and KTM,they all exhibit the same riding characteristics,you have to ride them like a normal bike,by that I mean you have to be in the right gear,which means you need to change gear quite often.
Since then we had developed the Kudos Ibex bike which had a strong crank drive motor plus derailleur gears plus many bikes using the BPM hub motor and derailleur gears.
The Ibex suffered from noisy gear changes,especially downshifts uphill with full PAS power,obviously the time when you would be using max PAS.
The Bosch system is clever in detecting high loads in the crank and reducing the power to give the gears a chance to change under lighter load,until they introduced that system it would destroy the Shimaano Nexus hubs and Shimano would not warranty the hubs unless the power under change was reduced.
I found that with Bosch plus derailleur you had to be slick with your gear changes otherwise the loss of power meant the bike almost came to a stop,I found that I changed gear,lost momentum and then found myself again in too high a gear,so changed gear again,it was a negative loop for uphill progress,but with practice it all got quicker. I now understood what the Pedalec member meant back at Derbyshire.
We sold a few Ibex bikes,to experienced cyclists who understood how to accomplish slick gear changes with an appreciation of reducing the chain load before attempting the gear changes. But a newbie to cycling or a lazy rider could destroy the derailleur very quickly-we are sellers of production bikes that have to be user friendly,such a technique was not acceptable.
The addition of the Nuvinci hub to the crank drive overcome the graunchy gear problem completely,gear changes are silk smooth-the bike is effortless to ride and very user friendly but expensive to manufacture,Pedelec newbies love the ease of the Nuvinci hub.
Not long after the Manifold event the Kudos Tornado arrived,shame we did not have it available at the event I am sure it would have been voted the best hill climber. The Tornado and Arriba both have the BPM motor but the torque sensor in the Arriba disguises the low speed grunt of the BPM motor,it's this low speed torque which makes it such an impressive hillclimber.
However,the Arriba is a very intuitive ride,the torque sensor delivering power to match the rider's efforts. In some respects the Arriba has riding characteristics similar to crank drive but without the chain load ,gear change problems and loss of momentum associated with cheap crank drive applications.
I made the decision at that time to build all future Kudos bikes,both MTB and commuter models with this motor,it does everything so well without the complications of crank drive. We went on to build 29" wheeled versions of the Arriba,known as Escape and the Tornado,known as Typhoon-many Pedelecs members have these bikes but are not so regularly contributors to the forum,there are others in the pipeline.
We are now on our third batch of Arriba and Tornado bikes,we have found no reason to change any element of the design.
The technology e-bike race pendulum keeps swinging from Crank to Hub drive and back.Bosch spent a fortune developing their crank unit and a big marketing budget to support it,it should be no surprise that it became the dominant motor supplier but IMHO this BPM motor has swung the race back to hub drive. Having said that these bikes are so much more than just the motor,the KTM range for example are beautifully engineered bikes,whether Bosch crank or Panasonic hub motored.
What the BPM motor allows is small manufacturers like Kudos to produce nice good hill climbing bikes without the marketing or R&D budget of the big manufacturers. With crank drive small manufacturers just don't have the money to fully develop the systems,it sort of reminds me of the difference between cars produced by the kit car industry and those produced by volume car manufacturers.
The trouble with forums such as this is that certain suppliers have friends who are so constantly posting that it makes the forum far from impartial but so many readers are impressed by the weight of postings that excellent bikes like the Tonaro rarely get considered.
Hope the foregoing is of interest.
KudosDave
