Yeah, e-bikes are the future

[taiwwa]

I’ve long been a holdout as a roadbike purist.

but recent experience with my 11 speed road bike versus a belt drive igh mid drive e-bikes has changed my perspective.

the 11 speed has always had adjustment issues. With the tolerances of road bike gear becoming smaller and smaller, they become easier to fall out of alignment and wear out more quickly, requiring replacement.

if you design an ebike within certain parameters, it can result in drastically less wear than a derailleur road bike. The ebike makes belt drive igh combinations viable where before their lower efficiency was a killer.

or you could get a derailleur bike with a hub motor, which reduces wear on the gearing of the bike.

having also used a powerful electric scooter, the bicycle parts of an ebike make it vastly superior to electric scooters. human Pedaling is high enough torque to matter.

with The ebike there just is less adjustment needed. It doesn’t need to have the tires filled up before every ride like a road bike does. It can haul cargo if needed. You can still lower electric assist for exercise/ range if you want.

 

[RunForTheHills]

I get where you are coming from, but I have never felt like a purist. E-bikes are part of the future for sure and more than half the bikes I see on the road these days are e-bikes. I enjoy riding both my e-bikes and my road bikes. I do my own maintenance on my bikes, so haven't had too many problems with adjustment issues. I use indexed shifters on my 11 speed bikes. I have bar-end friction shifters on a couple of bikes, but a lot less gears on those also. I put air in my tires a couple of times a week on both kinds of bikes. I have an 18V Makita tire inflator that makes short work of it.

 

[neptronix]

See this is the problem with human power. Unless you are some genetic freak then your maximum continual power output is 125-150w continuous and there's so many situations where that is not enough.

The reason we have a ton of gears and all these expensive very light, high precision parts is because you need every watt you can get out of this weak human engine - even a big one is super constrained compared to any other kind of vehicle. A bicycle is designed primarily around mitigating this small human power.

Adding a motor changes so much about the bicycle. There's a lot of engineering challenges but also a ton of rewarding possibilities in making a human-electric hybrid vehicle.

 

[calab]

Keep everything affordable and only go with 7 or 8spd gearing, I like lots of gears for climbing while on an ebike, some of the steep stuff requires 22chain by 32rear even with the watts, if ya like to pedal for fitness.

 

[taiwwa]

Keep everything affordable and only go with 7 or 8spd gearing, I like lots of gears for climbing while on an ebike, some of the steep stuff requires 22chain by 32rear even with the watts, if ya like to pedal for fitness.

Honestly the range of the gearing matters more to me anyways. With the 11 speed shifter I end up shifting twice really fast anyways.

 

[gromike]

On my BBS02 mid-drive bike all I need is 3 gears, a low, middle, and high. On my DD hub motor bike I use all of it's 24 gears.
Guess which bike I like to ride best?