Electric Bikes - Video of my commute on my BionX ebike

I just got a Gopro Hero helmet camera the other day. This is the second video I took with it. It's my commute to work this morning. For some reason it stopped recording just after 12mins, so it's missing the last 6 mins of my ride. I love watching other peoples commute vids. Hope you do too.

This is the bike I used. It has a BionX PL-350 system, speed limiter disabled.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3180/2874003244_6e2deb566d.jpg

Here is the vid. I'm new to video editing, be gentle. Enjoy.

http://www.vimeo.com/6112295

Are Vimeo vids not embedable?

lol that pole in the middle @ 9:31 scared the crap out of me i bet it has had its share of victims :-), cool video

Nice vid. Looks light an enlightened area with lots of bike trails. Where is NWO?

Thanks for posting the video. The helmet cam looks neat. I ordered a camera mount for my handlebars. How fast were you going? There is so much wild life in my area, including elk and moose, that I couldn't go that fast in many of the areas I ride without the risk of not being able to stop in time to avoid a collision. I'm happy with my top speed of 17 mph. I usually pedal and only use power assist on the steep roads (I'm west of Glacier National Park) and when I'm really tired.

Nice vid. Looks light an enlightened area with lots of bike trails. Where is NWO?

That is the main path that connects both sides of town, plus it runs through our university and our college. As a whole this is not a bike friendly city.

NWO=North Western Ontario. The real NWO. As in further north west than Sudbury and SSM.

Thanks for posting the video. The helmet cam looks neat. I ordered a camera mount for my handlebars. How fast were you going? There is so much wild life in my area, including elk and moose, that I couldn't go that fast in many of the areas I ride without the risk of not being able to stop in time to avoid a collision. I'm happy with my top speed of 17 mph. I usually pedal and only use power assist on the steep roads (I'm west of Glacier National Park) and when I'm really tired.

Yeah it's going to be a fun little toy to play with,

My average speed for the whole ride was 22mph and my max was 27mph. I was pedalling my ass off the whole time...lol. As the cycling season has progressed, and my fitness has improved, I am hitting the limits of the BionX motor. It was designed for hillclimbing not for high speeds on the flats or downhills. Santa send me a PL-500. Once I hit 22mph it's around the limit of the motors top speed. It stops assisting and the torque cogging effect makes getting any extra speed not worth the effort. If you notice in the vid on the faster downhills I'm setting the assitance to zero which eliminates the torque cogging effect and allows me some extra speed. Once I slow down to about 22-23mph I turn on the assistance again.

That said I can still get to work faster on this ebike than I can on my road bike, but the gap had become very narrow. The last time I tried to do a fast commute on my road bike I was only around 1kph slower than my ebike but I work a hell of a lot harder to do it. It also required no regard for my personal safety or the highway traffic act...lol

The main advantage of the ebike on my commute is if I have to come to a stop, or almost slow to a stop, getting back up to my cruising speed takes little effort. To match it on my non-electric bikes, would practically required me to sprint all out to get back up to crusing speed.

what time where you doing your work ride? it's sooo quiet!

at the 6 minute mark it soooo seems like my old university campus in Thunder bay!? Is that where you raced through early in the morning!? sure brought back memories :) (graduated 10 years ago! hah). But yeah that bionx system seems bloody fast! I really like it but there's no way they can implement that onto a strida anytime soon hahaha! Oh yeah that guy was probably going wtf around 10:45 as you effortlessly pass him and lose him in your dust.

Most fun is to head straight into the forest trail which is just around the corner. As for bike friendly? yeah it's not mostly trucks out there and usually we take that main cycle path to connect to all these smaller streets all over the city. It's not a large sized city for us students so our bikes where basically our main form of transportation.

what time where you doing your work ride? it's sooo quiet!

at the 6 minute mark it soooo seems like my old university campus in Thunder bay!? Is that where you raced through early in the morning!? sure brought back memories :) (graduated 10 years ago! hah). But yeah that bionx system seems bloody fast! I really like it but there's no way they can implement that onto a strida anytime soon hahaha! Oh yeah that guy was probably going wtf around 10:45 as you effortlessly pass him and lose him in your dust.

Most fun is to head straight into the forest trail which is just around the corner. As for bike friendly? yeah it's not mostly trucks out there and usually we take that main cycle path to connect to all these smaller streets all over the city. It's not a large sized city for us students so our bikes where basically our main form of transportation.

Hey Azreal,

Got a thing for smurfs do ya?

I left the house at 7:25am as per usual. Yes it is LU. Like the song says....Schools out for summer..so things are pretty slow on the LU campus and Con Col campus.

Yeah I've ridden the trails around LU, but they aren't so good with 26*1 inch slicks pumped to 110psi and a 40plus pound ebike.

Hope you enjoyed your time in our city,

LesMcLuffAlot

Hey Azreal,

Got a thing for smurfs do ya?

I left the house at 7:25am as per usual. Yes it is LU. Like the song says....Schools out for summer..so things are pretty slow on the LU campus and Con Col campus.

Yeah I've ridden the trails around LU, but they aren't so good with 26*1 inch slicks pumped to 110psi and a 40plus pound ebike.

Hope you enjoyed your time in our city,

LesMcLuffAlot

yeah I like Gargamels cat :)

and Yup totally enjoyed the city (university life was great there awesome 4 years) since where else can I go for $5 night skiing (ski club) which less than 15 minutes away!?
and where else can I get a mtn bike trail just around the corner?
and where else can I hike up a mountain just a drive away?

Those things don't exist in Toronto unless you go out of town for a 1 1/2 hrs of driving.

110psi? that's a really hard ride! but then you're hitting some pretty high speeds there on a thin patch of rubber.

Hey everybody. I did another vid of my commute. Not on my ebike this time, but you can see the last half of my commute that was missing from the first vid. If you wait for it to load and start watching at 12:30 in.

LOL at 4:45. Same guy as in my last vid at the exact same spot....lol

http://vimeo.com/6170504

Please tell me the name of the band.

Sweet video.

It's a sad day for me fellow ebikers. My ebike is no longer my fastest bike to work. Oh why do I have to be so fit.

Which song AllenG?
http://incompetech.com/
It's all royalty free stuff.

Ebikes where never meant for racers like you. They where meant for the general public who need some assistance to make biking more fun and easier. This will not help anyone going faster than 30km/hr I find. Hacking the limiter only made you hit the motor limit which is not much higher. All this that I'm saying doesn't include those electric scooters those thing are a different breed that should stay on the roads

It's a sad day for me fellow ebikers. My ebike is no longer my fastest bike to work. Oh why do I have to be so fit.

Which song AllenG?
http://incompetech.com/
It's all royalty free stuff.

You can go faster than 22mph for an average on that 6.7m ride with your own legs? That's quite fit! At least the e-bike can make the trip easier for you instead of faster.

Ebikes where never meant for racers like you. They where meant for the general public who need some assistance to make biking more fun and easier. This will not help anyone going faster than 30km/hr I find. Hacking the limiter only made you hit the motor limit which is not much higher. All this that I'm saying doesn't include those electric scooters those thing are a different breed that should stay on the roads

My racing days are well behind me, but I still train as if I do.

While my ebike is not faster on the way to work it is still faster on the trip home. If the first half to work is gradual downhill the last half home is all gradual uphill and my ebike excels at this. Not just due to the motor, but due to the fact that bike was 21 pounds to begin with and with the motor and battery it's barely over 40lbs.

I'm willing to try and beat my best ebike time home, and since my fitness is quite high right now I will make that attempt and report my findings.

I just might record it all for your viewing displeasure...get ready for some more 20min plus commute videos....muuuuuuhahahahahaa.....:giver:

thats a nice video, and a nice looking town, too. Thank you for posting that.

You can go faster than 22mph for an average on that 6.7m ride with your own legs? That's quite fit! At least the e-bike can make the trip easier for you instead of faster.

You are so right adamtki,

Today was a perfect example of this. I did 8 hours of cycling in 2 days on Sat. and Sun. and my legs were absolute toast on Monday morning. If I didn't have my ebike I would have drove to work. I rode my ebike and soft pedaled all the way and still got to work in less than 20mins with a 20mph plus average speed.


Sweet,

LesMcLuffAlot

Les, sounds to me like you just need bigger gears.

Most ebikes are designed to get slow pokes up to a decent pace. This doesn't mean that they can't be used to get a strong rider up to ludicrous speed.

Yeah, adding 3 mph to a 22 mph pace is gonna take more juice than getting a 10 mph rider up to 15, but so what.

One of these days I wanna set up a decent road bike with some sort of electric assist that will allow pro rider type cruise speeds. I realize that such things are probably illegal at the retail level, but, us DIYers ought be be able to figure something out. Just hope I don't get killed in the process!