Electric Bikes - Advice on what's available

Hi from a newbie. I live in the UK and my daughter and family in Southern Portugal. I have long summer holidays and have thought about cycling down (1000 miles or so). There are some fairly serious hills en-route, that have given Lance Armstrong a hard time, so I wondered about an electric bike that would give me some assistance on the steep bit. I'd need something that was light enough to ride as a normal bile on flatter terrain, with a wide enough gear range to be able to get by.

Is there anything out there that recharges the battery whilst under pedal power?

I'd need to carry a tent and stuff, panniers etc. would be needed.

Has anyone any recommendations please?

I'm not aware of anything that will fully recharge a battery while you ride. Regenerative charging when braking or going down hill is a feature on some units, but I don't think that the regenerative charge can come close to fully recharging a battery. At present, I think only Schwinn offers Toshiba's SCIB batteries. One interesting feature of this new Lithium Ion battery is that Toshiba offers a "commercial" charger that will fully recharge the battery in 10 minutes. I've not read any in depth reviews on the battery itself.

If you're serious about using an electric bike to travel this distance, I would suggest that you plan your trip around overnight stops where you can check into a room and recharge your battery, or at least a camp ground where you can have a site with electricity. If you haven't ridden a bike much lately, I'd also suggest that you do some longer local rides and test your stamina;1000 miles is a lot of distance to cover by yourself with no support (yea, the professionals have lots of support staff traveling with them on tour).

laserblazer

Justin Lemire-Elmore, the chief engineer at ebikes.ca rode across Canada in 30 days on an ebike last summer.

You might want to look at:

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5652

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7678925878624577581

http://hackaday.com/2009/08/19/e-bike-across-canada-for-10/


The video describes the issues. Justin is not an average joe ebiker. He is a graduate Electrical Engineer from Vancouver University.

Don

Hi there and welcome,
I'm on the search for an ebike myself and while doing research I came across this site:

http://www.atob.org.uk/

It's got a fantastic Buyer's Guide (http://www.atob.org.uk/Electric_Buyers%27_Guide.html) (review section) of dozens of bikes, and since this is a UK based site, you will get reviews on bikes you can actually purchase (UK bikes) vs. feedback on bikes available here in the U.S. (the specs are different even for same manufacturers).

And probably also greatly to your advantage, there's a link to a price list (http://www.atob.org.uk/Electric_price_tag.html) (scroll down for the complete bikes) of all the various types of bikes, so you can compare your requirements vs. the reviews vs. your budget. I wish there was a similar review site for U.S. available ebikes...

Good luck!

Thanks guys. The video of the x-Canada trip looks really good. I guess I'm not going to find as many power outlets in Southern Europe, I don't think block heaters are that big down there! If I do it, I'll have bags of time, so I won't be spinning wheels all day. I'd want to do a lot of sight-seeing.

Thanks for your link @stormsteed. I see there's a dealer i Kidderminster, which is right on my doorstep.