Originally Posted by
Jipe
The Alfine 11 hub was improved by Shimano a couple of years ago to make it stronger and compatible with Shimano Steps and other pedal assist motor (it wasn't before) which opens a huge market for it (previously, only Nexus and Alfine 8 were usable for ebike) but strange enough, there are still few ebike with Alfine 11 while there are more with the much more expensive Rohloff or the similarly priced Enviolo hub (even if this one has a very bad efficiency and is much heavier). Also, nor Riese & Müller nor Pacific Cycles propose a Birdy with Alfine 11 while they have one with Nexus 8 and Rohloff, again I don't know why because from the specifications and price, the Alfine 11 should be a good alternative
I agree there should be more bikes, including Birdy, delivered with Alfine 11 as an option. It's good value for money when you need the range and don't want or can't use cassette gears.
Enviolo is a very good hub for ebikes: Very strong, long lasting, low maintenance, supremely easy to understand for bike beginners, and is even offered with automatic, constant cadence shifting. I have 13 000 km on my older Nuvinci hub now, with no servicing and no sign of trouble. On a pedelec ebike the poor efficiency and high weight means only a bit shorter battery range, not less speed. But I would not want it on a non-assisted bike!
Originally Posted by
Jipe
(...) besides the potential reliability issues of the Sunrace hub, the solution of R&M work very well and gives a good gear inch and range. I rode my Birdy Touring during a little more than one year with it mainly loaded without any problem and doing many km with it, besides normal wearing, there was no mandatory need to change it. I also cannot imagine that R&M would keep the Sunrace solution if there were a lot of failure with it. Glye, when you had this problem with the hub, did you contact R&M directly or with your R&M dealer, did you receive any feedback from R&M, did R&M took the problem under warranty?
When the cassette hub body cracked I contacted the Norwegian dealer, who sent me a new body under warranty. When the second body cracked a short time later, I gave up and ordered the Alfine 11. I don't know if the Norwegian dealer contacted R&M, but they probably did, since they're a small shop and they probably needed to order the part from R&M. I got no feedback from R&M.
Shortly after this the hub body of my Sturmey Archer X-RDC also cracked, and I took it apart and found it to be the same internal freewheel mech design as the Sunrace one, only the Sunrace is aluminium while the SA is steel. Not so strange since Sunrace owns Sturmey Archer. That's why I don't recommend the SA CS-RK3 (DualDrive lookalike), it is likely to have the same weakness.
Yes, given that R&M continues to offer the Sunrace option, one would think there are not many failures. But I had 3 failures of this design in a short time, and I will not give them a 4th chance.
I wonder what would have happened if I had kept on requesting new bodies 1-2 times per year until warranty expired... surely there would have been some raised eyebrows at R&M.