Originally Posted by
choddo
Hi ebike people
tl:dr: what is one of these like on fairly steep hills of 10-20% if I can put in 250W of human assistance?
I have a commute of about 40 miles each way. It has two steepish hills quite near my house of approx 200m altitude and a few bumps the rest of the way into London.
At the moment I do this by normally aspirated bike a couple of times a week and car the rest of the time. Come Jan 1 the car will get £14 a day more expensive, doubling the cost, when the congestion charge exemption for EVs dies.
So one option I’m considering is to ride most days using a road ebike (looking at a Bianchi Aria with the X35+ motor at a good price) to take the deep efforts out of it and hopefully be able to manage 4 days a week most of the time.
But if it won’t save me on the big efforts over those hills then I’m probably wasting my money (I currently do them on a 8.5kg bike at about 14-15kph at pretty much max HR / 300-400W)
Oh, and in the UK, these are capped at 16mph/26kph
Donning my speculation hat, a fit rider like yourself on a lightweight, high performance ebike with boost limited to 16mph will easily eke 80 miles from a charge. Other than accelerating from stops and ascending those couple hills you're providing most of the energy.
Could perhaps coax 80 mi from mine with a lot of speed discipline but with a class 3 boost bike capped at 28 mph that's not happening. What I do instead is ride the first 10 or so km on no boost for warmup, switch to low boost for the middle portion then mid boost once the legs start tiring, for the home stretch. Reserve top boost for strong headwind and the like, which steepens battery drain considerably.
If a second, bottle cage battery option is available that can eliminate range anxiety provided you can program it to be used first then charge indoors whilst at work. But I suspect it's not necessary for your scenario.