E-bike tourers
 

I work at a campsite in Sweden. Yesterday a couple of fully loaded tourers rolled in with e-bikes. Never seen that before, although I do see more and e-bike commuters.
Here they are allowed to go at max 25kmh on the same paths and MUPs as regular bikes, though some have obviously been modded.

It wouldn't surprise me if the number of e-bike tourers increase as the batteries get lighter and can go for longer distances between charging.

I'll definitely consider an e-bike if and when I get too old and frail for a regular bike. Hopefully by then the battery will be a retro fit internally to any bike, weigh next to nothing and be charged by the solar painted frame :)

Thoughts?

seems what I See, hub motors are low torque.. Mid drive offers hill climbing Torque..

Then Theres the Hills when the motor and battery are So much dead weight , with no juice left to assist.

In Your Country how far apart are recharging Places? here we have Nevada And Utah,

some routes , even a Tank of petrol in a Motorcycle is insufficient in capacity.

... and it becomes a 'Push Bike' ..

E-bike tourers
 

Yes, I have no idea how far a fully loaded e-bike can go between charges, so I guess you'd have to plan well to get to campsite and recharge overnight

Seems like if you need a battery to get up hills then if it get's drained then you do have a heavy push bike.

The north of sweden has pretty long distances "inbetween" In Germany, France or England for example, much less so.
Australia? ;)

the future of bicycle touring...........

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I recently did a tour in Northern Italy and on my way up to Lake Garda from the Adige River, I passed a group of 8 people touring on e-bikes. I asked about them and was told that they could do about 90 miles a day before needing charging. They were on a hotel tour from Bolzano to Venice with the tour company handling their gear and charging the bikes every night.

To the extent that this allows more people to enjoy bike touring, I say bravo. The more people who do it, the money will come in and the better the infrastructure will be. As imi says, I wouldn't hesitate to use an e-bike when I can no longer do it under my own power.

90 miles a pretty astonishing range esp in presumably hilly terrain. A casual older biker friend got an e-bike for local rides, range is about 50-80 kilometers. Electric assist helps with hills & makes longer rides possible for lesser-fit riders. In America bike tourists are often dedicated bikers looking for a challenge but in Europe there's a tradition for average folks including seniors to do easy weekend-type tours just to enjoy the countryside, visit nice restaurants etc. In the US it's a little harder to find charming cafes but many areas have campgrounds that offer electrical hookup. In flatter areas one can fairly easily pedal an e-bike w/o the assist so a depleted battery not necessarily a disaster.

;) Heh, on long grueling climbs I get jealous of Harley riders going by. Just borrowing 1 HP would be super-boost for me & the Harley riders wouldn't even notice it's missing!

90 miles is pretty incredible. I have occasionally looked into ebikes, thinking that there are days when I'd like to get to work and not be a sweaty mess. I feel like I would never find an acceptable range. Usually around 30 miles seems standard. That's more than enough to get me to work and back, but it wouldn't take too many detours before I ran out of juice and had to pedal a bike that was twice as heavy as it needed to be. For touring? Forget about it. 30 miles a day is nothing, and then how can you be sure you'll be able to charge it.

But 90 miles a day. I could work with that. Although I can't imagine touring on an ebike. I could imagine a fancy, enclosed bike like the ELF for getting to work or elsewhere in bad weather.

Range depends on how much you use it, on my bike I can easily go 110Kms on a charge using level 1 assist, or 90Kms using level 2 assist or 70Kms using level 3 assist or 50Kms using level 4 assist or barely make 30Kms using throttle only and not pedal... So it mostly depends on how much you pedal... I usually pedal about the same in any level, the difference is the speed you can reach and keep with the assist, level 1=24Km/Hr., level 2=26Km/Hr., level 3=28Km/Hr.., level 4=30Km/Hr., no pedaling using just the throttle=32Km/Hr.


I have done two trips one 650Kms 6 days,the other 850Kms 8 days, and just charged the battery with a solar panel on my camper that the wife drove... ;)


EDIT; Oh, and how much pedaling do I actually put in? I used to average 20Km/Hr. just me pedaling so the difference is due to the E-Assist levels I can use during the ride... :thumb:

If you are touring on an E-Bike go out to your local Harley, Honda or other motorsickle dealership and get yourself one of them touring motorsickles. One of the managers at another store in my company has one from BMW and he rides all the dang time and camps and does all that fun stuff.

I find electric bikes to be a bad bicycle and a bad motorcycle all rolled into one heavy package for a bicycle. Putting touring loads on it sound even worse. You might as well make the rear wheel solid with no spokes because of all that weight on it. I have seen a very nicely built e-bike that keeps breaking spokes without a touring load.

On a Blue Ridge Parkway fall bicycle tour I saw zero other bicyclists despite that it's famous for scenic & safe touring. Saw quite a few day-trippers/tourers on Harleys though. The Parkway/Skyline Drive all hills which would drastically cut E-bike range. But my friend's new Galvani model seems pretty sturdily built; I don't know specifics of spoke count/rims/braze-ons for luggage but it looks like it would be strong enough for light motel touring. Whole thing weighs about 23 kg vs about 15 for a Surly Disc Trucker. E-bikes a newer trend so I suppose there's a wide variation in quality. Some apparently are made for retired senior citizens doing short jaunts, others seem like they're intended for more serious use.

90 miles is certainly a greater range than I've seen so far with commercial ebikes. But I could see them being used by touring companies that do fully supported rides since a support vehicle could carry spare battery packs and switch them out as needed. If the range is insufficient for a full day the support crew could swap the battery packs at the lunch stop or other convenient location and then recharge them in time to do another swap at the overnight stop.

I have seen far too many instances where that has happened and it has been to the detriment of the original user. That is what is happening to urban cycling infrastructure in Toronto where along with the improvements in cycling infrass tructure, they now allow electric motorcycles to use the bike lane. Or where long term gains were achieved by bow hunters only to be handed over to compound and crossbow archery hunters. For one thing you could end up with your infrastructure spaced assisted distances appart that regular cyclists can't match. Just to mention a small inconvenience.

I am very interested in electric boating. Not sure it will be what I want to see over the decades, but there the potential is vast. There are no hills on the ocean, and the winds one toys with can be avoided in areas like the doldrums that boaters have traditionally avoided. Boats can carry enough solar panels even at current technology that large yachts have gone solar round the world. Might be a little boring with neither the speed of power nor the challenge of sail. If it ever gets going there is the potential of vastly more cruisers which would reduce the freedom even today's cruiser's enjoy. But right now it is viable, and there is no reaction against techno tramps. Aux contraire, the solar pioneers are feted wherever they go. For now.

An inside look at the world's largest solar-powered boat | The Verge

I am not sure what happened to the solar boat chronicles, but they made it a fair distance in their trimaran.

Of course all these stunt boats have limits that a true platform boat does not, as it can use whatever form of power is best, without having to concern itself with a limited form of power.

There are basically four types of "E-Bikes" out there... Legal, where the motor won't help above 20Mi/32Km throttle only, legal where the motor won't help above 20Mi/32Km PAS only, Legal with both PAS and throttle and the motor only helps to 20Mi/32Km... and illegal where the motor helps to go faster than 20Mi/32Kml. It's the illegal that gives E-Assist the bad rap, IMO... Any legal E-Assist bike ridden in PAS can't really be distinguished from a "normal" bike that is ridden as one would any bike... It's the person riding the bike that defines how it can be perceived by others in general not the type of bike itself... JMO

EDIT; If it looks like the bike is going faster than it can normally be pedaled, it's more than likely illegal, and if the person is not pedaling than it's more like a moped/motorbike than a bicycle...

E-assist bikes are hugely popular for touring in Germany right now, and there is impressive infrastructure in certain areas to support it. In the Black Forest region, for example, there is a network of charging points (restaurants, cafes, museums, retail stores, etc.) that offer free charging points. These are noted on trailside signs as well as maps you can get from the tourist offices. Tourist officials and tour providers realize the potential of a huge market for people who might not otherwise try bike touring, and are investing in making it viable.

Here's an example: • E-Bike Region - Touristikgemeinschaft Hohenlohe e.V.

And in Austria: E-Biking in Austria and especially http://www.e-bikewelt.com/en with a network of 1000km of trails in Tirol.

Also, now that there are well-designed E-mountain bikes, I'm seeing them now being used in the Alps for guided tours and also rentals. Expensive bikes, though, around 2500-3000 euro.

See post #8 in this thread. It reflects the experience of a couple who posted about their trip on ACA's forum. They did part of the TranAm route. IIRC, the husband has breathing complications caused by smoking. I believe they had a CG journal and talked about daily battery drain depending on the level of assist used.

This is pretty cool: Ridekick Electric assist trailer. Lots of money though.

Hi guyz,
I was on a ride last night when I pulled up next to a kick-ass ultra-modern mountain-bike-type E-bike with a high-attitute rider. We didn't hit it off very well - I looked at his bike and thought 'ridiculous' and he looked at mine and thought 'i'm gonna leave some dust on that!' And we were off!!! Assisted by a short down-hill and clever manouvering I got ahead at the start (maybe he was setting his gears i dunno) and I was in high gear, head down and still ahead as the downhill evened out. But then sadly he blasted past me at at least 50% more speed than me! Not fair, un-cool. And then he pulled over and looked for parking. Judge that! while I chew my sour grapes....

yeah...and? was he proud of beating you? why not ask for a rematch, only next
time take your harley. same difference.

Smug
 

Definitely smug yet nonchalant like it was a simple excersize! Honestly if it was a bicycle I would have given him a thumbs up, and he was sporty so he might have beat me, but it's these bikes that take the grunge and challenge out of cycling, to my mind anyway...

So... you expected to win/beat a guy you knew was riding on an E-Bike? I'd look into a mirror for all the things you are attributing to him, you may have all those things... Just saying... Thinking/saying he was "not fair" and "not cool" if you didn't know he was riding an E-Bike would be different but you knew, so...

Interesting info; restaurants have an incentive to add charging points--diners can linger longer, buy an extra glass of Riesling or whatnot. But doesn't it take 5+ hours to fully charge avg battery? & doesn't riding in hilly areas cut range heavily? I scan some pages about Euro E-bike touring...many of the hosted and/or planned tours go short daily distances like 50 km. 90 km range seems to be more for experienced cyclists.

I'm not a strong rider but on tours if weather or hills slows planned pace down I have enough steam left to still finish. With E-bikes it seems that one needs to play it safe on planned range.

came across these chinese e-uni-bikers (?) doing a circuit around the
island. "riding" 70-80 km between towns, recharge in hotels overnight.
no panniers or trailer or bike bags....just a small backpack, max 5kg.
on hills, dismount and carry the critter, or flag down a bus and keep
it on their laps. ultimate lightweight credit card style touring.


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One needs to have lot's of $$$... Re-charging an E-Bike today is totally doable with just 2 Hrs. a day of sunlight or an Hr. here an Hr. there when you stop for lunch or a rest. ;) All you need is one of these. :thumb: http://www.hi-powercycles.com/hpc-su...ceted_search=0 Oh, yea, and a lot of these $$$. :eek:

Neat deal up to a point, 8 kg weight OTOH about the same as carrying a spare battery. Heh, well-heeled E-bike tourists could probably arrange to make a couple stops per day at a FedEx office & pick up a freshly-charged battery mailed from home. Then you get all the range necessary. A bit expensive but OTOH folks pay big $$ for supported commercial tours on regular bikes. Perhaps E-bikes might move to more standardized batteries as with phones/tablets now having more standardized AC chargers.

Not quite the same as an extra battery, that just extends your range and you still need a AC outlet to keep going the next day... With a solar panel like this, you may NEVER need to plug in anywhere, you can re-charge while stopped to rest all day so the distance you can go is unlimited, basically as long as there is sunshine you will have all the power you need. :thumb: