The E-Bike Experiment

I'm on record elsewhere as being of the opinion that I'm not an e-biker. Nothing against people using e-bikes as alternative transport just that, until now, I haven't felt any need to EEEE my ride. I've been a commuter cyclist and cycle tourist almost as long as I've been of consenting age and the physics don't stack up for distances of more than 20km. Or rather, they didn't until recently.

In recent times, 2 things have happened. Batteries have got a major boost in energy density in the last 10 years, thanks mainly to smartphones (yes, smartphones), and I had a heart attack at the end of 2020. I'll come back to this second point in a minute.

In the 90s, I was engaged for a small time in designing an e-bike drive. Not professionally, just as a curiosity. I lived in Hobart at the time and there were a few mighty hills in my laughably short, six kilometre commute. There were even more in my training commute of 20km. I wanted to see if an electric bicycle might take the edge off going to horrendous 5am starts on early shift and miserable midnight trips home on late shifts. In the 90s, the plan did not get very far.

Batteries were the racist hiding in the woodpile. The choice was metal-hydride or sealed lead acid (SLA), the dreaded "ballast block." Neither had much energy density, although, the latter had plenty of physical density. They weighed a ton! The problem was that, with the only available e-bike motors, 200W, that 200w boost would be required to actually lift the battery up a hill. I'd get almost no benefit.

Why was the battery so heavy? Firstly, lead. Secondly, I'm a long distance rider, I want the range of the open road. 100km in a day was relatively easy work, sometimes though, it would be nice to arrive with enough in the tank to not find setting up the bedding as a complete chore. The dream died finally when I started looking into available motor controllers. I didn't want a throttle motor, I wanted a little assistance, what we now know as pedal assist. Start pedalling, the motor gives you a few extra watts. It didn't exist back then, and I didn't have the "secret laboratory" I now own, so building such a thing was out, too.

Fast forward a few years to lithium battery tech and Euro e-assist laws, and the e-bike craze still didn't appeal because - well frankly - the cost. A really good bicycle off the floor of a local bike shop, good enough to suit a slow commuter, slower cycle tourist, like me could be had for between a bit under $1000 to around $3000. You could pay more for a utility bike, but only if you had it custom fitted and hand built. The e-bikes of 10 years ago, lets take the mid-range models, were $300 clunkers fitted with an e-kit with a total retail price tag pushing 10 times that price. An e-bike was always a 10 to 1 price ratio whenever I looked at the component and frame spec.

My current bike is 8 years old, one of Reid Cycles "bankruptcy bikes" - a City 2 urban that cost me $800 +/- and it was damned good value for money. Reid were expanding their range and working hard at building a reputation. It didn't go well for them and now they're owned by Anaconda. (Well, Spotlight, who own Anaconda...) The City 2 is still a good bike, especially from the POV of how well it's lasted and how many roads it's taken me down. I did 3000m of elevation gain in a single day on that bike, no electric motor. I've done tens of thousands of kilometres on it in the intervening years. I never felt the need to get an artificial push. It's been so good, I don't regret not getting that custom frame build when I retired.

Then I had that afore-mentioned infarction. I beat cancer, in part, with a bicycle. (My "onco" did most of the work.) Riding meant that my diabetes diagnosis in 2005 was an easy thing to regulate, not to mention that I wasn't type 2, last year I was officially confirmed as type 1. Cycling kept me alive without insulin for most of my life. When your heart goes pop, recovery is harder than anything else to recover from. Mine was big, the ambo called it "the widowmaker." I cannot get more than 25km a day now, and I still (more so) hanker for the open road, solo, ticking along at an easy 20km/h. (12MPH) Worse, I need at least a day between every riding day.

So, e-assist then. Yep. I don't have to like it, but assisted riding is better than f***-all riding, and f***-all riding is not helping my ticker, either. So, I've bought a conversion kit.

I figure I'll start off trying level 1 assistance, and not fit the throttle, just the cadence sensor. The retailer claims 60km range at "average use" with the 540Wh battery the kit comes with. I know from my e-scooter that actual range rarely comes even close to claimed range, so I figure level 1 e-assist is probably what they set that figure on. Fingers crossed my ticker doesn't require level 2. Heavens forfend I'll onsell the bloody thing if I need level 5, because that will plop me back in the 20km every other day range, except without the other day in the middle. Fingers crossed... as I said.

And this is what personal electric propulsion is really good for - accessibility! If you're able bodied, you don't really need e-assist. Trust me, you don't. If you think you do, you don't even like cycling. The way I see most e-riders using their bikes, the bottom bracket is probably seized! They rarely turn the pedals! That's not cycling, that's motoring, get an e-moto and ride in traffic, and stop blasting past "real" cyclists in the bike lane. Just because you can do 30km/h by pushing a button doesn't mean you should, especially on narrow cycle paths. This kind of rider is a "cyclopath!"

If you have an e-bike and ride because you love riding, you still turn the pedals, you're still the primemover of your machine, maybe I'll see you out on the road. We can chat about how our e-machines have given us back our joy on the wheel. But, if you're not pedalling, I won't be speaking to you. I still hold firmly to that aspect of riding. I am the prime mover, the e-drive is my accessibility aid. That is all.