Front-wheel drive traction

[nikon201]

I'm new to the world of electric bikes and I am currently trying to decide which one to purchase.

I have seen many that have front-wheel drive, and have been wondering whether these offer as much traction as a rear-wheel drive. From a simple physical perspective, most of your body weight will be pushing on the rear wheel, and the force of turning the pedals will tend to lift the front of the bike. When going uphill, even more body weight will be transferred to the rear wheel and this is surely where you need the most traction and power assistance.

It would be good to hear if anyone has suffered traction problems with front wheel drives, or if this has never been encountered.

 

[Conal]

Nion201

I have an Ezee Forza "front wheel drive" (front hub motor) and have been cycling just most weekdays since October 2007. I have never experienced any loss of traction due to the position of the hub motor. As you will read on the forum, the position of the hub motor, front or back, does make a difference but in my case at 17 stone (heavy boned, in fact heavy everything!) this does not seem to make any difference to the traction control on my route.

Conal

 

[flecc]

The only time I've known loss of traction is on broken surfaces like loose stones on a hillside track. Even with the powerful Torq 1 I never lost any front traction in wet conditions, though ice or snow might have been different.

However, that's when the two wheel traction of pedalling and front motor would come into their own.

I personally prefer a rear hub motor since I prefer the more normal front responses of a light bike and it gives me more stability for the heavy trailer towing that I do. The disadvantage is that multi-sprocket freewheels have to be used instead of the stronger cassettes of of normal derailleurs.
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[Trumpet]

You might even find it a positive advantage. There's one particular driveway that I got up that is a pig to cycle up (both peddling and steering a little front wheel drive balances out the whole bike - two wheel drive. May belucky with my setup but I quite like the balance of weight-wise with the front motor and it doesn't seem to badly affect the handling at all.

 

[nikon201]

Thanks for all your comments, I'm now the owner of a Synergie Mistral (rear-wheel drive)