New E Bike Ordered

[shep]

Well, today i ordered a 2017 Cube Reaction Hybrid HPA 500 Pro ( That rolls off the tongue easily) in the grey and blue colour collecting next Friday, this has the Bosch Performance Line CX Motor. I bought the bike from Adam the manager of Hargroves Cycles in Fareham, Really lovely guy to deal with. I shopped around quite a bit, he gave me a really good deal that i am very happy with and they are also very local to me. They are going to fit the bike with a rear rack and also some Cateyes LED lights. I stumped up a bit extra to have the 500w battery

I am going to take the bike down to La Rochelle in September via the La Francette cycle route and will do about 50 to 60 miles a day.

I looked carefully at a Haibike which i liked very much, but i just felt that the deal i was given and the slightly higher spec of the Cube made this the correct buy.

I have a Kalkhoff Agattu and so does my wife, they are very well used !!!! will keep hold of these for the time being.

 

[georgehenry]

Sounds like you have bought I nice bike, from a good local shop and have a great trip planned for it. That's the way to do it.

 

[StewC]

Good Choice, and from your local shop. I'm sure your be happy with your purchase.

 

[shep]

Sounds like you have bought I nice bike, from a good local shop and have a great trip planned for it. That's the way to do it.

George i thought very carefully about what you said in your other post in reply to my post asking for information on a bike to replace the Kalkhoff Agattu that we have.

To be brutally honest, i did not need this new bike as the Kalkhoffs are going fine, although the batteries are now 6 years old and will need replacing in the future. I had a go on a Bosch motored eMTB and what really hit me was how it kept producing power at a higher cadence than the Panasonic, i cycle non electric bikes a lot, and i noticed that the Bosch "flowed" much better. This is my only bug bear with the Panasonic drive which is now a much older generation drive. It likes much slower cadences than i would normally like to cycle with, it loves to just waft along, slowly, gently and to be honest very serenely !!! Perfect for a Dutch style bike like the Agattu.

I just wanted something with more performance, but with a similar high spec to the Kalkoff but without spending a fortune. I also wanted something that i could go off road with, although my usage here will be incredibly gentle, cycle paths, very light trails etc mind you with the state of British roads these days you need an eMtb !!!! and i really fancied having the bike equivalent of a Toyota Landcruiser, rufty, tufty do it all bike.

The Cube has the Bosch CX Motor, is a 29er and the 500w battery and all for £1750, so on the basis that we only live once, i went for it. But for the leisurely ride outs we have the Agattus.

 

[georgehenry]

You have obviously thought it through carefully. The cube does sound excellent value for money combining the Bosch CX Motor and 500w battery at a very good price and it is no good thinking later on "I wish I had done that".

I am also interested in what you say about cadence. Before I started using an electric bike to commute to and from work I enjoyed riding a hard tail mountain bike for exercise and fun and have noticed that the the power and torque of my Yamaha drive are greatest at lower/mid range cadences and gently tail off as my cadence increases, encouraging me to change into a higher gear at a lower cadence than I would on my non assisted mountain bike.

However that very controllable instantly available low end torque make it a very capable bike in demanding off road situations. I think that if you gently challenge yourself you will be surprised how capable your cube will be off road and how much fun it is once you get the hang of it.

I did test ride the Bosch system directly against the Yamaha off road back in 2015 on a demo day and preferred the instantly available power of the Yamaha system in the hilly off road conditions of the demo day. If I had ridden them both on the road I might have then noticed that the Bosch system supported higher cadences which is more like the way you ride a non assisted bike. I also paid £1750 for my Haibike sduro back in 2015. I do not regret it for a second as riding to work has proved to be an excellent decision and it is now only very occasionally that I take the car instead.

 

[shep]

George

That is very interesting what you say, because the Yamaha was my first choice, and that is only because after having nearly 30 Japanese motorbikes over the last 36 years, and predominantly driving Japanese cars, i think that the Japs are master engineers, as touch wood i have never had any problems at all with any of them. So Yamaha was definitely my default purchase over Bosch. However the Cube with the Bosch CX was such a good deal.

As regards Cadence, the problem with the Panasonic crank drive 26V system is that when you come to a hill and start or want to put in some effort yourself, the drive tails off in power as the cadence naturally rises. If you then slow down the cadence the power comes back in strongly. So you end up going up the hills either in a far higher gear than you would normally do, or in a lower gear at a slower speed. I feel that this must be quite wasteful of battery power, because it does not allow you to put in the effort yourself at a suitable cadence,you have to push the pedals at the lower cadence that it wants and that cannot be that good for your knees. However the assistance is strong at these lower cadences, it just does not feel the natural way to cycle.

With the Bosch CX it was really like riding a normal bike, but having legs like Chris Froome. So i put it in the gear i wanted and just cycled normally at the cadence that i wanted and liked, and it was providing lots of smooth assistance everywhere up to the electric bike speed limit. What i also noticed is that because i was also putting in far more effort but the effort i actually wanted to put in, i was using a lower power assistance level than with the Panasonic to achieve the same result.

I guess it is just the constant move forward of technology with the Panasonic 26v system being much older. However if you want to waft along at lower speeds in near silence ( Noticeably quieter than the Bosch) with very good hill climbing ability, the Panasonic is just great, and really suits the Dutch bike style of riding, which is why we will keep the Agattus

 

[georgehenry]

At the time I bought my Haibike sduro hard seven it was the cheapest Haibike in the range and that was the first year that they had offered the Yamaha drive.

The other bike I seriously considered was the Bosch drive xduro hard tail. At that time there was quite a difference in price between the two, £600 I think.

I also had owned a number of Japanese motorcycles myself including the seminal DT175mx back in the late 70's and probably had a reverse prejudice vis-a-vis BMW German bikes compared with the Japanese bikes.

I think this influenced my choice as despite the Haibike Yamaha being so much cheaper and a new drive with no track record here I was very confident that the engineering behind it would be every bit as sound as the Bosch drive. It may well be that when I wear it out, and I am trying hard to do that having covered 6814 miles on it as of my return trip from work last night, I might get over my prejudice and try a Bosch drive bike.

I have had an interesting and very rewarding ownership journey on the sDuro hard seven and enjoyed keeping a record of it on this forum in the reviews section if you ever get a chance to have a read of it, although I might have blathered on a bit at times.

All mechanical devices have their foibles and I have enjoyed understanding those that I need to keep an eye on my Haibike and have found this forum an excellent resource of other peoples experiences and expertise.

 

[Trevormonty]

The new yamaha PWX drives support high cadence upto 120rpm same as Bosch.

 

[georgehenry]

I still really like my Yamaha. I love the 0 cadence assistance and the fine control and sheer power and torque at almost no cadence that is available if you need it off road where the higher cadences is really of no consequence. When I bought my bike in 2015 the Yamaha motor on paper was more powerful than the equivalent Bosch.

Competition in any field is a good thing and I think that the introduction of the cheaper Yamaha drive system by Haibike may have kept Bosch on their toes and in some part led to the improvements they have made to their motors.

From a consumers perspective the more quality motor manufacturers competing for business the better.

It was on my 10 mile B road return ride home that I started to notice that it was better to change up to the next gear rather than spin faster as you might on an unassisted bike.

My bike is de-restricted, not so I can go as quickly as possible but to avoid that hitting a wall feeling you get at the legal cut off speed.

I only use the lowest eco level of assistance on the road on anything other than steep up hill gradients and turn it off on the downhills but with me adding plenty of effort find myself travelling at around 20 mph to no more than 26 mph and generally around 20 mph to 23 mph. Even in eco I can climb lower gradient hills at 20 mph in eco in gear 8 with me working away hard at the pedals, just the way I like it.

Once I understood how the power dropped away at higher cadences I changed the gearing to give me a wide spread and found that a 12/36 9 speed rear cassette with a 42 tooth chain ring worked best for me allowing me to pedal up to 26 mph and still have a low enough bottom gear to climb difficult and technical single track hills off road.

After that it has been mile after mile of fun fun fun with often an 18 mile almost completely off road ride to work and a 10 mile fast road ride home using the middle assistance level to get me quickly up and over the steeper hills I encounter. On one steep long hill in middle assistance I can maintain no less than 14 miles an hour and up to 16 mph again with me adding plenty of effort.

 

[John5001]

Well, today i ordered a 2017 Cube Reaction Hybrid HPA 500 Pro ( That rolls off the tongue easily) in the grey and blue colour collecting next Friday, this has the Bosch Performance Line CX Motor. I bought the bike from Adam the manager of Hargroves Cycles in Fareham, Really lovely guy to deal with. I shopped around quite a bit, he gave me a really good deal that i am very happy with and they are also very local to me. They are going to fit the bike with a rear rack and also some Cateyes LED lights. I stumped up a bit extra to have the 500w battery

I am going to take the bike down to La Rochelle in September via the La Francette cycle route and will do about 50 to 60 miles a day.

I looked carefully at a Haibike which i liked very much, but i just felt that the deal i was given and the slightly higher spec of the Cube made this the correct buy.

I have a Kalkhoff Agattu and so does my wife, they are very well used !!!! will keep hold of these for the time being.

Certainly looks a nice bike. Made me wonder about this compared to Haibike trail 30 which is about 1k more expensive. Would you know the range?