Shimano Alfine option

[eddieo]

Pardon my cynicism Tony but he runs into trouble.....goes silent and there you are. if I could be bothered to quote what I find objectionable about your mates postings it would take some time....

I hope that most of us are not that naive, and can see what is going on here, a manufacturer, with all the bias that implies, attempting to promote his own wares, with cheap point scoring, and comparisons that dont hold up to any kind of real life scrutiny.

I live in the real world, one without a full workshop or the skills or the inclination that go with them......So to discuss issues like support, warranty, and if that warranty it is transferable /resale value/reliability and how the hell you get a bike fixed when distributor is in the back of beyond.......Yes just inconsequential concerns like that.

looking at 2 bikes on a pedestal means nothing...its kids stuff! lol. when the likes of Mussels and other forum members commute/ride bikes into the ground and report back, that is a much more worthwhile comparison.

the end

 

[alex_h]

I realyy doubt your credibility here Eddie. You as W user obviously stay on the one W-side and you are right as it's a decent brand but you can't just tell someone to fu.. off and go away from this forum.

Even if Wai Won promotes his bikes by comparing them to the other brands then it's nothing wrong with it. Many consumers do not have a bloody clue what bits are better than other so frankly his informative posts are very good cos he tells us what's the difference.

Listen Chief you carry on what you've been doing

Alex

 

[lemmy]

Anyone is allowed to post here, boring or not. No-one has to read those posts.

Anyone is allowed to criticize those posts for being boring or for being blatant marketing.

In my book, being boring is not a cultural problem, some people are boring.

The chief, if he could cut his posts to a couple of paragraphs, tone down the marketing and learn that in England hectoring does not play well, would be most welcome. As it is, he can still post but will be subject to criticism. He doesn't sound like a shrinking violet to me and I don't think he needs to be demeaned by 'defence' here. I'm sure he can look after himself.

And yes, I know, I can be criticized as boring too

 

[flecc]

I hope that most of us are not that naive,

I live in the real world, one without a full workshop or the skills or the inclination that go with them......So to discuss issues like support, warranty, and if that warranty it is transferable /resale value/reliability and how the hell you get a bike fixed when distributor is in the back of beyond.......Yes just inconsequential concerns like that.

I'm anything but naive Eddie.

Your concerns are not inconsequential of course, they are important to you and many others, but I think you go a bit too far in your criticisms and bias.

Large numbers of forum members were commuting with eZee models years before Wisper sales took off, and they still do, reporting just as favourably as current Wisper owners. That's why in the "What make of electric bike do you own", eZee have the number one position and largest share of any make with 91, Wisper not even listed since hardly anyone owned one when that thread was launched. The Wispers are within the "Others" heading as part of that 210 total, so probably about the same as eZee now.

Both are fine makes of bike and probably the best hub motor buys on the UK market, but partly for differing reasons. Those for whom local support is important are best served by Wisper. Those for whom local support is not so important may well prefer the features from eZee. Yet others are better served by the Panasonic system bikes which barely need any support. Different but equal, horses for courses.

I like all three, each for it's special qualities, Wisper for it's long range with fairly high power, eZee for it's very high power motors which give more help to my ageing legs, the Panasonic powered bikes for their unfailing reliability and adaptability to any circumstance. Currently I'm most interested in the potential of the Bosch rival to Panasonic when it arrives.

So as well as not naive, I'm not biased either.
.

 

[eddieo]

Fine, that makes sense

Neither am I biased, just waiting for the ideal bike that is all.....whoever builds it!

Hopefully before regs change, as I realised after these 4 days cycling in Norfolk I sometimes need a throttle on return journeys

nice to see Bosch have taken note of my battery placement requirements.....you just don't know who is watching do you!

 

[flecc]

Neither am I biased, just waiting for the ideal bike that is all.....whoever builds it!

Same here!

Hopefully before regs change, as I realised after these 4 days cycling in Norfolk I sometimes need a throttle on return journeys

Again the same here, though I can live without a throttle on the Panasonic bikes. Existing hub motor bikes need them more in my view, but that might change as the new regs force more development.

nice to see Bosch have taken note of my battery placement requirements.....you just don't know who is watching do you!

Oh I think this is a widespread view Eddie, as e-bikes have attracted the interest of more regular cyclists the dislike of rear of seat tube and carrier batteries has become more common. Forward of seat tube seems to make much more sense, it's empty space at present.
.

 

[Alex728]

The chief, if he could cut his posts to a couple of paragraphs, tone down the marketing and learn that in England hectoring does not play well, would be most welcome. As it is, he can still post but will be subject to criticism. He doesn't sound like a shrinking violet to me and I don't think he needs to be demeaned by 'defence' here. I'm sure he can look after himself.

I think age makes a difference as well. Frankie Xu is as Chinese as Wai Won Ching and both are more so than myself (as I am part Indian as well and born in SE London ) but if you look at Frankie's comments he takes a much more conciliatory tone with readers (and potential customers!). I believe Frankie is in his 20s or early 30s (and went up to Uni in London?)

In fact Frankie was and still is very shy to openly advertise his bikes, which look like decent machines at the lower price points!

That said I've also seen American engineers openly argue with potential customers on other forums to plug employers their products so it might just be a British thing not to do this.

 

[flecc]

so it might just be a British thing not to do this.

As used to be said in the past, "It's just not cricket".
.

 

[Tex]

As used to be said in the past, "It's just not cricket".
.

Wisper v's eZee: The New Ashes! Who willtake the role of those cheating Poms?

 

[Chief eZee Power]

competition

Yesterday, I got my new issue of The Economist May 15th-21st 2010, I subscribed for the past 30 years. Front cover is of course the latest news on Britain's, with that 2 gentleman waving in front of 10 Downing St., and on the back cover is an advertisement taken by Oracle showing the difference of their Sun Sparc computer vs IBM. If they just state the speed of their computer it would not have strike the point, but they clearly stated in bold that it is 7X faster, while IBM consumed 6X more energy. I don't think they are doing anything wrong to advertise that.

What I wrote in the forum, was a table showing the specs or components, and I also mentioned that for those who does not instantly understand what it is about they should try test ride the bikes or seek the advise of their LBS.
The data I have is extracted from the brochures or website, not neccessarily the latest.

Shimano, Sram, and etc, spend huge efforts in engineering and research and manufacturing and quality controls in the face of severe competition. It is nonsense that the low end components they have perform as well as their very high ends, there is a very big difference, at least to those who knows their stuffs.

We fit various brands of components and various grades of components within the same brand or supplier. Example, we use lower cost Tektro disc brakes for the US market ( for a lower price too ofcourse ) and Shimano disc brakes for the EU market. We do this day in and day out and test ride every bike, the difference in performance is very clear to us, and even the ease of fitting them in is very clear to us.

I have tremendous work load and I dont' have much energy left and time to read and write on this forum, some days or even weeks I would not touch it, it is not that I chicken out and go silent.

Just another reminder, the Samsung battery pack 37V10Ah I offered on the Alfine option with 2 years warranty is the same battery that is on the Bionx, same cells, same pack manufacturer.

Cells manufacturers give only 12 months warranty, I don't tell them that " Why, is it going to be dead in 13 !".

W W Ching

 

[Alex728]

and on the back cover is an advertisement taken by Oracle showing the difference of their Sun Sparc computer vs IBM. If they just state the speed of their computer it would not have strike the point, but they clearly stated in bold that it is 7X faster, while IBM consumed 6X more energy. I don't think they are doing anything wrong to advertise that.

no, but Sun (which was once a company in its own right) is mounting these aggressive campaigns because it lost a load of market share due to focusing on technology rather than business/finance during a recession (the one we had 10 years ago), which dropped their customer service and led to a glut of second-hand hardware on the open market (which was and i guess still is popular with techies who can rebuild it, but not as accessible to the everyday businessperson).

So, it laid off loads of people and had to be taken over by Oracle, whilst IBM sticking to "old ways and technologies" kept its customer base. American IT engineers sometimes say "no one got fired for buying IBM".

And here in the UK people are much more cynical about advertisers and manufacturers as its only recently many are starting to deliver acceptable customer service, and if a product doesn't deliver nowadays they will shout about it to all who can hear.

Wisper had to deal with a lot of criticisms due to various reliability issues with earlier bikes, but all of these had been addressed by 2009.

In fact had their been a equally responsive UK Ezee dealer a year or two ago I might even have bought an Ezee!

And although nationality is no issue, distance still is. David from Wisper gives out a UK telephone number for queries as well as email addresses of British technicians. I know you have done the same at least with emails, but sometimes it takes longer for messages to get through to other countries, even when I telephone my mum ( who returned to Kuala Lumpur in 2007) the VOIP circuit is not always reliable!

If you are busy, why not delegate some answering of queries to Ken and his generation? I too work for an Asian family business in the UK and it is what we do when the business grows...Also, the younger generation are sometimes more used to multicultural societies (having grown up in one since birth) and might be able to integrate better when dealing with those in other countries.

you want people to use their ebikes as much as possible to be better to the environment. I wholly agree - but to do this means customer service must be as quick and effective as possible when things go wrong with them, with people having a minmum of downtime before they are back on the road. I was reading the website of a Dutch bike shop where they promised to fix all bikes (ebikes and normal ones) the same day!

 

[jkirkebo]

Ezee bikes have appalling resale value right now, at this time, not 2 or3 years ago......So resale does not matter? to you maybe.......

I suspect it doesn't matter to quite a lot of us. I haven't sold a used bike in my life and I never plan to. I buy a bike, use it, fix it myself when something breaks and upgrade it if I feel the need for better parts (like I upgraded to hydraulic disc brakes on my current bike and considering getting a N360 rear hub).

When it's not worth fixing (like a broken frame) or upgrading anymore, I take off the still usable parts and dump the rest.

Hmmm, that's exactly what I do with my computers too! Still haven't sold a used one, though I've given a couple away for free...

 

[Alex728]

When it's not worth fixing (like a broken frame) or upgrading anymore, I take off the still usable parts and dump the rest.

exactly what people were doing with the Sun computers! they glutted the market due to loads of failed businesses/and overambitious corporate IT projects in the late 90s/early 2000s.. nearly bought a few myself, compared to their original costs they were a bargain - but despite being an experienced IT tech myself I simply didn't have the unix/Linux knowledge at the time to warrant the costs/effort!

Getting back to the e-bikes, this is the issue is in fact similar. Lots of people (perhaps the majority of the regular posters?) on this forum are very intelligent engineering types. but not everyone and for those they want a bike which is reliable and holds its resale value. At present an Ezee is very much the equivalent of the Sun - good components and technologically innovative, but formerly held back by customer service and reliability issues.

Perhaps in a few years time Ezee can get there but they need to work hard to rebuild the brand. A bit like how Singapore transformed itself from a third world nation to one of the most advanced in SE Asia in the era after world War II / Japanese occupation and then independence from Britain..

 

[lemmy]

n
you want people to use their ebikes as much as possible to be better to the environment. I wholly agree - but to do this means customer service must be as quick and effective as possible when things go wrong with them

I find it hard to understand that healthy, intelligent young people are being brought up to believe that the rudimentary servicing and repair needs of a bicycle need a specialist to carry them out.

A while ago, my (well educated) nephew was dazzled when I showed him how to correct the chain skipping derailleur on his bike. It had saved him £20 in his LBS. It required the trial and error of moving an adjusting knob a quarter turn at a time until it didn't skip. These are Shimano indexed gears!

Where do people get the money to pay someone to do the simplest of tasks for them? Are we all rich now?

Maybe I'll set up a training facility at £25 per hour stop show people how to open a door, switch on (day 1) and switch off (day 2) a lightbulb.

Maybe an advanced section, how to lock a door. Thinking of that, here is the notice on the locker doors of my gym. It is obviously even more difficult than I think

 

[Alex728]

I find it hard to understand that healthy, intelligent young people are being brought up to believe that the rudimentary servicing and repair needs of a bicycle need a specialist to carry them out.

I agree, but the issues I've encountered with ebikes and also seen related on here relate more to quality issues of specialist components (pedelec sensors, brake levers with switches, throttles etc) than the traditional bike components themselves. Usually the only solution is swapping the defective component, which of course requires the dealer to have timely access to stock...

 

[flecc]

A bit like how Singapore transformed itself from a third world nation to one of the most advanced in SE Asia in the era after world War II / Japanese occupation and then independence from Britain..

Ironically I think Wai Won is from Singapore. . He'll correct me if I'm wrong.

Usually the only solution is swapping the defective component, which of course requires the dealer to have timely access to stock...

Whatever else is said about them, the eZee agents have stocked a very complete range of spares. I've never caught them out and had parts sent first class post by return.
.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Out of the country

Hi Guys

For those who could give a damn. I have not been out of the country, I have been here in Sevenoaks slaving away on the Wisper 2011 range, the DaaHub by Wisper kit, a new brochure and of course BEBA.

BEBA has now held it's general all comers meeting and I am delighted to report that without exception everyone who attended liked what we are doing and have shown a willingness to become involved. We will announce all the new members later this week or early next but they will hopefully include (in no particular order) 50 Cycles (Kalkhoff), Oxygen, Powabyke, Go-Cycle, Battery Bike, Holcros Cycles, Cytronex, Velospeed, Juicy bikes, Inno-cycle, Greased lightening, Lean Machines, Bike republic, Powarider, Valley Scooters and last but not least Nexxtdrive. Adding this illustrious list to On Bike (Ezee and E Motion), E Bikes Direct (Gepida) Urban Mover, Ultra Motor and Wisper, BEBA will now be able to start speaking on behalf of more than a small fraction of the industry. We still need a lot more members so if anyone would like to apply please email me and I will send an application form by return.

I have been reading this thread with interest and other comments made by the Chief. On one hand I believe I should be standing my ground and responding but I have decided just to leave matters well alone. I do hope that it is not being seen as a sign of weakness!! Of course Andy from On-Bike and I are great buddies and as you all know the On Bike guys are BEBA members representing Ezee so at least here in the UK we are not at each others throats!

I do love this business!

All the best

David

 

[flecc]

Congratulations on this major expansion of BEBA membership David, I was always confident it would happen and the doubters proved wrong.
.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Congratulations on this major expansion of BEBA membership David, I was always confident it would happen and the doubters proved wrong.
.

Thanks Flecc, due to the positive moves from these guys we are now able to start really moving. Our first event next month is for members to bring their bikes to Black Rod's garden at the Palace of Westminster to enable MP's to have a go and understand what pedelecs are all about. We are also looking to put on a come and try event in London in May/June 2011.

We also had talks with ACT yesterday in London to discuss how we can get more electric bikes into IBD's.

Best regards

David