Which bikes are now the best ?

[mitty]

Hello everbody, great forum, I have been researching electric bikes for the last 4 months with the idea of buying my wife and myself high quality electric bikes as where we live we could cut out 90% of local car journeys. We live in small town in cornwall close to most ammenities, After looking at the bikes on the market I decided that the Giant twist lite was the best way to go ! But now that giant have gone over to hub motors I am looking for better "off the shelf" options. I would like to know if anyone has ridden either the swizzbee 50cc or the biketech flyer bikes as they sound to me like the best users of power from an electric motor. I would like to be able to tow a kidddy trailer (probably a chariot) with the new bikes as we have 2 kids (3 and 5 years old) I am hoping to be able to get the bikes through the cycle to work scheme which is why I'm looking at the higher end of the market. I would reallyy appreciate any help with my quest/questions.
Are there any other good bike companies using a crank drive ?
How does the swizzbee really work?
best battery options ?
towing kids in hilly areas?
where to buy in UK ?
Has anybody heard about the new s series from biketech ?
Has anybody bought their bike through the cycle to work scheme ?

cheers Mitty

 

[flecc]

I've no personal experience of the Swizzbee, Swiss Flyer, or Biketech Flyer, but the difficulty of getting information about these does raise a question mark over how much support you'd have in the UK if there was trouble with any of the sophisticated systems involved. The quality is undoubtedly high, but even the best can fail at times.

The Swizzbee's clever system has the motor driving one part of an epicyclic system, with the pedals driving another part. The sum of the two applied powers drives the bike wheel, an ingenious solution to sharing two power sources in infinitely variable proportions.

There are no mainstream crank drive bikes on our market now, following the sad loss of the old Twist series.

Your problem is no doubt those Cornish hills in conjunction with towing. The only bike I've found that does a good job with those requirements in my North Downs hilly area is the eZee Quando II, but it is a single speed folder so doesn't give a full cycling experience. However, you can read of my experience of it's hill climbing and towing capabilities here.

Other members have used the Bike to Work scheme and can advise on that.
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[mitty]

Hi flecc, thanks for the info, Do you expect anybody to bring a quality crank drive to the UK market soon ? apart from AtoB can you reccomend any other good resources for electric bikes ? If I am not to worried about a really high top speed (i,e towing kids etc.) are there any other bikes or kits I should consider for the cornish roads ?

thanks again Mitty

 

[Miles]

Something like this, perhaps? Cleverchimp

Someone in Dorset has one of these - have a look at the blog...

 

[ITSPETEINIT]

Someone in Dorset has a Cleverchimp?

Something like this, perhaps? Cleverchimp

Someone in Dorset has one of these - have a look at the blog...

Are you sure it's not Portand, Oregon, USA
Peter

 

[Miles]

"We arrived yesterday on a redeye flight. Our greasy head-achey exhaustion was lightened by Paul’s welcome. Paul’s got the UK’s only Stokemonkey so far, in Dorset. He traveled two hundred miles to meet us at our hotel, arriving by Brompton with his 18-month old son Jo in a backpack. He came bearing gifts from his small farmstead: four small loaves of bread, a hard sausage from his pigs, a large bottle of hard cider from his apple trees, and a round of cheddar."

Ref: Cleverchimp blog

 

[mitty]

Thanks miles, I did come across this before and it does look cool,not quite sure how safe it is with my kids on the back ! but I really was looking for bicycle and seperate trailer solution, and also I not sure if it would qualify for the tax break of the cycle to work scheme.I have seen one without a motor around town so I might try and get a test ride !
I have found a importer http://www.vitaelectric.co.uk/ for both biketech and swizzbee in london and they say all their bikes qualify for the cycle to work scheme 40 to 50% off !
I will still try and find out a bit more about the bikes and also give them a test ride, the shop is in Hamstead which is about as hilly as my home town.

thanks for the help mitty

 

[flecc]

Hi flecc, thanks for the info, Do you expect anybody to bring a quality crank drive to the UK market soon ? apart from AtoB can you reccomend any other good resources for electric bikes ? If I am not to worried about a really high top speed (i,e towing kids etc.) are there any other bikes or kits I should consider for the cornish roads ?

thanks again Mitty

No-one is likely to bring one out I'm afraid Mitty, the market for quality bikes is too small to justify the investment. Giant reputedly only sold 20,000 of the Twist series worldwide over six years, and almost certainly lost money overall, hence them discontinuing it. I have broached this subject with other manufacturers, but in each case it's a firm no.

The only complete bike solutions are the more powerful hub motor bikes like those from eZee in particular, The best climbers they have are the Quando that I've mentioned, and the Chopper which has the motor and rider specifically geared for hill climbing ability. Wiith a seven speed hub gear and a powerful motor, it will climb just about anything and be a good tow bike, but it only powers to about 13 mph, though you can pedal much faster if you wish of course. It also has 20" wheels so is most suitable for shorter and medium height riders.

There are some fairly powerful kit motors, some are hub, but there's others like the Currie Electrodrive which drives the back wheel via the spokes, though it can get in the way of some trailer hitches. The one Miles has mentioned must be used with the Xtracycle frame extension, and I'm not too sure how good that might be with a trailer attached due to possible flexing, but it's certainly powerful enough and drives through the gears of course. All add-on motors have some compromises though.

There is a Swiss Flyer type that uses the Panasonic unit that the Twist uses, and I'll try to find a link to that for you, but again, support might be a problem, and if you're going that route, you might just as well buy one of the remaining Twist series. The money you'd save buying a Twist instead of a Flyer would pay for two complete replacement power units, thus taking care of any possible support problems.
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[mitty]

Can you still get the giant twist in the uk, I asked around a while back with no joy. I know this has probably been covered but which is the best gearing solution for the twist considering my need to tow a trailer in hilly areas ?
Would I geat the same or better assistance from a twist/flyer/swizzbee than a geared hub motor on a lighter MTB like the bigger heinzmans or puma from team hybrid ?
I prefer the idea of getting bikes which had been designed around the electrical assistance but if there was a much better solution through a kit, as long as it still qualified for tax break I might be tempted

cheers Mitty

P.S I found a foreign site with the specs for all the biketech flyers at NewRide

 

[mitty]

Hi I didn't know there was a limit on the scheme, I thought as long as you used the bike to get to work and the employer would front the cash you could by any bike ?
thanks for the reply Mitty

 

[ITSPETEINIT]

There's a co-incidence!

"We arrived yesterday on a redeye flight. Our greasy head-achey exhaustion was lightened by Paul’s welcome. Paul’s got the UK’s only Stokemonkey so far, in Dorset. He traveled two hundred miles to meet us at our hotel, arriving by Brompton with his 18-month old son Jo in a backpack. He came bearing gifts from his small farmstead: four small loaves of bread, a hard sausage from his pigs, a large bottle of hard cider from his apple trees, and a round of cheddar."

Ref: Cleverchimp blog

See my post above.
Quote from Cleverchimp blog:
"Clever Cycles LLC will open for business in Portland, Oregon in early 2007, supplying Dutch Bakfietsen for sales, service, and rentals".

There's a coincidence ! or was it contrived?
Peter

 

[Miles]

Department for Transport - Cycle to Work Scheme Implementation Guidance

 

[flecc]

I know there's quite a few in the USA, and I believe in France as well, but the import and carriage costs could rule those out. I believe there's still the odd Comfort version around in the UK, and probably some Twists, since many smaller dealers aren't aware there's a tail end demand. The standard gearing is best all round, but if you found the hills too much, it's simple for a dealer to swap the rear sprocket for one with one or two more teeth to lower the gearing. I cope in my hilly area with a Twist geared UP by two teeth despite towing a heavy trailer, but most of my hills don't match the worst that Cornwall has, though I do climb 14% (1 in 7) with that outfit.

If you're able to find out the gradients of the hills that you're likely to climb with the trailer Mitty, that would be a great help in identifying bikes that will do your job.

The high powered Heinzmann versions like the 700 watt will certainly do the job, but they are illegal on UK roads of course, and also have the disadvantage of greatly reduced range. You might be lucky to reach 10 miles on one of those, and it could be a lot less in hilly conditions. The same goes for all the other very high power types on the market, and support is also questionable with these other makes. The types on offer seem to change all the time on a "flavour of the month basis".
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[mitty]

I came across this on the cyclescheme website.

What happens when employees want bikes costing over ?1000?
Your employer needs to apply for an individual consumer credit licence which costs £275, last for 5 years and takes around six weeks to come through.
However, if your employer has decided to limit bike sales to £1000 (retail price including VAT) you can buy safety equipment in excess of this amount and pay the surplus directly to the bike shop who will make the quote out for exactly £1000.
Please note that any excess amount spent on safety equipment is not eligible for tax relief and will fall outside of the salary sacrifice scheme.

does this mean I might be able to get a bike which retails at more than £1000 ?
It would be good to clear this up as it will have a big effect on my chioce of bikes,

cheers Mitty

 

[nigel]

Nigel

Hi all
i wonder if ezee have any future plans to bring a electric bike out that weighs less then 20 kilos at the moment most of there bikes seem to be between 20kilos and 30 kilos as some readers know i have a torq which i love but it is still to heavy to really enjoy with power off so come ezee give us a bike under 20 kilos. nigel.

 

[ITSPETEINIT]

Audax or MTB

Hi all
i wonder if ezee have any future plans to bring a electric bike out that weighs less then 20 kilos at the moment most of there bikes seem to be between 20kilos and 30 kilos as some readers know i have a torq which i love but it is still to heavy to really enjoy with power off so come ezee give us a bike under 20 kilos. nigel.

I wonder if an Audax type bike would hold together with that motor pulling it along. Perhaps a carrier and mudguards are not essential for enjoyable biking but I like my creature comforts with me out there in the countryside.
Then take a look at the Tour de France lookalikes costing hundreds more just to shed a few lbs, even a few ounzes. Most folk can do that by missing a dinner or two and save money as well. Below 20 kilos would probably price them out of their market (that one with 1,500,000,000 people in it).

It's a bit like sex for the hoi-poloi: according to the upper classes "it's too good for them". (but not for the parents of those 1,500,000,000 folk) .
Peter

 

[flecc]

Hi all
i wonder if ezee have any future plans to bring a electric bike out that weighs less then 20 kilos at the moment most of there bikes seem to be between 20kilos and 30 kilos as some readers know i have a torq which i love but it is still to heavy to really enjoy with power off so come ezee give us a bike under 20 kilos. nigel.

It's not just weight Nigel, there's barely two kilos between the Twist and the Torq, but as you now know, the Twist was far easier to ride as a normal bike.

The sad fact is that no hub motor bike will be all that easy to pedal. Although a freewheel disconnects the motor, there's still the drag of the orbital gears which are always engaged with the hub shell. At walking speed that's barely detectable, but it increases with speed, and at 15 mph is very real.

In fact the Torq is one of the best bikes for low drag, but if you were to take out the front wheel and replace it with a normal 700C wheel, it would become much easier to pedal. Then replace the tyres with smaller profile slimmer types at higher pressures, and the Torq would be a very rideable normal bike, even with the battery still in.
.

 

[flecc]

Further to my outline explanation Mitty, here's two links showing the principle and actual implementation of the Swizzbee drive system:

esp@cenet document view

esp@cenet document view
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[nigel]

Nigel

Ok flecc
is it not possibile for a hub not to have any drag that would be the way to go then maybe weight would not be such an issue for me. Looks like i be waiting for some time then. NIGEL

 

[flecc]

For it to have virtually no drag Nigel, the toothed ring gear that's attached to the hub shell would have to be detached and acting on the hub in freewheel fashion. That could only happen if it had much more structural strength, and that in turn would mean a much bigger hub shell and considerably more weight.

Therefore it would lose much more than it gained.

We've just got to be content with what we have, since it's not commercially viable to supply us with crank drive systems on bikes. Good systems cost too much, since they would also need completely new gear systems to transmit the power that today's customers want.

There is a way we can have a 20 kilo Torq, just go on a diet and lose 4 kilos! I could certainly do with doing that!
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