Bonzo Banana

Good luck to you and I really hope you continue to enjoy cycling whatever nonsense rules the government sets. Throttles are the default standard for controlling ebike power in most of the world for good reason across Asia, Africa, Americas etc. It's no surprise many ebikes from China have throttles already fitted because its probably madness to them that we don't use them in Europe. Full control of power at all times makes complete sense you use as little or as much as you want when you need it. It's fantastic for new unfit cyclists, elderly and disabled exactly the type of people that need to get onto ebikes if possible. I remember a review of a basic Halfords ebike which was completely legal but gave full power shortly after rotating the crank, the delay between turning the crank and getting full power was inconsistent and managing such power was difficult plus of course full power like that put more strain on what was already a low capacity battery. Once you set off and continue to 15.5mph the battery was discharging even if you didn't need it and then of course cuts off. It was unsafe as pointed out by the reviewer and definitely would shorten the life of the battery pack and reduce the range. A unsafe and poor design choice forced on ebikes due to lack of throttle options due to moronic legislation that we should never have been adopted. However there seems to be a weird mentality from some people that will support the EU at all times as a political choice rather than a realistic practical viewpoint. I see it all the time, they cannot explain their choice, they are completely irrational people but somehow they have to support the EU even when the legislation is terrible. However you see many countries of Europe where throttle ebikes are commonly used and openly used they just ignore the legislation. Bulgaria is one that comes to mind. Sometimes legislation is not in the interest of people and best ignored and that is certainly the case for banning throttles. I personally don't even know why the cut off speed is 15.5mph it seems madness to me. The 20mph speed is common on many urban uk roads and would be the sensible option for the UK. You can easily cycle faster than 20mph on flats or downhill anyway without motor assistance. It would make sense to tie up ebike assistance with the urban 20mph limit but instead we have this 15.5mph nonsense. Also why are we still calling all ebikes 250W it makes no sense. The crappiest weakest ebikes and ultra powerful hill climbing e-mountain bikes are still all called 250W its utter madness. We are out of the EU now so should start using sensible accurate legislation and certification which gives a clear indication of true wattage like the US certification. We shouldn't be pretending a ebike using over 1000W is a 250W motor. The UK just needs to have sensible accurate non-manipulative certification for UK cyclists. Technical accurate but providing maximum safety standards. Really just an improvement of the UK certification before the EU certification where throttles were completely legal but a change to wattage and a 20mph assistance speed. I'm not saying the wattage needs to change in real terms just a 1000W ebike is actually called a 1000W ebike but still legal to use although I can see the case for a 750W maximum true wattage but that would make many so called 250W legal ebikes illegal afterwards.

People buy BMW or Audi cars that are unreliable and have very expensive repairs. Warranty direct used to do reliability comparisons because they had charts for which cars they warranted had high failure rates and expensive repairs. If you buy a ebike for 6,000 euros your mindset for servicing and repair costs is obviously going to accept higher bills. Even though mid-drive ebikes are a minority of ebikes sold in most countries they seem to dominate repair threads on forums. However again there is nothing difficult to understand you simply have to look at their complexity and huge number of potential failure points. A motor with 20 sealed bearings, nylon cogs and a belt that could stretch is obviously more complicated and then you have the controller board right down at the bottom bracket with the risk of water ingress and damage plus of course its all proprietary. Just putting so much power through the drivetrain means additional safety issues like chain snaps which are common on mid-drive ebikes. Of course though this doesn't mean all such ebikes fail and many don't provide good service but where do you go with them. When the motor does fail and you have a huge bill for replacement what do you do with the ebike? Do you invest that money into a heavily worn ebike with a end of life battery? Same issue if the frame fatigues and fails or you simply have an accident and the frame is damaged, it is specifically designed for the motor system and a replacement if available would be hugely expensive. These ebikes seem to reach end of life sooner than cheap hub motor ebikes which can be repaired more easily or even converted to a normal ebike or maybe have a new ebike kit fitted. I just hate this sector of the ebike market with high cost disposable ebikes. https://web.archive.org/web/20210430103028/https://www.reliabilityindex.com/manufacturer

I don't know much about the brand admittedly but if they are using mainly mid-drive motors I don't see how they can be that reliable or easy to maintain. Surely very proprietary with expensive parts and repairs only allowed through dealerships who probably have to send parts away. I'm writing this from memory so apologies if I've got it completely wrong but I thought the Birdy folding bike was one of their products and that was a very unreliable folding bike with many frame failures. It was made for them by a factory in Taiwan and at least the first version was not well engineered at all. Another overly complex design with a high failure rate. So at least for that model definitely not incredibly well built and definitely went wrong and didn't last forever. The Birdy is made in Taiwan so can we assume most of their bike frames and forks at least are sourced from Asia and if so the factory used would surely dictate manufacturing quality. I'm not knocking Suntour forks but I wouldn't say they are premium quality I would say OK quality and just because they are fitted to a premium brand doesn't make them magically better than the same fork fitted to a much cheaper ebike.

Mid drive motors aren't quality, they are incredibly complex with a high failure rate and they put all their power through the drivetrain so that wears down very quickly compared to hub motors which extend the life of drivetrains because they work in parallel. Then you have the proprietary nature of many German ebikes which means failure of the battery, motor or frame can make them uneconomic to repair if any one part fails. One of the reasons hub motor ebikes are so cheap is their reliability and lack of warranty repairs. It's simpler technology and if the ebike fails repairing them is more economic as parts like the controller are separate. There are loads of bikes with disc brakes in the UK some incredibly cheap, disc brakes are not an expensive option nowadays. The Brompton being an exception because caliper brakes work better and are more compact for such a tiny bike. A Brose mid-drive motor below, lots of bearings, a belt, plastic/nylon cogs etc. A huge number of failure points. It's frankly rubbish technology that we never needed. Hub motors provide the most environmentally friendly option for road based ebikes. The mid-drive market for ebikes in the world is absolutely tiny compared to hub motors, hub motors dominate with over 95% of worldwide sales and I totally accept that is related to price. Overly complex unreliable premium products is not what the world needs.

I'd go with most over-priced myself. I've never seen one of their ebikes out and about but did see one in a showroom and it was incredibly expensive but there was no obvious reason why it was so expensive looking at the components fitted. At first I thought it would have some great components due to its pricing but it was a fairly cheap Suntour fork. Absolutely no way they are huge sellers surely, quite a niche brand I would guess even in Germany. Germany has 600,000 bicycle thefts a year and probably many more than that go unreported its a huge problem where as about 80,000 are stolen in the UK per year but again many thefts go unreported. I only mention that as looking at figures Germany is slowly reducing how much it spends on new bikes and ebikes which makes me think theft is a huge factor in that although the German economy is not great at the moment with some decline. Rental prices for housing are unbelievably high so a lot of Germans rely on very high wages which the economy is struggling to continue generating now. Lower cost ebikes from China even with high tariffs are getting higher sales in Germany and now the UK has stopped ebike tariffs from China for non-folding ebikes surely that is really going to make European ebikes struggle to sell over here because they will be even less competitive. Surely there will be a big decline in ebike sales from assembly plants in Europe and I suspect companies like Halfords will adapt quickly and stop using ebike assembly plants in Europe and instead buy fully built ebikes from Asia.

I enjoy watching the Electroheads channel on youtube but they are a reseller of more premium ebikes and of course that is reflected in their content. I personally don't find their recommendations useful at all. The recent video where they went to Italy and that brand stated it was Italian designed and manufactured but just about everything about their bikes was made in Asia including the Taiwanese designed motor system. The so called factory was just an assembly plant of parts from Asia and the pricing obviously above typically Asian assembled bikes. It annoys me when they kept saying Pedibal were the first to have approved twist and go throttle ebikes when we know Wisper was doing it before them. It was pointed out in the comments but ignored they didn't care about giving out accurate information at all. Ultimately its about marketing not accuracy and this presenter is used extensively on the Pedibal site. What you are looking at is not a pro ebike channel trying to give you accurate information it is a ebike shop trying to sell you ebikes. I've lost count how many times I've been lied to in bike shops with misleading information because they wanted to make the sale and this feels just the same but on youtube.

Surely this lack of tariffs on imported ebikes benefits all importers and resellers of Chinese ebikes based in the UK. So UK businesses will be able to offer their ebikes at reduced prices. This will make them much more competitive with ebikes from mainland Europe and many of the ebikes from Europe are just from assembly plants. Even if the ebike features a German designed mid-drive motor the ebike itself and its components are pretty much all from the far east, China mainly. Such imports will still need to be fully certified.

That weight limit of 135kg seems good. I assume the front bit would say 'Total' so includes the weight of the ebike itself or is it just rider and luggage etc? I've forgotten how heavy this ebike is but I know its weighty which normally means strong and its steel which generally take more abuse and overloading.

Interesting that they state '300-Wh/kg' which sort of implies the battery could be only 0.5kg offering 150Wh or maybe 600Wh if 2Kg but I'm guessing the battery will be low capacity to suit the bike type. I think most consumers just want to know the Wh without any link to wattage to weight ratio. Seems like manipulative marketing.

Then surely the term should be 'Legal' not 250W because as you can see from this documentary there is massive confusion about ebikes and 250W. This so called professional well researched documentary states 250W maximum power so they don't understand the legislation either. The 250W means nothing in relation to how other electrical devices are certified. I've seen certification where a electrical motor is rated to its maximum wattage before it starts to overheat but I've never seen any other certification where you just state a random wattage number something can operate at and put that on the motor. Is there any other example of that? Certification is not normally random figures like this. So you have tiny hub motors, large hub motors, weak mid-drive motors, super powerful mid-drive motors and direct drive hub motors all certified as 250W. Even the pisspoor tiny hub motors that would struggle to get to 250W are called 250W like the Assist bike at Halfords which is really more of a 140-160W motor or at least that is all the controller can give it. It's rated 250W and sold as 250W despite not being 250W at all its being completely mis-sold as 250W and false advertising but that is the nuts certification we have. I guess you can take that motor and put it with a completely different controller and battery and test it at 250W but then certification is normally about the actual product supplied i.e. its components as configured. Looking at Chinese trade houses that resell products from Chinese manufacturers i.e. they operate like importers to a degree but buy product in large quantities from factories to export themselves some of these will certify products for Europe to sell as 250W but the manufacturers themselves sell as lets say 750W and other Chinese trade houses just sell as 750W. It's the same product that the reseller/trade house is selling as 250W. It's a mad certification process. Personally I'm never going to accept 250W as fair or honest certification. I was a compliance officer for many years and never saw anything like this before despite reading 100s of different BSI certification documents and the resultant test certificates based on that certification.

Surely even if they use sealant its better to have the cable going downwards unless they have worked out that splashing up from puddles is worse than rain but the point is if you splash up gravity will allow the water to come out again. However I have to say this is not the first commercial ebike product with a hub motor that has that cable going upward but I always thought that was a mistake.

I've seen this written before but again how on earth can all these ebikes some tiny and light, others huge, heavy cargo bikes all end up at 250W exactly? It makes no sense at all. These tests are all performed in a laboratory so obviously it can only be simulated flat roads and maybe those tests don't even factor in the weight of the ebike. So why are we going after so many ebikes as over 250W when clearly they are all pretty much capable of going along a flat road at 250W. So if we accept that rule just about every ebike is legal as long as its restricted to 15.5mph assistance. So why are people with direct drive hub motors seen as outside the law? So why can't I have a 90kg ebike with a 5000W motor if it can trundle along a simulated flat road with 250W? We have a situation where high wattage ebikes are classed as legal and low wattage ebikes are classed as illegal (i.e. 350W rated) despite both sharing the 15.5mph assistance speed restriction. Certification shouldn't be written like this, the true wattage of a ebike should always be its rating surely and this is especially true of ebike kits where you buy the battery separately.

Perhaps the fact the controller is 25A on many mid-drive ebikes and power of over 900W sometimes well over 1000W for a freshly charged battery. For e-mountain bikes used off-road with a lot of climbing they can discharge a 600Wh battery in 40 minutes. Also many Chinese ebikes that were originally rated at 750W are now certified as 250W in Europe despite being an identical spec because Chinese suppliers have learnt how EU certification works (i.e. its completely meaningless when it comes wattage). My washing machine is sold as 2000W and its peak consumption is about 2100W but when its just slowly turning over the drum it is 200W so should it be a 200W washing machine or a 2000W washing machine? I would say just like 99% of electrical certification it is correct at 2000W. If you start manipulating how certification is written so a 1000W ebike can pretend to be a 250W ebike I would say its a lie and certification should be honest and trustworthy like 99.9% of certification is. When you go in a bike shop and a pisspoor 20" wheeled ebike with a 140Wh battery is called 250W and £10k state of the art e-mountain bike with 110Nm of torque is also 250W you know the certification process is utterly incompetent or corrupt. You are obviously quite intelligent with a lot of info about ebikes but this is basic electrical knowledge I don't get why you agree with the misleading EU certification, do you support every device having false wattage claims? Is my washing machine now 5W because that is all it uses while on but not doing anything? Surely there has to be a connection between the wattage given and normal use. You can't just choose any random number between 0 and its maximum peak consumption? When you see a home conversion and the ebike has caught fire you can't help wondering if the motor was sold as 250W and the end customer confused by this has bought a battery pack capable of 250W and not the true 750-1000W of the motor. I just think its dangerous to falsely rate motors too.

They quote 45Nm peak torque and 240Wh battery so its seems like a package that will put the battery cells under a lot of stress a bit like those Gtech ebikes so like you I think the battery pack will have a limited lifespan even if using the very best cells. In contrast those cheap 20" wheeled ebikes like the Assist models at Halfords designed like a folding bike but don't fold only give out something like 12-15Nm torque max but benefit from the small 20" wheels to boost torque. Those aren't even really 250W ebikes more like 140-160W. Those ebikes seem to offer long battery life simply by having such low torque output and not putting their cells under too much stress. Which also reminds me of that recent £245 ebike from Argos that had a decent battery pack capacity, was it 320Wh but a low current controller, again the recipe for a long life battery pack. I think its good that some ebikes play safe, they know their limitations and provide less performance to extend the working life of the product. In contrast many high end products obsessed with lightness and high margins provide short life products that really punish the cells of the battery pack, i.e. some Specialized and Trek models.

Strange for that news report to be on a site about laptops. For me just another product with a ridiculous price point which I would never consider under any circumstances. Maybe there are some people prepared to pay that much but surely there can't be that many. Seems to have a ridiculous margin on it. The only great thing about it is it makes so many other ebike options look amazing value that cost a fraction of this price. Also its very proprietary which typically are products with short lifespans and difficult to repair plus a high risk of the company going out of business and not providing long term backup. Seems like so many reasons to avoid this product sadly.