Lumo

Can I ask why you disagree robert , I am just saying what I found works best for me and was suggesting the OP tries it to see if it works for them also. I expected a higher gear to work better as I could give more torque, but was surprised to find the sweet spot was a couple gears lower than I expected.

Make sure the insurance covers self builds, the insurance I have had a clause that excludes self build ebikes.

Have you tried gear 1 or 2? I have a similar ebike to the one you have. When I first got it I would try hills in maybe gear 4 as that felt right in terms of pedalling but the motor wasn't giving a big boost, if I switch to a gear that feels very low and pedal harder and faster in that gear the motor has a very nice boost. On a push bike when I get to a hill I stay in the highest gear I can and switch down when I need to. With the ebike I start a hill in a low gear and switch higher, I find that works much better in terms of getting the most motor boost .

It's a powerpack battery

How wide are the grips? I have one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zefal-95293-Double-Adjustment-Mirror/dp/B000FY05PG/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=bike+mirror&qid=1599722459&sr=8-5 They would be able to go around quite a wide grip. However, I don't know if I got a dud or not. It is OK but not great, it is discreet (it can be under the handlebar) and in exactly the right position it gives quite a wide view of behind. However, it tends to move about and the optical quality is not great. On my normal bike I have a differnet one that goes into the end of the handlebar, it sticks out a bit, but it is easy to adjust, says in place for quite a long time, and has better optics.

We live in a small building of 6 apartments, connected to another building which is the same. We keep our ebikes in a bike room on the ground floor of our building, there are a few road bikes in there but no other ebikes. The building next to us has the same setup, however I have not wandered into their bike room to see if they have any ebikes. Yesterday, a neighbor from the building next door, who is retired and has assumed a slightly (unelected) managerial role in the buildings (organizing the rubbish bins, obsessivly watering the garden, seemingly having keys to everything) asked us not to lock our ebikes. He said the room is locked so the bikes don't need to be. We replied that a conditon of the insurance is that they are locked to something. Thinking he might have a valid concern, we asked what the problem was with them being locked (the locking to the rack does not take up any more space or stop any other bikes being next to them, but maybe we had overlooked something and could perhaps lock them up somewhere else in the room). He said the cleaning company might want to clean under the bikes. We said the bikes combined cost more than some of the cars parked outside and so we would keep them locked. He said they can be locked to themselves but not to the bike rack and that it is not the case that the insurance requires them to be locked. His chummy neighbor (well also our neighbor) said she has had a bike in there for 20 years and not had one problem. When we got back from our evening trip we locked the bikes back to the rack. My first thought was to show him the insurance document. But now I just think WTF. It's none of his business, it's not even his building. If either of them had a proper concern we would address it, but there is no way we are leaving the bikes unlocked so a cleaning company can come in. Also, I think that is nonsense, until recently there was a bike in there which belonged to someone who died 10 years ago, it did not look like the bike had been moved since then, so I suspect the cleaner cleans around the bikes rather than moves them all (I have never actually seen the cleaner go in there, but it could be while I am out of the building during the day). If they really want to clean the whole floor, then on that day I will put the bikes, locked, somewhere else. The guy drives an Alpha Romeo, I don't go over to it, inspect it, check how it is locked and then go over to him and then instruct him not to lock it so much. I have a feeling he will bring this up again, so should I show him the documents, politely tell him to mind his own business, or just simply say that they will stay locked. Or am I being unreasonable and should just unlock them - would you leave an ebike unlocked in a room like that?

I'm pretty sure it is not the 2020 model and it has the Active Line Plus

AXA assistance is part of komoot premium and includes roadside repairs and accommodation.

What's so special about the 1 Jan 2016 date?

No, hers still went down quicker. Here it was harder to do a fair comparison as we both played around with the power levels a lot and I generally also went faster and waited at rest points etc, but her battery was lower than mine by the time we got home.

Well we did the route with hills, 20km roundtrip, 7km or so up, so 7 down and the rest mostly flat. Not sure how to quantify the hills, on the map they are 8-18% with shorter parts of 20+%. Another way of describing them is that I would not have managed them on my non-ebike without it being long and very hard. I found the best gears to be slightly different to what I would have done with pedal alone (seemed to work better 1-2 lower than I would have normally used), but I managed the hills, yes, it was a bit of a workout compared to the flat, but I got up fine. My wife did also. The most noticable thing was when I stopped pedaling to check the directions, the bike just stopped dead on the hill - it really felt as if someone had slammed both breaks on, because of the relative ease of pedalling I had expected there to be some momentum to carry me on a little as it would on a flat terrain, and this really showed me how much the motor was helping. With regards to finding the sweet spot - I fear my wife and I have different ones and there will always be one of us working outside of this range. I tend to go faster in a higher gear with little adjustment to speed once I am comfortable. Her comfortable speed is quite a bit slower and varies a lot depending on the surroundings.

Interesting comments, thanks. She now wants a second battery. We are going to try a trip with quite a few hills soon, I wonder how our ranges will compare there, and whether I will end up with a tougher ride than she has.

Yes well of course...BUT the perceived pedaling was light and there was no way of making it lighter without shutting the motor off competently, not having more control of the power at this end of the scale seemed to result in the motor ending up working more than it needed (and yes the user thereofre pedaling slightly less) and therefore draining more battery than it needed to. That's something I had not thought of, I don't think it does, but will certainly check and see.

Well I never implied there was magic and I also never mentioned motor efficiency. I wasn't thinking that narrow. I was meaning on a long route where both systems are in the lowest assist mode and neither person is pedaling with all that much force, the cadence sensor based system seems markedly less efficient (meaning km per wh, not transfer of electrical energy to kinetic) as it has a minimum amount it drives the motor and does not go lower. Yes, presumably this makes the rider pedal with even less force to maintain the same speed, but when both riders considering their pedaling to be 'light' and really would not notice a small increae or decrece in the force with which they had to pedal, the torque sensor based syetem will get them further for the same amount of battery power.

We went on a trip on our ebikes last weekend. My wife has what I believe is a cadence sensor (Fischer ebike) and I have a torque sensor (Bosh ALP). Her battery is 422wh whereas mine is 500wh. She was in power assist mode 1 the whole time and I used eco (level 1) for most of it, with periods of tour (level 2) and sport (level 3) every now and then. The route was mostly flat with some inclines here and there. About 60km into the round trip, her battery was flat, leaving her to pedal the 15km home whereas my battery still had three bars left when hers ran out, and still had three bars left when we got home (my bike is far too big for her, so there was not the option of swapping bikes for some of this pedal-only time). I know my battery has a larger capacity, but that alone doesn't seem to be enough to explain why her range was so much less than mine. So I am wondering if it's the cadence v torque sensor - the whole time she was pedaling the motor was running, whereas with mine if I was pedaling lightly, presumably the motor was running less than when I was pedaling more heavily (even in eco mode). Given that the route had some quite flat stretches in it, for a good few km I was cruising along without too much force on the pedals. Are there any other differences which would explain the shorter range? Her bike is lighter than mine and she is lighter than me. I did not try to take my battery down to empty, so I don't know how long those last three bars would really have lasted.