January 29, 201511 yr Good spot Selrahc the gwiz with lithium would be faster and more comfortable on road and a lot less than a some new bikes.
January 30, 201511 yr even provisional license? ive been riding around on these high powered ebikes with just a CBT for years Yup, if you are disqualified from driving under medical grounds, that is it. e.g. Would you want someone driving a [insert vehicle here] on a provisional license who would have been disqualified due to: a) eyesight b) a heart condition c) a neurological condition and hitting you - or worse ploughing into a crowd of children outside of the school gates? That is why I'm restricted to 15mph assisted until I meet the criteria again! Less speed and mass = less chance of causing damage to others who can't get out of the way and the damage should be less too. Most of the risk cycling is to me!
February 1, 201511 yr If you're disqualified for any reason, you can't get a provisional licence. Yup - I seem to have taken a roundabout way of failing to make my point (as always) and d8veh has used straight talk to set the record straight better than me!
March 7, 201511 yr Updated price, this is now £1000. Doesnt look like anyone wants it, havent even had any offers, so i'll try to make the price the best thing about it.
March 7, 201511 yr I agree with you selrahc1992. By slightly illegal I take it you refer to the S-pedelec type of bike. The point is, I think, that these bikes are still slower than what many athletic people can and do achieve on their road bikes with a lot of training, effort and sweat! Of course the 1500W bikes are a different matter altogether and if a crackdown is to come surely these will be the target.
March 9, 201511 yr I agree with you selrahc1992. By slightly illegal I take it you refer to the S-pedelec type of bike. The point is, I think, that these bikes are still slower than what many athletic people can and do achieve on their road bikes with a lot of training, effort and sweat! No I don't think so. Even Lance Armstrong can't do 45 kph up steep hills and we now know what kind of petrol he is running on... A reasonably fit rider on an adequate s-pedelec should be able to maintain speeds comparable to a road bike, it all depends on gearing. Think of all the energy you will not be using to get to 45 kph, you have that in reserve to pedal up to 60 kph. You dont even have to pedal to get to 20 kph with the launch button feature! Tony
March 9, 201511 yr I agree with you selrahc1992. By slightly illegal I take it you refer to the S-pedelec type of bike. The point is, I think, that these bikes are still slower than what many athletic people can and do achieve on their road bikes with a lot of training, effort and sweat! Until you have ridden one you cannot speculate what can and cannot be achieved. The Kalkhof S-ped I rode was easy to get to 25 a bit more effort to 30 and with a little more puff over 30 and I'm 50 with asthma.
March 9, 201511 yr AnotherKiwi - the S-Ped will not take a "normal" rider up a steep hill at 45kph either. The 350 watts will only move weight up hill at a certain pace, whatever it is limited to. Don't forget that the wind resistance is increasing by the square of your speed, so the extra power to get from 45kph to 60kph is colossal compared with 0 to 15. ( 60 sq - 45 sq = 1575, whereas 15 sq = 225) Nealh, it wasn't idle speculation without riding one. I based my comment on riding my S-Ped and uploading the times ( very briefly!) to Strava. I certainly moved up the tables dramatically from my usual level, but my point is that this put me amongst the faster riders, not way ahead of them. So the speeds I was doing were no greater than others can achieve anyway. I seriously doubt that any of the people who can ride at those sort of speeds are going to hop on an assisted bike any time soon. 25 or 30 mph is quite achievable by the athletes on Strava. I should say that I then deleted the ride from Strava before I upset anyone! For those who are not familiar with Strava let me explain it records the details of your ride and then compares you time over "segments" with anyone else who has done that segment. These segments are just sections of road of varying length, they can be uphill, downhill, flat, short, long - whatever. If anyone is interested, here is a link to my Strava account - I should say all these rides are on a bike with no assistance. You will see I have entered my ebike rides manually so they do not record any segment times. https://www.strava.com/athletes/690735 If you would like to examine this more take a look at http://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/aerodynamics1.html According to this doing 30 mph on the flat requires 317 watts ( including many assumptions about position, streamlining etc). If you increase the speed to 45 this goes to 1071 watts. I would suggest that if you compare a S Pedelec rider with a trained athlete on a modern road bike, the 350 watts will be needed just to overcome the extra drag from his less aerodynamic position, before you allow for the difference in muscle power. Edited March 9, 201511 yr by 4bound
March 9, 201511 yr I was extrapolating that s-pedelecs do live up to the marketing hype and that a motor of over 500W + 150W of fit rider were on tap. And with pedalling in the right gear, uphill speeds up to maximum assisted speed should be attainable WOT? There are very few road frame s-pedelecs on the market I give you that. Yes I do know about the extra force required to reach 60 kph. As a young man I rode a racing bike to work and back (including lunch break at home) about 15 km there and back from memory so 30 k or more every day. I was regularly clocked at +60 kph on that flat straight street. There were no speedos back then, it was admirative car drivers who gave me my speed when they caught up with me at the lights. Yes 60 kph was the legal limit in town back then. No, helmets hadn't been invented... Nor had hydraulic or even disk brakes and don't start me on racing tyres of that period... EDIT: found one in metrics ! http://www.gribble.org/cycling/power_v_speed.html My god I was a strong young man! EDIT 2: it can be done with a 1000W s-pedelec (5% gradient) Cheers Tony Edited March 9, 201511 yr by anotherkiwi
March 9, 201511 yr Tony - OK, I was initially responding to a post by selrahc1992 which referred to "slightly illegal" bikes which I took to refer to the EC defined S-Pedelec which is limited to 350 watts. You have widened the field now by talking about 1000Watts - in fact if you read my post to the end I did say "Of course the 1500W bikes are a different matter". Of course neither of us have mentioned gears - even if the bike was being ridden by Sir Chris Hoy, the commercially available S-Pedelecs do not have the gearing to do much over 30mph. You certainly were a strong young man! Edited March 9, 201511 yr by 4bound
March 9, 201511 yr You certainly were a strong young man! I am guessing there were some bumps in that road, it looked and felt flat back then (no more than 1 or 1.5%). The bike had been in the Tour de France in the '60s, bought at the after Tour sale by my father in law, lovely piece of kit, he had another even better one... Thanks to your post I am off into the wonderfull world of speed/power simulators: for my grungy free MTB - factoring in the frontal area, drag coef etc. it would require 750W to climb a 10% gradient at the legal 25 kph of a pedelec. With 250W + 150W (me on a good day?) the speed would be 12.4 kph. Now I have some numbers to live up to when the conversion is done! Just for fun a road racer with a Bafang 750W mid drive and a big sprocket could be a real sunday morning terror machine! At least these days you would be able to stop the damned thing. And the tyres wouldn't explode every two weeks... Cheers Tony
March 9, 201511 yr Don't forget that that's output power. You have to also consider motor and driveline efficiency. Motor efficiency depends on speed for a hub-motor and crank-speed for a crank-drive, so it all gets a bit complicated.
March 19, 201511 yr Another motorist kindly looked at his speedo for me yesterday. I was pedaling briskly down a small (2%) hill when I heard "putain il est a plus de 40 ce con!" coming from a truck window as he passed me... (yes that is 40 kph not mph) Tony
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