After doing around 1500km on a budget e-bike in the UK, I’ve come to a conclusion most people won’t say out loud.

A lot of UK legal e-bikes feel underpowered.

Not unusable.

Not bad.

Just really underwhelming.

250W, and the speed limit is fine on flat roads.

But as soon as you hit hills, wind, or even just a heavier rider, you notice it straight away.

You end up working harder than you expected.

I get why the laws exist.

But in real UK riding conditions, especially outside perfectly flat cities, it doesn’t always match how people actually use bikes.

That’s probably why so many people quietly end up looking at higher powered options or “unlocking” what they’ve got.

Curious what everyone else thinks.

Are UK e-bike limits actually right for real-world use?

Or are we all just pretending they are?

I don't find my legal powered ebikes underpowered at all and in fact I rarely go higher than the ECO assist level.

But of course there will always be some that would for many reasons find 1,000 watts insufficient but don't want to buy a motorbike but instead flout the pedelec rules and bring into disrepute those of us that abide by them.

Edited Monday at 20:551 day by Bikes4two

My yose power 250w front hub motor is fine pulls up hills no problem most of the time im in eco number 2 but move to 3 or 4 depending on hill climb im well happy.

5 hours ago, David Frew said:

After doing around 1500km on a budget e-bike in the UK, I’ve come to a conclusion most people won’t say out loud.

A lot of UK legal e-bikes feel underpowered.

Not unusable.

Not bad.

Just really underwhelming.

250W, and the speed limit is fine on flat roads.

But as soon as you hit hills, wind, or even just a heavier rider, you notice it straight away.

You end up working harder than you expected.

I get why the laws exist.

But in real UK riding conditions, especially outside perfectly flat cities, it doesn’t always match how people actually use bikes.

That’s probably why so many people quietly end up looking at higher powered options or “unlocking” what they’ve got.

Curious what everyone else thinks.

Are UK e-bike limits actually right for real-world use?

Or are we all just pretending they are?

There are plenty of legal ebikes that will give you all the power you want for climbing hills. Some can drag 500kg up a 14% hill with air-pedalling. Ebike law in the UK doesn't limit how much power you can have. Instead, it puts a limit on the rating of the motor, but that has no bearing on the actual power that the motor is allowed to give. You just have to choose right.

If you want a cheaper ebike with a hub-motor, look on Ebay or Amazon for any one with a 48v battery. To climb cliffs, look for one with smaller wheels, like the Engwe LS20 Boost/ If you want to spend a lot of money, any bike with a DJIsystem should do it. Also, Bosch have just increased the torque of their motors to a ridiculous level:

Bosch Performance Upgrade 2.0 - Gen 5 CX (120 Nm Power Increase) 2026

If you want to keep your budget bike, you can probably swap the battery and controller for 48v, which will give you 30% increase in climbing power at a cost of around £300, assuming that it isn't already 48v.

If you need any advice on how to solve your problem, just ask and give us details of what you have, your weight and the type of hills you need to climb.. There are plenty of solutions.

Edited Monday at 23:271 day by D8veh

I live and ride in the Alps with a UK legal ebike (fair enough not budget) and often ride up to 100Km with up to about 3000m of vertical ascent. I have a heart condition but don't find the bike underpowered. If it had much more power it would be more like a motor bike than a bike on steroids. I want a bike to feel and behave like a bike so expect to have to work harder up hills etc.

My own bike (a conversion) has a controller that gives 20A on maximum setting, giving a maximum 720w @36 v.

Yet the motor is rated at 250w and the speed limited to 15.5mph, so legal. I live in very hilly west Wales. I have no complaints.

I agree with David in particular Carrera E bikes most of the people I deal with by them and I disappointed after sometime and I just want a little bit more.

The lime bikes in London go towards this they have much more torque and power than most of the shelf standard 250 W bikes bought at the national retail end of the market.

The torque feels like more speed when in fact what is what they are doing is just getting up to the legal limit faster and not easier to ride uphill however long-term they are not cheap to ride.

And I am talking about sensible adults, not kids who want motorbikes.

I think this has more relevance for people who are older possibly unfit or this disabled who want a little bit more from their bikes, especially with self builds.

Sadly, this has been overshadowed by the illegal motorbikes that are being used by criminals and is causing hysteria amongst the general public and journalists who do not understand Pedelechs at all .

But more importantly, we need much better and safer roads to ride on.

All of the e bikes I have built/ used have always had the power I needed for undulating terrain riding up to 160km a day. I mainly use 70 - 80w of power in PAS 1 this enough for me to not have to work overly hard, on inclines then a boost using the other four PAS modes is more then ample.

End of the day it isn't really about the motor rating but the power one puts through a motor, most 250w hubs or mid drive can take 500 - 750w of temporary power when needed.

For some who know little about ebikes one expects they think they are going to ride moped like and forget it is simply a pedal cycle with added assist to aid riding and not simply to replace ones input power.

10 hours ago, detec52 said:

My yose power 250w front hub motor is fine pulls up hills no problem most of the time im in eco number 2 but move to 3 or 4 depending on hill climb im well happy.

Nice neat job on the conversion what controller are you using?.

I assume it’s in the bag I think you could’ve used integrated battery mount or a box under the bottom bracket as the bags I think tend to draw attention to the bikes from the place legal or otherwise.

Another thing often not known is that most low powered hub EAPC's aren't matched with an appropriate RPM rated hub for hilly terrain.

1 hour ago, chris_n said:

I live and ride in the Alps with a UK legal ebike (fair enough not budget) and often ride up to 100Km with up to about 3000m of vertical ascent. I have a heart condition but don't find the bike underpowered. If it had much more power it would be more like a motor bike than a bike on steroids. I want a bike to feel and behave like a bike so expect to have to work harder up hills etc.

This chimed with me Chris.

I read the initial post by David Frew the other day, and thought, 'this guy needs a motor bike, not an assisted pedal bike.

I ride both motor bikes and electrically assisted pedal bikes. I like each for their own qualities, and I enjoy the exercise the pedalling gives me. If the motor was doing all the work, or driving me at speed, I might as well ride the motor bike and just travel effortlessly.

On the electric motor bike thing - I can not understand why people buy those horrible Suron things. They are an absolute abortion of design. Expensive,shoddy, ugly, temperamental and in every way horrible. You can buy very good motorcycles for less money than they cost, and since the powerful electric bikes are pretty much always illegal in the UK, because you can't easily insure them, what is the point?

If you want a motorcycle, buy a motorcycle and in my opinion, you should buy a petrol burning one. In the end, even buying the fuel, it will be far more cost effective. You don't need to replace the battery every few years at a cost of hundreds of pounds and given the likelihood that the manufacturer of your e-motor bike dropped the design, your petrol motor bike won't end up as scrap in five years. I have two Hondas, one from the year 2000, and the other from 1997 and to put them on the road again, all I need do is phone the MOT station, ride them down to Hexham, and pay £30 for the test. When I took My Royal Enfield for its first MOT the week before last, the testing man asked me if I still had the two Hondas. He remembered them, which surprised me. They always pass - albeit that on occasion, he has failed them for stuff like headlight level, and then fixed it himself for no charge and passed them - all for the standard test fee.

I bought this at five months old, with 63 miles on it for £3600 delivered to my door.

This year, it cost me £200 to tax and insure for a year, and £30 to mot it. I carefully measured the fuel consumption on the last tank of petrol and it had done 98 miles to the gallon. To be fair, I just dawdle around the back roads on it at 40 miles an hour with the odd burst on an A or B road at 50 -60 miles an hour, but it costs next to nothing to run it.

Edited yesterday at 08:091 day by Tony1951

10 minutes ago, Nealh said:

Another thing often not known is that most low powered hub EAPC's aren't matched with an appropriate RPM rated hub for hilly terrain.

That is where the crank drive motors can shine, and there isn't that 'either or' problem.

The gears allow flexibility. When you need to, you can change down, and otherwise leave it in a higher gear. Perfect really. I don't understand why some people hate them.

Edited yesterday at 08:161 day by Tony1951

I'm assuming good faith, and that he has a "250W" bike with a 36V 12A controller which will struggle with steep hills and a heavy rider, but doesn't realise there are other legal "250 W" bikes with 48V 15A controllers , which is quite a difference!

5 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

This chimed with me Chris.

I read the initial post by David Frew the other day, and thought, 'this guy needs a motor bike, not an assisted pedal bike.

I ride both motor bikes and electrically assisted pedal bikes. I like each for their own qualities, and I enjoy the exercise the pedalling gives me. If the motor was doing all the work, or driving me at speed, I might as well ride the motor bike and just travel effortlessly.

On the electric motor bike thing - I can not understand why people buy those horrible Suron things. They are an absolute abortion of design. Expensive,shoddy, ugly, temperamental and in every way horrible. You can buy very good motorcycles for less money than they cost, and since the powerful electric bikes are pretty much always illegal in the UK, because you can't easily insure them, what is the point?

If you want a motorcycle, buy a motorcycle and in my opinion, you should buy a petrol burning one. In the end, even buying the fuel, it will be far more cost effective. You don't need to replace the battery every few years at a cost of hundreds of pounds and given the likelihood that the manufacturer of your e-motor bike dropped the design, your petrol motor bike won't end up as scrap in five years. I have two Hondas, one from the year 2000, and the other from 1997 and to put them on the road again, all I need do is phone the MOT station, ride them down to Hexham, and pay £30 for the test. When I took My Royal Enfield for its first MOT the week before last, the testing man asked me if I still had the two Hondas. He remembered them, which surprised me. They always pass - albeit that on occasion, he has failed them for stuff like headlight level, and then fixed it himself for no charge and passed them - all for the standard test fee.

I bought this at five months old, with 63 miles on it for £3600 delivered to my door.

This year, it cost me £200 to tax and insure for a year, and £30 to mot it. I carefully measured the fuel consumption on the last tank of petrol and it had done 98 miles to the gallon. To be fair, I just dawdle around the back roads on it at 40 miles an hour with the odd burst on an A or B road at 50 -60 miles an hour, but it costs next to nothing to run it.

People can get the power they want/need on an electric bicycle without resorting to a motorbike. Different people of different weight and fitness have different requirements. They can all enjoy electric bikes if they get the right one for them.

7 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

That is where the crank drive motors can shine, and there isn't that 'either or' problem.

The gears allow flexibility. When you need to, you can change down, and otherwise leave it in a higher gear. Perfect really. I don't understand why some people hate them.

Some people hate them because they think they're shite compared with a hub-motor. You don't need to downgrade to a crank-motor to get good hill-climbing ability. I remind you that the 250w Heinzman cargo system can drag 500kg up a 14% hill without effort from the rider and the Xiongda 2-speed motor at 48v and 20A is like a winch when it comes to hills.

13 minutes ago, D8veh said:

Xiongda 2-speed motor at 48v and 20A is like a winch when it comes to hills.

Does that have internal "low" and "high" gearing within the hub motor - that seems like it would solve a lot of problems - I'm surprised its not more popular

30 minutes ago, D8veh said:

People can get the power they want/need on an electric bicycle without resorting to a motorbike. Different people of different weight and fitness have different requirements. They can all enjoy electric bikes if they get the right one for them.

I love my electric bikes. I am just about to go riding one of mine right now. I think it will be the ultra cr @p Argos, which for some reason I love riding.

On your other point about how 'shite' crank motors are - you must have been riding different ones to mine and Gurneys and Chris's and others too. Mine has never given a speck of trouble, though I will need a new battery soon, but that is nothing to do with the motor. Mostly, I ride it in a high gear and don't change it, but when I come to a steep gradient (some are 20% around here) I drop to a low gear and it climbs up and doesn't even get the motor warm. How flexible is that? Before I restricted it properly to legal speed limits, it would drive me down a flat road at 23 miles an hour in blissful idleness. I took the throttle off it and set the maximum powered speed to 25kph and those days of 23 miles an hour are over. Apologies for mixing metric and statute speeds.

I’m another satisfied with the maximum the 250W continuous power law. I never feel my bike is underpowered, for example as a teenager I needed to stand on the peddles in first gear out of breath to crawl over the hill into town. Now in my 70s I can use full power at 12.5 to ,13 mph seated over the same hill. Yes I’m out of breath but not as much as I used to be.

I could buy a moped and go faster but then I’d loose the freedoms of a bicycle, especially the use of the new cycle path that feels so good being separated from the increasingly dense traffic.

250W and bicycle rules are just right in my opinion.

1 minute ago, Peter.Bridge said:

Does that have internal "low" and "high" gearing within the hub motor - that seems like it would solve a lot of problems - I'm surprised its not more popular

Yes,exactly that. It has a double clutch arrangement, with each working in a different direction of rotation. The controller reverses the direction of the motor to use one clutch or the other, so it doesn't need a physical shifting arrangement. The only downside is that you have to be careful not to push hard when you reverse the bike for any reason, like getting it out of the shed, because you can damage the internal gears. Also, they're a bit wider than a normal motor, so you need to be clever with the installation. I used one for about 2 years, starting with 36v and 15A, which was fine, then I upgraded to 48v, which was complete overkill to the extent that I was only using the high gear to get all the torque I needed, so I switched to a normal geared hub-motor at 48v. One other thing is that they become a bit noisy after about 1000 miles due to the idle clutch arrangement, so need re-greasing if you don't want pedestrians to hear you coming.

The cleverest part is the shifting. It's so simple. The controller, like all controllers, measures the current. When the motor slows down under load, the current increases. When it reaches a certain level, it triggers the shifting. The controller simply makes a slight pause, then reverses the motor, so you get automatic shifting as you slow down up a hil. You also get the option of manual shifting with a button, which I preferred in order to get the ideal (for me) shifting point.

I don't know whether everybody realises, but heavy people need proportionally more power to get up the same hills as you. In other words, If you weigh 70kg and have a 36v bike with 15A controller, a 110kg guy would need 48v and 17A to get up the same hill on the same bike with the same effort as you.

If the 70kg rider rode the bike with 48v and 17A, it would feel ridiculously powerful, like a motorbike, but the 110kg rider's experience of that bike would be more or less identical to the 70kg rider's experience on the 36v one.

Edited yesterday at 09:261 day by D8veh

I mass closer to 100kg than i would care to admit. My approaching 3 yr old conversion using the cheapest yose rear wheel kit, is still capable of putting a silly grin on my face as i switch on the motor-assistance leaving the supermarket. If anything i am surprised at the power available from the kit, yes when i hit hills and slopes and if they continue for longer than 1/4-1/2 a mile in distance, there is a significant 'performance' hit and my input becomes more crucial, but pre conversion i was puffin and panting or pushing the bike soooo much sooner..

3 hours ago, D8veh said:

I don't know whether everybody realises, but heavy people need proportionally more power to get up the same hills as you. In other words, If you weigh 70kg and have a 36v bike with 15A controller, a 110kg guy would need 48v and 17A to get up the same hill on the same bike with the same effort as you.

If the 70kg rider rode the bike with 48v and 17A, it would feel ridiculously powerful, like a motorbike, but the 110kg rider's experience of that bike would be more or less identical to the 70kg rider's experience on the 36v one.

I'm sure that is true, but something else needs to be taken into account; larger animals and larger people are proportionately stronger than smaller ones, so, given that we are talking about electric assistance, rider power needs to be considered. All things being equal in terms of fitness and condition, a fit 100 kg man can put out more power than a fit 70 kg man, because he has larger muscles and organs, so he ought not to be massively hampered by his extra muscle and bone.

If Peter Bridge and I got on a gym bicycle, set up to measure watts of output power, I know who would be able to generate more power, and it would not just be because I am older than him.

Edited yesterday at 13:001 day by Tony1951

Up to a point, but there is a reason why all the grimpeurs are very light - see square-cube law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_specialist

Edited yesterday at 13:151 day by Peter.Bridge

2 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

I'm sure that is true, but something else needs to be taken into account; larger animals and larger people are proportionately stronger than smaller ones, so, given that we are talking about electric assistance, rider power needs to be considered. All things being equal in terms of fitness and condition, a 100 kg man can put out more power than a 70 kg man, because he has larger muscles and organs, so he ought not to be massively hampered by his extra muscle and bone.

Let's put some actual numbers on it. The 15A 36v controller for the 70kg rider would take 540w from the battery. During steep hill climbing, it would be about 50% efficient, so 270w output. Add 150w rider input, you get 420w overall. The 110kg rider would need 420 x 11/7 = 770w to climb at the same speed. His 17A 48v system would be outputting 17 x 48 x 0.5 = 408w, so he would have to provide 362w from his pedalling to climb at the same speed as the 70kg rider. In that case, his stronger legs won't help. 200w is about as much as any of us can maintain for a long climb. An unfit fatso has no chance of sustaining 362w for a few minutes. That's about what an average fit club cyclist can do.

Edited yesterday at 13:201 day by D8veh

There was a survey done where 47% of respondents seem to support the idea of an increase in power level as below. I would tend to agree with this and with the original poster. I live in a hilly area.

Proposed changes to legislation for electrically assisted pedal cycles – outcome - GOV.UK