Long COVID has kept me off the bike for 2 years, so I want an ebike to regain some mobility (and stop commuting by car). Just trying to decide what I want!
Those stealthy hybrids like the Orbea Vibe or Ribble Al-E look great. They're 15-17kg with 250wh batteries. Fine for a couple of days' commute, but how are they for longer rides?
Currently I need to put in as little effort as possible, but as I recover I may be able for longer rides, relying less on battery. That's one reason I don't want a 30kg tank - I'd like to pedal it without assistance one day, maybe enjoy the ride/handling! This will essentially be my only bike for the next two years.
Is a 250wh battery good for anything but commuting? How much of the extra power/capacity of a larger bike is just eaten up by pushing a much heavier load?
Any experiences/thoughts would be most welcome! I need more angles to overthink this thing from... 😄
Imo too small. Use a lot of assist you coukd be down to 15 miles easily depending on hills.
My wife really loves her ribble gravel e-bike (which has a 250Wh battery). CGR I think it's called. She's a fairly strong rider anyway and didn't really *need* one but it gives her confidence to take on long days without worrying about getting stuck the wrong side of a big hill. Also makes the steep climbs less of a knee-breaker.
The weight penalty isn't that big really IMO. It sounds to me like it would be perfect for you, it would make any commute very easy and provide a significant boost on longer recreational rides. Though if you need the battery to genuinely do *all* the work of course it won't do really massive rides for you.
You can buy extenders for the Orbea, so when you want to do longer, you can get the bottle battery and another 208wh, on roads that'll give you a good range, my arse cheeks give up on me after 4 hours on the ebike before the battery does most times 😂
Will be interesting to see real reviews of the new https://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/FBPXLOXEB/planet-x-loxley-e-bike#FBPXLOXEB-BLK-LXL over the coming months.
ooh, that's interesting. And very cheap!
^ if that OnOne/PX came in xs/s, I would be breaking out the credit card today ..
I think it depends a lot on how heavy you are, how hilly your rides are and how draggy your tyres are - plus obviously how much assistance you need.
A mate of mine (75 with a shattered pelvis and other things) has a Scott road bike with ebike motion system in and he's getting 60+ miles on a club ride.
Well, I've just ordered one on c2w. Fingers crossed...
First new bike since 1994! I feel slightly guilty for cheating on the old faithful, bless it. It'll have to go in the loft for a couple of years.
What did you go for?
re the bottle battery for the Mahle e motion x35 on Orbea bikes and others. The problem is that the bike will probably need to be reprogrammed to work with the battery (or not) Make sure you buy the extender from a source you can return. My local orbea dealer spent a week trying to get the extender to work with my Orbea gain without success. I was told that Orbea were "less than helpful" in trying to sort the matter out. I had to return the extender to the seller. On a brighter note the latest mahle app allows you to play around with the assistance levels on the preset options.
I went for one of these in the end - https://www.cannondale.com/en-gb/bikes/electric/e-touring/tesoro-neo-sl-eq/tesoro-neo-sl-eq
Not quite my first choice - that would have been the Ribble Al-E. But there's a 4-5 month waiting list, and last year I had a 2 month wait on some electronics turn into an 8 month delay before finally being cancelled altogether.
I had a really enjoyable test ride on the Orbea Vibe on Sat, which is very similar. And I love the way that front light is integrated into the head tube. Not really the thing that would swing you on a bike purchase, but it does look super slick. (PSA - Pure Electric are doing 30% off at the mo! Would have had one, but they only work with one C2W scheme and it's not the one my work do).
So, Cannondale it is. My C2W scheme gave me an extra discount on it too. It has the X35 motor, instead of this year's X35+. I'm hoping that won't be a noticeable difference? Looking forward to tinkering with the app though - at least for the first couple of weeks, until I get bored and forget about it...
@bobgarrod - thanks for the tip on the battery! I doubt I'll be needing it any time soon though - on Saturday I did 9.5km on an ebike plus 4500 steps, and it fair knocked me out for the rest of the weekend. I think it'll be a while before I'm recovered enough to do 25 miles or more in one go!
I managed to "blag" a Focus Raven2 with the Fazua motor and 252wh (!!) battery. I "can" get it to around the 30 miles on a battery using mixed mode but support is never off as I'm suffering heart problems at the moment and awaiting surgery. I've got a second batter that happily sits in a camelbak and as 30 miles, for me, is 2 - 2.5 hours that's about as much as I can take in one go.
It also gets me 2 days of commuting 🙂
Bonus of this motor is I can fairly easily turn it into an "acoustic" bike and save a big chunk of weight.
Same as above, Fazua - except mines a Kinesis Rise Pro. It made 1.5 days of commuting, which was annoying had to charge every day, pretty much. I did a 3 hour ride and ran out of battery just as I was nearing the end of the ride, at my most knackered.
Bike is a lovely ride, but I'm always wishing for a full-fatter if I'm honest.
Like everything not at a special sale price, PXBANK15 gives 15% discount at PlanetX, making those Loxley e-bikes ~£850 plus p&p.
Still not reviews on site, or anywhere else I can see.
E-bike battery distances desperately need a standard formula they can use in marketing blurb. I don't believe for a second that I could get ~70 miles even at minimal assistance on a typical ~60 foot per mile ride at ~80Kg.
I just ordered the Orbea Vibe H10 (I wanted the better components than the H30). Requirements were light(ish), fun to ride, not pig ugly, did not need a lot of power. That's because it's not a bike replacement, it's a car replacement. Where we live the nearest 2 towns are 5 miles away. Sometimes I ride, but mostly I drive and 90% of those I am going to try and do on the vibe (maybe not in the middle of winter if I'm honest!)
So I didn't need massively long range. There's a nasty 130m climb between Ross and our house. I've done it 100s of times on various bikes at the end of long days/going to the pub. I'm quite looking forward to breezing up there with a bit of shopping/booze on board.
I tried the Orbea from my very local bike shop. It's really nice to ride. I was convinced I'd never use turbo. Until I tried it 🙂 I think I'll be using it for trail scouting up big hills I can't be bothered to ride up to find rubbish trails.
Also looked at the Ribble's but they are saying November and a mate bought a non e-bike from them last year and delivery dates slipped quite a few times.