Holla,

Looking to electrify my old hybrid for bike to work purposes.

Would like recommendations for kits.

Criteria:

1. They do cycle to work vouchers
2. High Watts – I know I know. Cheeky.
3. Mid drive, or freehub. Not interested in freewheel ones…

Cheers Alex

Bafang or …? middrive (forget the name )..TJ had one iirc.

Unless you live somewhere hilly, hub motor = less drivechain wear. That’s just a theory though, all mine are Shimano mid-drives. I have a yose power rear wheel kit to try on a cheap hardtail but haven’t fitted it yet. Will be interesting to how a £360 kit compares to a £4k eMTB.

Wheel kits are very much second best to mid mounted

Tongsheng TSDZ2 ebike kit

+1 for the Tongsheng mid mount and they can be set up singlespeed (for simplicity) too.

Wheel kits are very much second best to mid mounted

Why is that? I’ve heard it said quite a few times but haven’t really found out why. At a guess a hub motor needs to work across a much wider range of speed and torque which might be a bit of a compromise…?

I’ve only tried a basic rear hub driven e-bike; it was quite crude but then it was cheap. It still did the job though.

When going slowly ie climbing and pulling away a hub motor turns slowly thus is both inefficient and gets very hot.

Its also much harder to do torque sensing which is what makes them intuitive to ride.

Heavy wheel if that bothers you

Great, thanks. The one I tried was a torque sensing one but there was a distinct lag which took a bit of getting used to.