Comment by phreeza

4 years ago

The pedaling aspect is also not really what matters, because you can in principle reduce the load factor so much that the pedals also just become a fancy throttle, no?

31 comments

phreeza

Reply
jacquesm  4 years ago

No, there is a direct relationship between the power exerted and the power the motor will add. There is a nifty torque sensor built into the cranks.

  • nybble41  4 years ago

    You're describing one particular kind of (high-end) e-bike. Many perfectly legal, unmodified e-bikes do not have torque sensors. If the bike has a cadence sensor, like mine does, then it doesn't care about how much torque you're applying to the pedals. All it cares about is how fast they're turning. And at the higher speeds (around the 20 MPH limit) the gearing and small wheel sizes on mine are such that one would need to pedal very fast to exert any significant pressure on the pedals. A much lower pedaling rate with no pressure will still maintain the top speed on level ground.

    There is no significant difference between "pedal assist" and a hand-operated throttle. It would be really nice if the politicians would recognize this and remove the meaningless class 1 / class 2 distinction based purely on the location of the throttle. (Though to be fair there are many more sensible places which already treat them the same.)

    • jacquesm  4 years ago

      Those are more than likely 25 Kph limited bikes, s-pedelecs are a different class altogether.

  • phreeza  4 years ago

    What I am saying you could hack the power to torque factor to be so high you don't really have to exert very much force at all.

    • jacquesm  4 years ago

      You can't. These bikes are DRM'd to the hilt and any attempt at hacking them will cause the bike to brick itself which you can only reset at the dealership. You can do that three times and then it's permanent.

      The penalties for having such a hack detected on your bike - assuming you would get away with it - is confiscation. I would strongly advise against such tricks.

      You can see how much work just changing out the battery was. There are plenty of parties selling limiter removers or speed boxes but they're all illegal and you are uninsured when using such a device. My bike is perfectly legal to ride.

      24 replies →

lukevi  4 years ago

I've found this to be correct on most every e-bike I have rented. You can "feather pedal", just spinning the cranks without engaging any energy, and the e-bike will send power to "assist".