Comment by wpietri
4 years ago
Speed (or better, momentum) is important. But pedal assistance is definitely material to me. Switching from pedal-assist to throttle-controlled changes the proportionality between impulse and real-world results.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
E bikes also have a dial, all it does is it limits the speed when it stops accelerating. You can dial the bike all the way up, peddle but not apply any force and still accelerate to top speed.
Where I live that would be illegal for an e-bike, that vehicle would be classified as an e-scooter.
Doesn't any Batavus E-Bike does this? That's were I got my (limited) experience from.
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Interesting. So you're saying that they have to keep pedaling, just not very hard? My only experience is with the Lyft e-bikes, where high speed required actual work for me.
yes, as long as i kept rotating the crank with my pedals, it would power me forward, regardless of rotation speed
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