Comment by jadenPete
5 hours ago
I'm curious, how much does this weigh? I've ridden e-bikes a few times, and it's always surprising how much heavier they are than ordinary bikes. I can't imagine how heavy this must be.
5 hours ago
I'm curious, how much does this weigh? I've ridden e-bikes a few times, and it's always surprising how much heavier they are than ordinary bikes. I can't imagine how heavy this must be.
170 cells, they're 45 grams each, the pack mounting hardware and box adds another two kilos or so, so say 10 Kg in all for the pack. Definitely not a lightweight :) But once it's going you hardly notice the weight other than when you have a pothole or bump. It also obviously isn't as nimble as a lighter bike but it is still very well manageable because the weight is relatively low.
What's interesting is that the duct tape is still the same, it never even cracked or tear. I don't particularly care about the looks, it just needs to work.
190 cells is 9-9.5kg, a mid-drive motor like the one in the picture is typically 3-7kg depending on power. This is roughly 12-17kg/26-37lbs of extra weight plus the enclosure, electronics, and wiring.
Yeah the assistance you get from a bike being light is huge. I wonder if expensive light bike > assisted bike in terms of saving human effort per trip.
Obviously if the e-bike requires no pedalling at all it wins but then that is not legal everywhere.
Human effort just isn't worth very much. The strongest humans on earth can manage about 400W for an hour. Even very small ebike motors are usually capable of 500w continuous/forever, so long as the motor does not spend too much time stalled or at very low speeds.
For a normal human, a "legal" 250w motor is easily doubling or tripling their normal power output, so hauling around an extra 20kg on top of the existing ~100kg body + bike is not a big deal.
A heavy battery makes an ebike extremely unpleasant to pedal manually. You should try it.
I built almost exactly the same size pack (2 kWH) as Jacques in 2020 on a hybrid road bike and hated it so much that I only rode it 20 times or so. The battery still sits in the corner of my house doing nothing.
I think the main difference due to weight boils down to you riding in one gear lower when not using assistance.
On flat roads, I usually ride on 3rd or 4th gear (out of 7), now i ride in 2nd or 3rd.
But where i ride, the road isn't even and has a lot of steep slopes. There I'm on 1st gear all the time anyway and the assistance i get totally saves my knees, and ensures I'm not all sweaty when i reach my destination. Even compared to the light weight regular bicycles i rode before, this is better.