Comment by Panzer04
7 hours ago
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.
On a flat road I disagree, but uphill you notice it a lot of course, but way worse is carrying the heavy bike. I take mine into trains a lot and unfortunately there are often lots of stairs and no escalators involved.