My adult daughter bought an R10 with the larger battery in September 2010 to replace a Tres Terra Europa
http://www.electricvehiclesnw.com/main/tresterra.htm that was purchased in May 2006.
She uses it daily as her only mode of transportation. She is very happy with the bike. It is comfortable and the suspension and disk brakes work well. The Europa seems to accelerate a little faster than the R10 with just the throttle and no pedaling but if you pedal (strongly recommended for performance and battery life) they are about the same. The R10 seems to have a slightly higher top speed. We have not tried to measure the speed. The R10 is 15 pounds lighter than the Europa so it much easier to handle. Because the motor is at the crank and takes advantage of the gears it handles hills much better that the hub motor. Her ride is over hilly terrain and the bike does not slow much on the up hills so her 15 minute commute is now about 12 minutes and she feels she is not pedaling as hard.
In late October it started to have a problem with the crank. If you stop pedaling, the crank should free wheel and the motor can still power the bike. It started to intermittently stop free wheeling so the motor was causing the pedals to turn. Sometimes when she would pedal, the mechanism would release and the pedals would just spin without powering the bike. At the end of October it became a total failure. I contacted R.Martin and they knew right away what the problem was and said they would send me the part and a crank puller so that I could replace it. The did not FedEx it so I had to wait about 8 days for the part.
November 13th, 2010
When I started to dissemble the crank assembly I found the Philips slots striped in 2 of the 4 screws. Then in the next step I had to remove 4 Allan cap screws. 2 of these were hard to remove and it turns out that they were cross threaded when assembled. All parts are aluminum and it appears that very little care was taken in the assembly.
I did replace the part they sent me and the bike has been working well as of today 1/2/2011.
I contacted R.Martin on Nov 15th about the stripped screws and they agreed to send me a whole new crank assembly. I told them it was not a rush because the bike was working. By no rush I was thinking I could wait w couple of weeks. I am still waiting. A follow up email on 12/8 has gone unanswered. I will follow up with a phone call tomorrow to see whats up.
They seemed helpful and responsive up to this point so I hope they have a good explanation for the delays. I will post an update.
Spacing between pedals is 9"
Attached are some pictures of the motor and crank assembly and the defective part next to the new one.