Comfortable speed

How fast do you go on your e-bike

  • Between 10 and 15mph

    Votes: 9 7.3%
  • Between 15-20mph

    Votes: 40 32.5%
  • Between 20-25mph

    Votes: 27 22.0%
  • Between 25-30mph

    Votes: 15 12.2%
  • 30mph+ but honestly it's a bicycle.

    Votes: 31 25.2%
  • Under 10mph

    Votes: 1 0.8%

  • Total voters
    123
Joined
Mar 14, 2013
Messages
2,282
Location
The not so UK
Picture your on a quiet road with good visibility. Wearing sneaks and shades, not padding and a m/c helmet. How fast do you go?

I'm talking comfortable speed. Not how fast you could go.


I like to do about 18mph. It's getting noisy and my hairs getting messy but my face isn't quite rippling yet.
 
FWIW, I picked 15-20MPH because that's what's max street speed here, so I have no experience riding CrazyBike2 on the street at higher speeds.

But I have ridden it faster on the kart track for Undead Race 2010 and Death Race 2011, and it's a much better bike now, so I have a feeling I would probably be comfortable enough riding it up to at least 25MPH if it was allowed here. I'd like to try it above 30 for a good long stretch, but I don't know anywhere to do that legally and safely.

I'd need better tires and suspension, though, and probably a better brake setup, as the stuff I have now isn't matched up and doesn't operate as well as it could, and I wouldn't trust it to stop me quickly enough at the faster speeds. And I wouldn't trust the plain bike tires I have at these speeds on these roads with this weight; I'd want something multi-ply and more proof against road debris, good grip and large contact patch for braking.
 
This is interesting. People with bikes go slower than people without bikes think they want to go. The 15.5mph limit is still a little low, but 250w bikes can probably do what most people want, once delimited. Such bikes probably pull harder than a 1000w DD setup from ebay to. The DD only winning on top speed, which people think they want, but it appears they are just kidding themselves. Loosing out on torque, to acquire speed they don't use.

I'm trying to weigh up the 3000w mxus against a 500w bpm. Bearing in mind I don't care for 30mph top speeds, and want good torque and low battery weight. For a bike that rarely see's temperatures above 30c or long hills. Plus it's a bike, so will get pedaled around in pedestrian zones. Never used on throttle alone.

The bpm on Justins simulator appears to be the 328 version. To fast for my needs, so only makes 110 torques with 35 amps. While a good DD might make 80. His 250rpm 500w ezee produces 140 torques, so I expect a slower bpm to be more inline with that. Same power consumption, but limiting my speed requirement with gears is almost doubling the torques available, and it still does 25mph.

I need to find a graph for a mxus to see it's output with similar power, and output possible with similarly acceptable excess power. I know it weighs about 6kg more and your not pedaling it far, but it's still of interest as it's price is very good
 
It's interesting to hear bike comfort holds you back. Mines just as comfortable at it's max of 28. It's me that is more comfortable at 18.

I hope 15.5mph bike users are not being forced to say 15-20 when they themselves would be comfortable going quicker. It is more the users prefeerance I'm interested in, not their bikes competency.

Speaking of competency. That's an hour, and I still can't find mxus the company or the mxus thread. Just lots of group buys. Lots of resellers. Lots of users. No specifications..... anybody?

Edit: Moments later, I find it. All 35 pages. Where the best I could see (with limited time) was peeps say it's like a crystalite 40XX. I see the 4080 on the simulator. Is it close enough for comparisons?

The 4080 with the same supply as the 328 bpm (if it's 328, which it seems to be) has no more torque. The ezee 500 has 30% more than the 4080 and is not going to over heat at that power level. Making the 4080 a pointless motor at that power level if it's high speed is not required. Due to the 6kg weight penalty and poor pedaling performance. Not forgetting the cost.

I guess the mxus is not for Me if it won't pull like a bpm until you get past 50 amps. Being 150% heavier I expect more than breaking even before I will carry it. Maybe 70 amps. Which in RC lipo will mean carrying 20ah. That's about 18kg of kit. For 50 amps your looking at 15kg of kit. I can do that with 7kg. Then still pedal round town.

I have spent a long time trying to justify DD motors. They never even come close though. Only serving people that want to go fast. Hence asking how fast people like to go.
 
Kiriakos GR said:
Conversion Link for Europeans and rest of the world. :wink:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/miles-to-kilometers.htm

Nowadays that I have driving experience regarding requirements which an ebike need to have so to blend with regular traffic successfully, I am aware that one Mid-drive capable to accelerate from dead stop to 35-40Km in 5 seconds it would be named as ideal.

Good target for me to. 35-40kmh as quickly as possible. Speed that does not really need much power to sustain it. Reached so quickly the motor has no time to heat. In europe it appears a bpm is the best choice for this (or something similar). To get any more power off the line, you need twice the motor and battery weight before any gain is seen.

Am I missing any motors? I think I saw a 750w geared hub once. Can you imagine a 10kg geared hub? If it didn't shread the gears you wouldn't keep the front wheel down.
 
friendly1uk said:
I hope 15.5mph bike users are not being forced to say 15-20 when they themselves would be comfortable going quicker. It is more the users prefeerance I'm interested in, not their bikes competency.
Remember that like I posted above, it's hard to know your preference if you arent' allowed to ride faster than a certain speed--you might prefer it if you try it long enough to get used to it. I can't, here, so I can't know if I'd prefer it or not.

So it isnt' a matter of the bike's competency so much as it is that the law and enforcement doesn't allow for the opportunity to try it long enough term to find out if the bike *is* competent or not. ;)

I can say that it's fun on an isolated kart track where there's no cars to run me over, and the road's not full of holes, ridges, bumps, construction debris, etc. But I can't know what it is like to ride like that regularly on my normal local streets because it's not allowed, so I also cant' know if I'd like it. :(

I expect there's a fair number of people like that, especially over in the EU and Down Under where it's even more restrictive than most places in the USA.

(At least here in AZ, I don't have a power limit so while I can't go faster I can still get *to* that speed PDQ).



I have spent a long time trying to justify DD motors. They never even come close though. Only serving people that want to go fast. Hence asking how fast people like to go.
DD motors don't only serve speed-demons. ;) THey also serve those that overheat or break the gears and clutches in geared motors due to heavy cargo loads, frequent complete stops and starts, etc. And those that don't like the noise of the gears and/or the whine of the fast motor inside. People like me. ;)

I thought geared motors would be better for my needs because of all the reasons others had liked them, but for me they don't work becuase they break: Either they get so hot inside the halls stop working (temporarily or permanently), or the gear teeth start pulling out at the roots, or the clutch disc actually cracks thru.

Heck, I've overheated single DD motors too, with some of the neighborhoods that have complete stops pretty much every single intersection--getting a heavy load restarted from a stop every few dozen feet sucks up power real quick. But at least they can shed heat easier (without modification) than the geared ones, becuase there's at least one less layer of stuff between the stator and the air outside.

PReviously I've used other motors thru the bike drivetrain, some with their own gearboxes, and while they've got plenty of pulling power, they break things often, if alignment isn't perfect (and alignment apparently doesn't ever stay perfect, for me, on my bikes).

That's a part of why I have 2WD DD motors now.


I'm also not a fan of the noise of any of the geared systems I've tried so far (thru the drivetrain or otherwise), though I haven't yet tried a DD-hub-powered-thru-the-bike-drivetrain, which would probably fix the noise.
 
Yes, I understand my waffle is just personal preference. Based on my 30 degree peak summer temps and no long climbs. Limited speed requirement and expectations of carrying little weight.

Have you tried geared hubs in the last couple of years? The older nylon gears offer little strength beside the newer composite one's.

I see your average summers day is 40c+ so I can see why you don't want plastic gears and must concentrate on getting the heat out. I don't like to think how hot a black item would get if left in the sun. Especially one with a heater inside. I'm surprised the gears didn't pool in the bottom of the case.
 
I think the gap representing 25-30 shows the divide we are all aware of, between cyclists and people that think they are cyclists.
 

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I chose the 25-30 mph comfortable speed, whatever that may mean. As its not so much wanting fast speed as wanting to go with the flow of traffic in my urban street environment, feeling it somewhat safer, and I'll take that as the key issue. We all have to contend with very various factors inducing slower or faster. In the local park along side lots of people, I prefer <5 mph, because the "flow" is that. I'm contemplating a hydraulic disk brake for my MAC/Trek Shift 3 build, as the faster speed I believe is begging for better braking.
 
Only 15 respondents to the poll, so not a fair sample yet. ;)

friendly1uk said:
Have you tried geared hubs in the last couple of years?
Yes, but I still have no idea what the gears inside it are made of (requires a special tool to disassemble, which I've not yet made, and Fusin won't show hte inside or tell anyone about it, or sell the tool to anyone but dealers).

Another issue is that it's sensorless, so the controller for it randomly picks a direction to startup, and it doesn't always pick the forward direction the first time, so it sounds like it's grinding around inside much of the time when it starts up, as if it's coming apart. :( Kinda like teh way a car sounds if you have it halfway between gears when you try to go. :roll: Very unsettling. I also don't yet know if it will even work iwth a different controller; Iv'e only tried the 6FET and 9FET ones it came with (neither of which has much oomph with it; acceleration is pretty slow for what I want, even on just a normal bike like I tested it on to start with).



See my Fusin 1000W geared hub review thread, or the Delta Tripper thread, for that motor info. Most of hte other geared motor info is in the DayGlo Avenger thread, and early in the CrazyBike2 thread.

I never got to really check out the oil-filled geared hub idea before life interfered and then the housefire, and I have yet to get back to most of my projects since then.

I'm surprised the gears didn't pool in the bottom of the case.
So am I, since it got hot enough to melt solder off the little hall board at least once. :(

The clutch breaking was on my mostly-normal DayGLo Avenger without even a trailer or real cargo, just starting out from a stop leaving work after a long overnight shift.
 
amberwolf said:
I thought geared motors would be better for my needs because of all the reasons others had liked them, but for me they don't work becuase they break: Either they get so hot inside the halls stop working (temporarily or permanently), or the gear teeth start pulling out at the roots, or the clutch disc actually cracks thru.
I think what you mean is that 'the ones you tried', 'the way you tried them', 'back when you tried them' - broke.

In the general case, this is certainly has not been the case for the last few years for the big geared motors like BMC, MAC, or eZee. The scene has been changed with composite gears, improved clutch design, and the CA V3 to avoid high-stress getaways and do thermal rollback. Small geared motors address a different market and putting one on a heavy bike and flogging it is a recipe for disaster - not the motor's fault.

I run BMC v2Ses as 2WD at 3.3kW total. They run every ride at 35-40mph for part of the ride with a 350lb cargo bike. I slam it WOT to jackrabbit intersections all the time - 30mph in under 10 seconds - I'm not being gentle with it - 9000+ miles. In my state we have no weight or speed restrictions and my bike has legal power levels so I can ride the shoulder at bike speed or in the traffic at car speed as appropriate. They definitely whine when flogged hard, but at bike path speeds, they're quiet and peds don't even know the bike is powered.

It took a few clutches to get get everything tuned, but since then there have been none of the clutch, gear, or hall issues that you report.
Just sayin'....
 
I find it interesting that the consensus seems to be 20 mph (32kph). Would you be willing to live with a 20mph speed limit (already a de facto or actual limit in most of the US) in exchange for REAL roadways for all Slow Speed Light Vehicles? Sorry...back on my soapbox again.
 
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66106&p=994461#p994440
That is true; I didn't say it that way because I figured it was obvious (and is documented in the mentioned threads). :oops:


http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66106&p=994461#p994440
Probably true, but I haven't had the opportunity to try the others yet, given the costs involved vs my budget (when I have one).


Regarding high-stress getaways, though: There's a lot of times I need to do those, when stuck in front of a line of cars at a stop light, and have to be able to get across the intersection and out of their way before one of them gets impatient and does something stupid. :(

(and sometimes it's just fun to do it ;))


http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66106&p=994461#p994440
Sounds like the ticket for a geared motor for me, then...other than cost.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66106&p=994461#p994440
I don't much care if people know it's powered; I just don't want to hear anything from the bike itself (wish I could get rid of wind noise and tire noise, too, so I could just hear my environment clearly (without being muffled), but have never found much to help with that.
 
I think 15-20mph is perfect. IMO if I wanted to go faster, I would just ride motorcycles. Plus think about the battery lasting for more distance. I don't plan on forcing my E bike motors to strain going up steep hills either. I'd rather take 30 seconds to walk it up a steep hill and enjoy longer rides on the flats. But that's just me. Great thread Amberwolf!!))
 
2 days and 27 votes.

SpeedPoll01-edit.jpg

The distribution seems to be staying somewhat consistent.

~50% think 15-20mph is about right
~25% want to go 5mph over the speed limit
~25% want to keep up with the cars and motorcycles

Would love to see a bigger sample.
 
I find that around 14/15Mph is most comfortable as wind drag is noticeable if going any faster.
It also gets the best range out of my batteries and allows me to enjoy the scenery as well.
Having said that I often ride between 30 and 40Mph when heading to the pub(nearly all downhill) :twisted:
 
I like speeds a bit over 20mph, because the ride is still relatively quiet and non-stressful, but it's faster than I can sustainably ride with pedals alone. I mean, if I'm going to tolerate a heavy clunky bike, I might as well get something I don't from my pedal bikes.
 
I find travelling along the road at 30mph to be perfect when im going somewhere because i can keep with the local traffic and dont have to worry about cars passing me to close and its a comfortable speed to do as long as i know mr policeman isnt around.

Travelling along a bike path or Shared path taking a leisurely ride i tend to stick between 10mph and 15mph due to traffic and pedestrians and just plain simple courtesy.

If im out for just a plain and simple ride i tend to comfortably sit around the 25 to 30mph speed as its a very comfortable speed for me and not too fast to stop in a hurry if need to.

Also whats the go with "30mph+ but honestly its a bicycle" crap? Road riders in my local area sit on 45 to 48kph on the flat and way faster down a hill so its not out of the question that bikes are made to go this fast.
Maybe its the people riding cheap Walmart bikes that find 30mph unrealistic because when im on the road or fire trail doing 40+ mph there are times i wish i could do 50+mph. My bike is stable and i feel very comfortable doing the speeds it can do.

Going down my local hill at 45kph on my sons 29" $200 bike feels like im planning to die and just dosnt feel the same because of the Quality of bike im on. Speed with Comfort is all in relation to the Quality of Bicycle you are CHOOSING to Ride imho.
 
I went with 25 to 30 as it is a good speed to outrun city traffic.

My slowest build will top out at 16 mph. Too slow to mix with traffic.
But lots of fun for offroad.
 
TotalConfusion said:
Also whats the go with "30mph+ but honestly its a bicycle" crap?

You Sir, Are Confused. Even the tour de france riders don't do 30mph as an average speed, and they have the roads closed off for them. While we are on much more dangerous routes with a lot more weight to stop. Why even make the comparison. The gap between them is over 100% making it a mute point.

We can all see the small group that go too fast for conditions, be it on bikes or in cars. Rear ending someone is the most common crash by far. This human weakness is plain to see and well documented. We absolutely must have a couple of these people on this thread, it's just the law of averages playing out.

The argument "because they do it" is a religion. It shows no free thinking. Have a think about who you might be. From all the people commenting, who sounds most likely to be dead next year?
 
Does anyone else think the top two speed groups picked up 3 votes each overnight that don't ring true?
This happens a lot. People want their view to matter, so have a few accounts to back themselves up.

I consider the results to be fudged until a moderator tells me otherwise. I also presume double accounts are not allowed for this very reason. Many forums have this rule. It's that common.

It's too many votes, in too short a time, on a poll that's about ground to a halt, for results that were highly unpopular. It stinks.
 
My rolling average is 24-25mph on my commute. So... ya.. 30mph on a flat, up to 40mph down hills. 6 miles outside of town mostly back roads. Slower than 20 feels like a snails pace, and doesn't make a 40 mile round trip commute feasible.
 
friendly1uk said:
Does anyone else think the top two speed groups picked up 3 votes each overnight

It doesn't look like that to me: The two resuls at the top of the poll are the lowest ones, and one has zero votes and the other only two, so neither could have "picked up 3 votes". So I don't understand that part at all.

Code:
Under 10mph  	0%  	 0%   	[ 0 ]
Between 10 and 15mph 	5% 	 5%  	[ 2 ]
Between 15-20mph 	37% 	 37%  	[ 15 ] 	x
Between 20-25mph 	22% 	 22%  	[ 9 ]
Between 25-30mph 	12% 	 12%  	[ 5 ]
30mph+ but honestly it's a bicycle. 	24% 	 24%  	[ 10 ]



that don't ring true?
? People vote what they vote; if they don't also explain themselves in a post there's no way to know who voted or why; that's perfectly normal too.

When you want to know who and why so you know if it's "true" (as much as anything can be known to be so, especially on the internet), you'd have to use a non-anonymous way of polling, by not using the actual poll function.

This happens a lot. People want their view to matter, so have a few accounts to back themselves up.
If so, they'll be removed when found--duplicate accounts are not allowed. If you can point to specific instances of duplicate account use, they'll be investigated and resolved where possible, and the members warned. (typically both accounts will be merged and posts from one reassigned to the other--but it is a manual process and can take a very long time if there are more than a handful of posts...and polls cant' be fixed as there's no moderator access to the results or votes).


I consider the results to be fudged until a moderator tells me otherwise.
There's no way to know, AFAICT, without actually sitting at the computer every member is logging in from and seeing the screen that comes up on this thread. If the screen shows they've voted, then they have, if not, they haven't. I'm sure the forum software internally tracks which have voted and which have not but the data isn't available to moderators.

An internet poll is just an internet poll, and you couldn't know it's accuracy even under ideal conditions. The best you can do is to not have the results visible until the end of the poll when no more votes are taken.

Given our membership numbers here in total vs the small active number, it would really not be true results even without any deliberate actions, just because hardly anyone ever participates in polls, and even fewer explain themselves (which would be required to satisfy you, AFAICS), based on what I've seen of past polls.


It's too many votes, in too short a time, on a poll that's about ground to a halt, for results that were highly unpopular. It stinks.
You sure are an impatient person, figuring all you will get is the first 3 days of data. Results could trickle in forever on a poll with no close date, especially as others mention the poll in other threads, and people that didn't know it was even there now go find it and vote. (like Eclectic's thread discussing the results of this poll).

It's your poll and you can ignore whatever you like about it, though. ;)
 
TotalConfusion said:
Road riders in my local area sit on 45 to 48kph on the flat

Considering that the standing world record for distance covered in one hour on a bicycle with drop handlebars is 49.7mph, I think you're mistaken. Or maybe you have a lot of gifted riders in your area who should consider making attempts at setting a new world record.
 
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