Fast Ebike for a tough commute

C

cbr shadow

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Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Messages
341
Location
Daly City, CA -USA
I'm a cyclist and ride about 6,000 miles/year, so I'm not against using the pedals to go forward. My issue is that I work 34 miles away from where I live, including a fair amount of long hills. I love riding this route but it just takes too long by bike. There's also a ton of traffic in my area, so driving takes a long time too (although not as long as cycling).

I'd like to build or buy an ebike. I'd like a bike that:

1) Doesn't look like a dirt bike. It doesn't have to completely hide that it's electric, but I feel like bikes like the Stealth Bomber get a lot of attention

2) Can go 35-40mph top speed
3) Has a range of 40 miles (not necessarily at 35-40mph the whole time though)
4) Has the ability to pedal. As in, I don't want a Zero Electric Motorcycle :)

This is mostly for commuting, but I think it would also be a fun toy to ride around town.

Any suggestions for reliable pre-made bikes that fit what I'm looking for?
 
It would be good to describe the hills in more detail. Grade, duration, etc. Also, you will get advice on suspension, so if you provide some of your thoughts or limitations around that, best to have that known up front.

PS. There are some good online tools for plotting out terrain, etc., which should provide good info.

The motor simulator will be helpful for the speed, etc, and for how well a motor will perform depending on the grade, weight, rider contribution, etc., to let you know if the motor will handle it or melt.

https://www.ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html
 
Any bike with a bbshd or cyc motor would be fine. You might need a 800wh+ battery to cover all that range though, also you'd have to charge at work.
 
One possible formula is to use a Direct Drive hub motor with a fairly large 72 volt battery. Given the speeds you want to hit and the range you want, I'd look for about 1200 watt hours of capacity. That's more than the math suggests, but you want to oversize so that you don't overtax the battery when running fast. So that's about 16-17 amps hours at 72 volts. This amount of battery combined with a heavy DD motor will make the bike pretty heavy. Depending on the bike and whatever else you add, it will probably be 70 lbs or heavier - especially if you mount a robust potted charger to the bike.

You probably want a decent quality front suspension fork. You also probably want a cassette or freewheel with an 11 tooth small sprocket and a large chain ring. I just run a road crank with a double chain ring with a 53T big ring. You may want a bigger ring than that.

You can put something like this together and have the bike still look like a bicycle and not a motorcycle. You should be able to cruise at about 25 mph and consume about 25-35 watt/hr per mile depending on conditions.
 
If there are good roads in your area and the hills aren't extremely steep, Stromer makes an excellent commuter for about $5,000 (they have a $10,000 model too, but after riding both extensively, the less expensive bike is adequate. It was fairly easy to hold 30 mph on flat roads; probably you'll need to charge at work.
 
Zero is a lot better for your situation. Fast ebike is expensive. Used Zero the same.
 
We need more information on what exactly is a fair amount of long hills.
What is the grade of those hills and what is the distance of those hills.

cbr shadow said:
including a fair amount of long hills.
Click to expand...
 
Your idea is a long time e bike dilemma. The hills are not the problem, a 40 mph e bike gets up any hill. The distance is the problem.

The real problem is not the motor, but how you carry a really huge battery, without actually being a zero.

Additional difficulty arises above 30 mph,, when pedaling tends to do nothing much to move you forward. You pedal 100-150w, but you are using up to 3000w to go 40 mph.

And then there is high speed wobble, which can happen at 15 mph, if you overload the frame with batteries.

So, in short, compromise is going to happen, unless you build a shorter range, " motorcycle with pedals on it" Those MWP's are fun as shit, but they are not great commuters unless the ride is short.

Often the best approach is a large, sturdy cargo bike. Its designed to carry the 30 pounds of battery you will want, if you ride that commute very fast. You need to ride it at 30 mph, because its way longer than usual for bike commutes. Build for fast, with a larger size hub motor, one that can get you to about 40 mph on 72v. But then ride it so you always cruise about 30 mph. Use the 40 mph when you need it, to get in the lane with cars in the bad spots on your route, but just briefly. Take the safe routes, even if a bit longer.

Learn to weld, and you can build a nice longtail that is crazy sturdy, for cheap. Start with a steel beach cruiser frame, ideally with a square taper BB.6-1-2015 Schwinn Cruiser with 52 t crank.JPG
 
I ride the 20 miles to work sometimes, and on both my bike and my wife's bike I drain the 1000wh battery each way maintaining about 30mph. If you want a 40mph top speed on level ground with an upright bike, you're going to need a 2000wh battery to go 34 miles at 30+mph. Thankfully you will contribute more to pedaling than I am able to.

I work right next to you in Arlington Heights if you wanted to try my bike out sometime.

Open as a new tab for full resolution:
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thundercamel said:
I ride the 20 miles to work sometimes, and on both my bike and my wife's bike I drain the 1000wh battery each way maintaining about 30mph. If you want a 40mph top speed on level ground with an upright bike, you're going to need a 2000wh battery to go 34 miles at 30+mph. Thankfully you will contribute more to pedaling than I am able to.
Click to expand...

Yup, the combination of not being able to contribute much pedaling and the speed requires a lot of juice. Dropping down to 25 mph from 30 mph would yeild almost 30% more range, but add in that you are able to contribute more at that speed, and the difference is even greater.

At my turtle cruising pace of 17 mph, I've ridden 50 miles with about 1/3 charge left (I calculate about 80 miles to empty, with the same 1000wh), since my ratio of human to motor power is much higher and wind resistance is minimal.
 
Note that with a mean speed hovering around 30 mph, his average speed is still only 23 mph given stops and other delays.
 
Thanks everyone for the responses so far. I guess I should have provided more information initially!

https://www.strava.com/activities/2680879540

Here's a link with my exact commute. This is from last week when I rode home on my road bike.
The roads are very nice and smooth, have a bike lane the entire time.


I like the idea of a long cargo bike to hold a very large battery. Even better if I could have a "pad" on the back for a passenger to get around town for light errands or a cafe run with my wife.

How reliable are these setups now? I built an ebike many years ago when I frequented this site pretty often (KMX tadpole trike with crystallyte hub motor and lyon controller). The controller had so many issues that I ended up giving up on the project after messing with it for a long time. I'm hoping things have progressed quite a bit since then (5 years) so that a "kit" is much more reliable than it used to be.
 
thundercamel said:
I ride the 20 miles to work sometimes, and on both my bike and my wife's bike I drain the 1000wh battery each way maintaining about 30mph. If you want a 40mph top speed on level ground with an upright bike, you're going to need a 2000wh battery to go 34 miles at 30+mph. Thankfully you will contribute more to pedaling than I am able to.

I work right next to you in Arlington Heights if you wanted to try my bike out sometime.

Open as a new tab for full resolution:
48iaTjmX1jwsNw0jSrxx_lO1UADfFUOIq6XkWGDAq7ArP0qZIGQ4XE4alVniRabLMyhfyEchziQAge-NZJahRJAWKAQ3z7Z2FFk5rZGp792zQMDUgfdbLDNSU7OjnBFUCmchOi2BWz4XYrC9HB7X8hs7FDVr6TUNdm6KUfLznnh4s_KzjY6l1F3k07PTDsmVa2hRpKYpsZWNKAx15PHc8tJwRmt62Y5JjrHQhPQM9lui-WDWeMHFDRenAzlyNjedmZ3a-WJfgsbbS8bqXLuN1_gV51TQ04utSZqSPrXo74Cn6DnFEfHuUiZuAPq8QYqvV408tcEqhKDoAx1f1NBisbe4cwmxhZ0xE0vY96kE-uc5qULrwc1UT68VUXcKfAXgBKNJBYgitZvpkO1WG0-pfQmnxZV82-PC8L2bFkzzXHkewjQLm-fOkH7Dknv60hiaXw0Q9T_KtbY7OotpxY6n-s-knibYIu0nMODAhrRJn4y4KRIniHMXNvZsCdLIuGm_iUlh8t3xNZ5ctgTKXzcFDHL7YKjGOuiz1dSgUlIt_FSRMTf63wpSFF-0YEmCiGQrtTU6ZOtnBqNk4LoMcSM9peOt5JpsJ1M7QORqhindlCZNrooE5a1wrO1a_a0zVF1XsWmDBohVINVwAWxYpLTfBIafPwn77wpLGPF9wIEpiNyTo5ldwTMz0yj2kBdDQIdnGmsrF9j1hvL-YblVuhOMUcQ5=w1567-h665-no
Click to expand...

That's really nice of you to offer to let me try your bike. I no longer live in Schaumburg, IL though - we've since moved to Daly City, CA (right near San Francisco). I should update my profile tag!
 
That's a bit too far for me :p

wturber said:
Note that with a mean speed hovering around 30 mph, his average speed is still only 23 mph given and other delays.
Click to expand...
Indeed, thank you for pointing that out. Overall, it hasn't been bad, typically a 45 minute drive or 52 minute ride. On the last ride, I picked a car out when I got to the normal bumper to bumper backup. I got 3 miles before that car finally caught up to me.

E-HP - 50 miles with some charge remaining is quite good! The most I've done also around 15mph was 45 miles before I was into the low voltage cutoff zone.
 
cbr shadow said:
Thanks everyone for the responses so far. I guess I should have provided more information initially!

https://www.strava.com/activities/2680879540

Here's a link with my exact commute. This is from last week when I rode home on my road bike.
The roads are very nice and smooth, have a bike lane the entire time.


I like the idea of a long cargo bike to hold a very large battery. Even better if I could have a "pad" on the back for a passenger to get around town for light errands or a cafe run with my wife.

How reliable are these setups now? I built an ebike many years ago when I frequented this site pretty often (KMX tadpole trike with crystallyte hub motor and lyon controller). The controller had so many issues that I ended up giving up on the project after messing with it for a long time. I'm hoping things have progressed quite a bit since then (5 years) so that a "kit" is much more reliable than it used to be.
Click to expand...

Facebook?

That's a really scenic route (I used to ride my motorcycle out that way on weekends), but will take a good amount of battery if you want to maintain 30 mph. Looking at it in more detail (using this tool http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.html), it looks like the steep section are around 7%-8%, with couple of part hitting 10%+. Nice to have a direct drive so you can take advantage of regen on that type of commute.
 
E-HP said:
cbr shadow said:
Thanks everyone for the responses so far. I guess I should have provided more information initially!

https://www.strava.com/activities/2680879540

Here's a link with my exact commute. This is from last week when I rode home on my road bike.
The roads are very nice and smooth, have a bike lane the entire time.


I like the idea of a long cargo bike to hold a very large battery. Even better if I could have a "pad" on the back for a passenger to get around town for light errands or a cafe run with my wife.

How reliable are these setups now? I built an ebike many years ago when I frequented this site pretty often (KMX tadpole trike with crystallyte hub motor and lyon controller). The controller had so many issues that I ended up giving up on the project after messing with it for a long time. I'm hoping things have progressed quite a bit since then (5 years) so that a "kit" is much more reliable than it used to be.
Click to expand...

Facebook?

That's a really scenic route (I used to ride my motorcycle out that way on weekends), but will take a good amount of battery if you want to maintain 30 mph. Looking at it in more detail (using this tool http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.html), it looks like the steep section are around 7%-8%, with couple of part hitting 10%+. Nice to have a direct drive so you can take advantage of regen on that type of commute.
Click to expand...

Yes, Facebook - good eye!
This route is just amazing. I do have the option of taking a shuttle in to work, but I prefer to be out on the bike and like the convenience of driving, so I'm hoping an ebike would give me the best of both worlds.

I'm hoping there's an existing frame I can use like the "RadWagon Cargo Bike" that I can add a bigger batter+motor to. I like the style of that type of cargo bike, plus I've seen people ride around town with a passenger sitting on the back.
 
cbr shadow said:
E-HP said:
cbr shadow said:
Thanks everyone for the responses so far. I guess I should have provided more information initially!

https://www.strava.com/activities/2680879540

Here's a link with my exact commute. This is from last week when I rode home on my road bike.
The roads are very nice and smooth, have a bike lane the entire time.


I like the idea of a long cargo bike to hold a very large battery. Even better if I could have a "pad" on the back for a passenger to get around town for light errands or a cafe run with my wife.

How reliable are these setups now? I built an ebike many years ago when I frequented this site pretty often (KMX tadpole trike with crystallyte hub motor and lyon controller). The controller had so many issues that I ended up giving up on the project after messing with it for a long time. I'm hoping things have progressed quite a bit since then (5 years) so that a "kit" is much more reliable than it used to be.
Click to expand...

Facebook?

That's a really scenic route (I used to ride my motorcycle out that way on weekends), but will take a good amount of battery if you want to maintain 30 mph. Looking at it in more detail (using this tool http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.html), it looks like the steep section are around 7%-8%, with couple of part hitting 10%+. Nice to have a direct drive so you can take advantage of regen on that type of commute.
Click to expand...

Yes, Facebook - good eye!
This route is just amazing. I do have the option of taking a shuttle in to work, but I prefer to be out on the bike and like the convenience of driving, so I'm hoping an ebike would give me the best of both...
Click to expand...
Really cool you get to use a bike path/lane too!

I recently mapped that destination. Good company but they’ve lured away a few good employees, so I was guesstimating what compensation would be necessary to endure a daily commute there. On the other hand, once your there, there’s a lot of perks to make you want to hang around.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I see there are several options for the "type" of bike I want. Would any of these be a good starting point?

Cargo Bike without existing Electric Components
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/d/san-francisco-surly-big-dummy-long-tail/6954429557.html

Cargo bike with electric components
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/bik/d/mill-valley-yuba-spicy-curry-cargo-bike/6975717695.html
or
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/d/san-francisco-electric-cargo-bike-for/6975465039.html
 
This is what I ended up with that would do 40mph for 60 miles, on a cheap motor and cheap recycled batteries and left over cargo bike frame. It's ugly, but has perfect neutral handling, no wobbles at high speed, but quick in turn reversals, doesn't wheelie up when punching the throttle, giant chaining for high speed pedaling, and the skinny bars for lane splitting. The battery pack is also in the perfect place for grabbing with your knees for sudden bumps, and it's tall enough to lay my chest on for extended aero position sessions. The pack is modular 20s (72v nominal) bricks, so for short sprinty runs I just run one or two modules, the top speed and power is the same, just less range.
KIMG0054-640x360.JPG

The latest iteration has aThudbuster suspension seatpost... It was a great addition.
 
cbr shadow said:
I see there are several options for the "type" of bike I want. Would any of these be a good starting point?

Cargo Bike without existing Electric Components
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/d/san-francisco-surly-big-dummy-long-tail/6954429557.html

Cargo bike with electric components
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/bik/d/mill-valley-yuba-spicy-curry-cargo-bike/6975717695.html
or
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bik/d/san-francisco-electric-cargo-bike-for/6975465039.html
Click to expand...

I see the Yubas around pretty often. The 20" rear wheel makes it good on hills (see the YouTube videos where they ride them up some steep SF streets). Doesn't have the top speed you're looking for though.
 
Don't get the Bionx powered xtracycle... Non supported, very proprietary system.

The Spicy Curry was actually one of the best handling cargo bikes I've ridden. It has the rare no hands stability that makes it a pleasure to ride. The 1.5 inch steerer tube makes the front end rock solid. But the drive is impossible to hot rod for higher speed.

The Surly would make a fine conversion platform. It has the ten speed cluster though, so rare to find a hub motor that can mount that gearset, so need to change out the deraileur, chain and shifter.

Mine just for reference is a first gen Yuba Mondo... The first gens had really thick wall tubing, and a non welded bolt on rack, which made them really heavy for pedal use. But electrified they're a stiff good handling pavement burner.
 
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