Reef Invisitron - claims 11kg and 100km range

Hi guys,
I was concerned that the claims made on another forum about the Reef invisitron seem a bit over the top.
It claims to be 'years ahead of its time' and that it will 'blow away all the competition'. 11kg and 100km range.
http://www.reefbikes.com.au/invisitron-r1-electric-bike-carbon-road-racing/

Seems a bit bullsh*t to me.

I became concerned when the article was posted on the ATA.org site by a guy called 'Chris Rider'. Turns out he is the owner and has a history of posing as a potential customer.
http://www.ata.org.au/forums/topic/150/page/3

I guess there is a market for carbon bikes - I love builds like Kepler's one.
But for guys like this to belittle all other kinds of ebikes and trump it up as lightyears ahead because it's a minimotor on a carbon frame seems quite unfair to me.
What do you think?

Technical Specifications

orange-tick.jpg Motor: 250W Micro
orange-tick.jpg Battery: PANASONIC lightweight lithium battery
orange-tick.jpg Display: LCD Digital Computer Display
orange-tick.jpg Throttle: Multi Level PAS Speed Control
orange-tick.jpg PAS: Pedal Assist Sensor and Controller
orange-tick.jpg Max Speed: 25km/h
orange-tick.jpg Max Range: 100km* (Only Estimate Using PAS Only Mode)
orange-tick.jpg Max Load: 150kgs
orange-tick.jpg Net Weight: 11kgs
orange-tick.jpg Frame: Alloy
orange-tick.jpg Forks: Carbon Fiber
orange-tick.jpg Gears: SHIMANO Sorda 27 Speed
orange-tick.jpg Tyres: 700C Road Racing
orange-tick.jpg Brakes: Shimano Sora Road Racing Brakes
orange-tick.jpg Saddle: Road Racing Sports
orange-tick.jpg Headlights: LED
orange-tick.jpg Charger: 240Volt Intelligent Smart Charger


"Fly past other racing cyclists at 25 km/h"
Nice looking bike though. Maybe has a 40km range.

Samd said:

It claims that it will 'blow away all the competition'.

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Yeah right.. Who's going to compete against that? Ask them if they're keen on coming to the next FrockFest
11kg with motor and battery - not likely. It's an alloy frame BTW. Not carbon. Looks cheap-ish and heavy-ish. More like 11kg without motor and battery.
100km range - sure. My road bike can do that! It doesn't even have a motor :wink:

Remember when Specialized declared releasing the world's most powerful ebike at a few hundred watts?

I think ES needs it's own version of the annual Darwin Awards for the most hyped up ebike tosh. I'm nominating Reef...

lipo, arguably (one of) the most power dense chemistry would weigh about 6-7kg for 1kwh of usable power. so that would be 10wh/km, if 60-70% of this bikes weight is battery. 10wh/km is not unheard of, but it's unlikely to say the least - and I've never heard of a 4kg bike that also includes a motor, reduction gearbox and controller. so they're either using a redicuosly low wh/km in that calculation (like sub 2.5wh/km) or they're talking bullshit. Then again, maybe they've put a small generator on the front wheel and are able to recharge the batteries while powering the bike with the motor... right? :lol:

Iknow that bike. It's the Annad R1:
http://www.annad.net/productsinfo-id=5.php.htm

It's basically abike with the Keyde kit installed.
http://www.keyde.com/?do=product

I tried the MTB version at the Shanghai show, and the weight claims are more or less correct. The battery is 9.3aH 33v so 307wH. Range on any bike means nothing. There's not much difference in efficiency from one bike to the next. Some, like the European crank-drives, make you pedal harder, so they give the false impression that they're more efficient, but you have a choice: You can use the motor to help you a lot, use a lot of battery power, and not go far; or turn the power down, pedal harder, use less battery, and go a lot further; or even turn the power off, use no battery, and go a very long way.

If I was on that bike, it would take me about 25 miles.

How was it for torque d8veh - you seem to have good experience with other small hubs so it'd be interesting to compare...

Samd said:

Hi guys,
I was concerned that the claims made on another forum about the Reef invisitron seem a bit over the top.
It claims to be 'years ahead of its time' and that it will 'blow away all the competition'. 11kg and 100km range.
http://www.reefbikes.com.au/invisitron-r1-electric-bike-carbon-road-racing/

Seems a bit bullsh*t to me.

I became concerned when the article was posted on the ATA.org site by a guy called 'Chris Rider'. Turns out he is the owner and has a history of posing as a potential customer.
http://www.reefbikes.com.au/invisitron-r1-electric-bike-carbon-road-racing/

I guess there is a market for carbon bikes - I love builds like Kepler's one.
But for guys like this to belittle all other kinds of ebikes and trump it up as lightyears ahead because it's a minimotor on a carbon frame seems quite unfair to me.
What do you think?

Click to expand...

Beware of reef bike.... whirlpool member was not happy with a purchase from them and they are not helpful if something goes wrong!!

Samd said:

How was it for torque d8veh - you seem to have good experience with other small hubs so it'd be interesting to compare...

Click to expand...

I only rode it inside, and so did my colleague. We both agreed that it had quite a lot of torque for such a small motor. We discussed it afterwards and wondered if it's an illusion because of the bike's very light weight. Anyway, it went pretty well.

Noticed I posted the same link twice at the original post, so updated above to include the ATA.org one.

Thanks for the feedback D8VEH

Melbourne said:

Samd said:

Hi guys,
I was concerned that the claims made on another forum about the Reef invisitron seem a bit over the top.
It claims to be 'years ahead of its time' and that it will 'blow away all the competition'. 11kg and 100km range.
http://www.reefbikes.com.au/invisitron-r1-electric-bike-carbon-road-racing/

Seems a bit bullsh*t to me.

I became concerned when the article was posted on the ATA.org site by a guy called 'Chris Rider'. Turns out he is the owner and has a history of posing as a potential customer.
http://www.reefbikes.com.au/invisitron-r1-electric-bike-carbon-road-racing/

I guess there is a market for carbon bikes - I love builds like Kepler's one.
But for guys like this to belittle all other kinds of ebikes and trump it up as lightyears ahead because it's a minimotor on a carbon frame seems quite unfair to me.
What do you think?

Click to expand...

Beware of reef bike.... whirlpool member was not happy with a purchase from them and they are not helpful if something goes wrong!!

Click to expand...

Warranty is so good that if you take it back to one of their authorised service centres, it can be fixed. Clicking on the link for their list of service centres shows........Not Found

The page you were looking for appears to have been moved, deleted or does not exist.

This is most likely due to:

An outdated link on another site
A typo in the address / URL

EPIC FAIL

And the CARBON invisitron only has, umm, carbon forks.

I too turned away from Reef bikes after a few phone calls to their shop back in June last year. The answers were, um, strange and so I lost trust in what was being said and going to be sold to me. Never really heard of them again until they were sponsers/part of that app E-Bike Guide. I still don't trust them.

Keyde do some cool innovative stuff, hopefully they branch out more and end up in mid-drive tech. From memory this is a 120W/160W or so rated motor, so you could even get away with 18650 2P in a slim down tube.

If your keen on something light and innovative check out http://www.protanium.com/ they developed compact a shaft driver motor.

Dev8h if your at eurobike today on the test course check it out apparently they have a prototype at the show

Ive bought a Reef folder and although knowing it was an "as is" (new but incomplete) deal asking a simple question about the controller I got no response, still I got it at good price so can't complain, the bike above does seem a little far fetched seeking cashed up gullibles

t3sla said:

Dev8h if your at eurobike today on the test course check it out apparently they have a prototype at the show

Click to expand...

I'm not going to Eurobike, but my colleague is there, and he has a sample of the Keyde motor system on test He'll be bringing that sample to me to test in a couple of weeks. He confirmed again that the motor packs a big punch for its size.

Those Reef bikes (Annad) are good bikes, some of them use top spec components, and their weight claims are true. With such a small motor, you can't expect it to pull like a MAC. They're more for regular sports cyclists that want a bit of help on the hills, or to maintain a higher average speed. It's a different concept to what most people on this forum are used to.

If you're a regular club cyclist, you wouldn't have any trouble getting 100km out of a 300wH battery because you'd be providing 95% of the power, so the range claims made by Reef would also be true if they provided a context for them.

What's disappointing is that without context, someone could end up very disappointed if he bought that bike on the basis of the claims, and was expecting to cruise around at 20mph for 100km without any pedal effort. They're serious bikes for serious cyclists, so Reef should make a serious description of what they are, and then they'd have a lot more credibility and support.

We all have to start with our first posts somewhere, and likely it's in a thread about a bike we happen to have.

Sounds like an interesting bike. One of you should post a real review of it, with lots of pictures. Not an "I just got it and rode it 10 miles and like it" review, but rather a serious evaluation of all it's positive and negatives after at least 500 miles of riding.

Provide lots of performance data, like how fast it really goes without pedaling by testing it on flat ground in both directions and averaging the speed, how far it can go at full speed with no pedaling or very light pedaling, how steep a grade it can climb without pedaling, etc etc.

From the company that sells it, it's just too common to get fluffy range claims. We can't compare one bike to another by what they say. This is what ES is for, ferret out the truth and post it for all to see. Even if you have only 2-3 posts in your history, we'll see right away if you are telling us the truth when you put up real data.

However bad Reef are, the bikes are something else. They really are special. I tried a MTB version: The power was not in the same class as a 500w MAC, but perfect for a sporting cyclist who wants a bit of help. The weight claims are all correct, and for serious off-road riding, that weight saving makes a massive difference. So the comments by Wardkit are valid. Some of the bikes have everything top spec. There's absolutely no comparison with a BH Emotion Neo that uses average spec stuff.

Don't judge the bikes by the seller. They won't appeal to everyone, but for those that want lightweight, there's little better.Checkout the manufacturer's website:

http://www.annad.net/products-id=1.php.htm

1kkg will not give you the worlds most lightweight electric assisted bike available for sale.

I do not know the winner, but at least you have to beat 9,5kg (incl battery):



http://vivax-assist.com/en/produkte/road.html

I did notice they left the pedals off

Honestly, I really dislike the way this is going, beyond the jerk from reef pretending he is a customer here and elsewhere, the whole fascination with weight within a few kilos is concerning.

A large part of Ebiking is about getting people moving and presenting transport alternatives. We often ridicule lycras for choosing elitist materials and expensive options that marginalise ordinary people from transport options. Now we are in danger of going the same way.

A 90kg rider plus a 15kg bike divided into a 250W drive gives 2.4 watts per kilo at say $1200 for a basic build (we should be using torque).
A 100 kg rider plus a 9.5kg carbon reef bike divided into a 150W keyde drive gives 1.4 watts per kilo at say $3000.

Seriously, we are getting silly at trying to engineer bikes to suit a power drive that may vary by 50% at the wheel anyway.

I don't like the way Reef are posing as customers and thinking we can't see it, but I hate the weight distraction even more.

lol at using hub motor in a super lightweight class

I'd often wondered where they'd stashed the controller on those! Nice work Tes.

It'd be nice to make a 500mm unit in the downtube and see if it could dish up some appreciable power. It's never gonna be a kilowatter, but still.

Rumours of them being used awhile back in the tour-de-merde I think...

i dislike weight weenies, and bike snobs. and dishonest sales people. and people who ruin threads with stupid arguments. and cats.

Ha! I haven't 'weight weenies' for awhile. Cats? I love cats, couldn't eat a whole one though.

I had look on a popular cycling frame site for some cheap but cheerful frames.
A decent 26" frame layout in 6061 aluminium - 1.95 kilos.
The same layout in carbon fibre? 1.26 kilos.

Geez, that 700 grams is worth the extra $300.

Shouldn't have had that burrito at lunch...

Samd said:

the whole fascination with weight within a few kilos is concerning.

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Imho it isn't. At least not for those people that want an electric ASSISTED ... BIKE.

Of course this id difefrent to those that want an electric motorcycle with pedals (and bike privileges)

A large part of Ebiking is about getting people moving and presenting transport alternatives.

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Depneds on the people, doesn't it.

I move MORE with a bike than with an e-bike, so I'm comming from a different direction.

A 90kg rider plus a 15kg bike divided into a 250W drive gives 2.4 watts per kilo at say $1200 for a basic build (we should be using torque).
A 100 kg rider plus a 9.5kg carbon reef bike divided into a 150W keyde drive gives 1.4 watts per kilo at say $3000.

Click to expand...

This is of little relecance for me. Carrying my electric bike daily upstairs wearing a suit is something that I need to consider. I can carry a 15kg e-bike single handed, but I can not carry a 25kg bike single handed and there is the risk to come into contact with the dirty bike (I commute not matter the weather).
Also carriieng a 25kg e-bike upstairs is no fun.
And btw, my BMI is 22, sso there reducing my body weight is no real option.

Seriously, we are getting silly at trying to engineer bikes to suit a power drive that may vary by 50% at the wheel anyway..

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depends what you design an e-bike for. If you have to persons that want to make a tour together with their fast racing bikes but one person has more power than the other which ebike would you suggest?
That 25kg motorcycle with 1000W drive and some psedo pedal movement oder that 10kg racing bike that gives an additional 100W, when it is needed, but stays a racing bike?

Also keep in mind that we are from difefernt parts of the world.

Our standard pedelcs here are only legal up to 25km/h, so many persons will drive without motor for most of the time and need a e-bike that also is a good bike. The 250W assist will help to climb hills, which alone is a good reason to have that motor.
(or 45km/h assisted pedelecs are a different thing, because you can't built them on your own and you need a license plate for them)

Most people on ES are talking abot electric motorclcles with pedals on them, this in my opinion is a different thing (not better or worse, but different and hard to compare)...