7 ms·

I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my b

I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my bike. The fastest I've done on it (on a large hill but still) is 42.7MPH (~68Kph). Average cruising speed on flat land can easily be 30-33mph(48-53kph). Not all e-bikes are capable of this, but they are certainly not some kind of rare expensive impossibility - mine was less than 3000 USD. My point is that you should be more ingenuous with your assertions of what the capabilities of these bikes are when communicating with people about it. Nothing makes people more skeptical than reading things that are just plain false from an advocate.

jacquesm 5y ago
I'm sure there are other e-bikes, but those are not available where I live. The fastest here are the Stromers, they are a little bit faster but not exceptionally so and they also cut out at 45 kph, just like mine. At a guess your bike outputs more power than is legal here.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  >At a guess your bike outputs more power than is legal here. From a brief look - no. Belgium says "4000 W 45 km/h limited "speed pedelecs", which are classed as mopeds for all requirements." Mine has a 750W nominal motor, but seems to output around 1050W at peak.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    4000 W? That sounds a little excessive :) A typical s-pedelec is somewhere between 350 and 750 W nominal and with peaks of maybe twice that.
    - rjbwork 5y ago
      Yeah it's totally excessive, lol. That's just what wikipedia says about your country's laws. No idea if it's accurate, haha.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Anything over 45kph or 750W is illegal unless registered as a moped in California at least (and much of the rest of the US as well). Enforcement is lax in most places though.
user_7832 5y ago
I'm not sure why you would assume the author is being disingenuous. Your bike is almost certainly very different from the author's, and a more powerful motor is going to get you faster. Fun fact/side note - power requirements generally scale with the cube of speed due to rapidly increasing air drag, so going at 50km/h is much harder (and requires a much stronger motor) than going at 30km/h.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  I specifically did not choose the word disingenuous. I asked him to be more ingenuous. His assertion was "there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period". I disagree, and I think minimizing the capabilities of these machines in the rhetoric is counterproductive to converting skeptics. In the US it's 100% legal to go 28MPH on them for as long as you can - which for me would be nearly forever on flat ground.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Depends on the jurisdiction. NYC only allows 25MPH: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml At some point, we do need to restrict faster vehicles from operating in the bike lanes and the sidewalks, because the speed differentials will probably end up killing someone.
    - rixed 5y ago
      They had this problem for years in Amsterdam and last time I've heard about it they decided to ban moped from bike lanes in the city. Electric moped were particularly problematic because of their speed, of their silence and weigh. I don't know what the rules are with regard to ebikes though.
  - hackerkreise 5y ago
    The full sentence was: “ The problem is that s-pedelecs are technically lumped in with the scooters, even though there is no throttle and there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period.” He is explicitly talking about S-Pedelecs which are the fastest legal E-Bikes in most of Europe. He never said that you are generally not able to sustain 40+ MPH in general.
m4x 5y ago
I'm curious - what ebike do you have that can easily cruise at 48-53 kph for extended periods? In most countries that would be far above the legal limits imposed on ebikes. As a result, the ebikes available for purchase are all limited to 25-32 kph max and typically have power limits of 250-300 W. Since ebikes are a lot heavier, exceeding 32 kph for more than a few seconds is generally very difficult. I don't think GP is being disingenuous with any of his assertions. In the US there might be ebikes with much higher top speeds, but jacquesm doesn't live in the US and neither do most of the other people on this planet. Most ebikes sold do exactly what he's describing.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  I have a JuicedBikes CrossCurrent X. They only made my particular configuration for a short amount of time around early 2018 - it has a massive battery, a 52v system, a 750W Bafang hub motor, and location tracking within the battery (though I stopped paying for it since I moved out of the city). Their newer models are just as, or even more capable. Yeah, that is the legal limit but I turned it off in the bios. When cycling on roads I want to be going as fast as possible to keep things safer for me by moving at roughly traffic speeds and disincentivizing dangerous maneuvers by motorists. On bike trails and such I keep to 20mph or so as safe. I actually tried to get mine registered as a moped with a license plate and insurance coverage etc. but was essentially told to take a hike by the state and insurance companies. So I did.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    "I disagree with your assertions about sustained speed because I turned off the assist limit." Okay, you should have said that in the first post. If you're not using the class of vehicle the comment was talking about, your experience isn't really relevant.
    - rjbwork 5y ago
      These vehicles are capable of doing so - they simply have a limiter on them. It's like saying an NVidia card can't mine cryptocurrency because they added a limiter in their drivers or something. Or that a truck with a governor on it could not go faster than that with the governor removed and no functional changes to power output. Even so, I can go at least 4MPH greater than OP's suggested maximum speed legally.
marvin 5y ago
Power assist cuts out at different points, depending on design choice (and jurisdiction). Norwegian e-bikes, for instance, disconnect their power assist above 25kph and you need to pedal like crazy to go significantly faster than that.
stef25 5y ago
Most if not all electric bikes here in EU won't get close to those speeds, regardless of your fitness. I don't think it's even allowed. If it's capable of doing 50KPH it should be treated as a motorcycle, away from other cyclists and pedestrians and the rider should have the same knowledge as a motorcyclist wrt to how to behave in traffic.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Almost all ebikes are limited to 25km/h here, which is a reasonable speed in my opinion. It makes cycling accessible to everyone regardless of fitness level or hills, but it also ensures that ebikes go at a similar speed as most other riders (most riders on the cycle paths go between 20 and 30 km/h (12-19MPH) There are some people who modded their ebikes to go faster, but I've only encountered them very rarely.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
If something has that average speed capability, why is not licensed, registered, insured and held accountable as any vehicle would be? My 50cc scooter appears to have comparable speeds (maybe 10kph higher), and I wear proper armour & helmet, took the classes passed the test, am registered, licenses & insured. That's my massive pet peeve & safety concern: I WANT to love e-Bikes, and all those sorts of things; and like a fellow poster, I've been riding both 500-650cc motorcycles and 50-125cc scooters for more than a decade so 2-wheelers are part of my life; but basically all the ads, shops, and salespeople over here are focusing on "You don't need license, you don't need insurance, you don't need to behave like a vehicle and obey the rules" as their main and primary sales point; and therefore the behaviour of riders is equally nonchalant. In the Toronto area (and it's important to be explicit because this is definitely different in different geographies), the relationship between cars and non-gas two-wheelers is charitably described as "strained" ("murderous/self-righteous hate" may be more accurate), and we all need to get better and understanding how we can co-exist and behave responsibly on the road.
- kmtrowbr 5y ago
  I drive, walk, and bike often in San Francisco. I rode a 650cc motorcycle for 10 years when I was in my 20s. In the Panhandle, for example, there is a mixed use bike / walking path. It is very dangerous for the walkers even with normal bikes, as the bikes are whizzing by the walkers at 20mph. However one day I was walking, and a HUGE mutant E-bike with massive fat tires & very heavy frame, flew by me at what seemed like 30-40mph -- and to me, it felt exactly like a near miss from a motorcycle. There are other safety concerns with recent trends, with the Slow streets. Everyone walks in the middle of those streets & the pedestrians treat them as their exclusive domain: kids playing, etc. But the drivers long ago stopped respecting the "slow street" concept, and whiz around the traffic cones, and then go 30mph down the street. The city is still treating them as an experiment, which is a part of the problem. I love both E-Bikes and the Slow Streets, and they should be a huge part of our future: * Cities should make the Slow Streets official and modify them to make them impractical to use for driving a car (perhaps making them have a single curving central lane). * Likewise the E-Bikes need a bit more regulation and limited strictly to bike only lanes, not the mixed biking / pedestrian paths. As it is currently the progress of society and technology has created a bit of a dangerous situation.
m0zg 5y ago
I hope you realize you're one pebble or pavement imperfection away from breaking every bone in your body at those speeds.
- gpm 5y ago
  At those speeds bikes are incredibly stable. The only way a pebble of pavement imperfection will harm you is if the bicycle fails mechanically (e.g. a wheel folding in on itself). I'm pretty sure that the risk of being hit by or hitting a vehicle is multiple orders of magnitudes higher. Which isn't exactly better, but let's at least worry about the correct sources of danger.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Cornering grip at speed and some gravel can really ruin your day, in spite of the bike itself being stable at speed.

jacquesm 5y ago

I'm sure there are other e-bikes, but those are not available where I live. The fastest here are the Stromers, they are a little bit faster but not exceptionally so and they also cut out at 45 kph, just like mine. At a guess your bike outputs more power than is legal here.

rjbwork 5y ago
>At a guess your bike outputs more power than is legal here. From a brief look - no. Belgium says "4000 W 45 km/h limited "speed pedelecs", which are classed as mopeds for all requirements." Mine has a 750W nominal motor, but seems to output around 1050W at peak.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  4000 W? That sounds a little excessive :) A typical s-pedelec is somewhere between 350 and 750 W nominal and with peaks of maybe twice that.
  - rjbwork 5y ago
    Yeah it's totally excessive, lol. That's just what wikipedia says about your country's laws. No idea if it's accurate, haha.
aidenn0 5y ago
Anything over 45kph or 750W is illegal unless registered as a moped in California at least (and much of the rest of the US as well). Enforcement is lax in most places though.

user_7832 5y ago

I'm not sure why you would assume the author is being disingenuous. Your bike is almost certainly very different from the author's, and a more powerful motor is going to get you faster. Fun fact/side note - power requirements generally scale with the cube of speed due to rapidly increasing air drag, so going at 50km/h is much harder (and requires a much stronger motor) than going at 30km/h.

rjbwork 5y ago
I specifically did not choose the word disingenuous. I asked him to be more ingenuous. His assertion was "there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period". I disagree, and I think minimizing the capabilities of these machines in the rhetoric is counterproductive to converting skeptics. In the US it's 100% legal to go 28MPH on them for as long as you can - which for me would be nearly forever on flat ground.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Depends on the jurisdiction. NYC only allows 25MPH: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml At some point, we do need to restrict faster vehicles from operating in the bike lanes and the sidewalks, because the speed differentials will probably end up killing someone.
  - rixed 5y ago
    They had this problem for years in Amsterdam and last time I've heard about it they decided to ban moped from bike lanes in the city. Electric moped were particularly problematic because of their speed, of their silence and weigh. I don't know what the rules are with regard to ebikes though.
- hackerkreise 5y ago
  The full sentence was: “ The problem is that s-pedelecs are technically lumped in with the scooters, even though there is no throttle and there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period.” He is explicitly talking about S-Pedelecs which are the fastest legal E-Bikes in most of Europe. He never said that you are generally not able to sustain 40+ MPH in general.

m4x 5y ago

I'm curious - what ebike do you have that can easily cruise at 48-53 kph for extended periods? In most countries that would be far above the legal limits imposed on ebikes. As a result, the ebikes available for purchase are all limited to 25-32 kph max and typically have power limits of 250-300 W. Since ebikes are a lot heavier, exceeding 32 kph for more than a few seconds is generally very difficult. I don't think GP is being disingenuous with any of his assertions. In the US there might be ebikes with much higher top speeds, but jacquesm doesn't live in the US and neither do most of the other people on this planet. Most ebikes sold do exactly what he's describing.

rjbwork 5y ago
I have a JuicedBikes CrossCurrent X. They only made my particular configuration for a short amount of time around early 2018 - it has a massive battery, a 52v system, a 750W Bafang hub motor, and location tracking within the battery (though I stopped paying for it since I moved out of the city). Their newer models are just as, or even more capable. Yeah, that is the legal limit but I turned it off in the bios. When cycling on roads I want to be going as fast as possible to keep things safer for me by moving at roughly traffic speeds and disincentivizing dangerous maneuvers by motorists. On bike trails and such I keep to 20mph or so as safe. I actually tried to get mine registered as a moped with a license plate and insurance coverage etc. but was essentially told to take a hike by the state and insurance companies. So I did.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  "I disagree with your assertions about sustained speed because I turned off the assist limit." Okay, you should have said that in the first post. If you're not using the class of vehicle the comment was talking about, your experience isn't really relevant.
  - rjbwork 5y ago
    These vehicles are capable of doing so - they simply have a limiter on them. It's like saying an NVidia card can't mine cryptocurrency because they added a limiter in their drivers or something. Or that a truck with a governor on it could not go faster than that with the governor removed and no functional changes to power output. Even so, I can go at least 4MPH greater than OP's suggested maximum speed legally.

marvin 5y ago

Power assist cuts out at different points, depending on design choice (and jurisdiction). Norwegian e-bikes, for instance, disconnect their power assist above 25kph and you need to pedal like crazy to go significantly faster than that.

stef25 5y ago

Most if not all electric bikes here in EU won't get close to those speeds, regardless of your fitness. I don't think it's even allowed. If it's capable of doing 50KPH it should be treated as a motorcycle, away from other cyclists and pedestrians and the rider should have the same knowledge as a motorcyclist wrt to how to behave in traffic.

newaccount74 5y ago
Almost all ebikes are limited to 25km/h here, which is a reasonable speed in my opinion. It makes cycling accessible to everyone regardless of fitness level or hills, but it also ensures that ebikes go at a similar speed as most other riders (most riders on the cycle paths go between 20 and 30 km/h (12-19MPH) There are some people who modded their ebikes to go faster, but I've only encountered them very rarely.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

If something has that average speed capability, why is not licensed, registered, insured and held accountable as any vehicle would be? My 50cc scooter appears to have comparable speeds (maybe 10kph higher), and I wear proper armour & helmet, took the classes passed the test, am registered, licenses & insured. That's my massive pet peeve & safety concern: I WANT to love e-Bikes, and all those sorts of things; and like a fellow poster, I've been riding both 500-650cc motorcycles and 50-125cc scooters for more than a decade so 2-wheelers are part of my life; but basically all the ads, shops, and salespeople over here are focusing on "You don't need license, you don't need insurance, you don't need to behave like a vehicle and obey the rules" as their main and primary sales point; and therefore the behaviour of riders is equally nonchalant. In the Toronto area (and it's important to be explicit because this is definitely different in different geographies), the relationship between cars and non-gas two-wheelers is charitably described as "strained" ("murderous/self-righteous hate" may be more accurate), and we all need to get better and understanding how we can co-exist and behave responsibly on the road.

kmtrowbr 5y ago
I drive, walk, and bike often in San Francisco. I rode a 650cc motorcycle for 10 years when I was in my 20s. In the Panhandle, for example, there is a mixed use bike / walking path. It is very dangerous for the walkers even with normal bikes, as the bikes are whizzing by the walkers at 20mph. However one day I was walking, and a HUGE mutant E-bike with massive fat tires & very heavy frame, flew by me at what seemed like 30-40mph -- and to me, it felt exactly like a near miss from a motorcycle. There are other safety concerns with recent trends, with the Slow streets. Everyone walks in the middle of those streets & the pedestrians treat them as their exclusive domain: kids playing, etc. But the drivers long ago stopped respecting the "slow street" concept, and whiz around the traffic cones, and then go 30mph down the street. The city is still treating them as an experiment, which is a part of the problem. I love both E-Bikes and the Slow Streets, and they should be a huge part of our future: * Cities should make the Slow Streets official and modify them to make them impractical to use for driving a car (perhaps making them have a single curving central lane). * Likewise the E-Bikes need a bit more regulation and limited strictly to bike only lanes, not the mixed biking / pedestrian paths. As it is currently the progress of society and technology has created a bit of a dangerous situation.

m0zg 5y ago

I hope you realize you're one pebble or pavement imperfection away from breaking every bone in your body at those speeds.

gpm 5y ago
At those speeds bikes are incredibly stable. The only way a pebble of pavement imperfection will harm you is if the bicycle fails mechanically (e.g. a wheel folding in on itself). I'm pretty sure that the risk of being hit by or hitting a vehicle is multiple orders of magnitudes higher. Which isn't exactly better, but let's at least worry about the correct sources of danger.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Cornering grip at speed and some gravel can really ruin your day, in spite of the bike itself being stable at speed.