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Google is sponsoring employees to lease Vanmoof S3 and X3. Anecdotally I've seen a huge increase in the number of S3 owners in the south bay area. I'm leasing t

Google is sponsoring employees to lease Vanmoof S3 and X3. Anecdotally I've seen a huge increase in the number of S3 owners in the south bay area. I'm leasing the X3 myself. I also agree on the auto shifting. I'm an experienced cyclist and own a number of bikes and do regular weekend rides in the mountains. The auto shifting on vanmoof bikes is absolutely awful for me and caused horrible janky shifts while I was putting torque through the system. The gearing is also all wrong, since the cadence is way too low in most gears and at the top speed. Thankfully vanmoof added manual shifting into a fairly recent update. But on the other hand, my non cyclist wife loves auto shifting. She rarely puts power into the pedals and likes the low cadence for easy cruising. She just uses the turbo button whenever she wants to accelerate. So it's clearly designed for flat roads and easy riding for non cyclists.

bombcar 4y ago
If there's auto shifting there's a computer somewhere, and so you'd think a firmware update that made it so that it wouldn't auto-shift under heavy load could be applied (call it semi-auto mode or something); then you could leave it in auto but if you wanted it to shift when pushing hard just let off the pedals a bit and it'd do so.
- kgermino 4y ago
  Only if it has the sensors for it. There's a decent chance it just has a cheaper cadence sensor on the pedals, not a torque sensor or other way to tell if you are pushing hard.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Hmm I would have thought it had the equivalent of regenerative braking and could detect how much "power" you were creating, but ... it seems that's not how it's designed.
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      Regenerative braking on bikes is a bit harder than it is on cars - you can’t easily combine regenerative braking with a freewheel - if the rider stops pedaling that‘s not a sufficiently good signal to start regenerative braking. With cars, the signal is there - the driver stops depressing the accelerator. Additionally, with middle motors (which most ebikes today have), you‘d need to have the chain run continuously to transfer the power from the wheel back to the motor, and you likely could not do that with a derailleur shifting setup. That said, I‘ve seen (but not tested) one model that had regenerative braking, so that does (or at least used to) exist.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I can see the middle motor problem (though the company here claims to have solved it by using a front motor instead) - but there is a signal available to the bike; the brakes themselves. I'm not sure that cars even begin regenerative braking until you actually hit the brakes as opposed to just letting off the accelerator.
        Xylakant 4y ago
        The electric cars I have tried all started regenerative braking when you let go of the accelerator. As an additional problem for bikes: they are rear-wheel drive and the primary braking power comes from the front wheel for normal bikes (load distribution shift to the front when braking). Cargo bikes and tandems are a bit of an exception here. I’m not saying it’s impossible - as I wrote above I know it exists. It’s just a lot of effort for comparatively little gain, and so it’s pretty rare.
        bombcar 4y ago
        I think that's the main thing - the amount of energy lost by bringing a bike to a stop is nothing compared to that of bringing a car to a stop from 60 MPH. And they're probably better off just adding a generator in-line with the pedals (in fact, I'm surprised these things have "direct drive" at all and aren't just a generator on the pedals with a wire to a motor on the front/rear hub).
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    I can’t speak for VanMoof but the Bosch ebike motors definitely have a torque sensor (+), and my old Douze had one, too. You can’t do proportional assist without a torque sensor. I would consider it probable that VanMoof has one, too. (+) some folks on a German forum reserve engineered the can bus protocol for the Bosch motor and it exposes torque https://www.pedelecforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/bosch-active-can-daten-sammlung.40358/ https://www.pedelecforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/bosch-ac...
    - cactus2093 4y ago
      Nope, Van Moof uses a cheaper cadence sensor not a torque sensor. Bosch ebike motors are amazing and a huge step up, but bikes that use them generally sell for $5000+ and the Van Moof S3/X3 are half that price.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
KennyBlanken 4y ago
If the gearing range is universally too high for the kind of riding you do, you can get any bike shop to swap the rear cassette to a larger one, or the front chain ring(s) to smaller ones. The chain may need to be shortened.
- TheDong 4y ago
  > you can get any bike shop to swap the rear cassette to a larger one That's less likely to happen with the vanmoof. They have a custom-made chain guard which is integrated into the bike, and would not fit larger cogs. They also have an internal hub, not a typical cassette and derailleur setup, so modifying the drivetrain is a more involved affair. I think most local bike shops would tell you to have vanmooof do it out of fear of voiding your warranty.

bombcar 4y ago

If there's auto shifting there's a computer somewhere, and so you'd think a firmware update that made it so that it wouldn't auto-shift under heavy load could be applied (call it semi-auto mode or something); then you could leave it in auto but if you wanted it to shift when pushing hard just let off the pedals a bit and it'd do so.

kgermino 4y ago
Only if it has the sensors for it. There's a decent chance it just has a cheaper cadence sensor on the pedals, not a torque sensor or other way to tell if you are pushing hard.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Hmm I would have thought it had the equivalent of regenerative braking and could detect how much "power" you were creating, but ... it seems that's not how it's designed.
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    Regenerative braking on bikes is a bit harder than it is on cars - you can’t easily combine regenerative braking with a freewheel - if the rider stops pedaling that‘s not a sufficiently good signal to start regenerative braking. With cars, the signal is there - the driver stops depressing the accelerator. Additionally, with middle motors (which most ebikes today have), you‘d need to have the chain run continuously to transfer the power from the wheel back to the motor, and you likely could not do that with a derailleur shifting setup. That said, I‘ve seen (but not tested) one model that had regenerative braking, so that does (or at least used to) exist.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I can see the middle motor problem (though the company here claims to have solved it by using a front motor instead) - but there is a signal available to the bike; the brakes themselves. I'm not sure that cars even begin regenerative braking until you actually hit the brakes as opposed to just letting off the accelerator.
      - Xylakant 4y ago
        The electric cars I have tried all started regenerative braking when you let go of the accelerator. As an additional problem for bikes: they are rear-wheel drive and the primary braking power comes from the front wheel for normal bikes (load distribution shift to the front when braking). Cargo bikes and tandems are a bit of an exception here. I’m not saying it’s impossible - as I wrote above I know it exists. It’s just a lot of effort for comparatively little gain, and so it’s pretty rare.
        bombcar 4y ago
        I think that's the main thing - the amount of energy lost by bringing a bike to a stop is nothing compared to that of bringing a car to a stop from 60 MPH. And they're probably better off just adding a generator in-line with the pedals (in fact, I'm surprised these things have "direct drive" at all and aren't just a generator on the pedals with a wire to a motor on the front/rear hub).
- Xylakant 4y ago
  I can’t speak for VanMoof but the Bosch ebike motors definitely have a torque sensor (+), and my old Douze had one, too. You can’t do proportional assist without a torque sensor. I would consider it probable that VanMoof has one, too. (+) some folks on a German forum reserve engineered the can bus protocol for the Bosch motor and it exposes torque https://www.pedelecforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/bosch-active-can-daten-sammlung.40358/ https://www.pedelecforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/bosch-ac...
  - cactus2093 4y ago
    Nope, Van Moof uses a cheaper cadence sensor not a torque sensor. Bosch ebike motors are amazing and a huge step up, but bikes that use them generally sell for $5000+ and the Van Moof S3/X3 are half that price.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

KennyBlanken 4y ago

If the gearing range is universally too high for the kind of riding you do, you can get any bike shop to swap the rear cassette to a larger one, or the front chain ring(s) to smaller ones. The chain may need to be shortened.

TheDong 4y ago
> you can get any bike shop to swap the rear cassette to a larger one That's less likely to happen with the vanmoof. They have a custom-made chain guard which is integrated into the bike, and would not fit larger cogs. They also have an internal hub, not a typical cassette and derailleur setup, so modifying the drivetrain is a more involved affair. I think most local bike shops would tell you to have vanmooof do it out of fear of voiding your warranty.