10 Things We Wish We'd Known About E-Bikes

[Music] more and more people are buying e-bikes all the time so if you are one of them or you're thinking about joining the world of e-bikes and this video is for you what we wish we'd known about e-bikes when we started [Music] now it's not just things that we've learned we've also worked with bosch the e-bike industry powerhouse pun very much intended and also ebike veteran steve jones from our sister channel embn has given us some tips as well [Music] we'll start with a basic but very important one an e-bike will only power your bike when you're pedaling the harder you pedal the more power it will give you which is very natural sensation it's just like what you do on an ordinary bike only with a bit more oomph now e-bikes typically have different modes which tailor exactly how much extra oomph you get so on this bosch bike in addition to off i've got eco tour sport and turbo now exactly how much extra power you get depends on the motor type that you've got so on this bike i've got a performance line at cx and so when i'm in eco mode i get 60 percent of my own power extra and then in tour i get 140 then 200 of my own power before finally in turbo mode i get 340 extra of course the more power you ask for from your e-bike the faster it's gonna drain your battery however recent advances in technology mean that you can now get real-world range prediction as well as just knowing how much is left in here what's even cooler though is that if you've got a route planned on the head unit it'll be able to tell you if you've got enough battery left for you to be able to reach your destination with assistance if you haven't you simply knock it down a mode and see the range shoot up and if you do happen to have an absolute epic day planned on the bike you could always take a leaf out the e-mountain bikers book just take a spare battery with you when e-bikes first came out i'll admit i thought they might make people a bit lazy which clearly in hindsight is a bit stupid and as i've written more and more e-bikes i've realized that no matter what your fitness level you will always do some kind of exercise on them and how hard you exercise is entirely up to you it's not just my own experience though there's give me this remarkable insight but there's a whole load of scientific research that backs it up in fact the latest systematic overview of all of that evite literature says that e-bikes have more health benefits from exercise than walking and whilst not quite as effective as regular cycling clearly having a motor means that more people are then able to cycle more of the time in more places or as the science would have it e-cycling can improve cardio respiratory fitness in physically inactive individuals now if you want to be a little bit more engaged with the fitness theme over and above just getting on the bike and pedaling it's quite likely that your e-bike will be able to help here too so they can generate all sorts of interesting bits of data like how far you've been riding and how long you've been riding for and how fast you've been riding but also some more advanced metrics too like your power output and even on this one connecting up via bluetooth to a wearable device like a heart rate monitor and then you can connect it up to apple health or google fit it's not like your car can do that is it actually it might be able to i don't know but what's it gonna tell you you have been sat on your ass for 35 minutes and have burned four calories [Music] now when i was talking about range prediction earlier on i sort of casually glossed over the fact that my phone was connected to my bike but let's take a moment how cool is that so on many of the new bosch equipped bikes you'll find that the head units enable you to connect your phone up via bluetooth to open up a whole load of connected functions and in some cases like the button i've been riding around on my phone itself became my head unit using their kobe app now all the functions on there for me i think navigation is probably the most useful now you can use bosch's own root finding app or you could connect up a strava or a commute and get a route from there and then of course there are also other more phone oriented functions like actually making phone calls or my new favorite listening to music we'll go back to another fundamental one now and that is that just for every country in the world e-bikes are governed by laws that restrict how fast they can go before the motor isn't able to give you assistance anymore it's considered to be really important to be able to distinguish between a pedal assist bike like this one and your more conventional throttle style motorbike now depending on where you live that speed will vary in europe for example above 25k an hour and it's all you in america it'll vary state by state but you'll be able to get at least 20 miles an hour security is a big deal you've got your amazing new bike clearly you want to look after it a big chunky lock is going to be a worthwhile investment but if you look you might find that the e-bike itself has some built-in security features as well so again for example on this bosch nylon head unit there's a lock function which means that when i remove the head unit from the bike the bike cannot function as an e-bike anymore so the motor becomes completely disabled and it won't reactivate again until you put this very same head unit back on now the bike itself isn't completely immobilized but it's pretty worthless without a motor until your head unit gets back on e-bikes are a sizeable investment for many of us they might be replacing a car not for every journey granted but hopefully for lots of them so one of the features i really like is the fact that the bike itself can work out how much money you've saved by riding it as opposed to driving your car for that particular journey so hopefully then over time you could maybe treat yourself so instead of going to a petrol station to fill up on fuel you could eat cake instead winning [Music] most of us will probably buy our e-bike ride our e-bike love our e-bike and then that's that that's the end of the story but for many of you who like tinkering it'll be worth knowing that on many bikes you can actually customize the performance of your motor so whereas the different modes come as standard on some bikes you can actually tune them so if you want more power on sport mode you can get exactly that so you can tune your e-bike to suit your style and also your needs so where we are now it's incredibly hilly and so it would definitely be worth having more power in sport mode as well as as much power as possible in turbo mode but if you live somewhere flatter you could tune them so they're perhaps a little bit less powerful but you get more range it's also worth noting that you could tune them so that you actually get the kind of workout that you might want as well bear in mind you've got your power output on there you've got your cadence the bike can effectively learn how fit you are and then you can tailor the outputs to make sure it's working for you [Music] i confess i had assumed that an e-bike would take quite a lot of servicing to keep it on the road but no apparently that is not the case so all the traditional bike bits of course behave and wear out like traditional bike bits but the actual e-bike specific stuff the motor and the battery will just last they're sealed and they'll keep on going so the motor apparently will last as long as the battery and that could give you anywhere between 30 to 50 000 kilometers of riding which sounds like an awful lot in many respects it's a little bit like a car isn't it so your tyres will wear out and need replacing and here your chain might need replacing every thousand kilometers or so but the engine the motor just keep on trucking [Music] lastly and i think this probably comes back to my initial e-bike skepticism but i wish i'd known how much fun they were from the outset and i've been lucky enough to ride a fair few now on gcn and i'll be honest i've had a blast every single time what's also cool is how they can make even the most mundane tasks buzzing around the city actually good fun and the amount of stuff you can carry on some e-bikes as well it's just remarkable to the point where you can really genuinely start to consider replacing your car for most journeys around town now yes an e-bike won't keep you dry but come on waterproof clothing will keep you dry and given that you can even get weather updates on your head unit there's no excuse for getting caught out waterproof jacket waterproof trousers waterproof shoes boom away you go so there we go 10 things you might not have known about e-bikes i certainly didn't know all of them that's for sure but i'm sure there's plenty that we've missed so let us know in the comment section down below and please if you enjoyed this video give it a big thumbs up

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 1,364,070

Keywords: ebike, e bike, e-bike, ebiking, e-biking, e biking, top 10, motor, battery, battery powered, assisted, bosch, nyon, e-cycling, ecycling, e cycling, fitness, fit, beginner, fast, environment, friendly, cobi, cobi bike, fun, commute, commuting, riding, city, electric, electricity, renewable, energy, GCN, Global Cycling Network, Sports, Cycling, Bike, Bikes, Bicycle (Product Category), Road Bike, Cyclist, Road Bicycle, GCN Cycling, velo, si, simon, simon richardson, sec-feature, sca15, ඡ, ସ, ホ, ᡭ, ዩ, ළ, Բ, Ժ, Լ, Ծ, Հ, ፕ15, サ, ኾ, 4498

Id: S00r7WVbz5k

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021