7 Things We Wish We'd Known About Commuting On An E-Bike

[Music] what's it like riding to work on an ebike plenty of people already do it even more are thinking about starting so in this video we're going to tell you everything you wish you'd known before you get one and it's not just me talking about it Canyon have just launched a new e gravel bike the grizzle on and they sent one for us to try out it could make the perfect bike to commute on as well as for riding for fun so Matt here a regular bike commuter has swapped his usual bike for this ebike to see what happens has he ridden more has he ridden faster has he run out of [Music] battery one of the primary concerns for aot lot of people I think is the battery life is it going to last and it is easy to see why this causes anxiety but remember first of all this is not like an electric car will you ever to run out of battery you will not get stranded you simply ride it like a normal bike but honestly you only realize how little you need to worry about the battery when you start riding with one this bike has a 400w battery concealed here in the down tube and that's kind of typical for a good ebike how long that will last depends entirely on what you ask it to do I mean if you ride up a steep hill in full power mode you will go through the battery faster than if you ride on the flat in eco mode now what you need to know though is simply that you can see how much battery you've got left on the display in this case it's on the top tube some ebikes have like an LCD display on the handlebars and then might also share how much range you've got left depending on the mode you're in I find you don't need that so much how long the battery lasts is something you quickly get a feel for particularly if you're doing a regular route like a commute you just get into a routine of doing in out in out and then put it on charge it becomes [Music] innate yeah the battery the battery thing's been less stressed than I thought it would be really so I do 20K each way I can certainly get 80k of my commuting done and still have battery left currently cing at 27 28k an now pretty standard after 22k each way so 44k commuting I've still got three bars of battery left on the bike normally when cycling to work you would want a travel light cuz any added weight you have to carry under your own steam but an epiphany we very quickly had on KNE bikes is that weight simply doesn't matter the bike itself of course weighs a little bit more than a normal bike because it's got a battery and a motor but that means that you can add more weight to it without changing the way it feels to ride plus cuz there is so much power in this motor if you want it that the bike still Zips away from traffic lights and zooms up hills no matter how much weight you add to it so that could be carrying more stuff to work to make you more comfortable for the ride or for when you get there or it could be adding more stuff to the bike itself to make it more comfortable or potentially even safer so you've got these incredible integrated lights at the back here you've got integrated storage you can get an option which has got built-in mud guards or a paner rack this has got a suspension Fork it's got wider size all of the things that add a little bit of weight but that absolutely don't matter because you only get the benefits from them ah the lights on the bike are amazing obviously being in integrated there's no reason not to leave them on all the time so I do I have done they're really nicely positioned as well they're really nice little units always love my commute especially on days like this cool bike cool Sunset loving it do ebikes make riding easier oh yes 100% even for an experienced cyclist they absolutely do but for everyone in fact I think it's fair to say they completely transform the experience of cycling now I'm not saying that non- ebikes suck of course I'm not saying that but let's at least recognize that ebikes are transformative Fitness age weight are no longer barriers to riding and actually it's not just the motor either because the bike weighs a little bit more it feels sturdier and gives you more confidence plus manufacturers like Canyon here are designing the bikes to be easier to ride to be more confidence inpiring and so it is simpler as well as fun by the way just to let know that Hill is unbelievably steep just in case it didn't come across on camera yeah I do actually feel safer in traffic I mean there's two parts of that one is the pulling away from lights is easier like you just get that nudge with the motor that just means you're confident that you're going to stay ahead of traffic you're not stressing about clipping in or losing momentum you'll just know it's going to be a real nice steady pull away from the lights so that's really cool uh and then the other bit is sometimes in busier bits of traffic you just feel confident that you're going to be able to maintain the same speed as the traffic around you you know regardless of what happens I actually feel like I probably become a sort of slightly politer nicer Rider cuz I'm not stressing about momentum ebikes are more costly than a non- ebike version it's easy to see why batteries are expensive the materials in them are expensive and there's a lot of Technology going on here but I think it's important to put ebike costs into context so I saw a statistic that said that on average a car owner in the United States spends 2,200 $100 maintaining it every year now that's not even adding fuel into the equation as well so you can see quickly that an ebike makes sense if you're not using a car and you are using an ebike you will very quickly save money now how much will this cost to keep running anything from not to a couple of hundred a year I'd have thought depending on how much you ride it and the conditions you're riding in but brake pads tires chains are probably the ones that you most frequently have to look at they're easy to replace in the context of a car very very cheap indeed as for the battery and the motor the most expensive bits of the bike in my own experience of owning a Bosch powered ebike I've got to say in 2 years and 1,000 miles of riding it has never missed a trick now that's clearly one person's experience and so it's of limited value maybe I got lucky so I checked in with the ebik guru Steve Jones from our sister Channel he said that a Bosch motor should be good for about 50,000 M now as for the battery as I mentioned earlier this is a 400w battery which will cost about 20 P to charge from empty compared to a car traveling a similar distance of course it depends on what you're using but that could be about 10 for fuel and then in terms of keeping it sweet Bosch say that it should last for about a thousand charges or about 10 years so let's say you do 40 m on a charge you should be able to get a couple of laps in of the planet when I commute in without a motor sort of regardless of how easy I try and go I'll always need a shower when I get to the other end you know you can't can't go easy enough whereas on this one if you just knock it back a little bit then and and let the motor take some of the strain then you're cruising along at 15 M hour without putting in too much effort for many people ebikes are not about going faster they're about doing something that you otherwise wouldn't do namely riding a bike which I suppose actually makes them faster but anyway what I was really interested to know is whether in Matt's case it had made him faster or whether in fact it had made any difference at all yeah well the question whether I was faster is an interesting one like Mike my commute is sort of a commute of two halves the first half is quite Urban and stop start and then with a couple of hills in the equation as well had a great little ride up the uh First Hill today put a tri turbo mode on a hill for the first time blind me flew up there so I reckon 25 minutes into my commute about halfway I'm 2 or 3 minutes faster but the second half of the commute is flat on a separated B path I normally Cruise in the high 20s maybe 30k an hour something in that order around here currently I'm sitting on the same speed and enjoying life no power it's just a good bike to ride and on that bit I'm definitely not faster but I reckon I'm a minute a minute and a half faster over the whole ride you joining Matt and I together now on one final commute we don't normally ride to work together mainly because I'm always late and going flat out whereas Matt's slightly more organized than me but today we're going to make the effort to go the long route which is awesome super super hilly and normally it's a little bit too long to do before work isn't it yeah yeah I suspect you're going to give me a hard time hopefully up the hills a will yeah yeah all right let's find [Applause] [Music] out okay here we go first care of the day right then let's do it [Music] feel like Andrew feather at this [Applause] [Music] point yeah this thing's amazing up little steep pinches like that what's that there's some more come yet I am on full power mode it's weird riding with him I'm working hard on the flat to keep up with him as soon as we get here I'm getting a I'm getting a rest don't think so is oh he's coming back proper good it's like a rocket yeah spending a week with it probably has changed my perspective a little bit on ebikes I mean I think at the start of the week I'd have said I don't really need one and it would have been it would have been defining whether I need an ebike or don't need an ebike at the end of the week I'm like I really enjoy riding one whether I need it or not now one final point to remember is that an ebike is for life and not just for commuting which is to say that were you to buy a bike like this to ride to work on I could almost guarantee that you would end up up using it way more than that cuz at the end of the day what you've got is a bike that is flipping good fun to ride and again if you got one like this you would not be confined to city streets either you can take it away out into the countryside out into the hills for whatever Adventures you fancy hopefully you have found this video useful if you've got any other questions that we haven't answered in this video then please get involved in the comments section and we will do our best to answer them I think the biggest Tak homes for me from this are firstly you don't really need to worry about the batteries like it becomes so easy when you get used to it and even when you're new to it actually it's still easy the other thing to bear in mind is that ebikes can be real workhorses you can load them up with as much weight as you want and it's still Zippy and fun to ride and the other thing as well is that even if you're an experienced cyclist you still get a benefit to your Fitness so while they're easy to ride you still get exercise on them anyway please give this video a big thumbs up if you've enjoyed it head over to Canyon's website if you want a little bit more information on this bike by the way the new Grizzle on not sure I'm going to be able to wrestle it off mat to be quite honest

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 200,918

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Id: 47uH3NU-c84

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024