Electric Bike Drivetrains: Internal vs External Gears (Derailleur, Enviolo, Rohloff, etc)

so today I wanted to talk about internal and external bike gears now this comes up in my shop quite a bit because we offer a bike from a particular brand recent Muller it's a German company their bikes are built to order and they are available with several different options you can get several different internal gear options as well as a traditional derailleur option so today we're going to kind of talk a little bit more in general about these different types of gear systems but a lot of the conversation will be oriented around this particular brand and you know how those options might differ external gears in the US probably is what most people are familiar with because traditionally most bikes used for sport use an external what we called a derailleur now that's traditional chain you know back in the day I guess you could say that it's consider like a ten-speed that was a common one and he had 21 speeds and all these other different scenarios and now you have all sorts of variations of that more commonly we're moving in a direction of having a single chain ring up front so you don't have a derailleur in the front and you just have multiple gears in the back anywhere from 7 to 12 even 13 years which is kind of crazy in my mind but in ebikes were generally seeing somewhere between 8 and 12 gears and basically you have a traditional chain you have a derailleur that moves the chain on a cassette or freewheel more commonly a cassette on a better-quality bike but you do sometimes see a freewheel on on some bikes as well now that system is probably the most common at least here in the states and probably the easiest to get familiar to work on that sort of thing internal gears or internally geared hub as it's generally referred to or sometimes even IgH as a abbreviation in that case all the gears are inside of a casing similar to transmission on a car you know you don't see all those gears outside but they're inside now you have different variations of that a two or three speed internally geared hub which we might see on some pretty basic simple city bikes not that common on electric bikes but it can happen now actually Shimano introduced their own five-speed internally geared hub but what we use most commonly in our shop are two different variations one a 14 speed hub from a company called roll-off now that's a German company they build these systems in Germany and it's 14 speeds which is a really wide range of gears actually one of the widest on an internally geared hub and then the other system which we use quite a bit and it's becoming quite popular an e-bike space it's called nvo low and it uses a technology called a continually variable transmission and basically the concept there is that there's no indexes to it so with the traditional gear system you have basically indexes so it's similar to like a channel clicker on an older TV or you know you're you're selecting individual gears now with the continually variable transmission it's almost like instead of selecting those three or five or eight or 14 gears you're using it more almost like a volume dial where you're just kind of adjusting in more gradual increments and you could dial it in to exactly what your preferred cadence might be a lot of people like that it's really simple to operate you normally have to think too much about it and I kind of like that system as well but there's pros and cons to all of these systems now that we talked a bit about the physical differences of these different systems I want to talk a bit more about the performance between those different drive trains as refer to them now with the traditional Durell yer in many ways you'll see some of the best performance I mean especially if you're looking for something that's lightweight and fast now most actually pretty much all race bikes out there today use a traditional derail your system whether it's a road bike or a mountain bike or other sorts of racing bikes or what the exception may be of like a track bike which is going to have a single speed system we're gonna have a derailleur on that probably the close second or maybe it might even be pretty pretty close in there would be like the roll off hub because of the efficiency of that system the derailleur is the most efficient when you're in the gear you have a direct relationship there's no sort of loss in that and the roll-off system works in a similar way as does many of the other indexed internally geared systems you might wonder like so if that's the best-performing like why would I want anything else the roll-off as I said performs really great but it has some other advantages one of the big things is as far as a wide range of gears the roll-off is going to have one of the widest at 526 percent so that means you have a very low range gear so if you wanted to climb a very large hill or the high gear which if you're gonna be pedaling at a higher rate of speed or even pedaling downhill or something like that you can find with the roll-off you can really use the full range of those gears where a derailleur quite often you're not going to have as much range there now we are seeing that some derailers they're getting to have a pretty wide range of gears there as well you see some that go from a 10 or 11 to 2 set upwards of a 50 to +2 cassette in the rear and with that you have pretty close to 500 percent gear range there with that you're getting pretty close to what roll-off can offer as well so but the N viola hub maybe doesn't have the same efficiency you do have a little bit of a loss in power when you're operating through and viola hub but the ease of use is really great it ships very fast you're able to shift through the gears very easily and then the gear range is kind of somewhere in the middle somewhere comparable to a derail your so it's three hundred and eighty percent so generally you'll see the NBO low say in 380 or something of that sort that basically means that three hundred and eighty degrees of gear range so you're not gonna be the fastest necessarily but when you're appearing with the electric assist system it's really no problem and from our experience pairing that in Yolo hub with the electric motor it works quite well and that's becoming very popular especially in certain scenarios where somebody wants something to be very low-maintenance probably the biggest topic that comes up for us when comparing these different systems is the maintenance cost because when you're riding electric assist bike especially when you're using that bike to replace a car you might find you're putting a lot of mileage on that bike and if you're putting a lot of mileage on a traditional derailleur system you're gonna be maintaining it often they're going to be cleaning and lubing the chain potentially replacing the chain and replacing other cassette parts pretty often on that bike now with a roll off hub over time it's about 3,000 miles you have to change the oil in it and often times you're gonna pair that roll-off hub with the belt drive and those belt drives will last tens of thousands of miles so you're going to see significantly more life out of a belt in comparison to a chain especially when on a derailleur system so the maintenance costs over time are much lower but the initial costs are often times greater now when looking at an MBO low hub there's actually no maintenance to the internal the hub now generally speaking when you use a envelo hub it's gonna be paired with a mechanical shifter that uses cables over time those cables might stretch out a little bit they might need adjustment and then over more extended time they might need to be replaced or other small wear parts on that system will need to be replaced but for the most part it's very low maintenance especially when compared to a derailleur now those are the maintenance costs but the overall cost can be pretty significant now the difference between a performance derailleur and an nvo low hub but it's gonna be pretty comparable maybe you're looking at a couple hundred dollars more maybe a slight bit more if you're gonna pair it with the belt but if you go for something like a roll-off hub the additional cost is going to be much greater and oftentimes when looking at kind of a mid to upper range derailleur compared to a rollup hub depending if you go with the mechanical or electronically shifted version you're gonna see an additional costs of $1200 to $2000 so pretty pretty significant and in that case now traditional derailleur you shift through the gears very quick and fluid there's no real lag as you're shifting because as the derailleur moves through the gears it's really just moving one to the next and you're keeping that pressure on the gear system now when working with a traditional indexed internally geared hub you do have to let off the pedaling a little bit now the new electric bike systems like Bosch they're oftentimes able to actually detect when you're shipping in the gears and let off a little bit and allow that to engage a little bit smoother but it's something it takes a little getting used to and from my experience as you do get used to it it becomes a pretty seamless experience as you're shifting through the gears even with the internally geared hub especially as you time it correctly now with the NBO low there's really no lag when shifting through the system you can pretty much continue to shift even under load now it's ideal to let off the pedaling a little bit to allow it to engage it's really easily and put pretty minimal pressure on that shifting system but but you can shift under load which is a nice feature one other detail I'd like to mention in comparing a derailleur to an internally geared hub is when you can ship the bike now with a internally geared hub you have the unique advantage that you can actually shift at a standstill so if you're at a light or you're just starting out maybe you forgot to shift into the lower year or you're quickly approaching a hill you might want to shift into that gear and you can do that when you're not pedaling now it's light difference with the derailleur system you do have to pedal to change the gears I mean technically you can change beforehand but it's really not so good for that system so I'd recommend against it you want to be pedaling and just do it through a smooth motion change one gear at a time particularly if you're going to a higher gear whereas if you're going to a lower gear oftentimes some of the more modern derailers you can actually shift multiple gears at a time so you know many people really appreciate that we find that there's quite often people are riding these bikes in urban environments you have you might have some scenarios that come up unexpectedly and you find that you suddenly came to a stop and now you're in the top gear and starting off is gonna be really challenging but if you can shift into that lower gear before you start out again you know how much easier time not to mention they're gonna be much more efficient and using your power as well as the electric bikes power provided that's the type of system that you're using so to recap there's a lot of different options available and it might be challenging to choose what's going to work best for you people ask me all the time what should I choose I'm not really sure what's best for my specific application and I think that's really what it boils down to what is your application and these different systems work better for different applications for example high mileage commuters you're probably better with the internally geared hub because overall you're have low or maintenance you have less downtime that sort of thing but some people don't really mind doing their own maintenance on the chain and derailleur and that sort of thing and and and in that regard also there's more people that are familiar with that the maintenance on these systems is not really that complex it's pretty easy to pick up but some people are more comforted to work with the system that's maybe more familiar and more common out there more interchangeable with different parts and that sort of stuff so something to consider in relation to that for many that want to have just a really low maintenance bike not really worried about it just set it and forget it I think the nvo low hub is a great way to go but some people want that but they also want a little bit more performance and the roll-off it's a great way to go in those scenarios but keep in mind you're going to spend a little bit more money for that so you really want to consider if that added expense is going to make sense for you specifically so another thing to consider in relation to application is really the type of terrain that you're going to ride on if you're riding a mountain bike most mountain bikes you're generally going to use a traditional derailleur although more commonly people are using roll-off hubs on mountain bikes and viola you won't find that as much because it's just a maybe not as efficient the shifting experience is a little bit different so generally going to do a derailleur or roll-off hub so that's kind of off-road many urban riders cargo bikes using that in viola hub makes a lot of sense it's just really easy to shift when you're not pedaling you can operate it and for me it becomes like really something you don't have to think about much at all I mean other systems you get used to them overall and and it becomes pretty seamless the experience of riding them but there's probably the least amount of learning curve with the MBO low hub compared to some of the other systems so that's maybe another thing to consider if that's where you're at and for new riders people that are less experienced NBO low is quite often what I usually recommend but really all these systems will work well it's just a matter of considering like what might work best for you I'm always happy to answer questions about these things I'm hoping that this video could serve as kind of a good primer on how these different gear systems work and what might work better for one person or another if you have any questions or comments you know just leave them below or reach out anytime I'm happy to help and I look forward to seeing you in the future all right see you soon you

Channel: Propel

Views: 73,472

Rating: 4.8871794 out of 5

Keywords: electric bike drivetrain, e bike drivetrain, e bike gears, enviolo nuvinci, enviolo, enviolo vs rohloff, rohloff speedhub, rohloff e-14, rohloff vs nuvinci, external vs internal bike, internal vs external gears bike, internally geared, internally geared hub bike, internally geared hub, ebike, electric bike, bosch ebike, riese &, riese & müller, riese & muller

Id: mS0ubxmOFL0

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020