Hub motor vs. mid drive motor - Which one is best for ebikes

Francis here from emtv review and I have a good one for you guys today because I'm going to give you some deep insight into the differences between a hub motor that you see on this e-bike and a mid-drive motor that you see here on a similar e-bike [Music] I'm going to discuss 10 key attributes like range power maintenance cost and tell you which one is better in each of these characteristics and in the end I'm gonna give you a verdict on which one is better for you and for which applications okay good one for you today because in my testing of a bunch of e-bikes commuters and mountain bikes I've come across some really good discoveries about the difference between Hub Motors and mid-drive motors and first I'm going to discuss two massive things that you should know about these things and then I'm going to go through the attributes like cost weight and whatnot so the first thing you need to know about it is there's a the biggest difference between these two is in a hub motor the motor does not go through the drivetrain meaning the motor is directly attached to the ground Tire motor Tire ground meaning whatever gear you're in it doesn't really matter to the motor because the motor bypasses that whole drivetrain on a mid-drive motor the motor goes through the drivetrain so it goes through the crank the pedals the chain and all the gears that you're in so a mid-drive motor has the advantage of gearing and it also puts a lot of stress on the gearing so that is a huge difference between the two my second mind-blowing Discovery is I always thought Hub Drive Motors are for cheap bikes you know ignore them I'm a mountain biker at heart because they're unnatural feeling and whatnot but it turns out it's because most Hub motor bikes don't have a torque sensor so but in recent bikes that I received the Hub motorbikes have a torque sensor and now I get that natural feeling so a torque sensor senses how much power you put in with your legs on on the pedals and the bottom bracket you're usually a bottom bracket torque sensor and with that information it's able to know when to start the motor how strong to start the motor you know how much to give you so then you get that natural feeling without a torque sensor they rely on a Cadence Sensor the spinning of the wheel so it doesn't really know how to when to start or or how much to give the driver how much help he needs but with a torque sensor they are both almost on equal ground on what information they know about the cyclist so they can give assistance as it's needed so now I'm going to discuss 10 key attributes or key considerations about these motors how they're different from each other and I'm actually going to declare a winner in each category all right so I'm gonna have a table of contents so you can skip to the area that you're interested in the first attribute is cost which one is more expensive you know given this kind of the same quality and attributes and the advantage goes to the hub motor right here you know for a similar manufacturer like buffang similar power and quality their Hub motor costs about four hundred dollars and their mid-drive motor costs about 800 and that is typical of what you see across manufacturers mid-drive Motors are more expensive than equally powerful Hub Motors so Advantage Hub motor the second attribute I have for you is weight weight which one is lighter which one's heavier obviously you want lighter and the advantage goes to the mid-drive motor so the typical mid-drive motor weighs about four to six maybe seven pounds and the typical Hub motor weighs about eight to ten pounds so you know a couple pound difference between the two given similar power levels so when weight is a key consideration for you guys then mid Drive motor has the advantage here okay the next key consideration number three is smoothness and ride quality and right here I'm gonna put a caveat both of them need a torque sensor if your most mid-drive Motors they have a torque sensor a lot of Hub Motors especially in the past don't have a torque sensor so in this kind of uh shootout you know the The Hub motor has no chance you know it's just very natural feeling it's best used as a moped or or a Throttle Bike so both of them need a torque sensor so they have an equal chance of having that natural feel so in this kind of competition the advantage goes to the mid-drive motor so the mid Drive motor always proves to be smoother you know and a little more natural feeling and the reason is this basically the mid Drive motor assists your legs it works with your pedal it works from the crank while you work on the pedal so you work in conjunction with each other so you both of you tension that chain that cassette that ratchet and then into the wheel so it delivers quite a natural feeling next attribute number four that I'd like to discuss is one of noise so in all my testing the mid-drive motor is more quiet so we have some very expensive mid-drive Motors the levos the new Trek TQ even this van Powers you know the mid Drive always proves to be a little more more quiet especially at high levels of output a lot of Hub Motors you know some of them are quiet at low levels but at high high levels of output they make they make this Roar this little wine or Roar and I'll try to demonstrate to you in the videos what kind of noise it makes you know in high Powers I think it just doesn't have as much sound insulation as this sophisticated mid-drive Motors the fifth attribute I'd like to discuss with you guys is power which one's got more horsepower and this is one of the things why I wanted to make this video this because researching this blue mealway you know I thought for sure mid-drive was going to be better you know it can get you up a hill You Know It uh you know it's got all that torque and whatnot but it turns out you heard it here first Hub Motors are more powerful Hub Motors are more powerful so basically most of these have more these mid-drive motors are 250 Watts they peek out at about 500 watts and these Hub Motors are at 750 watts and they Peak out at 11 1200 watts and I'm like whoa is that is that true and I researched it and it is true The Hub motor just has more space more magnets equals more power and that's why it can deliver all this top speed all this Gusto so if you want to go you know class class 3 bike you know you got a heavy load you want to go 30 miles an hour 28 miles an hour it's Hub motor for you so if they that they can the shocking thing to me is an engineer at in Taiwan uh specialized told me their Hub motor has more power than the mid there than their level and I said no way but it is true so the caveat is in your mid-drive motor it has the advantage of gear reduction meaning you know imagine if you're level uh doesn't have any gears it's a single speed that's that's the true power of your mid-drive motor you know the Hub motor will Propel you the mid Drive motor you can go through gears you know it's like your car you know on first gear you could you could like an 18 wheeler it can haul you know so so much load you know and then for Speed you know you go through gears so mid Drive motors have that Advantage uh and it this it deceives you into thinking they have more torque more power but really it's the Hub Drive Motors that have more horsepower all right number six attribute is durability and maintenance and if we're just talking about the motor itself the winner is the Hub motor The Hub motor is simpler than the than the mid-drive motor mid-drive motor has a lot of gear reduction in there it's got a tiny little motor and so many gears and parts that it it can break it it will break and it's it's uh really so close to your pedals uh that take a lot of hits you know you do a lot of pedal strikes and and whatnot so in terms of durability of the unit cell is the hard drive motor because it's it's simpler and it's more sealed it doesn't have this bottom bracket going through it and whatnot but a couple caveats is if you are talking about changing your tire changing your sprocket uh your chain or your wheel hub motors have that difficulty because there's a wire connected to your uh you're you're really real and it's difficult to manage and in the other caveat that kind of balances out is Hub motorbikes they don't go through the drivetrain uh Drive trains are the weak link of e-bikes right now because the chain is old school is it it's for human power the cassette the derailleur everything's for human power and when you go you know multiply that by three or four you know with uh with assisted power they just they you just snap your chain a mid-drive motorbike as well as it rides is very hard on the drivetrain and you wear out Parts very quickly on it number seven is throttle compatibility if throttle is important to you and in some cases it is you have a cargo bike and it's how you want to get started easily on a stoplight or you live on a hill you know and uh you know you're trying to get started on a hill a throttle really helps out you know to get you going Hub Drive Motors are very good at this you know it's it's what they're made for uh you can throttle you don't even need the chain you could throttle nothing mid-drive Motors most of them don't have a throttle when you have a throttle it's okay but it's not ideal you kid basically you have to you have to still pedal because the the mid-drive motor still has to go through the chain so you're throttling but you you have to spin the pedal so it's kind of a it's kind of a strange happy medium on a mid-drive Model withdrawal so throttle compatibility Advantage Hub motor all right number eight we're getting down to the stretch I hope I've kept you guys engaged so far so number eight is bike compatibility by compatibility means what how many Motors how many bikes uh this this motor fit and the advantage here is with Hub Motors Hub Motors all you need is the compatible Hub size the width and you're good to go and the wheel size and whatnot you're good to go mid Drive Motors unfortunately the nature of the Beast is that every mid-drive motor has its own bolt mounting pattern and no two manufacturers have the same bolt mounting pattern so a bike has to be built around a specific mid-drive motor all right getting it under wire number nine is regenerative braking compatibility with regenerative braking regener braking is it's like your your Toyota Prius you know when you're going downhill can you turn that energy that that kid a potential energy into battery energy convert it again and this one is only possible with the Hub motor and the reason is it's just physics you know to turn that that physical energy into electrical you have to spin the motor and use the motor as a brake so usually you you put that in tandem with a braking system it's kind of complicated when done well uh but you know the Hub motor is already spinning as opposed to the mid-drive motor it's not spinning huh right it's just like this because only the wheel spinning to spin the motor you would have to spin the chain or you would need an elaborate system or chains and trust me my friends have tried I have some engineering friends engineer friends who've tried this thing it looks very complicated and it's you just get a lot of power loss uh when you try to do regenerative braking on a mid-drive so Advantage Hub motor and finally the last attribute I'll talk to you about is range and efficiency which one is more efficient with the same size battery climbing a hill or getting a lot of miles the winner here is the mid Drive motor and the reason is it has the advantage of gearing gearing is cool because you're able to you know either get a lot of torque or a lot of speed you know while the motor is operating at its most efficient range you know the Hub motor just has to spin wildly and if you're climbing a big hill the system has to put so much power onto that Hub motor just to climb that hill and most of it is is generated as heat and wasteful energy okay so there you go those are the 10 attributes what is the right motor for you I would say this is pretty easy if you are a mountain biker if you want a mountain bike like real mountain biking uh for all the disadvantages I said it has to be mid-drive motor mid-drive motor for sure because handling is key and you know handling is so important in a mountain bike and the location of the mid Drive motor is Right centrally located and you know it it it makes it ideal it's still heavy but it makes it ideal a very neutrally balanced bike on a hub motor you have 10 pounds on the rear and it it's a non-starter basically if you want to jump or or do some real uh good good bike handling so now the other side of the coin is if you're a commuter if you are you know if you you want a cargo bike you want two kids back there uh you just want to commute uh you don't want to spend 10 grand you want to spend 2 000 has to be Hub motor Hub motor and let me give you that caveat which is look for that torque sensor get that torque sensor and now you have kind of The Best of Both Worlds torque sensor is about 100 item uh adds up about 100 bucks to the price of the bike so it's still it's still in the two three thousand dollar range but if your commuter Hub motor uh with a torque sensor is very good in fact I just got that like I said the specialized Globe Hall it can carry 400 pounds of payload Rider and and cargo and it has a Hub motor uh and it's got pretty darn good range and power and and get up and go and natural feeling so there you go I hope you learned something today I certainly did because I was like mid Drive motor or nothing but you know these new generations of of Hub motors have really opened my eyes and then seeing it at a different light really tells me that yeah mid drive is not for everyone you know not for all budgets and not for all applications so it's great we have good options on both sides of the coin thank you very much

Channel: E-MTB Review, Electric Mountain Bike Review, Emtbr

Views: 53,559

Keywords: hub motor vs mid drive, mid drive vs hub motor, Mid drive vs hub drive, hub motor electric bike, hub motor, hub drive vs mid drive, hub drive ebike, hub drive, mid drive vs hub drive electric bike, mid drive motor, Mid drive ebike, mid drive electric bike, hub drive electric bike kit, mid drive, Hub motor kit, best ebike motor, Best electric bike motor, electric bike

Id: YQ5YPGuNbzE

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023