Jack's Electric Bicycle

Initial impressions (short and sweet)

I’ll provide a more detailed analysis early next week. But in the meantime here are some abbreviated comments regarding the bicycle:

• The battery pack is heavy. It’s kind of like going for a ride with a cinder block lashed to your bike rack.

• At first, I found the resistance in the motorized hub to be very frustrating. The motor in the hub basically slows down your bike when you try to pedal. It’s kind of like bicycling on a semi-deflated tire. Of course, there’s an engine inside that more than makes up for this, as long as you have power.

• The motor is obviously small and doesn’t accelerate fast. But once you get going, you can go fast. I don’t have a speedometer, but I reached speeds that were fast enough that it was pointless to pedal, even in high gear. With a full charge, the motor propels me forward as fast as I desire. It’s pretty sweet.

• The motor will take you up and down hills as long as they’re not too steep. This sucks energy, so you end pedaling a little.

• On a steep hill, the engine doesn’t have enough torque, so pedaling is a must. However, I noticed I was pedaling in a high gear, so it was obviously helping.

• Over the course of several days, I learned an important lesson – unless you’re on a short trip, you need to be selective when using the motor. You have to remember that this is a “pedal assist” device. You only have so much power in the batteries and you want to save it for the hills and head winds. (I’ll write about this topic in detail at a later date.)

• I probably pedaled more this week than most weeks, even though I have a motor.

• It’s a lot more fun to get around this way than in a car.

• On Friday, when I finally started up my car, it was time to get a full tank of gas in preparation for Monday’s “big drive.” I typically purchase about 10 gallons of gas. Today I purchased 7 1/2 gallons. To be conservative, I’ll round it off to about 2 gallons of gas that I saved this week. Plus there was less wear and tear on the car and I got some exercise.

• I’m still trying to figure out how much money is spent charging the batteries every day. I read somewhere that a charge requires 6 cents of power.

• It’s way too early to give this product a thumbs up or thumbs down. There are a lot of factors to be considered, which will take some time.

Stay tuned....

posted by Jack Durham @ 8:31 PM