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I've been thinking of doing this for a while. My commute is about 23 miles each way and not too hilly. I'd like to use the car less and increase fitness, at the moment I couldn't contemplate riding the whole distance so I thought about getting an electric kit for the old hard tail. Initially it would need to do most of the work/assisting, I'm hoping that as I get fitter this will decrease quite a lot. I expect that I can charge a battery at work so the range required should only be about one way's worth. Does anyone have experience of doing a similar thing? I'd also like the thing to reach a reasonable speed (appreciate theoretical max is 15 mph, not too fussed if it happened to go faster)and hopefully not too expensive. So it might be all a bit ambitious, but you never know...
Thoughts?
There's a bloke uses the busway in Cambridge with a Cannondale hard tail with a motor strapped to it. Goes a damn site more than 15mph too!
Everytime I see him I repeat that cheating isn't winning, but he's usually too far in the distance to hear me by then.
Is driving part way then leaving your car and riding the rest an option?
How many are you getting? 2?
http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/electric-bike-commuting-am-i-madwill-this-work-1
Being marginally more helpful, epicsteve +1 would be the way to go.
I will say that the more you are prepared to spend on a decent solution the better the experience will be.. Definitely recommend having a chat with the people over at [url= http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/ ]Pedelecs forum[/url]
I have a kit for sale but it's basic (SLA batteries, freewheel, thumb throttle w/Cyclone motor) and only strictly legal for offroad/private roads
I think it could be a nice solution. No experience of the kits but my father had a kalkhoff which put together with a new frame for my wife. Excellent bit of kit but expensive.
Also look carefully at the specific kit/ bike you are interested. The Kalkhoff progressively gives you less assistance the faster you go - At about 13 mph it's expecting you to do 80+% of the work. Where is really excels is 'squashing' hills where your speed is low so it gives you a full 250Watts of assistance.
I can imagine they would be great for commuting, especially if you are not too fit, to allow you to get some exercise but still get there in a realistic time in a non sweaty state. They are incredibly popular on the continent for this reason.
I built an ebike last year to enable me to tow my disable lad now he's getting bigger.
I spent ages researching it and got far more information than I type here, but as straight answer, easily.
To give you some idea. I went for a Krampus as my starter bike, I thought a fat bike would be nice and stable and would offer me a bit of fun now and again. But I needed a 73mm Bob for the kit so went for the 29+ instead, turned out to be a great choice. I went for a mid motor system as I was towing I want to be able to use gears to help. In the end I went for BBS02 Banfag system with a 24ah (or something like that) battery that sits in a frame bag, tbh it all looks. Ice and stealth. One of the issues of aftermarket setups is they us a simpler cadence sensor to engage power (Hiabike etc that use the a mosh system us a torque sensor), the trouble with the cadence sensor is they over run a bit, which is fine in itself but can cause issues thug gears. Thus I went for a Navinci 360 CVT gear hub, which I found pretty ace in itself.
In the real world where I live (hilly Northwales) it will easily do 15mph and over 50 mile range. I hunt down roadies on the hills and their not happy when I fly past. That is on the legal road setting. In off-road setting round say Llandegla, it's flippin Awsome. I'm pretty confident (read sure as I've used Strava and then deleted it) I can easily beat the record up the big hill and I'm a 44 year old, 14 stone only what can be described as fittiish on a good day.
TBH I didn't plan to use it much, but it's addictive. I've taken to once a week riding from home to Llandegla round red and then home again, round trip about 45 miles and grin factor 10 and according to my heart monitor still burning a good few calories (you still pedal hard, you just get more out).
Everyone who has had ago (and I let everyone have a go), even the most sceptical, wants one.
Get one.