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Need advice from actual ebike users (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/micromobility@lemmy.world
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TL;DR: help me, Micromobility, you're my only hope

Long story short, I am fed up with the state of public transit in my city and feeling envious of the e-riders whooshing past. However, while trying to pick an actual model, I've ran into being unable to find a model that fits my needs:

  • being able to drive 30+ km, with ~100 meter elevation difference between start and finish
  • being able to handle 100+ kg of load (I am, unfortunately, fat)
  • being able to handle rain and possibly light snow
  • being foldable or otherwise transportable, because I'll have to keep it in the apartment

The Ebike store I've been to suggested picrelated, Yokamura Apache, which seems to fit the requirements, but is expensive enough to give me pause. Are there better options? Am I dreaming the impossible? Please help!

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[–] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

So, since I assume OP is at the ebikes 101 level, let me elaborate a bit on hub drives vs mid-drives.

If you have to climb steep grades, a mid-drive can have an advantage because you can lower the gear and it helps the motor. With a hub drive, the gearing has no effect (though it can still help you with pedalling, of course), so you may need a more powerful motor. I think historically, mid-drives have been more popular in Europe than North America because there were stricter restrictions on how powerful the motor can be. I don't know if that's still the case?

One advantage of hub drives is that it's easy to add a throttle mode (where you don't have to pedal at all). It's getting harder to find a hub drive ebike that doesn't have a throttle these days.

Also, in principle, the motor can be on either the front or rear wheel. ebike conversions like to put it on the front, since the front wheel is easier to replace. I find this interesting, in that in some sense, you're getting an all-wheel drive bike! Like the motor drives the front wheel while your pedalling drives the rear. Might be good in snow? Less fish-tailing? That's just speculation, though. I haven't actually tried it.

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