Comment on E-bike rules in Australia will soon change with possible ban on sale of bikes faster than 25km/h
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
250 watts just isn’t enough. It can help you carry a load or it can help you up a hill, but not both. I wouldn’t even bother with an ebike at that wattage. 500 (like in NSW) is a much more sensible maximum.
It’s especially true given that wattage isn’t the real issue. Top speed is the issue and that can be capped independent of wattage.
Bullshit. I’ve got a 250w pedelec and I’ve pulled large loads - 20/30kg - uphill in a headwind. I literally got my bike converted to a pedelec due to knee injuries and I’m managing that shit regularly.
is it effortless? No. But that’s not the point of a friggin’ ebike. It’s not a car or a moped. It’s a pushy with assistance.
I’m old enough to be past my physical prime, and I don’t own a car. I use my ebike for everything. 250W is fine when your goal is exercise, or commuting, or the odd load here and there, but it just doesn’t cut it for every day use.
Before I owned my ebike, I had a regular road bike that I did 15,000km on. But the only time it got used is when I was commuting or “going for a ride”. It was completely useless as a tool in my daily life. My ebike though sees regular use for things that most people would use a car for, and things that a road bike just couldn’t do.
but it doesn’t cut it for every day use
Can you explain why? Sure, it’s less than 500 W and there will necessarily be situations where it’s not enough. But how would you know it’s insufficient for every day use without trying? If it were, say, 99% as effective it would (probably) be fine, no?
Unless of course you have experience with a 250 W ebike but (from your comments) it looks like you only ever had a single 500 W ebike. Is it possible to limit it to 250 W and seeing how much it changes?
Can you explain why?
Look at the comparison I did elsewhere in the thread. One hill I know of and have climbed many times, going up at just 12 km/h, I’m putting out over 500 W at some points. And that’s on a carbon analogue bike, as a lighter-than-average dude, carrying nothing more than a bottle of water. I’m out of the saddle, working my arse off to get up that hill.
As a cycling advocate, that’s unacceptably difficult. Great for when cycling for fun or fitness, but as an advocate, I do not want people to have to exert themselves that much just to get around. I try to set a baseline effort of 100 W, but up to 200 W for brief periods is not unreasonable. 250 W (plus a 250 W motor) when climbing up a hill even with the lightest possible load, which would easily become 500+ W (plus the 250 W motor) on the way home from shopping or transporting kids to their cricket training, is not reasonable. I want cycling to be accessible to as many people as possible. It has the potential to be a far more accessible form of transport than driving is, if our network design and laws allow it to be. A Dutch-style network is by far the most important thing and would work for 80%+ of potential cyclists, 60%ish of the time.
But to get that last 20% of cyclists 100% of the time, laws designed for the famously flat Netherlands are not necessarily appropriate. And that could include allowing up to 500 W motors. Especially with the NSW law, which states the power must be
progressively reduced as the bicycle’s speed increases beyond 6km/h.
So (assuming it’s linear), at 16 km/h you’d be getting about 250 W of assistance, maximum. At 20 km/h you’re down to 132 W, and at 23 km/h it’s just 52 W. To do that 12 km/h up the hill I was talking about, you’d get about 340 W of assistance, or go down to 10 km/h and get 390 W, plus 1–200 W from your legs, which should be enough to get an older or less physically capable cyclist up the hill with their shopping or (grand)kids.
Yeah, my current bike has a power scale setting. Adjusting the pedal assist directly adjusts the max power output. And at the 250W level, I work up a sweat whenever I push it.
Which, again, is fine, if the bike is just for exercise or commuting. But it stops it from being a viable car replacement.
I used mine in part to move house, as well as regularly dragging reno supplies, groceries and my own fat arse. I am regularly using it to haul. Extremely regularly. And in no way a fit person or spring chicken myself
I run. I cycle. My road bike has 15,000km on it. But I can’t do the things I need to do on a 250W ebike easily enough for it to replace a car in my daily life.
I could do all of the things you’re talking about if my goal was to give myself a workout, but when the goal is to use it instead of a car, 250W doesn’t cut it, because I’d be dripping in sweat and worn out half the time.
Yeah I think NSW’s approach is pretty good. As you say, 250 W is a bit limited with heavy loads up hills. To put this into perspective, on my analogue bike, up one of the steepest hills I’ve ever climbed in Brisbane, I do about 400–500 W for about 20 seconds. Ebikes are all required to be pedal-assist, so let’s assume a baseline of 100 W from the cyclist’s legs (about what a casual cyclist who just wants to cruise along would do), plus the 250 W maximum output. That’s 20 seconds where they’re having to pedal extra hard, even if their total load (including bike, rider, and water) is comfortably under 90 kg. Make that a serious cargo bike (++kg) loaded with shopping, sports equipment, or kids (+++kg) and you’re likely going to end up putting out more power with your legs than I do on my analogue bike even after you account for your motor assistance.
NSW also has a rule requiring the motors to smoothly taper their power. So at the 12 km/h I climb this particular hill at, you might get 400 W of assistance, but if you’re getting up to 22 km/h it might be just 100 W[^1]. Basically, it naturally self-corrects for any risk that might be associated with higher power at higher speeds. EN15194, otoh, is 250 W flat. It allows peaking above that amount for a short time, but from what I can tell it’s not clear how long that time is, or how it works in practice on compliant bikes.
A counterpoint to this take would be: the hill I’m describing is extremely steep, and chosen in part because it’s steep. I’d go a different, easier route, if I wasn’t on a training ride. And 90% of the time, most utility cyclists will have options that avoid climbs that steep. And also that perhaps it’s not unreasonable to expect ebike users to put out more effort on hills than they do on the flat. Personally I find both of these arguments convincing enough if used against even higher power limits, but not convincing enough for me to oppose 500 W. Especially since I’m also in favour of increasing the speed cap from 25 km/h to 30 or 32 km/h (20 mph), since that’s the speed I feel I can comfortably reach without too much effort on the flat, on an analogue bike.
[^1]: I made no attempt to actually do the maths on this. And I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a linear drop-off or if some curve is applied anyway.
See, that sounds absolutely perfect. Like you, I’d prefer 30 to 25, but whatever, that’s not a hill I need to die on. 25 does the job just fine too.
And I love the fact that the wattage reduces as your speed amps up, because that means you get the most power when you need it, when carrying loads, hitting hills etc.
I’d be quite ok with Australia adopting NSWs standards, because at that point, my ebike is still a viable alternative to car.
But at 250W it’s not.
I think I take a slightly softer position than you do, because in my view 250 W is a viable alternative to a car the majority of the time. It becomes a problem on very steep hills when carrying heavy loads, but most people are not doing that very often, and a better cycling network buildout (which is always my first priority) would reduce the need for it even further, if people had safe convenient routes around hills that didn’t force them up and over unless either they want to take the shorter, harder route, or their destination is actually on the hill.
But I do still ultimately agree with you. Ideal world, we’d change it to allow them. It’s more accessible to more people, and I cannot see much disadvantage, if the speed regulators work correctly.
They’re banning it based on wattage? That’s ridiculous. That means a 50kg person can go three times as fast as a 150kg person.
Well, no. For starters, you’re forgetting that gravity it’s probably the only force acting on a bike that’s linear with speed. And even it technically isn’t linear—just close enough to be a good approximation over human scales. But air resistance goes with the square of speed. i.e., to double your speed requires quadrupling the power.
More importantly though, there’s also a speed cap. EN15194 has a hard cap of 25 km/h. It can provide up to 250 W of assistance if you’re doing 24.9 km/h, but the motor must cut out entirely and be no help at 25.1 km/h. It also must be pedal assist, meaning it can only provide power while you are also providing power through your legs. The exception is up to 6 km/h it is allowed to assist with a button or throttle, sometimes called “walk mode”.
The NSW law is a 500 W cap at present, but the law specifically calls out that it must “progressively reduce as the bicycle’s speed increases beyond 6km/h”, in addition to cutting off at 25 km/h, and the pedal-assist requirement.
I still think the wattage cap should be increased for fat people and tradies, who both need to carry heavy loads.
Yeah, I won’t disagree with you there. You can check elsewhere in the thread if you want to see more details, but in summary: the specific combination of heavy loads and steep hills (take away either one, and 250 W is easily sufficient) do make a 500 W limit more necessary.
It’s not max output of 250w. It’s a motor rated for 250w, which often means peaks of 400w or more.
Greddan@feddit.org 2 days ago
Sweden here. Never had a problem with 250W with cargo on my RadRunner. Not even in heavy snow. You know you’re supposed to pedal them too right?
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
You can drop the sarcasm. My roadbike has 15,000km on it. My ebike doesn’t even have a throttle. The only way to move it is to peddle.
But I live in a sub tropical region. It doesn’t snow here, and temperatures have been hitting 35C this week, before we have even hit summer!
When I used to commute to work on my roadbike, it was a workout. I’d get there covered in sweat, and feeling good.
But I don’t use my ebike for workouts. I use it for daily life because I don’t own a car. And if every time I need to carry a load, it turns in to a workout and requires a change of clothes, then it’s no longer suitable for day to day life, and instead, becomes a workout tool. But I’ve already got one of those, and it’s not why I bought an ebike.
vas@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
As a person who lives in the Netherlands where hills are not a problem and heat is not a problem, it’s hard for me to understand the need for more than ~250W. I mean, I use all 600W when I want to get somewhere super-fast or after a traffic light, but it’s a luxury and I’d survive just fine with 250W.
That being said, when it’s hot and/or there are hills… I think I understand you. I’d definitely prefer to see a person on a 500W bike than a person on a got-knows-how-much-W car. I wouldn’t consider you a risk even if you occupy the bike lane, if your support is capped to 25km/h.
And from a third perspective, I do see the temptation to limit wattage to avoid the problem of “fat bikes” (as is observed in the last years in the Netherlands), but not really sure it’s that relevant to AU at the moment. I think I’d support a higher Wattage cap overall, up to 500W and 200%-300% support all seem fine to me.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Yeah, it’s a huge problem in Australia. Mostly they have an unlock code in the electronic controller that lets you simply over-ride the speed limit. Some stores sell it already over-ridden, or just tell you how to do it.
But the other side of things is that Australia is a heavily car focused country, and whether they’re speed limited or not, whether they’re driven dangerously or not, they’re still far less lethal than cars, far less polluting than cars and far less wasteful than cars.
Making ebikes unappealing to people will just ensure none of that changes.
And the European standards are probably relevant in Europe, but they’re too conservative to increase ebike uptake here in Australia (or at least in Queensland, where I live). My state alone is 40 times the size of the Netherlands. And the city I live in has a comparable population to Amsterdam, but it’s spread over an area 6 times the physical size, with hills and a subtropical environment. We actually have pretty good cycling infrastructure as far as Australian cities go, but it’s nothing like what you have. So lots of our trips either need to be on the road, or on the footpath, and a 250W bike with a load going up a hill just isn’t safe on the road…