Electric Bikes
Northwest

How Far On a Battery Charge?

'Range' is the distance an electric bike can travel on fully charged, fairly new and warm batteries.

Claims abound. While some may be accurate (stating the exact conditions under which a certain range is achieved), some estimates are accomplished under such rarefied test conditions as to render them irrelevant, others are too vague, overly enthusiastic or frankly demonstrably false.

"But what would", asks nevertheless on occasion a prospective customer, "be the range on average terrain by an average rider?"

There is no 'average' terrain: How steep is a steep hill? How strong the headwind? What road surface? What 'stop and go' and 'twist and turn' are involved?

There is no 'average' rider: What's the weight of the rider plus e.g. groceries? How strong and fit are we? What constitutes agreeable pedaling? When do beads of perspiration start to appear on our individual brows? How fast is our riding fast? How well does the rider maintain his or her bike?

While range is of course a function of the power draw or drain from the finite capacity battery we continue to find that some designs provide greater range per nominal Ah battery capacity than others.

That said if you would share with us what level rider you are, what the terrain of a typical prospective ride may look like and your expectations we shall definitely be able to arrive at a reliable range estimate specifically for you.

In the meantime a 'magnitude' number would be around 25 real life, real traffic miles on moderate terrain on our advanced, pedal activated, energy miser, quality bikes with a single 9-10 Ah Li-Ion Polymer battery. If you need to ride upward 50 miles do purchase the dual battery Giant Twist Freedom DX model, the iZip Express—or carry an extra battery.

Copyright © 2011 EbikesNW

September 2011

The 'Reigning Range Queen'

The Giant Twist Freedom DX: Our customers report a 'real world, real traffic' range of around 50 miles due to this model's highly efficient power use, torque sensing pedal activation and the dual Li-Ion Polymer battery packs. What about the 75 mile range mentioned in "Popular Mechanics"? Sure, under the specified test conditions.