MID-DRIVE vs. HUB DRIVE: Tested a Pedego City Commuter for Towing Heavy Loads up Steep Hills
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2021
- For info about my books: www.robertberiault.com
In my quest for the perfect ebike for travelling with my heavy bicycle camper, I discovered that Pedego has come out with a new ebike, the City Commuter Mid-Drive. Motors that are incorporated in the pedal crank benefit from a varying gearing ratio, which multiply their torque and provide them an advantage for riding up hills. This video reveals the results of a test I made comparing Pedego's new mid-drive with the old model that has a hub drive. - Навчання та стиль
I built an e-bike with a hub motor which I've ridden on the mountainous roads of Vermont for the past 10 yrs. It had always struggled on hills, even when supplied with 1600w of power! Last month I bought a new bike and a Bafang BBS02 750w mid-drive and paired it with a 52v 21Ah battery. The difference is night & day, both in climbing ability, and range. On a fully charged battery with no payload, I can do 80 miles on pedal assist 3, 36T chainring, and a 10-speed cassette. I did however reprogram the assist levels to better match my fitness level and riding style to give it a more natural feel. At age 67 I couldn't ask for a better bike to explore with!
Sorry I misses seeing your comment of 3 weeks ago. I think you made the right choice for managing those steep hills.
A hub drive is using only one gear. If you you have a ten speed and you stop in seventh gear, and then try to get moving again in that same gear it is very hard and you have very little torque. That is how a hub drive works. The motor is connected to a set gear ratio, which would be similar to about 7th gear on a ten speed. Because of that you get smooth throttle response and a nice even smooth acceleration, slower as it may be but many people prefer this feel. You can assist the motor by changing the gears you pedal but it is not changing the motors gear ratios. If the chain breaks you can still use the throttle and move along. The bad part of this is that at start up speeds with stop and go or steep hills the motor will pull max amps and will heat up tremendously. The reason they shut off while going up steep hills is because they are pulling too many amps and the motor is shutting down for safety, so the wires don’t melt or so it doesn’t cook circuitry in the motor. With a mid drive the motor is using the chain to drive the wheel, just like your legs. The relationship with speed and torque are dependent on the gear you put the bike in, just like a manual transmission in a car. A hub drive is not like an automatic. It’s like starting your car in third gear. Because of these differences, what you want out of a bike and more importantly how you are going to use the bike should be the determining factor on which drive you use. If you tow and are going through hills, you would best be served using a mid drive. If you tow and live where it is supper flat, a hub drive would suffice. You also would likely get better range out of a mid drive on hilly area because you can adjust your gear ratio that the motor is pulling so it doesn’t have to pull as much amps. Sorry for the long rant.
I'd say that is an exact description of the two systems. Thanks.
I run a hub drive. I run low pedal assist levels and pedal . I like my hub drive around town because I don't need to down shift at light's. I get about 70 miles of range on a 20.8 ah battery. I've not experienced overheating on the hilly terrain I ride . I was looking at mid drives but the whole chain breakage risk wasn't worth it. I commute 30 miles round trip to work. Mids are definitely better for climbing hills but hubs win for ease of use and maintenance.
My 500 watt hub-drive takes off slowly. My first fat tire folder took off like a rocket. I'll keep my hub drives forever.
great comparision, greetings from poland :)
Glad you liked it!
Okay, if you want a geared hub motor, to pull a heavy trailer. There should be a rating as to how much the motor can handle. Most 500 watt geared hub motors I looked at had a load limit of 350 pounds. If however, I had gone with a 750 watt geared motor, that has a load limit of 500 pounds. As for my E-bike that I created by converting my two wheeled recumbent. I used a 48 volt 500 watt Direct Drive Magnetic hub motor, that has a load limit of 600 pounds. I go up some pretty steep hills where I live. In fact my parents live on top of the second biggest hill, and its a 1.1 mile long climb. My motor has yet to stall out, even when I am pulling a trailer full of groceries. Something you need to think about.
Thanks for sharing your experience, James.
I’m enjoying your straight to the point, informative videos on e-biking, thanks! Since laws vary regarding motor power, in the US, the most prevalent hub motor is 750W, and 500W for mid-drives. While it wouldn’t be apples to apples, I’d be interested in seeing a 750W hub drive on the same hill, but recognize this may not be possible in Canada.
One other concern with the mid-drive motor using that much torque is the stress put on the chain. Unless you can do mobile chain repair (a good skill to acquire for long trips, I imagine), this is a consideration. Because hub drives work directly on the wheel, if you have a throttle, you can use it to get to a place where you can get the chain fixed, assuming you’re not riding far from civilization 😊.
By the way, if the hub drive won’t get you up some slopes, and you’re concerned about the mid-drive overheating, sounds like you might need a motorcycle for the type of touring you’re interested in. What have you decided?
Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. There's no doubt that a motorcycle could climb any hill and I'd never have to worry about stalling in the middle of a big hill. But they're too fast for enjoying the scenery. Since I like going fast, I need a bike that can't allow me to do so. 32 kph or 20 mph is just right as a maximum.
I'm riding a Bafang 250 W for over 20.000 km now. During vacation It pulls my 40 kg trailer with me. And yes, it get's warm on a steep incline, but it never ever failed.
The reason for the good results of a mid drive motor is easy: I almost always turn at its optimal speed, whereas a rear (or even worse a front) drive motor has only one optimal speed which often is 25 km/h. The slower you go the higher the losses within the motor gets.
That's a good observation. Thanks.
You have confirmed what I have been hearing about crank drive motors. I want a second bike that will be a commuter/adventure bike with longer range.
Thanks for your comment. Enjoy your electric bikes!
We live in a Hill station. roads are steep up/down most of the time.. i love this vid becoz most test vids are done in a plane roads...
I've noticed that too about other videos.
I love Pedego ebikes. Im over 65, and no way can i spend $2500 on a mid-drive. I like the 20" x 4inch fat tire folders. I like being close to the ground, and a 500 watt motor. Ride safe!
Glad you found the ideal ebike for your needs.
Wow! Beau vidéo, je fais des recherches pour un e-bike et je suis tombé sur votre vidéo par hasard. Je pense y aller pour le mid drive avec belt drive et enviolo gear comme combo. Merci pour le vidéo, la rue Main c’est un monstre en effet. Je regarde le Vvolt proxima
Vous faites un excellent choix. merci
With that load you need a bit more oomph. BBSHD would be perfect. I would not worry too much about the heat on the pedigo one. 55C is pretty normal and I'd guess it was that by your description. Stick a 750watt sticker on it. If you are obviously touring and riding well I doubt anyone will bother you.
From what I'm learning about the BBSHD, that would be a workable solution. Thanks for your input.
Interesting comparison, I have been looking to get an electric moped one that has hub drive and another one that has mid drive. I am looking to tow stuff with it in the future but the mid drive is so much more expensive so I dont know if it viable to get that one since I have a budget go from. In conclusion the hub drive seems to do well enough, it having a 1,5 Kw motor with 3,3 kw peak it shouldnt have to much problems with this.
Thanks you for a good comparison!
I'm presently working with Grin Technologies to figure out which hub motor will do the job for me. I need a motor that can get me up a 16% grade with my 370 lb gross weight. Watch out for a video on that when I've solved the issue.
Pretty fun
It was an interesting test.
Every time I try to plan my dream cross country touring trike with trailer, I get a migraine. People tell me using two motors is inefficient, but a single motor isn't capable of both torque and maintaining speed. The mid drives provide that torque for hills and accelleration, but the hubdrives do far better at maintaining high speeds with less effort than the mid drive. I don't want to be wasting power using a mid drive on the highway at cruising speed where stopping and starting isn't necessary.
It's impossible to find an ebike that is perfect for all occasions.
@@RobertBeriault753 A smart controller that would engage and disengage the hub and mid drive as necessary would achieve the extra torque for hills and stop to start, while maintaining a desired speed and efficiency you get from a hub, IF once the mid drive (with pedaling of course) brings a bike up to speed. The hub needs something to get it up to that speed for it to maintain it.
It's not impossible. I'm just not there yet. Give me a year while I learn to program an Arduino. lol
Good luck with your projects. Keep in touch.
I’m planning to build a four-wheeler with a massive camper trailer. trailer will be tall enough to stand in , 40” wide and long enough to fit a bed, desk and tiny kitchen. Gonna go with two Grin hub motors up front and a Bafang BBSHD to power the rear. Will be a recumbent. Total weight will likely be half a ton. Planning to design and build like crazy for some years and then live in it for the rest of my life. But yeah, a half hub and half mid-drive vehicle is as close to perfect as it gets.
@@EricPeelMusic Ooh! A velomobile! Those are so cool!
I don't know if this will help you or not but it just put a damper on my designs. - Hub motors do require support from both sides of the wheel bolt. Bicycles built to have wheels side by side or 4 wheels in don't have a fork to support both sides of the hub, there's only one on the inside.
I would have to fabricate a fork to support the outside, to attach to the frame some how.
Hey, I rarely even log on youtube but I would like to put a different perspective on this subject. I'm building my second ebike and I am going to pull a trailer with it. I took the approach of how many N.m./torque the motor produces, Voltage and how many amps the battery and controller can discharge along with gears and ignored the whole "watts" argument as far as pulling a trailer. I'd also run a minimum of 52V (I have 72V) as well as a torque sensor and not just a PAS. Being a DIY type I'd suggest the CYC X1 Pro Gen 2 or Stealth but they are a bit noisy. Also you can set the speed limit to be legal in your area and disable the throttle all together if you want in the app and then stick a 750 sticker on it as #high voltage suggested. Not sure the BBSHD has a torque sensor in it though and they just came out with a new M625 I believe. Either way one can spend less for either kit and purchase a bike more for touring than commuting to pull the trailer for less money. My goal is to be able to do the speed limit if I want up through the mountains here in Colorado. Well great videos!
Thank you for sharing your experience and goals. When I finish my own DIY, I'll have to find where I can buy a 500 Watt sticker (the limit in Canada)😊.
My house is at the top of a 1km 14~% incline hill, and I drive it up daily on a 350w bafang hub motor. I use a lot of force (similar to the effort I use on a regular bike) but I just climb it much faster; because i want to keep the speed above 10km/h. Under that the motor starts doing weird electrical noises D: Is it actually BAD for the motor to work at this low speeds right? I always wondered if I just claimbed at 5km/h~ would that be frying the internals and if I'm doing good limiting myself to 10km/h and up. I was surprised to see your mid drive also heated up
According to Justin of Grin Technologies, rated Watts by the manufacturer has little meaning. It is quite probable that your 350 Watt motor is putting out 1000 W when going up that hill. As for the question, which is better 10 kpm or 5 kpm, instinctively, to me it sounds like the motor is straining more at a crawling speed than at a more peppy speed. I'm not an expert in this, so if one of my viewers would like to chime in with an informed opinion, it would be appreciated.
@@RobertBeriault753 This is correct, the coils inside the motor will start to cook if you push a lot of power while it's moving too slowly up a very steep hill, as the coils don't have time to cool by transferring the heat to the shell of the motor. You don't need to be flying up the hill, but you don't want to be going so slow you could've just walked just as fast either. From what I remember the bafangs are internally geared hubs so they don't suffer as much as direct drive units going up steep hills, but it's a good idea that if you know a hill like that is coming up to actually pick up some speed so the inertial will carry you some of the way up so you're moving at a better speed. But if the hill doesn't take multiple minutes to go up, then it's not a big deal and it shouldn't damage the hub, it's usually the controllers that usually die first on most ebikes.
Your red car is so shiny!! Is it ceramic coated?
No. It's the factory paint job.
Wow 16% is really steep! Possibly with the mid-drive you could always fit a rear cassette with larger sprockets, they are made with 40 teeth or more nowadays. This would allow a faster pedalling cadence and probably the motor wouldn't get so hot.
Also I'm surprised the hub motor didn't overheat badly on the 16% ?
The idea of enlarging the lowest sprocket might be a good solution. But I'm not sure it wouldn't overheat anyways. Besides, I didn't like the way it shifted gears. Clunky.
@@RobertBeriault753 Did the mid-drive bike have a gear shift sensor on it (for example the Bafang SS01) that cuts the motor when you shift gears?
Please tell me how many teeth are there on the chainring and lowest cassette gear?
I was thinking about swapping to a mid-drive but my lowest gear would have to be more than it is at the moment (on a triple) due to the BBS02b mid-drive only being able to use a single chainring. I'd get something like an 11-46t cassette with a 42t or 44t chainring.
No, it didn't have gear sensing. And I don't know the number of teeth on the gears.
@@RobertBeriault753 that's why you had the clunky shifting.. a gear shift sensor is a must on mid drives as is stops the motor for a split second during your shift making is smoother. This also takes a lot of stress off of the drive train making it last much longer.
Seems like if you want to compare how hot they get you need compare apples-to-apples and try to keep to the same road speed on both.
The purpose of the experiment was to compare two different drive systems (hub drive vs. mid drive) by looking at their climbing efficiency as determined by the speed at the slowest point a hill, both systems using the same motor. Temperature was an incidental observation 😢.
Très intéressant comme vidéo. Quelque chose me dit que tu dois être un gars de Sherbrooke toi.😉
Mon accent? J'ai grandi à Ottawa, ai vécu à Hull, St-Hilaire, Guelph, St-Pierre de Wakefield, et depuis 2001 à Gatineau. A part St hilaire, j'ai toujours vécu dans des régions fortement influencées par la langue anglaise. Je ne connais pas l'accent Sherbrookois, mais se pourrait-il qu'il soit influencé de la même façon?
@@RobertBeriault753 Je sais pas, la rue Maine je croyais c'était à Sherbrooke, et il y a beaucoup de côtes dans cette ville-là. Alors j'ai cru c'était cette ville-là. Mais clairement je savais t'étais français juste de la manière tu parle l'anglais. Haha
👍
What about the cost difference between the two?
I haven't checked, so I don't know. My guess is that the mid drive would be a little more expensive. Next time I speak with the Pedego people I will ask.
@@RobertBeriault753 We should also consider that with a hub drive we can do with single speed basically, so no cost needed for bicycle gearing.
If we assume a hub motor can "flatten" any hill then a single speed should be enough.
True. The only reason for multiple gears is to help the cyclist provide the ideal cadence for the effort he's contributing.
@@RobertBeriault753 They are exactly the same price.
I would think that a Bafang with its internal nylon gear will get fried much sooner.
I don' t have first hand experience with Bafang, so I can't add anything to that. Thanks for your interest.
If you had changed gears the mid-drive would have done even better.
Lets say a 32t front and 34 rear and the mid-drive would zip up the hill.
Lower gears might do the trick. I wonder if the bike would slow down to the point where you can't keep it from falling over.
@@RobertBeriault753
No it would climb pretty reasonably fast. A 1000 watt bbshd mid-drive and a 52v battery would pull you up the hill without issue.
The mid-drive depend 100% what gear you are in. Large rear cogs for hills. Then you have 7 or more other gears to use when you get the top of the hill.
The Pedego bike, in Canada, has only 500 W. Of course, with double the power, it would make all the difference.
The huge advantage mid drive bikes have over the hub drive is that mid drives use the crank/drivetrain to put power to the rear wheel which means it also takes advantage of the gears. With mid drives, it's all about using the right gearing, it's like having a manual transmission in a car. Hub drives just turn the rear wheel, they are stuck in whatever internal gear ratio the motor comes with. The drivetrain only uses the power from your legs, like any normal bike. I've got a MTB that I converted with a Befang 750w motor and a 52v 17ah battery. 44t front chain ring. In a low gear it will pull the front tire off the ground and zip me up steep trails on throttle only no problem. I'm 6' 210lbs. My hub drive bike couldn't come close to doing this. Hub drives are great for casual riding around but if you need serious hill climbing/towing abilities the mid drive is the way to go. Just know that mid drive motors are happiest when spinning fast. You put too much power in too high a gear from a standing start and lug the motor bad, you could fry the controller or break a chain.
What are he controller of each motor? What are the price of each bike. Watch my Test Comparaison on the same Bike.vBafang Hub 750w outperforms Bafang BBSHD 1000w Mid Drive - ua-cam.com/video/VnyKEYBqXMU/v-deo.html
Wow! That's one heck of a good comparison! The manufacturer, Pedogo, doesn't tell us about the controller. Most people who buy an ebike don't know anything about controllers, nor do they care to know. Both bikes are the same price, about $4500 CAD.
J'ai bien aimé ton vidéo!
@@RobertBeriault753 Merci Robert content de ton appreciation de mon video. Yes most people know anything about controllers, amps continuous current and maximum current that can make a huge difference of the power, watts and torque. I have learned the bafang 750w hub motor controller upgrade from 25 amps to 30amps and 35 amps from others and I pushed it to a 45 amps controller. The watts went from 1200w to 2200 watts. I recent;ly made a maintenance on the 750w motor and the gears, cables have sign of damage at all after more than one year.
Is that a coffin on wheels 😂
In case you're not kidding, I'm providing you a link to this wonderful bicycle camper with lots of headroom and storage space: ua-cam.com/video/nDf6_T3ZHoM/v-deo.html&pp=ygUQa2VlcHMgaXRzIHdoZWVscw%3D%3D
Enjoy!
Moral of the story is hubs are better but don't go for one that is only 500 watts
Well said!
kmh not kph.
It's not something I gave any thought to. But since you brought up the subject, I consulted Wikipedia and found out WE'RE BOTH WRONG! According to Wikipedia, the General Conference on Weights and Measures established that either of these can be used: "km/h", "km h−1" and "km·h−1"
This is being petty to be honest, it doesn't really matter its easy to understand anyway.
Pas pire pentoute ! :)
Ch'te r'marcie!
@@RobertBeriault753 lol