UKC

I have been using my bike for my daily commute (8 miles each way).

However, at times of the year the wind can really drag it out (I cycle along a coastal path) and I am interested to find out whether an ebike might be worth the investment.   

Does anyone have any experience of this or recommendations? 

snap!

my commute was 8 miles too, 4 each way. Had an ebike for 3 years and it was brilliant, clocked up over 2000 miles. Battery started to tire and replaced it with a 50cc vespa.

Mine was a 1000w samsung 48v, most of my commute was off road and it really took the sting out of hills and wind. You get just as wet when it’s raining though, that’s one of reasons i went to a scooter, starting a 12 hour shift at 6 in the morning piss wet through gets tiresome pretty quickly! Vespa keeps me much drier

No experience of using for a commute, but have been e biking for some seven years. Most I put on one bike though was only 4250 miles; the battery capacity drop was barely noticeable and it had have a really hard life out in all weathers and conditions.

Without a doubt I’ve had a lot of fun as they make cycling so much more enjoyable. Not sure what to say otherwise as there are so many to choose from nowadays. If you can afford to buy and ride one go for it. Some versions allow you to cycle more or less normally with power off though there is a weight penalty unless you get one where the battery and motor can be removed (Fazua for example used to do these, though I think they now have a disengage system to stop mechanical drag instead).

You will need to narrow down essential needs and whether solely for commute or multi use. I’ve seen all sorts of e bikes being used for commute type journeys so many buy for their many use (I sold my first e mtb for someone to commute with primarily).

Things like type of bike, motor placement (front, mid, rear), battery size, battery location, ease of removal for charging if you can’t charge on bike, overall weight, handling, tyre sizes, and the list goes on. A pure road e bike narrows down options. If you are brand loyal, that would be a good place to start to limit options.

If you have any specific questions I’ll try and answer through I’ve not had a road version, but nearest is a hybrid that can do soft off road.

Downsides - cost more to buy, more to maintain (at least a bit higher or substantially higher if something unexpected happens), more to insure, and are heavier. Extra maintenance costs are partly in some case due to manufacturers’ restrictions, eg. some say software/firmware updates are restricted to bike shop only and they can charge for this service. I’ve heard £30-£50 for this, though my LBS does it for free if the bike is in for other work. Some software/firmware updates are more essential bug fixes whilst others are optional to improve the riding experience.

To me pluses of using e bikes far outweighs the downsides; ymmv. 

Thanks for the information - very helpful. 

Some more info, I rode gatorskin tyres 32mm in summer and knobby ones for winter. Long mudguards (SKS) I diy converted mine, got a new carrea crossfire 2 (disk brakes) and got the dillinger kit from their website, proved extremely reliable and never had any issues electrically. rear wheel motor, being 1000w was extremely heavy and needed the tyre pumped rock hard to prevent pinch flats. Rear wheel puncture can be a pain as has to be disconnected electrical wise. 

I wore out the 8 speed free hub and was on my 3rd one when I retired the bike. Awful lot of torque going through that free hub, cheap and fairly easy to swap out if you have the tool (£10) only really ever used the very bottom few gears.

My mum's a teacher and used an e-bike to commute to work for about 3 years (she's now retired).  It worked extremely well for her, meant she could get herself plus a classload of books to school every day over a short but very hilly route.  Reliability was never an issue, her bike has a Bosch assist system and she thought it worked well. 

Fitness wise, it took the sting out the journey but definitely improved her overall health

We have one for towing the kids around town in a trailer. Depending on what bike you have already you might want to consider a conversion kit. Ours is a converted Kona Caldera mountain bike with a mid drive bafang motor. It's certainly much cheaper than buying a whole new bike if you've got a suitable donor bike, so might be worth looking in to 

I treated myself to an e-bike last December and have done 1000 miles on it in 6 months, mainly on my hilly commute.

Cycle Sheffield have a really helpful web page about choosing an e-bike. The stuff about hills may not be relevant for you, but it may provide some pointers on things such as what kind of motor, battery position, etc.

I decided to go for a mid-drive motor & integrated battery (to keep the weight more central), with a large battery (longer range) and a larger motor for the hills.  Gazelles come highly recommended for quality, and I found a good deal on a second-hand Gazelle Grenoble C380 HMB (if that hadn't been available I'd have got a Gazelle Grenoble C8+).  It's a very upright position (the Gazelle Ultimate is more like a hybrid bike), has stepless hub gears, integral lights and pannier rack. I've happily lugged 25kg of shopping home uphill in the panniers.  It's great!

Have a look here for lots of info/tips: https://ebiketips.road.cc/

My cousin bought an e-bike for commuting a couple of years ago, as it's very hilly where he lives - loves it, apparently.

My commute is 11 miles each way and I haven't considered an e-bike, but I don't get the winds/hills that you/he do.

Does your company have a bike to work scheme - that can slash the costs of buying one.

Lots of good advice on here. I converted my mountain bike into an ebike but ended up taking it all to bits and selling it. I used a hub motor which was fine powered but unpowered it had crazy resistance - if you span both wheels the front wheel would spin four times as long as the back one.

The problem was the speed limit on the roads, as soon as you got over 15.5 mph I was riding a horrible heavy bike with what felt like a rear brake permanently on.

I love the idea of them but for me the speed limit ruins them.

Yes, that's one of the things that (currently) puts me right off them - because I generally ride faster than the bike will assist, I'd mostly be lugging the weight around for the couple of small hills on my commute.

You can, on some of them (particularly older ones), hack them (via various means) to go faster, but most of the recent mainstream ones are intelligent enough to recognise this and shut down.

If you want anything faster at the moment, it becomes classed as an e-motorbike and then you're into the territory of licences, MOTs and insurance (and VED, although that's £0).

Mine was deregulated 1000w, I could get up to 30mph on the road but I thought I can't ride round like this I'll get fines and points. My mates been riding his around at 30mph for a few years but I think he's playing with fire, plus he lives in the country so is on quite roads.

I've looked into this, a registered ebike with the right gearing could probably do 40mph. It's really complicated from what I can tell, having to get the bike inspected, lights, horn, mirrors, ect. After all that I think they still have a speed limit of 28mph. 

I'm same as this, I can ride to work at 23-25km/h average so for most of the journey the motor wouldn't be doing any good at all.  If I could get a deregulated one easily and legally I would do so, but it all feels a bit messy at the moment.

I just tried this on my Dillenger (front wheel) kit. Spinning it forwards I don’t notice any appreciable resistance. Backwards there is and it makes a whining noise. Out of the box, on the flat, it assists up to just over 21MPH so I’ve never felt the need to tinker with it (but did look up the instructions just in case). Another advantage of a kit is that it can be used ‘button only’ as the regulation stopping this only applies to manufactured ebikes. I got it to keep up with my grandson and having a heart problem means I can (mostly) match him without serious exertion. It also makes coming back up the cycle track (disused railway line) with shopping easy despite the gradual incline. The incline is just enough that I can slowly coast most of the way down and adding the kit hasn’t changed that as far as I can tell.

Mine was a big cheap one, 1000w is quite a bit heavier than a 250w - sounds like your hub motor is probably much better quality than mine was.

As to assisting up to 21mph are you aware this is illegal? If the police catch you they can fine you and if you have a driving licence you can get points. 

With the cycle track and canal taking me where I usually go, I don’t need the roads, so figure I am relatively safe. Also I can’t really see this as a police priority. A case in point was a visit to the local Tesco’s last summer. Returning to the bike there was a pair of police looking at it and I assumed that the vibration alarm had gone off. No, they wanted to know where I got it and did I recommend it. I let them have a go in the car park and they both seemed to like it, especially the go button. Neither made an issue of the speed despite having enough space to get to max assist. I was tempted to take a pic but thought better of it. I guess it’s like most things, if you’re not being a nuisance they aren’t interested.

Mid motors largely do have a resistance when power is off from my experience. Not all manufacturers, but I’ve ridden five mid motor e bikes over a few years and with the ones I had, they all had significant resistance. Certainly didn’t encourage you to pedal harder over the upper assistance limit unless it was downhill!

I’ve read, thought not tried out, some model/manufacturers have systems with minimal resistance more so nowadays when pedalling without power.

Choice is out there if it’s important to the rider. Certainly shouldn’t put of anyone getting an e bike just because some have resistance without power.

Someone I know did this on an earlier generation trek e-mtb. He could get about 38 mph out of it on the flat, he stopped it in the end and changed it back, as realised it was an accident waiting to happen.

Yeah I get that, it's a daft law and probably mostly ignored. I'd just feel really paranoid if I was riding around regularly above the speed limit. 

Ha, I manage to splat myself all too often without any assistance. 

I've got a Swytch kit (well, two, one on the Brompton as well). The front wheel hub motor has a bit of resistance when unpowered, but not awful.

There's definitely no incentive to pedal faster than the motor limit though, as you get suddenly hit by having to overcome all that rolling and air resistance.