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by switch007 3225 days ago
What makes it worth 3100 EUR?? That's seems a lot of money even for an electric bike. (I'm guessing your ex-demo was a bit cheaper)
3 comments

Cost me £1700 (about €2000). High-end Mid-drive motors pushing 75nm+ are expensive. Bosch Pro CX line and Shimano Steps are the other two types available. If you start looking around, you see the cheaper mid-drive, i.e. Bosch Active Line starting around £2000 and are suitable for lighter people. The high end motors are usually combined with high end parts and bigger batteries. Thus you end up with bikes costing between 3-4k.

It's saved me an absolute fortune. In fact after owning it for a month, my wife wrote off my car. We just took the insurance money and didn't buy another car going down to a one car family.

Interesting. How do you keep it from getting stolen ?
Electric bikes are not as easy to take apart and sell on. (I'm sure I'll be proved wrong.)

I have a gold standard D-Lock that is side mounted on the frame (weight not an issue) that I use when parking up. There is also a dutch style rear wheel lock mounted to the frame I also use. The battery has a key that keeps it locked to the frame. The head unit for the eBike display is removable and I take that with me whenever I leave it locked up making the motor unusable.

Basically you're trying to steal a 25kg (55lb) bike with multiple security features and relatively unique electric parts that people would be wary of buying due to lack of guarantees.

Sometimes if I'm popping into a shop/café, I use the bike stand, lock using the dutch lock, and just take the head unit off. I'm guessing somebody could pull up in a van and just lift the bike but the opportunistic 'snatch' is so not going to get very far.

Not having and using a bike is costing you many times that.

(Though if you don't need the e-thing 310€ will get you started)

I'd recommend multiple bikes. Ebikes can be inherently boring to go for a long ride on as you are essentially free-wheeling. Nothing quite like the quiet of the road as you are cycling along. Ebikes always make a whirring noise.

As a way to get from A to B quickly, nothing beats them in a city.

I did an Air Pollution piece for the BBC comparing exposure of somebody walking, cycling, and driving in and around Bath. As the cyclist, they told me I was travelling around the city a bit too fast for the pollution monitor to get all my data correctly. ;)

High-end non-electric bikes are in a similar price range...