Ebike Industry Updates

I was slumming it on Twitter today when I came across the following post:

Say it isn’t so

I started to really think about this chart and started to think about if I agreed with his theory that adding an electric motor on a bike increased the overall load on the bike by 708%. Since most of my time in the last 8 years has been spent repairing destroyed high power ebikes (1000-4000 Watts) I have to actually take this chart into consideration and start thinking about whether throwing on a high power electric mid drive motor really is what has created all this extra time spent repairing ebikes.

When I think about the main issues I’ve had with high power ebikes vs bicycles it really breaks down into these categories (in order of seriousness):

I want to discuss each of these issues individually because they all deserve their own descriptions. This article will not discuss maintenance of motors and batteries, but these items also require a fair amount of maintenance on their own as well that is outside the scope of this article.

Today we’re talking about something near and dear to our hearts: saving cold hard cash. Specifically, how the US Postal Service can save a ton of money by switching from 40 year old Grumman LLV death traps to e-bikes. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “The Postal Service is a government entity, they don’t care about saving money.” Well, you’d be surprised. You see, the Postal Service is actually a business and like any business, they want to cut costs wherever they can. And let me tell you, switching to e-bikes is a surefire way for them to do just that. Not only will they save money on fuel and maintenance, but they’ll also be doing their part in saving the environment. So, strap on your helmets and let’s dive in to how the Postal Service can save some green while going green.

One of several electric vehicles the USPS is testing for mail and package deliveries, I think this design might have a few too many wheels

Fuel and maintenance savings for ebikes compared to gas powered vehicles are insane

The Post Office is still using those gas-guzzling Grumman LLV’s to deliver the mail and those things are about as efficient as putting a drag chute on a submarine.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Those Grumman LLV’s have been delivering the mail for 4 decades, what’s the problem?” Well the problem is that they’re not just outdated, they’re costing the Postal Service a fortune in fuel and maintenance costs. But don’t just take my word for it, let’s do some math.

The Post Office has a fleet of thousands of Grumman LLV’s and each one gets around 12 miles per gallon. That means they’re spending about $0.33 per mile on gas. Now, let’s compare that to an e-bike. E-bikes have a cost per mile of less than 1 cent. That’s a saving of over $0.32 per mile. The USPS 208,000 vehicles drive more than 1.1 billion miles each year, using 114.3 million gallons of fuel. If you assume $3.50 a gallon for gas that means they burn through over $400,000,000 a year, if they could swap out even a small number of their mail delivery vehicles in urban areas with ebikes they could cut that number by up to 97% for the fuel savings alone.

For the last 3 years I have really enjoyed riding my Ludicrous enabled Luna X-1 Full suspension ebike. After much use and abuse the rear freehub finally blew out. This is a common problem on higher power mid drive ebikes, but one that is easily remedied by relacing the rear wheel with a DT Swiss rear hub which uses a fantastic steel ratcheting system that is incredibly reliable. This article is about the issues I had when doing the rear wheel relacing and some direction on how to relace a rear wheel and also why I decided to swap the cassette, derailleur, shifter and chain from a 12 speed to a 10 speed chain.

This is the right hub for the X-1 : DT Swiss 350 Rear Hub – 12 x 148mm, 6-Bolt, HG 11 MTN, Black/White, 32H, 18pt for $239 on bikeman.com

The DT Swiss hubs can be hard to find and there is about a million different versions of them. I have bought about $1500 worth of DT Swiss hubs from bikeman.com and every single one has worked in the ebike I retrofitted them too. Generally I buy an ebike and run it till the freehub fails then I buy a DT Swiss hub and relace the wheel to get the bike back to ridable condition. Every single one of the high power mid drive fatbikes I ride including my Christini AWD are all fitted with the DT Swiss hubs at this point. Here is the cold hard truth, if you are running between 2000-4000 Watts through your drivetrain and plowing through deep snow your freehub will eventually self destruct. The lightweight and expensive aluminum ones will die faster but even cheap steel freehubs will eventually fail. The only hubs I have found that do not fail at those power levels is the DT Swiss ones with the Star Ratcheting system.

Measure spokes with this $10 tool

In all my DT Swiss conversions I have been able to use the same spokes that came with the original wheel. This makes things a lot easier and faster, just make sure that you keep the spokes on the different sides of the wheel separated because they are generally slightly different lengths. With the X-1 the spokes were extremely thick (12 Gauge?) and did not fit through the holes on the DT-Swiss hubs. I measured the length of the spokes with a spoke ruler and averaged the difference between the two sides and bought a set of 36 cheap spokes on Amazon that were 253mm for just $13.99 available here. Most wheels in the US only have 32 spokes so that leaves me with 4 extra spokes for future breakage. This includes the nipples as well. 38 cents a spoke is quite a bit cheaper than my local bike shop, but if you don’t have a spoke wrench and don’t want to deal with Amazon, you can wander into your local bike shop with the spoke that you have and they will try to find something similar or cut it and thread it if they have to.