3 ebike motors and how they provide a boost to your pedalling

Having a tailwind all the time isn’t necessarily the feeling you get from every ebike motor. Ebikes have been in North America for roughly eight years. Almost every major bike company has at least one in its fleet, which makes sense. Unlike those crypto-scooters with token pedals you see in bike lanes, ebikes require the rider to actually turn a set of cranks. That pedalling gets a boost from the battery-powered motor.

Ebike motors fall into two categories: mid drive and hub drive. Mid-drive systems, such as Shimano’s Steps, are far more popular with bike companies than hub-drive ones. Why? A mid-drive motor makes an ebike feel more like, well, feel more like a bike. Here are three ebike motors and how they provide a boost to your pedalling:

Giant SyncDrive Sport

Giant was one of the first companies to bring an ebike to Canada. For model year 2009, it offered the Twist Freedom DX with a SyncDrive motor on the front hub. For 2017, Giant Canada has three ebikes – the Quick-E+ for commuters, and the Dirt-E+ 1 and the Full-E+ 0 SX for the off-road set. They all use a mid-drive motor, SyncDrive Sport, that Giant developed from technology by Yamaha. “We have a great partnership with them,” says Giant Canada product manager Sean Kerr of the relationship between the two companies. “They have an office in our factory. We’re the only bike company that’s been allowed to get into that motor of theirs and fine-tune the mapping of the motor’s sensors. So, we’ve been able to customize how we want our bikes to ride.”

A hub-drive motor relies on sensors to assist your pedalling in a natural, unobtrusive way. In the case of the SyncDrive, there are four sensors: speed, torque, cadence and motor rotation. Software ties all the sensors together and decides how the motor will behave. Shimano and Bosch also have their own ways of handling data and managing their motors’ behaviours.

The 500 Wh battery on the SyncDrive is made by Sanyo/ Panasonic. Kerr says you can get roughly 100 km on it, but cautions that range depends on many factors. This past August, he took a Full-E+ 0 SX to the Chilcotin Mountains. “At the time, I didn’t know what I’d get out of the battery on that ride,” Kerr says. “I knew i’d have four hours of non-stop off-road riding. I rode in eco mode almost the whole way, bit on normal. But I never put it in power mode. I came out of that ride with more than 70 per cent left in the battery. I had way over-babied it.” The battery can be charged on-bike or off in about 2.5 hours.

On the Chilcotin ride, Kerr was with some top level riders, provincial champions, who are always nice enough to tone rides down for him. But this past summer, Kerr had the upper hand on some sections. “I was blowing the doors off of them on the climbs,” he says. “They were hanging off my Camelbak straps on an incline. It was a great day because that never happens to me.”

Bosch Performance CX

The Performance CX ebike motor by Bosch debuted in North America at Interbike in 2015. As with most things ebike-related, the off-road-oriented motor first appeared in Europe – in this case, a year earlier. The German company, however, has been involved in ebike motors since 2009.

“We’ve always been mid drive,” says Jonathan Weinert, marketing manager of Bosch ebike systems. “When the motor is adding on to your pedal power right at the cranks, it feels more seamless. You don’t feel as if you’re being pushed or pulled by something. You just feel stronger.”

Two figures that are commonly presented with an ebike motor are the watt hours of the battery and the amount of torque the motor can add to the cranks. Recently, Bosch released a 500 Wh battery for the Performance CX. A rider can opt to use that more powerful battery instead of the previous 400 Wh model, or switch between the two. The
500 Wh battery is four per cent heaiver than the 400 Wh one, but offers 25 per cent more range. The Bosch motor can put out 75 Nm of torque. “Some riders, if they are doing really steep trails, they just want as much boost as possible, or they’re looking for torque. That’s the key thing for them. But a high max torque can mean a trade-off in range. We have systems that don’t have as much torque, but you get more range out of the battery,” Weinert says.

When Bosch developed the Performance CX for off-road ebikes, the company had to improve the responsiveness of its system. On the trail, you need the motor to act quickly when you start pedalling up a tricky hill. You need power and traction. The Bosch system has three sensors that monitor pedal torque, wheel speed and cadence. “The electronics inside the system take measurements from those three sensors 1,000 times a second to ensure you get just the right amount of force, but not too much. When you are going uphill, you get great traction control,” Weinert says. He also says you can achieve a sense of uphill flow with such a motor.

Like the Shimano Steps system, the shifting on the Bosch system can go fully-automatic. In the case of the German company, its motor has to be paired with the NuVinci Harmony internally geared hub. The system will monitor your cadence and shift to accommodate any changes it detects.

Pendix

Pendix, a German ebike system, approaches its mid-drive system differently than Shimano, Giant or Bosch. It’s more direct, if you will. “With the Shimano, Bosch and Yamaha, there’s a small motor that’s run through gears to drive your cranks. The Pendix is a big motor that acts directly on the crank,” says Dave Clifford, product manager for ebikes at Opus. The advantage of the direct drive is that it is quiet. Really quiet.

The left-side (non-drive-side) crankarm has the Pendix motor integrated into it. The system can be added to any bike with a BSa-threaded bottom bracket. “If you can change a BB, you can install that system,” Clifford says. The other Pendix components are its bottom bracket with a torque sensor and the battery, which mounts to the bottle-cage bolts on the down tube.

Clifford spec’d the Pendix on the Opus Case+ not only because the motor is smooth and quiet, but it has a sharp, clean look. There’s no head unit. The charge on the 300-Wh battery is indicated by a coloured light near its top: green means fully charged; yellow, 70 per cent; orange, 40 per cent; and red, 10 per cent. You can select one of the three power modes – eco, smart or sport – by turning a dial on the battery. Pendix is working on an app so you can monitor the battery via Bluetooth.

While the Pendix is available on the Opus Case+, the system isn’t yet available to Canadian riders looking to convert their bikes to mid-drive ebikes. It’s just a matter of time, though, as ebikes continue to get more popular.