I bought a mid drive with a small motor because I wanted to put in some effort. If I had gone in with the idea that I was going to buy an electric motorcycle with pedals, I’d also be disappointed at the current crop of ebikes. There are some gems out there, but a 250w hub isn’t going to do mush for you unless you already live somewhere nice and flat.
He had planned to put so much strain on the battery that it would ignite, sending him rocketing off the side of the road until he would jump off of it, momentarily Superman-ing across someone’s lawn while screaming a solid stream of obscenities, then landing in some rose bushes. The bike, meanwhile, was supposed to fly into someone’s front window, setting fire to the structure and putting both Tomshardware and Trek in a legal fight for years.
None of this went as planned. Instead, he rode successfully up the hill. What a disappointment.
Some countries use commas as a decimal point, but even then, 9.7?
1 mile is 1.6 km with some change, so 20 miles would be around 32 km. If you’d plug the numbers in reverse, that would still give you 12.42.
I can’t even imagine how they got that number.
EDIT: Ooooh, they probably asked chatgpt to calculate that, or even to write the whole article.
As an aside, metric conversions of US customary speed and distances are convenient in that they almost perfectly align to powers of two for typical land speeds.
5 mph ~ 8 kph
10 mph ~ 16 kph
20 mph ~ 32 kph
40 mph ~ 64 kph
80 mph ~ 128 kph
The other common speed limits in the USA are thus bitwise compositions, which Computer Science folks might appreciate:
15 mph ~ 24 kph (16+8)
25 mph ~ 40 kph (32+8)
35 mph ~ 56 kph (32+16+8)
45 mph ~ 72 kph (64+8)
50 mph ~ 80 kph (64+16)
55 mph ~ 88 kph (64+16+8)
65 mph ~ 104 kph (64+32+8)
Had the 1980s US metrication effort succeeded, we could have seen those same limits rounded off to: 25, 40, 55, 70, 80, 90, and 100 or 110 kph.
For reference, common speeds around the world are 15, 20, 30, 50, 80, 90, and 100 kph
A “fairly powerful” 250 watt hub motor? That’s pretty much the least powerful motor you can find for an ebike and it’s a hub motor to boot. I’m not surprised he was feeling that hill by the end.
I think in the UK, that’s the limit on ebike motors, but are considering upping it to 500W? A 750W motor can still struggle to go up a steep hill with pedal assist, so I find it weird that’s even a question.
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