E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Hey everyone. Peter at Cult-Rider here at Sixthreezero Bicycles and E-bikes. We get a lot of questions about how steep of a road or terrain can you ride an e-bike? So we'll answer that today. Stay tuned.
First of all, a little bit of a disclaimer, this is for recreational e-bike riders. If you're a mountain bike e-bike rider, this completely does not apply because you're going to be on all sorts of very steep terrain that a regular or recreational e-bike rider would never encounter on a paved road. So we're talking about paved roads. We're not talking about mountain bikes.
So we're going to talk about how steep of a road can you ride on your e-bike? Well, first of all, let's talk about road grade for a minute. Probably the steepest road you'll ever encounter will be actually about 10% grade. If you look at this road here, you may guess it's about a 30-degree angle, something like that. It's actually, I calculated it at 9% grade, which translates into about a 6% angle. Okay. So road grade is measured in percentage and then the angle is different. Angle relates to it. So anyway, a lot of people think that they live on a very steep road, which is a 45-degree angle. 45-degree angle is actually a 100% road grade. 90-degree angle being infinite. So 45 degrees would be 100% road rate. So the steepest road that you'll ever really find around the world will be maybe 14, 15%. That's going to be very, very rare. Really you'll typically only encounter 10% road grade. Even at 15% road grade, that's only a 10-degree angle, not a 45-degree angle, a 10-degree angle.
Now let's walk over here and we'll talk about it from looking up the road. So here we are standing on the hill. This is actually a very steep hill. If you were riding a regular bike up this, you would be struggling. In fact, a lot of people would have to get off their bikes and walk, but this is only an 8.8% grade, which is actually quite steep. But a lot of folks don't realize that roads just don't get much deeper than about 10% grade, which again is an about six degree angle. Only a six degree angle, not a 45 degree angle. So anyway, any e-bike can make it up this. The main factor is going to be actually how much you weigh. Our CEO has made several videos of himself riding up this road. He weighs 220 pounds and the bikes will carry him right up. The 250 watts and the 500 watts will both carry him up this road. Again, like I said, this isn't for mountain bikers who are going to encounter much deeper terrain. Depending on the length of how far that steep terrain goes, they can get up it. They also will have lighter bikes potentially that cost more, but you can get up this road just fine. Even your 10% road, you can get up on that e-bike.
Now let me just show you really quickly, how you can find out the road grade in your particular area if you like. So here I am on Google Earth and I just drew, I went over to the little measuring icon here, and then I clicked a point from a little below where I was standing up to the top of the hill, which you saw behind me just earlier. And there's no network out here. And if I move my cursor, it will also show the elevation at whatever point. Wherever I move my cursor, the elevation will show up right here. Okay. So the distance that I measured was 252.46 meters. You can also change this to feet or miles or whatever you'd like. Okay. So from point to point, I have 252.46 meters.
I also have the height here. So it'll show me the height in meters here and the height in meters here that can also be adjusted. You just take the difference. So just subtract the lower one from the higher one, find that difference, which is the rise. Then the formula is rise overrun. So the rise, however millimeters, is divided by the distance and then multiply by 100 like you do with any percentage. So it just rises over run times 100, and then you'll find your road grade percentage. In this case, I calculated 8.8%, which is a pretty steep road. Again, that's different from angle. It's maybe about five or six degrees in angle. So anyway, there you go. And your e-bike will get you up any paved road.
All right. Thanks for watching. I really hope that was helpful. If you need any more help, please don't hesitate to contact us at 310-982-2877 or theteam@sixthreezero.com. Six three zero is spelled out, S-I-X-T-H-R-E-E-Z-E-R-O. Also, subscribe to our channel. And remember, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.
