E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Hey everyone. Peter here at sixthreezero e-bikes. Today we're going to talk about the effect of weight on your e-bike. Stay tuned.
Okay. So with any vehicle, weight can be a major issue on its efficiency and how it will perform. On your e-bike, you can especially notice some big differences because it's kind of a small vehicle and weight can range on a human being quite a lot. From maybe 80 pounds or so on upwards of 300 pounds.
So there are basically three factors that weight can really affect on your e-bike that you'll need to think about.
So first of all, if you already have a bicycle or an e-bike that's already in motion, it doesn't really need extra energy to keep it in motion. It's mostly about acceleration. So if you're accelerating, that's going to drain the battery more. Also, if you're going up a hill, it would be more taxing if there's more weight. But if you're going on flat and going a steady speed, really it doesn't matter how much weight, once you get up to that speed.
A third thing to think about is that for more weight on a bike, there will actually be more pressure on the tires, which is more rolling resistance, which will cause it to be less efficient. So basically we're talking about acceleration, going uphill, and rolling resistance.
Now an e-bike will typically come in 250 watts, 500 watts, or 750 watts. There are other variations, but those are the three main ones. If you're just riding flat on flat areas and maybe you weigh, it probably wouldn't matter how much you weigh up to maybe about 300 pounds. It's not going to have a whole lot of impact on your range. But if you want to go uphill and you weigh more, it's definitely going to have a big impact on your range.
So if say you're only about 120 pounds, you might zip right up the hill with your 250 watts or 500 watts. However, if you're closer to 300 pounds, the battery's going to drain quite quickly because it's working pretty hard to pull the extra weight up the hill.
Again, if you're on flat ground, if you're only accelerating one time, just to get up to speed and then going along, it's going to have momentum and inertia and it won't require that much extra energy to keep you going. If you are stopping a lot and accelerating a lot, that will also drain the battery. More weight, of course, will make it harder, but the more you accelerate, all things even, the more the battery will drain and the shorter the range will be.
So it's hard to kind of gauge or to tell you exactly what bike you need in terms of power. For a lot of people, 250 watts is just plenty, and a 500 wat may be kind of more power than they want. Say you weigh less than 150 pounds, you don't expect to accelerate a lot and you're just kind of riding on either level terrain or gently rolling hills, 250 watts may well be enough. And you may even think depending on your confidence level, that 500 watts are too much actually.
However, if you start to get maybe above the 150-pound range like myself or our CEO. Our CEO weighs about 220 pounds, I'm at about 180 or so. And you want to take that up a hill, you'll be fine on a 500 watt, but you'll definitely want that 500 watts if you're taking up a steep hill. The 250 watts will probably feel a little slow for you if you get above 150 pounds.
And then, of course, 750 watts, which is really the maximum allowed in this country on roads, will be enough power for almost anybody to get them up the hill. But the major things are, do you ride where you're going to be going up hills a lot? And are you going to be accelerating a lot? Probably not accelerating a lot. That's usually something that happens less with recreational riding, and more with high-performance riding. The acceleration. And then you also have to take into account rolling resistance.
So one thing you can also do to improve your battery range if you have more weight is to find a higher pressure tire. Find one that instead of is at 40 pounds or 50 pounds, find one that's higher pressure. Maybe 75 pounds, 80 pounds. That will help to reduce the rolling resistance and give you more range on your battery.
So anyway, weight can be a very major factor in your battery's range. So you need to take that into account, but of course, you also have to modify what I just said with, how are you riding the bike? Are you going to be riding on the flat? Because then it won't matter so much, but if you are going uphills, your battery range can be quite short. If there's more weight and you're going up the steeper the hill, the more it will take out of your battery.
So just give all those factors a thought. Acceleration, going up hills, and then also rolling resistance. And then, of course, I would say just to be on the safe side, if you're 150 pounds or more, definitely go with a 500 watt, maybe even consider a 750 watt.
If you're 150 pounds or less, it probably doesn't matter how powerful you get a bike. And the 250 watts maybe just all you need depending on your confidence, because the 500 watts, sometimes if you're quite light and you're not riding uphills a lot or whatever, it may just feel like more power than you really want or need.
So that kind of wraps it up. There are a lot of other considerations, but those are the major things right there for how does weight affects your e-bike range.
I truly hope that was helpful for you. If you liked it, please do like it and hit subscribe. It helps grow our channel. And if you need any help at all, please contact us. You can call us at 310-982-2877 or email us at theteam@sixthreezero.com. Remember SixThreeZero is spelled out. S-I-X T-H-R-E-E Z-E-R-O. Theteam@sixthreezero.com. Thanks.
