Long Haul Day and a Meditation on Meat Crayons

I put a lot of miles on the Haul today: Two runs to Johnson Creek after I left my wallet at home,  then one up to River City Bicycles to exchange a part, then a detour through Woodstock.  By the end of the day it was claiming 16 miles of range left in PASM level 2, where I had spent most of the day minus a fast run down Foster. It looks like I put over 20 miles on it.

My previous two e-bikes used Bosch mid-drives with four levels of assist: "Eco," "Touring," "Sport," and "Turbo." I usually ran them in Touring or Sport, and usually pushed to keep the bike at 20 mph.

The Haul has a 700w hub motor with five levels of assist and no names to remember them by:

Level 1 is pretty similar to "Eco" on my other bikes: Just enough push to offset the heavier frame, motor, and battery. You have to really work the shifter at this level.

Level 2 isn't far off "Touring," either. It's a nice level of assist that makes it easy to hit 16 or 17 mph, with a little extra vigor to get to 20 and hold it. It also requires a little bit more interaction with the shifter.

Level 3 is a pretty sharp increase. It's easy to wind up to 20 pretty quickly, then it takes vigorous pedaling to get up into the Class 3 speeds. 25 or 26 is where it stops being easy. 28 takes a little extra work. 

Level 4 makes 28 mph very attainable. Oddly, I think I've only been on one stretch where the speed limit was over 30, so outside of winding the bike out to 28 once just to see what it was like, I usually peak at 25mph and keep it there.

I am told Level 5 is for uphills with a fully loaded bike.

I have the throttle accessory, too. On my test drive it became obvious to me that the bike, while fun and nimble, is quite heavy. Pushing off is much harder thanks to both the weight and the geometry, and cycling the gears to get up to cruising speed can be slow going. So while the throttle can take you to 20 mph with no pedal assistance I mostly use it to get the bike underway and cycle back up through the gears to get to speed.

It's also great for when I've had to make a sudden stop and couldn't climb down from a high gear in time: Just apply a little more throttle, apply pressure to the pedal, and wait for it to get easier to let off.

The throttle is also fun, sometimes, for powering out of blind corners I've slowed down for once I know they're clear. 

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The throttle was sort of its own whole issue for me. I get the impression there are throttle bikes that've been hacked to do 28mph with no pedal assist. Or rather, I have seen bikes that must be going 28 or faster with no pedaling going on that are not the electric mopeds you see from Ubco and others.

The Haul throttle cuts out at 20 mph. Maybe there's a hack to make it go faster, but I don't really care to find out, because if I could just run at 28mph with nothing but throttle it'd be time to do what I got tired of doing with motorcycles, which is get a full-face helmet and armor. Just doing 28mph with pedal assistance was a little nerve-wracking. I'd be very interested to read what sorts of statistical hockey sticks you hit somewhere between 20mph and 30mph.

Anyhow, I had the no-pedal-all-throttle-28mph bikes in mind when I considered whether to get a throttle or not. I honestly think those things are a menace, and I say that not as an angry normie who's afraid of speed, but as someone who is working backward from having a motorcycle endorsement and isn't willing to go without a little armor and a full-face helmet even when I know I'm not going to go anywhere that takes me over 30. Someone, in fact,  who calls Vespa drivers in short pants and tank tops "potential meat crayons."

And as a general consideration about throttles, I feel sympathetic to objections to them the way I feel sympathetic to objections to lane splitting, which is legal for motorcycles in California and is not legal in Oregon despite a few attempts in the legislature: They do make bicycles operate in a way that motorists are going to find unpredictable for a while.

It is already, for instance, a well-known problem that motorcycles, because they're smaller, seem to be approaching more slowly. And even though people intellectually know that some tank-top-wearing future meat crayon on his liter bike can probably go faster than their Prius, when they see him coming their brain is still telling them they have time for that left turn, or that tire-spinning swerve off of that side street.

As an acoustic bicyclist, I recall that those things were mild problems, and I think plain old visibility was the bigger problem. On a class 1 e-bike, they became a little more acute, but even when someone misjudged they always slammed the brakes and I only had to evade in earnest once. Then again, motorcycling taught me to think in terms of automotive "body language," so I'm a relatively cautious e-biker and usually back off a little when approaching a left turn or side street entry situation because they drum it into your head that left turns are lethal for motorcyclists. 

Anyhow, throttle bikes hacked to do 28 are going to mess with the acceleration pattern people are used to, and they're moving at speeds right at the ceiling of what the law, in its infinite wisdom, believes is safe for people without special training. From my point of view, and given the generally permissive climate in the US, that ceiling is probably already too high.  Don't at me. 

I guess I ran through all of that because I wanted to make clear that I don't have a moral hazard issue with throttle bikes. I thought I might, but as someone who has been on e-bikes for a long time now, and who has taken abuse from acoustic bicyclists who think it's "cheating" (who're you racing, bro? I'm just trying to get home for dinner), I'm a little less inclined to think that way anyhow. 

Having a throttle does add something novel to the experience,  though, because it adds this dimension to the ride, where I'm sort of orchestrating the drive train and the throttle to manage push-off, or holding speed coming out of corners, or scrambling across an intersection a little faster than I might have attempted before.  It's all still a very active, engaged experience. Which is probably why people talk about the Haul being so fun.