Taken yesterday.
The backstory: I have now done over 3000 km of touring on this fat-tire Engwe e-bike since buying it last year.
Engwe’s target market for this bike seems to be food-delivery riders and city-tour guides. People constantly tell me that it looks like a motorbike. In fact it’s the EU-regs-respecting model (so: power-capped pedelec with no throttle). I have done lots of touring on regular bikes and I can say that riding this thing is more comfortable, but not radically. The suspension and tires help with bumps and the motor takes the edge off hills, basically.
The airport is in fact an airplane-storage park near Teruel, Spain. During international crises it fills up with furloughed jets, so it’s currently quite full.
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Cost of bike? Distance per charge, time to charge, etc? Panier options? Seat comfort? Water resistance?
Price: 1200 € of which I got rebated 400 (!) by Paris regional government as part of their effort to bribe people to get on bikes.
Distance per charge: yesterday I did 75km with 1000m of uphill. That was a big day, too much, but I arrived with 2 bars of battery left. Basically by limiting the power level to 1/5. That means the motor targets about 15 km/h. In theory you just have to turn the pedals, in practice you have to help quite a lot on hills.
Time to charge: 4 hours or so.
Paniers: none, it’s literally a single backpack that I’ve bungeed to the rack. Very practical, this is always the way I’ve done touring and here it’s even better since the smallish wheels help to lower the center of gravity.
Seat: heavily cushioned! Significantly more comfortable than a standard bike but I suspect the real difference is made by the double (front and rear) suspension. I’ve done touring on a recumbent, this is not as comfortable as that (impossible!) but definitely much better than a normal touring bike. I was skeptical about that and it’s a pleasant surprise.
Water resistance is fine, I’ve ridden in driving rain without issues.
The one issue I’ve had (in 3000km!) is with the cadence sensor. It began to wobble, which caused the motor to cut out intermittently, very annoying indeed. Once I worked out what was going on, I fixed it (with tape!) and all was good again.
