Chug

Well on my second trip to work with my bike, I ran out of electrons! Now I thought it would last two trips as it claims 50 mpg and work is 10 miles away. But then I remembered I did some riding on the Sunday before and I think I forgot to charge it, so I will forgive my machine. But this was actually quite a useful experience as I was wondering how it would fair when the power goes.

The first signs were the reduction in the top speed. Think I noticed on the way to work as it really struggled to get up the hill at the end. Think it was showing 10 kph at one point. Don't ride one of these if you get easily embarrassed as I don't be feel a bit bad blocking people up for these small parts of my trip. Overall, for a 28 mph max speed vehicle it is respectable and keeps with the slower commuter traffic quite well. I try to only go on roads up to 40 mph speed limit and try not to be on them for long. Have found a small route home that minimises that quite well.

The max speed was getting down to 30 kph (sorry for the unit mixing, the bike is in kph and I'm not!) but I managed to get about a mile before I came to a hill and that was when it really failed. I felt it would be dangerous to go up it very slowly with lots of traffic so I elected to guide it up the pavement with a little bit of power as I walked beside it. I thought then that I could at least get somewhere down the other side.

But the route didn't go down very much and I managed to get another half a mile before it really went slow. I finally gave up and parked it on a wide pavement and locked it to a lamppost. Luckily my partner could come to the rescue and take me home with the battery. She'll drop me back tomorrow for the next days travel but as I said it was interesting to see how it fared and how accurate the indicator was.

The display showed 2/4 segments for most of the first half of the trip and then went down progressively after then. The frame of the indicator then flashes when it's in full panic mode and it can then just limp along at best.

So is on charge now and I will live to ride another day! I always expected the range value to be more than reality but the slowing down of an already slow bike makes me think I need to charge it every night. I will see how it fairs on a proper test with a full battery.