I cancelled my stark varg they dont want to refund the 100$.

Accurate assessment. Reasons to get the larger bikes is for steeper or sandier conditions or if you are looking for better stock suspension. Efficiency and range will definitely not be as good as Surron due to weight. I'm leaning towards a Talaria Sting, very similar to Surron with a full chain drive, better battery connector and better suspension.

Great, sensible info. Learning a lot. Thanks for the ride.

Awesome trail!

Motor, controller and battery/cell type and overall voltage ABSOLUTELY do make a difference. In general, the higher the voltage, the higher the efficiency (a very dumbed-down explanation). The Sur Ron controller and motor were both found to be quite inefficient. In fact just changing from a stock controller to a BAC4k controller reported an extra ~10 miles of range (on street). And that's just the controller. The Sur Ron motor is another story: very inefficient. In addition to that, the stock Sur Ron is only 60v - very efficient. Upgraded Sur Ron is 72v (more efficient)... The Stark Varg is 360v. To give you an idea, my highly modified, 72v Sur Ron (with the much more efficient BAC8000) can do about 60 miles in "eco" on 2.7kw (tested and confirmed). Typically 40-50 miles if I'm pushing it a bit harder on woods trails. And that's 100% to about 3-5%. I've been building ebikes of many types for 10 years and these factors all play a huge part. Also you didn't run a full 4kwh unless you ran that battery from 100% to 0% each time plus on top of that it's a claimed 1.9kwh per charge, not exactly 2kwh plus on top of that, people have tested and found that the stock Sur Ron battery is actually closer to 27-28ah so it's more like 1.6kwh per charge. That stacked with very efficient components means a lot less range per ah of battery. I can tell you haven't ridden an electric motion Escape R or KTM Freeride E-XC. I have (and also own), they are both far superior to even a 72v, 15kw @ 600 phase amps (which is what mine is at) Sur Ron even on very tight track. The EM and KTM leave the Sur Ron in the dust. This is mainly due to the terrible suspension on the Sur Ron (even with upgraded, 2021 Fox 40 and Fox X2 Float) as well as the limited traction on the Sur Ron (even with the largest 18" or 16" rear wheel). Regen does make a difference on heavier bikes. Even the EM Escape R (with PRB regen lever) at around 180 lbs sees a significant gain. The Sur Ron not as much but with the BAC8k it does put some juice back into the battery. I can also tell you've never ridden motocross track or ridden a bike with an actual, large rear tire that has good traction and good suspension that keeps that tire planted. You wouldn't be saying power doesn't matter. Power ABSOLUTELY matters a lot on MX track, hard enduro, singletrack, etc. Your wheel slips out because it's small and has very little traction but when you have a heavier bike with a large rear tire, you get a lot more traction and can actually put more power to use. Try pitting your Sur Ron against some 450's on a large motocross track or 250's on singletrack and you'll see. After all, motocross track is really what the Stark Varg is aiming for. So maybe it won't be useful for YOU personally with what you ride (especially at the speed you ride) but it will absolutely be useful to everyone that actually wants to ride and compete in motocross, hard enduro, single track races, etc. A better comparison would be the zero FX ZF7.2 which is 7.2kwh and for some people, has gotten up to 110 miles of city range even though the claimed city range is only 91 miles. They've also tested off-road and gotten about 6-7 hours of ride time and that bike is much heavier than the Varg. So their estimated times really don't seem that out of place. I agree that the Sur Ron is a very fun and capable bike but your explanation is very dumbed down and uninformed (not to be rude in any way - I enjoy your videos - just saying). Ultimately I just think your math is too simplistic and doesn't take into account many factors. You may see if you upgrade your controller, battery (to 72v) and motor on your Sur Ron. All of these comments make a huge difference in miles or ride time per kWh. In the end though, we'll just have to wait for people to actually get their Stark Vargs in to really test range. It's still too early to tell at this point so I don't think it's fair to just jump to a conclusion based off of what you have experienced on your Sur Ron.

i deffo get more battery time when im off road ....i had 4 hours in the forest last weekend👌 ...... can i ask you a qustion off topic....before you changed your chain on your peddal kit did you get a lot of vibration? ohh yeah i ment to tell you ..2 of my freinds bought the talaria sting and its deffo a better bike for you the gearbox instead of the beltdrive is such a nice upgrade and it sits a bit higher too with a wider back tyre allso... im deffo getting 1 myself.

Your on a mountain bike track, of cause the mountain bike geometry Surron will suit it better. The weight of say the Stark is less an issue on faster track, the longer wheel base more stable. Are you getting any form of income from Surron?

In these discussions we have to make sure to use units correctly. kW is instant power, kW hours (kWh) is energy. kW is like horsepower and kWh is like gallons of gas.

I like the series on the e-bikes Vegas.

Off the back I was looking at the weight as being an issue not only handling wise when riding, but when shit hits the fan and you have to move your bike under your own power will it be worth it? I was thinking not, and your breakdown mathematically reassured me I was thinking correctly. Thanks for the honest info. I shall subscribe. 🙂

While I was watching your video I was going to say you need to build an auxiliary battery to add to the battery storage. Super excited to see what you can come up with.

I’m in Florida with no hills. Doesn’t altitude affect battery usage too? Love your vids

Good points but it sounds to me you are using alot more battery than normal if you are in eco mode but maybe you were in sport for the 28 miles on 4kw? I just did a race and got 20 miles(GPS confirmed) out of a 4.8kwh pack running 11kw. If I run the bike at stock 5kw my estimated range on that same pack is over 60miles when my wife rides which is close to me running eco mode power level the whole time. That said you seem to be using 140wh/mile where in my testing I get about 80wh/mi in eco and 120wh/mi in sport, all offroad with sand and hills and faster speeds so it should be worse than your conditions other than rider weight but my bike weighs about 160lbs all batteried up and ktm65 suspenion/16" offroad wheel. In the race though I was getting 240wh/mi which is almost perfect match to the 50 mile estimated range on the 12kwh battery you want to see on the varg and I agree. At the pace and terrain you are on I think it would do it but with its 6kwh battery now, I think its only gonna be 20-25 miles which is similar to alta. Only thing to note is that efficiency can sign off a good bit when loads are high so when running my bike at 11kw I think that is part of what hurt my range the most as the motor gets pretty hot, when I used to run field weakening it could overheat in about 6-7min at 9kw and all that heat is a loss in efficiency. That is why stark varg "could" be a bit more efficient than our surrons as the motor will operate in a more efficient power range so maybe mine is running at about 80% at 11kw where the varge may run at 95% at same power level. Just a consideration that could help the the varg in this area

SurRon shop sells a auxiliary battery in both 20 and 25 AH sizes that fit on top of the existing battery cover of the surron much like a tank bag would. It is much less $$ than the ChiBattery or other larger replacement batteries.

you are correct, but you are using the wrong units. energy... power is a rate of energy application. how fast a battery can be discharged would be related to power.

Hi mate, I don 't want to start a dispute. Many points you address are correct, but one of the most important points is simply wrong. You cant just say that e motors all are about 95 percent efficient. You must compare the whole electri system. And electric motors are not equally efficient throughout the whole rev range. Best efficiency is at lower rpms - that's why some e cars have two gears to keep them in their optimum rev range. The stark varg has a much bigger motor and has a higher gearing ratio, meaning it is revving much lower at a certain speed than the surrron motor. So looking at this and supposing the rest was equal on the bikes (eliminating other variables), I would say that at 30 miles/h the smaller motor would consume more energy than the bigger one with higher gearing ratio. once there was a comparison on Top Gear between a Toyota prius and a BMW M car. They managed to consume much more fuel on the Toyota-the prius was driven as fast as possible, and the bmw just followed him. A proposal for your next video. Compare your sur ron to a zero fx. For ex. the zero fx 6.5 has a claimed range of 145km/90 miles in the city. The average speed in cities is about 25 to 30km/h. I guess in technical terrain the average speed is similar. So substract some miles due to roling drag and you will get a realistic guess. Keep in mind that you as an youtuber have impact on people's opinions and even on their next purchase. Considering that neither me nor you or anyone else have driven the stark varg yet, you should be careful with your assumptions. Give a new bike a chance

we will see what varg can do when it comes out

Battery energy density has tripled in the past 10 years , It will get better only question is how fast . With gasoline's energy density 100 times greater than current batteries it looks bad for electric.. I guess we'll just have to wait and see

Only thing that will help stark varg compared to surron is because of more power you will not always use 100% of the power. And battery efficiency drops fast when you use maximum power and it starts to overheat