At the age of 66, I converted my bike to a tongsheng 500w with 48v 14ah battery. I wanted to still use my bike for exercise, not as an electric scooter, so no throttle! I recently did a 70 km ride on it, covering ascent of over 1200 metres. We have lots of hills in North Devon. The battery was still over half charged. I felt pretty tired but I covered roads that I wouldn't have attempted normally. Thanks for your informative videos.

Great videos that have helped me choose and build 2 ebikes. One with rear hub drive and the tsdz2 mid drive. For me the clear winner is the Tongsheng. I can easily peddle alongside someone walking or ride in a group who do not have e assist. The rear hub drive wants to go a set speeds and that speed can dramatically change as one encounters a slight hill or down slope requiring constant selection of assist levels. I also dont like the drag feel when i am peddling slightly faster than the assist speed. But most importantly , the Tongsheng feels like i am riding a normal bike albeit I have the legs of a youngster. I like the feeling of a workout still but now I can do 20-30 miles not 4 miles and can go out every day ,not once a week. The Tongsheng is easy to bypass programmed speed limit should you feel the need. Once again , thanks for your effort in making these video, and oh, I envy you riding in Italy.

BBS02 rider here..With minimal effort I can travel 30 miles on a 54.4v fully charged (48v battery) with 12.5ah. With my 58.8v (52v) battery I can travel over 80+ miles with 30ah. Never been able to test the full range as I get saddle sore. Great video Luke👍🏻

quel dommage que toutes ces excellentes vidéos ne soit pas en français .Un immense MERCI pour la pertinence de vos analyses.

TSDZ2 with approx 1400km done since May 2022. Three times per week I do 500m drop in altitude downhill over 10km and then back up again, 52V 18Ah LiFePO4 15s3p and it takes about 5Ah to charge up again. I like pedalling. I like electrical assistance too.

Super. Your videos are excellent.

The equation is simple: If you want to go a certain distance at a particular speed with equivalent battery consumption, then the rider has to work at a certain rate. No motor is inherently more thrifty than another. You showed this - the Tongsheng used less battery, but you had to pedal harder. It is true that a cadence sensor motor is harder to ride economically than a torque sensor motor such as the Tongsheng, because a torque sensor prevents you from "ghost pedalling", whereas even the most careful rider of a motor like the BBS02B is going to be doing some light, or ghost, pedalling. Look at your figures - with the Tongsheng you cycled 7.69km per volt used up, with the Bafang only 4.26km per volt.

Very interesting video.thanks for uploading it.

Great post, thanks.

I appreciate the experiment. We would all benefit greatly if more folks were working earnestly to properly compare the real world efficiencies of e-bikes and their powertrains. I know it's a little more difficult with the tools you have, but the best measure of energy used is to find Watt Hours used. The best way of determining that is to measure either the total Watt hours or Amp hours used (and multiply by your average or mean voltage). The way some of us do that is with the Cycle Analyst, but in my case, I have a Grin smart charger (Satiator) which expresses the total amp hours replaced when recharging to full. Both of those methods are more accurate than basing energy lost on voltage, which is both non-linear and also subject to sag. I'd interpret your outcome differently. I believe the Tongshen motor is never putting out as much current(and therefore power) as the Bafang when they are both set at maximum power setting. This is why you were struggling more with it. They may both be rated at 500W, but that is 500W nominal and not necessarily indicative of an average wattage of output over time. If you were to dial the Bafang back by one or two assistance settings, you'd probably experience similar performance and similar efficiency. I'd actually expect torque sensor motors to deliver less efficiency, and here's why. These motors prefer consistency and higher speeds to maintain optimum efficiency. With torque sensing, you are essentially varying the motor speed on every stroke, and this in turn varies the wattage constantly. With the cadence sensor motor, once it starts, it's much less subject to constant wattage variance, it still varies the output, especially as you reach maximum speed and as you take off from a start, but in theory, it's able to keep power stable and not suffer as much from variance in directing the motor to pull. The other issue with torque sensing is that as you grow tired during a long ride, the motor appears to tire too. Since it is acting as a torque multiplier, you no longer benefit from the motor's highest available output if you cannot provide high output yourself. For this reason, the best motor designs utilize torque and cadence sensors to both simulate bionic legs (torque sensing), but also maximize efficient, constant motor output at a reasonable steady rate of travel. Ideally such a system would have a "tired" mode, to allow minimum effort from the rider, while still providing the high output required for timely transportation. I believe use of a throttle is completely ruining your experiment's observations, as it's use is an indication that your input is not consistent, but you're introducing a whole new variable that you're not tracking in your experiment.

Nice wheel. I got the BBSHD!

Hi Luke & thank you for this comparison. I sell & install the exact same kits that you used for this test. I am a little confused why your legs were significantly more tired using the Tongsheng when it should have been amplifying your pedaling effort. One criteria that you never mentioned is what power level you operated both kits at. With the Tongsheng only able to chop up the available motor power into 4 equal chunks & the Bafang able to chop up the power into 9 chunks, this would affect your power consumption rates significantly unless you were riding both motors on full power all the time.

I've got a 250 watt rear hub drive motor runs with a 10 amp hour 36v battery, easily does my 20 mile daily commute. Run with a throttle as the supplied Hall Effect sensor was rubbish.

waiting for a review about the new bafang m325 for pedaling comparison, thanks

A throttle only range test would be a more accruate way to represent the range of the motors, as you noted the torque sensor requires more human input.

good stuff - I'm building a tsdz2 since I really only want the help on all the big hills around where we live or to extend some rides out. Going with a 52v build and the flashed version of software that lets it use a bafang 860 display.

I don't understand. Why not turn up the pedal assist level on the tongsheng if you're fatigued? Also there is a 750w versions that would give you even more access to power to prevent fatigue, no? I need a motor for commuting so I'm trying to understand why you're saying the torque sensor isn't best for mixed traffic.

Hi Luke What is your crash helmet on the rear carrier ? @3:22

do you believe that 1500watt geared hub motor has the same power for uphills vs 500watt mid drive?

From which website are you buying the motor from Amazon or any other. Please give me a reply 🥺

You want to do a range test how about using the exact same bike. As in 2. Not 2 separate bikes that are different from each other in weight and style.

Can I run a 52v battery on the tongsheng 48v motor ?

Why didn't you increase degree of assistance for tongsheng if it was going harder?

too much power. blasphemy.

That camera is dreadful......