Which Is The BEST E-Bike? | eRoad vs eGravel

E-biking has taken off in the last few years, from cargo bikes to eMTBs, electric motors have helped more people get into the world of cycling. Ollie and Alex have teamed up with @TQEBike to investigate the tech behind electric bikes. They tell you the key differences between eRoad and eGravel bikes. Which one will you pick?

In association with @TQEBike 👉 https://gcn.eu/tqmotors

00:00 Intro
00:46 Hub based vs mid motors on eBikes
01:33 BMC bikes and TQ motors
02:23 Is there a difference between eGravel and eRoad bikes?
03:24 What is the difference in bike set-up and geometry?
06:00 How heavy are eBikes?
07:29 What is the battery range on an eBike?
09:03 How do the bike tyres affect the battery range?
10:07 How does an eBike feel to ride?
10:47 TQ eBike motors and personalised power app

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Ebikes are fantastic ebikes are brilliant but do you go e Road or E gravel we’re going to explain the differences between both and go through their relative strengths and weaknesses so that you can decide which would be best for You now before you even begin to consider whether you would choose an e- road bike or an e-gravel bike something far more important to consider and decide on is the type of motor system used and it’s incredibly important because it could be the difference between having a bike which gives you a

Natural ride feeling or having a bike which feels like you’re just riding an electric motorbike hub-based Motors on the rear wheel are typically less expensive than mid Motors mounted in the bike on the cranks and they’re typically less powerful too and with less torque now this is something that’s really

Noticeable especially when you’re on steep climbs Hub based Motors are actually also particularly easy to install onto a bike whereas a mid-base motor system requires the bike and the frame to be designed around it however they offer a significant Advantage because the bulk of the weight and the

System mass is placed centrally and low down on the bike which has a positive impact on the handling and also gives you that sort of natural ride feeling now we’ve got a couple of Mega bikes from BMC and they’re fitted with the TQ motor system and it’s actually thanks to

The support from TQ Motors that we’re able to make this video TQ Motors is a German company and has a background in robotics engineering and have manufactured parts for Mars rovers that engineering expertise is now being put to use in ebike Motors and the result is

This very small But Mighty tqh pr50 unit that punches well above its weight but is also very quiet I’m riding the BMC Road machine 01 amp X which is an e gravel bike and oie’s riding The BMC Road machine 01 amp which is an e- road bike but to illustrate the difference is

Let’s do some riding fundamentally riding any E Bike has the ability to make more roads more accessible to a wider range of riders which is a great thing look at roads like this however when you are riding out on beautiful roads and you see a nice gravel track darting off to the side

Where you’ve got the option to Simply head off and explore thanks to the gravel Bike and that is one of the big advantages of gravel it has has that extra capability it’s a personal thing right you see O’s more than content just cruising around on the roads but for me it’s all about having a mixture of on and off-road that’s what I enjoy the

Most but to enable me to ride off-road and utilize a gravel or E gravel bike my bike’s actually set up quite different at O’s I’ve got a single chain ring up front and then at the rear of the bike I’ve got this super wide range cassette which is really helpful when you head

Off-road cuz it enables you to deal with the rapidly changing speeds and gradients that you’re typically faced with other changes on this bike compared to alies well I’ve got a suspension stem up front to help soak up some of the bumps and also wider ties with a more

Aggressive tread pattern now this is something that we’re going to speak about a little bit later on in this video in terms of how it affects the motor and the battery performance I however have more road bike style gears on my bike so so my easiest gear isn’t quite as easy as

Alex’s gear but Road climbs tend to be um a bit you know easier than steep gravel climbs whereas my biggest gear is bigger than Alex’s which will allow me to go at a higher top speed than him when riding on the flat or when the the

Road allows for it so because of that I’ve got a double chain set um on the front and a front deria also the cassette at the back is a tighter ratio which means there’s less uh well the gaps between all the individual sprockets are slightly less which means

You can sort of better fine-tune your gear selection because changes in speed and gradient on the road tend to be well more nuanced than they are off-road a key difference can be geometry the Angles and lengths of the tube that make up the frame in the case of these BMC

Road machine amps that we have they’re actually the same but it’s the components and spec where they differ however with other brands such as pinell with their Nitro range they have different geometry for the gravel and road bikes the road version is slightly lower at the front end and slightly

Longer this allows for a more aerodynamic Road riding position which is something that can help you travel faster on the flats and the downhills gravel bikes in general be that e assisted or not will typically be slightly shorter and higher at the front compared to your normal road bike

They’re also likely to have a longer wheelbase and a slacker head tube angle All In Search of adding extra stability into the ride and handling characteristics this is particularly important when you’re heading Offroad to position your body slightly more upright and you weight further back so that when

You’re going down steep descents or gravel tracks it doesn’t feel like you’re just going to tip over the front of the Bike woo I want to talk about weight next because e-road and E gravel bikes are considerably heavier than your normal bike however these examples that we’ve got here today are actually fairly lightweight in the ebike world yeah so Alex’s gravel bike is 13 kilos and my

Road version is 12.6 so not a big difference but what you’re typically going to see is that the e-road bike is going to be lighter than the e-gravel bike and it’s likely to be a bigger difference actually than what you see on these two because these two are using

The same frame but why does weight matter if your bike has a motor I hear you asking well arguably it’s less important but it still does make a difference in terms of acceleration how the bike feels and it’ll have an impact on the overall range that you get out of

The bike too tqs say that their motor and Battery system is the lightest in its class just 3.9 kg for this mid Drive motor and the battery which is encased in the downg there are of course tradeoffs to pay here and that is that this motor May well not be the most

Powerful out there and it may not give you the greatest range possible but systems that do offer more are considerably heavier now this is important to take into account here because a heavier system is going to have a bigger impact on what the bike is like to ride and how it feels compared

To a nonassisted bike the range that you get out of your ebike is going to be dependent on a whole host of factors but one of the main things is which level of assist you choose now most ebikes have different levels of assist and that’s

The case with this TQ system it has low medium and full send but to get a greater idea of how the different level of a tissue chose affects the range TQ gave us some real life data as an example TQ told us about some testing

They did with a 60 kg Rider who averaged 140 wats of their own power on the cellar Ronda Loop in the Dolomite absolutely beautiful uh area I’ve got the numbers here of what they did so when using the low level support um which offers 78 wats of of power

Assistance um then they rode 51 km with, 1600 M of elevation and they had over 50% of the battery left when they used the midlevel support which gives a maximum resistance of 150 wat then uh this Rider went 72 km with 2,300 M of elevation and then the

Battery ran out and then with the high level support uh which offers a whopping 300 watts of of maxr assistance they went 582 km with 1,886 M of elevation and then the battery ran out so it gives you an idea so if you use less assist you’ll get

Greater range out of the system but by far the most significant factor in the difference in range between the two bikes is going to be the tires and the tire rolling resistance so if you were doing an absolute max range test with the two bikes on tarmac like this then

The road bike is going to have greater range because the tires the slick tires are just so much more efficient on this surface with lower rolling resistance but the overall difference between the two isn’t going to be massive but it might be something that’s significant to you

However for me personally I think the smart and sensible choice is to go for an e gravel bike with a mid-mounted motor system right hear me out because I think by having that system you’re free to chop and change your Wheel and Tire setup as and when you like meaning you

Can have one setup that’s ideal for the road and one setup that’s ideal for when you head Offroad Road and that’s one of the great things about gravel bikes or e-gravel bikes well is their versatility something that is an underrated but incredibly important attribute of any ebike that you might

Consider is ride feel you want it to feel natural like you’re riding a normal bike in an unobtrusive way and some bikes can feel jerky or if they don’t have enough talk then they just don’t give a nice smooth level of assistance TQ is able to achieve this in part down

To some beautiful engineering that’s come as a result of their background that they have engineering other things forgive me for being a bit excited about this because well I’m unapologetically a massive nerd it’s something called the harmonic pin ring transmission or HPR and it’s the result of T’s decades long

Experience in the development and Engineering of electric motors for robot satellites space stations and Mars rovers another interesting detail that many people won’t realize is that although these two bikes share the same motor and Battery system the software and electrical Wizardry which controls how the power is delivered is actually

Set differently between the e-road and the E gravel bike but crucially is also adjustable by you which is something that many different brands don’t actually offer Now by enabling you to control how the software delivers the power within the TQ app it actually allows you to fine-tune and control the

Characteristics of how the bike responds to you so you can tune it to kind of like personal preference really which is something I have done so I’ve gone into the app and then you can fine-tune each of the three different motor settings so low medium and high to have them refined

To how you choose to have them now the three different options that you’re able to adjust are in terms of the maximal amount of assistance which can be applied through each of the settings and then how the motor takes the effort that you’ve got and multiplies it up for the

Motor to then deliver and then also the speed and rate at which the motor reacts to how quickly you increase your effort now what I’ve done is gone into the app and kind of dialed back effort level low which means it gives me that tiny little bit of assistance and I really struggle

To notice when motor is kicking in and keeps everything natural and then for the mid setting I’ve simply set everything slap bang in the middle to have the best of both worlds and on the high setting more power baby we turn everything up to the Max and the reason

I’ve done that is because when you do want to really rip along a section of Trail or you Dart up a gravel track which is super steep you want the bike to apply as much effort as possible and be as reactive as it can to the efforts that you’re putting into It overall I think the way to think about it is unobtrusive assistance it’s like riding as you would normally but with the feeling that you’ve got a Tailwind all the time which well it’s just great fun isn’t it and I think you know these kind of bikes they have the power to

Just open up more of the world to to to more people you TR think it’s fantastic it is right I hope you found this video informative and helpful and it’s of you to decide in your mind whether a e- road bike or an e gravel bike is right for

You so please do let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below and well if you did find it helpful give this video a thumbs up and share it far and wide for all your friends to see should we go and enjoy that non-stop Tailwind we’re going to

Have love you bye bye