What’s The Fastest Way To Commute By Bike On A Budget? Sub-£500 DIY e-bike vs acoustic

Sub £500 E-bike vs acoustic commuter, what’s the best way to commute by bike on a budget?

⚫️ Preorder the new Swytch GO+ kit: https://swytchbike.com/?utm_source=roadcc&utm_medium=press&utm_content=video

At road.cc we love to champion commuting by bike, but Dave and Jamie disagree on how it’s best done on a budget. To find out who was right, we were each given a £500 budget and told to meet in a top-secret location (next to the bins in the office car park) to hash out the finer details of our commuting challenge.

Jamie opted for a Merida Speeder 20 hybrid bike whilst Dave opted for a Facebook Marketplace bargain and the new Swytch Go+ kit, who will win this bike commute?

Let us know which bike you would choose in the comments below…

This video contains paid promotion on behalf of Swytch bike.

You can find out more about the Swytch Go+ kit here: swytchbike.com/?utm_source=roadcc&utm_medium=press&utm_content=video

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⚫️ In this video

0:00 Introduction
0:16 Jamie’s Choice
0:30 Dave’s Swytch Go+ kit
2:10 The challenge
3:09 Race start
5:00 Through town
6:30 The Flat
8:00 The Hill
10:05 The Finish
12:30 Was The Swytch kit any good?
14:20 Outro

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at Road CC we loved A Champion commuting by bike but can it be done on a budget me and Dave were confident that it could so to find out the producers gave us each a budget of £500 and told us to meet in a top secret location next to the bins in the office car park this is what I’ve gone for it is the ultimate commuter it is a merid speeder 20 and at Touch under £500 it’s this type of bike that proves you can commute by bike without spending a fortune I’m here with a box with a box with an ebike nobody said they couldn’t have an ebike did they uh no although I’m not too scared because most ebikes under £500 are what’s the word that may be the case Jamie but if you’ve got a really good cheap donut bike like this triband 100 I picked up for 50 quids it does look cheap then you can fit a switch kit like this and you’re under your £500 budget and this is the new Switch kit this is a switch go plus so the middle one of their new Range super easy to fit they say and pre-order £399 so I’m well under my 500 budget that is a bit of a bargain but I’m still confident that this is the bike look at this Steed look at this vanilla commuter it’s a lot shinier than yours come on it’s got more gears I’ve got eight gears that will be enough with my motor I’ve got a triple on the front I don’t know how many I’ve got in the back 5 six s I’ve got eight at the back I’ve got three times as many gears M you got hydraulic disc brakes y I’ve got brakes y they I’m sure they’ll be fine I’ve got a mud guard if there’s a braking challenge I’m going to win you don’t have any pedals though but other than no pedals this is the perfect commuter wow we’ll get the challenge we’ll find out won’t we oh thank you very much right to the honest I’ll hold the envelope shall I thanks it is a timed commuter challenge you’re both going to ride Jamie’s commute home approxim Advantage for you you know it I I do know where I’m going 16 km with 250 M of climbing the challenge starts as soon as the whistle goes I’m on edge now so if it isn’t already you’ll have to get your bike into a ridable state you’re screwed you’re abely screwed the winner is the first person to be sat at my local with a pint in hand but to get in you’ll have to pass a sweat test at the door okay I might do some sweating you might do some sweating but can you make it in time I think so how long it how long do you think it’s going to take me to fit this an hour I’m going to be I’m going to be sat drinking my pint before you’ve even left left this car park we shall see right I’m going to go and get light CR up I’m going to go see you in a bit damn it right luckily not my first rodeo with a switch kit so shouldn’t take me too long for a bit of luck got to get my pedals on come on I’m not losing this race I’m sorry so you want a an 8 mil for that yes I do yeah no no no [Music] no absolute dick okay Jamie thought it might take me an hour to fit this kit which you might do if it’s your first time but it’s not mine step one is to fit this wheel with the motor in it that’s the hardest bit cuz you have to swap the tire over I’m pretty good at that that’ll take me a couple of minutes step two is to fit this pedal Senter and that’s what tells the system when to kick in with the assistance then I just have to vco on this battery pack wire everything up put the controller on and I’m ready to [Music] go now this used to be the hard bit but these new pedal sensors really are super super easy put that on there oh my [Music] things oh my [Music] things oh that’s completely the wrong height [Music] okay display next luckily I know that these switch displays don’t always fit on drop bar handlebars so I fitted my little 4B Teemo extension it should go on there like a [Music] treat battery next luckily it’s [Music] full and we just need a wiring loom and we are ready to roll there we go all done in just under 9 minutes right I think he’s about 3 or 4 minutes in front of me I’ll tidy this up and I’m out the door [Music] oh there’s no time to go around that ah there is just no way I’m losing this you see the thing is with ebikes they I don’t think they make you any quicker because we’re in the UK they top out at 25 km an hour now right now I’m going more than 25 km an hour which I think means I’m extending my lead because Dave is many things but he’s not built for Speed got to go well I’m pretty glad at least I got a free rear mud guard with this bike but I think I can take my time and go through here without getting too wet it’s nice trying Jam’s commute with a nice flat bit mine on the way home just all uphill it’s very attritional and you end up as a bit of a sweaty mess at the top but I do it on an ebike all the time because it’s just a great way to get back up the hill sit back let them mot to take the strain now Jamie’s a fit lad and I’m a little bit red he’s going to be pulling a little bit of Timeout on me here but that behind me is is the coat to Hinton the big climb of jam commute that is where I’m planning to make up a bit of time on him okay admittedly right now I would happily take an ebike oh dear I’m kind of regretting my bike Choice cuz it weighs approximately 3 tons I think that Dave might be claing back some time but I’ve got time to waste I’m surely Miles [Music] Ahead a [Music] fly okay well that’s the hill done and still no sign of Dave I reckon I’ve got this one in the bag ah not going to relax though cuz you never know you might be making a final surge when I do get there I am a bit sweaty and uh this isn’t my normal Pub get up believe it or not but uh hopefully they let me in now this this is where an eike comes into its own admittedly up a steep hill like this not a free ride not by any stretch to the imagination but I bet I’m finding it so much easier than Jamie is right now I’ve got my mega range gears I got my heavy independable B twin but I feel like I’m flying up here I remember racing this as the B CC Hill Climb and I remember going super hard I bet I wasn’t doing as quickly as this anyway nearly at the top now just coming up to the hair pin and then I’m going to fly along top B try and catch up with Jamie before we get to the pub so like I said at the start of this video I’ve got the switch go plus which is the second biggest battery and switch say that’ll do about 30 to 40 miles on a charge and it probably would under normal conditions but I’ve been hitting the battery pretty hard today I’ve been well I mean I’ve been in level five the whole time that’s the highest it goes and also I’ve just been pedaling softly letting the motor take the strain as much as I can now I probably get maybe 15 Mi out of it riding around the edge of bath like that but it’s only a 10 m commute so I can just plug it in at the pub when I get there and I have some juice for the way home [Music] is he here I I [Music] one come on [Music] all right that’s me at the puup I mean Jamie probably beat me here but I’m hoping he’s been turned away and he’s still in the shower [Music] got bless your switch [Music] kit here he is oh you could have got me a pint So Jamie I thought when your bike wasn’t outside that I had beaten you but here we are well funny story I uh actually left it at home cuz I had to go back to get changed so you passed the sweat test then I did the second time [Music] yes so I guess we learned that um ebikes aren’t always faster well I mean that isn’t the whole story is it I mean I had to put the switch GE on my bike at the start okay which took me about just under 9 minutes I was out of the door in 10 which I thought was pretty good I mean obviously it’s not my first rodeo fit in the switch kit even so I was quite impressed with my performance that is pretty good uh so you probably had about five six minutes on me I expect clawed a little bit of it back yeah given that you had to go for a shower I thought you might up that hill as well I was I was sweating yeah and that’s a steep hill and actually like even with a even with an ebite motor wasn’t free ride up there not at all I must admit I don’t on my normal commute I don’t normally put in that much effort I had to calm down on the like the final run into Norton just to like make sure I didn’t have any like beads of sweat on me so I can get in the pp but I made it in the end and obviously next time we do this I won’t have to put the uh kit on my bike so that’s 10 minutes I’ve saved I’ll beat you by Miles I’ll get the points in this time except you didn’t buy me one so how was the switch kit yeah it’s really good um obviously this is about the third one that I’ve tried and the difference with this one the go kit is that it’s a frame mounted battery so you don’t have to fit adapter to your handlebars first time it was like a bag second time it was a clamp system that’s something that takes up a bit of the time and some of your handlebar space and this is a much simpler kit to fit it’s a little bit cheaper the motor’s good um the battery range on this go plus which is the middle one is pretty good I mean it’s good for a 10m commute perfect um and also the new pedal sensor is much easier to fit than the last one that I tried so that’s that’s another bonus you did get it fitted quickly I did get it fitted quickly I could have fitted it better but I got it fitted quickly fair enough so with the switch kits the we’ve all seen the adverts this is a switch bike no this is a switch twitch bike etc etc could I fit this twitch kit to to my to my bike yeah I mean you’ve got 700 C Wheels you’ve got um disc brakes but we can we can put a disc on there um you’ve got quick release so absolutely we could pull that wheel off stick it on your bike and uh yeah you could ride it back to town although I have to say I have used up rather a lot of the battery on the way out here I’m not surprised doing much work on my own so there you go ebikes are and they are not FAS faster than regular bikes over a commute of 10 mies we haven’t learned anything brilliant um if you want to order a switch go kit then they’re available now for pre-order um we had the middle siiz one and the range on that looks to be pretty good well actually I think we learned that uh I won anyway if you like these types of challenges then please give this video a like uh leave us a comment Down Below on which one of our two bikes you’d most like for your commute and uh subscribe to the channel for lots more bike stuff yeah we’ll see you in the next one cheers Dave