Understanding your eBike's range and battery consumption Follow

When talking about range, there are a multitude of factors that will impact how long you can ride your bike for. Here are some of the more common factors that will impact your range.

- City riding vs. Highway Riding

Similar to when you ride a car, stopping and going consumes a lot more battery compared to when you are continuously maintaining a speed. That means if you are continuously getting stopped by traffic lights or stop signs, your range will see a significant reduction.

Throttle

Although using the throttle is addicting and fun, utilizing your throttle uses more juice from your battery in comparison to using the pedal assist. When your motor is trying to self propel itself, it is drawing significantly more current. If you were to put two riders side by side, one pedalling and one throttling, it would not be surprising to see the throttler get half the range of the rider pedalling.

Level of pedal assist​

When you are in higher levels of assist, your motor is programmed to give you more power. For example, on level 1 assist, your motor is designed to give you 20% of your motors maximum output whereas on level 5 assist, it is designed to give you 100% of your motors maximum power output. By using level 5 assist, you will be using the maximum potential of the motor and as a result, your range will suffer.

Utilizing your gears

Your DŌST Bike comes with a set of gears that you may use at your disposal. When riding, be sure to use your gears as you would a normal bicycle. As the mid-drive motor works in accordance with your transmission system, being in a different gear will result in different optimal speeds and are used for different applications. By being in the optimal gear for the specific application will result in better range.

As a rule of thumb:

Gears 1-3 are your climbing gears. If you are going up a hill, these are the gears to use.

Gears 4-7 are your normal gears to use. Most of the time, you will not need to go out of these gears.

Gears 8-9 are your speed gears. If you are trying to hit fast speeds, you would want to be in these gears.

Weather

As our bicycles contain lithium ion batteries, they are highly susceptible to changing weathers. The lithium batteries that come with your DŌST bikes are very much like humans. They don't like being in the extreme cold or the extreme heat. If you are riding in freezing temperatures, the battery will temporarily receive reduced range. You may experience above a 50% reduction in battery capacity while the pack is cold.

Terrain

Terrain is often an overlooked variable when talking about range. If you are riding on a paved path, the rolling resistance is much lower and your tires are able to traverse on it much more efficiently. If you are riding on gravel or sand, there is much more rolling resistance and will impact your range.