<story><title>&apos;The big problem is water&apos;: UK ebike owners plagued by failing motors</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/15/the-big-problem-is-water-uk-ebike-owners-plagued-by-failing-motors</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>serf</author><text>it&amp;#x27;s not surprising to me that the bosch mid-drives are failing, they&amp;#x27;re typically placed at an angle that catches all the run off from every tube at the lowest point on the bike (except on recumbents), and the controller is (usually)  integrated.&lt;p&gt;mid-drives are great, the gear advantage rocks; the bosch units suck but unfortunately they had so much industry sway that &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of ebike frames are  coming out built around the unit -- which is absolutely unlike any other unit out there aside from vague similarities to the bafang units in the same range -- so it forces replacement with the same garbage, or a total re-engineer of the gear train; a big pain.&lt;p&gt;one thing to be said about the bosch unit : it looks sleek and it integrates well. This is likely a lot of the reason behind the mass adoption, aside from Bosch&amp;#x27;s presence itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t see how mid-drives are significantly superior. An electric motor doesn&amp;#x27;t need any gear advantage and sending more force to the rear wheel seems like it&amp;#x27;s actually a disadvantage since it put more stress on bicycle components that are often designed for just human levels of force.&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the mid-drives became dominant just &amp;#x27;cause people wanted to have something the looked more &amp;quot;seamless&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I have rear drive ebike (Avanton Pace 300 v1) and I&amp;#x27;m very happy with it (it was also cheap as a show room model). It&amp;#x27;s responsive and I can pedal up any hill to about a 25% grade. The controller is still mid-frame and the battery inset into the down tube. Thinking about it, my ideal ebike would be a heavy duty frame with all the components just bolting on (plus could use power tool batteries).</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;The big problem is water&apos;: UK ebike owners plagued by failing motors</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/15/the-big-problem-is-water-uk-ebike-owners-plagued-by-failing-motors</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>serf</author><text>it&amp;#x27;s not surprising to me that the bosch mid-drives are failing, they&amp;#x27;re typically placed at an angle that catches all the run off from every tube at the lowest point on the bike (except on recumbents), and the controller is (usually)  integrated.&lt;p&gt;mid-drives are great, the gear advantage rocks; the bosch units suck but unfortunately they had so much industry sway that &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of ebike frames are  coming out built around the unit -- which is absolutely unlike any other unit out there aside from vague similarities to the bafang units in the same range -- so it forces replacement with the same garbage, or a total re-engineer of the gear train; a big pain.&lt;p&gt;one thing to be said about the bosch unit : it looks sleek and it integrates well. This is likely a lot of the reason behind the mass adoption, aside from Bosch&amp;#x27;s presence itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dgacmu</author><text>The gear advantage of a mid-drive rocks but I was quite surprised that I chewed through a rear cassette in under a year &amp;#x2F; about 1k miles -- a 250W motor + heavy cargo bike + kid passenger + a large and pretty strong rider exert an awful lot of force. And with the assist, I almost never use the larger cogs, so all the wear gets concentrated. (This compares to many, many thousand miles on my road bike.)&lt;p&gt;Still love the thing, though.</text></comment>