Nuvinci Harmony Automatic seems like nice way to have it simple - however I can't quite find what gear-range would that produce for me (in old terms 22/36?) . Since we have 15% hill to get to our home - we need to make sure that it can be done without using electro motor as I would expect by that time battery may be empty after a day trip ...
I know Rohloff 14 first gear would be 22/34 pretty much and there is way to make it 38 (not sure how so far)
Cheers
h.
OP there are plenty of bicycle gear head here who can advise, but they're probably out doing something this weekend just be patient and you'll have an answer.
I can't comment on the gearing, but we are v happy with our choices (except oh would now like one that goes to 40 km/h ).
Yesterday we rode with the kids and turned off the motors as, well it's only fair...I wouldn't call it a pain to ride, although I don't bike with another bike here so I can't directly compare.
Have you tested bikes with the Bosch motors? To me they are much smoother than the Panasonic.
Have you seen this data sheet on the NuVinci?
We did look at couple other brands where it seems Flyer fits us the best . We are set for ' retro ' looking bike so .. here we are..
From our experiences rental flyers (ssb.ch) do have quite used 12Ah/24V (280Wh ?) batteries so that might have been the reason for your experience . It is likley it's 60% of nominal charge they hold and these been for some time used as " drop old battery" due to the offer of battery swap during your trip where some of the ' swiss' guys simply put their old battery at replacment station that didn't hold anymore and got better one for free.
New Flyers have up to 18Ah with 36V (~640wh ?) so should be better I hope.
Just yestorday we put 15km from which 4km was 13% uphill with steep section of 30+% for 50m (one needs to put body forward to climb it to keep frot wheel on the ground) .I myself use real mountain bike and had good workout to make it up the hill on 2x/38 (ok, I had extra ~20kg load on my back) - she has done it with one hand waving back on me .. driving uphill on xx/34 gear. After that jurny battery was still at its 92% charge- so 8% used for 4km assistance uphill is good for me. I believe I could not hold up for a day on my MTB to when Flyer gets to 0% .. that be like 40km uphill of 15% .. means we are at Mt.Blanc ?
Flyer today does offer Bosh as well as Panasonic however we haven't tested it this year. From last year exeprience it wasn't good.
Going back to gearning - all I can see for Nuvinci is :
Ratio Range
-----------------------------
360% Nominal – 0.5 underdrive to 1.8 overdrive
so it's not really all that much impresive (I would expect 600% on this type). Now, it's not all that much of the problem when largest gear would be somwhere in 42T but that's what I can't find out .
I'm thinking now of 3rd option - get XT 10 gears , use 44T cog and be sure that whatever stands on the way - can be done with or without electro motor support.
Still would love to hear from someone that actually knows details for both - for Nuvinci gearing and Rohloff - how to make Rohloff 38T or 42T and how its possible ?
This is for 50kg rider so not much worried about maximums of what gears support in terms of power as these be never reached I would guess (since most are graded much above what 50kg person can ever deliver - Rohloff seems to be 1kw output graded on all it's gears - and my wife is unlikley to put (together with e-motor) more than 450w - with perhaps 600w at it's peek ever ) so I'm left with 40% of that range and would love to turn gear one (34T) into 42T.
Found that : http://www.simpel.ch/fileadmin/spezt...arInchCard.pdf
Should it be the case - Nuvinci is out of the picture for us.