9 minute read
Petrol Heads’ Corner Trek Powerfly
David O’Neill*
This column comes to you in a somewhat different flavour than usual.
To put this comment into context - I will be retiring from active practice at the end of 2024 and in readiness for that, I am having to do a ton of things before I go (I never knew it was so hard to retire). Consequently, I haven’t had time to source a car to drive, so I have gone and reviewed what is fast becoming, a popular form of transport.
Fear not, gentle reader (stolen from Bridgerton…..), I am not retiring from everything. I am only retiring from the law. I intend (if the Bar Association will have me) to continue this column and continue editing the magazine. Mind you, to be perfectly honest, the editing is already done by the time I get near it and I don’t have to do much. That is why you see erudite comments from Jacqui peppered throughout my column.
Anyway, enough wittering from me about retirement (safe to say that I have a list of things that I really want to do, which will have nothing to do with the law, and I intend to focus on them).
This tedious introduction is my justification for not doing a car review.
Instead, in desperation, I have gone all ecofriendly for the column and I will be reviewing an electric bike. You gotta take one for the team now and again!
When electric bikes first came on the scene, I was dismissive of them. I thought it was just a lazy way of getting around on a bike, making out you were biking somewhere, but not doing anything. I couldn’t be more wrong.
Instead of electric bikes being like lime scooters, where you push a button and away you go, you have to pedal these things to make them go. It is really cycling with some assistance from a small electric motor. I am pretty sure that they have come a long way in their sophistication since they were first introduced.
The Trek Powerfly (and I confess here, that this is one of ours) has full suspension, back and front, squidgy seats, extended handlebars and small wings on the handlebar rests. I will get to those shortly.
As standard, they come with the following:
Disk brakes back and front (great until you get grit and stuff in them);
Six or seven gears at the back (no extras on the front cog);
A sort of, reasonable seat;
Push-push gear changes ( I will explain that soon); and
No mud guards.
We had been told to get the full suspension model because, according to friends, if you ride the bike with only the front suspension, your backside will really let you know about it further down the road.
Having full suspension does make a difference. When you get off, you don’t feel like you have been beaten up, although you do have to undergo surgical extraction of the seat. Unless you are a Tour de France rider, bike seats are always tough after any length of time and I, for one, inevitably get off a bike and I am grateful to find somewhere soft and easy to sit down on. Then I stagger over and collapse.
If you don’t have mud guards, all you are going to get is a dirty great big stripe up your backside and up your back. The same thing happens at the front. If you want to avoid that, then get small mud guards which are obtainable from any bike dealer.
I will get to some of the extras shortly, but one thing you need to know is that these things weigh a ton. They are really heavy with the batteries in, and you need a special bike carrier to transport them. Bike carriers for two bikes cost around $1,000. However, they are worth it because they transport your valuable ($7,500 each going up) bike everywhere without fear of them falling off. The racks are lockable so you can make sure the bike isn’t nicked while you pop in for a latte at your favourite watering hole on the way to wherever you are going.
A hint – always remove your battery when you take the bike on the car somewhere. There is always the risk that the battery might jiggle loose and fall out. If it does, you can’t go anywhere. Even without the battery, they are really heavy.
As to specifications – I have taken this off the website and can only tell you what I know from the website.
You can get up to 32km/hr under assist;
The torque is 85nm. That is a lot when you are going up a hill;
The range is around 5 hours;
The battery apparently has 500-625Wh (whatever this means-probably watt hours-whatever, it looks flash)
Charging isn’t too bad. We found that it takes overnight charging to get the battery back to full capacity.
The gearing, as I have said, is push-push. In other words, you push one lever to continually change gear going up, and then changing gears down, you likewise push the opposite lever. The gear change is mounted under the right hand handlebar.
The original seat was not terribly comfortable, and we opted to go for the gel seat, which is a lot softer, slightly wider and a whole lot more pleasant to sit on if you are going a reasonable distance.
The bike also has a feature which I have never struck before (that probably tells you how long it’s been since I have ridden a bike) and that is, that you push the seat down so it is easier to hop on, and once you get going, you push a small lever which pops the seat up to a comfortable height. This is very clever and makes getting on and off easy.
The control panel (for want of a better word) features an on/off button. Once you turn it on, it comes up with a menu of four types of assistance. Basically, you can put as much or as little effort into riding the bike as you want. The highest level of assistance is labelled turbo and the lowest is labeled economy. The titles speak for themselves.
Economy is minimal assistance, but you will go for a lot longer and a lot further. Turbo is right at the other end of the scale, and you can pretty much remain seated in a high gear and go up steep gradients. It is also the assistance which will get you get you to the top speed quickly. We tend to ride the bike in “touring”. That still gets you along around 30+kmh but doesn’t use up the battery as quick.
You can fiddle around with the control buttons, and it will also tell you how far you have gone, what speed you are going, how much power is left, etc.
There is also a “walk” mode. That is another button, and if you want to walk it up a ramp to put it away or walk it up onto the bike rack mounted on the back of the car, you can use this, and it gives gentle assistance from the electric motor.
We opted for a handlebar extension, and handlebar grips which had a type of flange the hand rested on when you were biking along. We found that because you were leant over the handlebars, your hands became quite sore after a while. This has helped.
Because it is a type of trail bike, it has large knobbly tyres. The frame is probably more rugged than the ordinary road going electric bike. However, this is able to be used on off-road trails, and we have found the bike terrific to use off a trail through dirt tracks etc. This is not to say that I am some sort of mountain bike freak who rips down doing extreme jumps etc. I am more of a genteel cyclist who likes to go off the footpath and out into the back blocks (in a civilised sort of way).
The motor is a small electric motor tucked into the bottom of the frame so that the centre of gravity is quite low. The battery is lockable (for obvious reasons) and the key for each battery is, according to the dealer, unique to that bike. Personally, I doubt that, but I wasn’t going to argue with him – I wouldn’t get anywhere.
It’s very easy to ride and I have to say it has renewed my wish to get out and go see other places.
The bell you can see in the second photograph is a must have. These things don’t make a lot of noise, (think of a two wheeled Nissan Leaf) and it is quite useful to ping the bell every now and again in case you terrify some poor pedestrian or scare somebody, so they fall over.
You can also see, in the second photograph, the handlebar grips I was talking about, and the handlebar extension.
The suspension on the front is adjustable from soft through to hard. I suppose hard is for the adventurous type who wants to roar down a mountain at high speed, avoiding trees, rocks and other people. Soft is more my style.
For those with keen eyesight (we are all getting old), you will have noticed a rectangular pad which looks a little bit like a “transformer in waiting”. I bought these from Amazon. They are as cheap as chips (about $15) and you can mount your mobile phone in it and then lock that into place so it doesn’t fall out. Believe me, I have tried, and it won’t fall out of that cradle. This is excellent if you have no sense of direction, get lost, or for that matter, want to talk to your favourite friend. I recommend them.
Well, that’s my lash at doing something eco-friendly for a while. I will get back into cars that go fast and make lots of noise next time around. I hope this finds you all well. The next time you read anything from me, I will be retired and will probably not be in Hamilton, but somewhere else, just for a change. All the best.
