FAQ: How far will I be able to get on a full charge?

A lot of people ask how far they'll be able to ride on their electric cargo bikes on a single charge. Obviously, there's a lot of factors that affect it. Number one is the battery capacity. And number two is the power setting that you're using. Three is the geography. How many hills are along the route for is the amount of loading on your bike. For example, how much you're carrying, and then other environmental effects like the road surface and the headwinds, etc. So all these factors add up, and it's hard to give a definite amout how much you will get off your battery. There is a big difference between the ranges that you get on an ordinary bike as a cargo bike for obvious reasons, you're always going to be carrying a lot more on the cargo bike.

The best way for me to describe that is the typical ranges from my own experience with my family and that I hear from our customers. For example, lets talk about the Yuba Spicy Curry or Tern GSD. Let's talk about a 500 watt hour battery, which is mid range for Bosch, as they have a 400 and 625 watt hour batteries or larger on some bikes. A 500 watt hour on a cargo bike around the hills with a load will usually give you around a 30 kilometer range. So that's greatly reduced from what we would otherwise say for a 500 watt hour on an ordinary bike, which would be 50 to 70 kilometers. The idea is that you will usually use the cargo bikes on the higher settings. So that's sort of what you can expect. You can get less if you've got a full load every day and you're in turbo all the way and up and down the hills, but you can also get more if you're economical with it, but that's that's pretty typical what we see.

Nowadays on most of our bikes you can get dual battery systems that would bring your typical range up to about 60 kilometers. For a lot of people that's a full week's commute. It is nice to have more range, particularly if you're going to do a longer day trip. Of course, on a longer day trip, you're probably not going to use it in it’s highest assist setting because you're cruising along and you might pick a waterfront route instead of over the hills and that kind of thing. So you might find that even on a single battery, you're getting a much better range on a recreational trip than you are on a transport trip.

For more information about Dual battery systems check out the 'Can I get more range on my cargo bike?' FAQ here.