LONG-TERMTEST
£999 › An electric bike for Cycle To Work scheme money... the perfect n+1?
Deputy editor Paul Robson has been arriving in the office full of beans this month after getting to grips with an electric bike for Cycle to Workschememoney from Gtech.
I’m a utility cyclist.” There, I said it. It’s not glamorous, but it’s true. Now, I’m not only a utility cyclist, much of the time I love to get out my road bike and ride for riding’s sake, sometimes I actually even train, and once I rode 1200km from Paris to Brest and back to achieve my ultimate cycling goal. But I commute by bike, I go shopping by bike, I nip into town or to the pub by bike, and I take my child to nursery by bike. All of these things would be just that little bit easier with an electric bike, especially as we live atop a steep hill, but the cost is hard to justify if you don’t ‘need’ one. But what if I could get one for under a grand? Vacuum cleaner giant Gtech has launched such a bike, and it looks very much like a bike, so is a Cycle To Work scheme eBike the answer to a problem you didn’t know existed until the solution presented itself?
Power comes from a bottle-shaped 200Wh battery [1] that slots onto the frame where a bottle cage would normally sit (and charges similarly on a separate dock). Gtech claims a 30-mile radius, and given that I have commuted 15 miles and ridden around town a bit on half a charge that looks realistic. The Gates Carbon Belt drivetrain [2] is the epitome of simplicity and eliminates the danger of oily hands or clothes spoiling your day.
At 16kg, its weight is pretty good for an eBike, and with the motor assistance, tackling hills has been easy enough (it won’t do all the work for you, though). I have found myself easing o! on the pedals to maintain motor assistance on the "at, which can actually increase journey times, but at least you get there fresh…