HOW FAR CAN YOU REALLY RIDE ON AN E-BIKE?
You’ve bought your shiny new bike, and now you want to plan some big rides. But how far can you go, really? Is the manufacturer’s range estimate accurate? Jon Minster borrowed a Cannondale Synapse NEO and did a totally unscientific test to see how far he
I’ve ridden 60km – a solid morning out so far. I left the southern suburbs of Cape Town in the dark, and rode to Cape Point. And not just to the reserve entrance gate, which you go past on the Cape Town Cycle Tour – all the way to the point itself.
I feel like I’ve achieved something! It’s still early, and I’m the only one here. The parking lot, usually bustling, is empty. A baboon stares at me from his vantage point on top of the bathroom block, and a seagull squawks from somewhere over the misty Atlantic.
There’s just one problem: the battery on the Cannondale is still full. Each of the five little indicator blocks on the Bosch Purion display is still there, a digital mob that seems to be mocking me: “You think you can beat us, buddy? We’ll see about that!”
Sure, the Synapse is an e-bike, but Eco mode gives you just enough assistance to make it feel like a normal bike; which means that I feel as if I have actually pedalled that 60km. If this carries on, I’ll have to ride 200km – or more! – to have any hope of picking off all five members of the mob. That’s like doing the Double Century, on a random Thursday morning. Alone. People train for that kind of thing!
Spitefully, I eat a banana right in front of the baboon, suddenly worried that I’ve underestimated the capacity of this machine. Then I turn the bike around, climb back on, and start pedalling. As I approach the first rise in the road, I casually change the mode from Eco to Tour. Take that, battery. Let’s see how you cope now!
Learning The Ropes
Before this little adventure, the closest I’d come to draining an e-bike battery was when I rode a Specialized Turbo Levo mountain bike for just over 70km, on a route that involved paved roads, dirt tracks and lots of hills.
Draining the battery is not usually something you set out to accomplish on an e-bike ride. In fact, it’s something you try to avoid! Even the fanciest e-bike is still kilograms heavier than a normal bike. With the motor in play, this heaviness doesn’t translate into a sluggish ride; but if the battery’s flat, so there’s no motor… well.
The Cannondale Synapse NEO, with its midnight blue paintjob, is a different animal to the Levo. It’s a proper road bike, designed for going fast – and hopefully far – on tar.
But how far?
The range claimed by e-bike manufacturers is like the fuel economy figure a car salesman quotes for a new vehicle; it's never as impressive in real life. According to the Cannondale website, the range for the Synapse NEO is 160km – a figure that I decide to take with a pinch of salt.
My CTCT/Cape Point route will max out at close to 150km if I ride all the way around the Peninsula; but surely the battery won’t make it that far? I decide to keep an eye on the display – and take a shortcut home if the battery starts to give up the ghost.
I’d charged the battery the night before I set off, and charged it again even when it said it was fully charged. I wanted to give the Cannondale the benefit of the doubt.
Little did I know…
Over rolling hills through Constantia in the load-shedding blackness, I start to get a feel for the Synapse NEO. It has a 250W Bosch Active Line Plus motor and a 500Wh battery, which is a relatively standard combo.
It’s a powerful motor and a big battery, which means that the Synapse is not the lightest road e-bike around, but it offers plenty of oomph if you venture out of Eco mode.
I do not. At first, anyway.
You feel the extra weight in the belly of the bike, low down around the motor – a little speed-wobble wiggle, especially on a steep downhill if you stand up out of the saddle. But when you hit a rise and expect to be sucked back by gravity, the motor magically comes to the party and pushes you up, like the best tailwind you could ever wish for.
Like all e-bikes in South Africa, the Synapse is limited to 25km/ h, which means that the motor stops offering assistance when you reach that threshold. On a mountain bike, when you use the motor predominantly on steep climbs, you seldom need to exceed 25km/ h; but on the road, it’s super- easy to reach max speed.
Luckily the Synapse pedals efficiently, and you don’t get that ‘ hitting the wall’ feeling when you breach the limit. It also rolls supersmoothly and carries good momentum, especially when you’re cranking along in the big ring.
Now, heading north away from Cape Point in Tour mode, I decide to stop being kind to the bike. The first biggish hill I come to in the reserve, I click twice more, through Sport mode
and into Turbo. The Synapse absolutely flies up the gradient.
But uh- oh: the battery indicator just dropped a bar. I’m down from five to four, and I’m still a long way from home… Man vs bike
Chastened, I immediately dial it back to Eco and labour along the boundary of the national park, towards Scarborough. After a quick coffee and a croissant in the village, I carry on through the air-conditioned coolness of Misty Cliffs and over the little pass above Slangkop to Kommetjie.
Now I’m getting tired. I’ve done more than 80km, and much of it at speeds greater than 25km/ h, with no assistance from the motor. After that initial heart-fluttering power drop, the indicator remains unchanged at four bars.
So back to Tour mode I go, which is a pleasure on the gradual rise out of Kommetjie up to Imhoff’s Farm. It stays on four bars all the way through Noordhoek to the base of Chapman’s Peak; and I think, to hell with it – let’s go one more.
And I can tell you, Sport mode up the steep side of Chapman’s Peak would make anyone fall in love with an e-bike. It dulls the effort to such an extent that for the first time ever on that section of road, I actually take the time to appreciate the magnificent surroundings.
I peek over the side at turquoise waves booming against the cliffs, and I look up at all the engineering work that holds the whole thing together. Other cyclists do a double take as I fly past them grinning like Phil Liggett in that e-bike ad, where he burns Julian Alaphilippe up a pass in the Alps.
And look, I’ve managed to kill another battery bar! I’m down to three – but I’m also two thirds into the ride. The battle of man vs bike is becoming grim: I’m fast running out of road, and unless I do something drastic, the bike is going to win.
After hurtling up Chappies and Suikerbossie in Sport mode, it’s clear that hills are the battery’s nemesis. So when I get to Camps Bay with more than half the battery still remaining, I aim for the steepest hill I can find – Kloof Road, up the Glen.
This time, I’m taking no prisoners. I go straight to Turbo mode, and try to keep the speed at 25km/ h. I can feel the motor working to the absolute max as I fly up and around the hairpins, as fast as a car. I reach the top in 5:30. My fastest time on a normal road bike is more than double that – and I nearly puked from the effort.
I’m fresh as a daisy at Kloof Nek, and guess what? I’ve managed to knock off another member of the battery mob.
N O W I ’ M G E T T I NG T I R E D . I ’ V E DONE MORE THAN 80K M, AND MUCH O F I T A T S P E E D S G R E A T ER T H A N 2 5 K M / H, W I T H NO A S S I S T A N C E F R O M T HE MO T O R .
Lessons learnt
The route back to Claremont from the city is flat, and I can’t do anything to damage the battery further. I get home after six and a half hours on the bike, having ridden 145.75km – with two battery bars still glaring at me.
The bike won. It could easily have gone 200km or more. But I’m not sure that I could have.
What did I learn from my duel with the
Synapse NEO? Firstly, that taking an e-bike on a super-long ride is really fun. It’s a different kind of experience – slower, but also easier, more relaxed.
Knowing how potent the battery and motor are, you can adjust your effort and your route as you go along. No weekend warrior on a normal bike would sanely attempt the Glen climb with 130 km on the clock, but on an e-bike? No problem.
Doing this ride also made me want to take advantage of all the mounting points on the frame for racks and bags, stick on some wider gravel tyres, and load up for a week’s worth of B& B-hopping through the Overberg. The 25km/ h limit can be a bit frustrating, but the trade- off is seemingly endless range.
And just wait until you try Turbo mode up a hill.