Watt Hours / Battery Size?

Question for you regular eBike users - what's your ideal battery size for 2 to 2.5 hour rides on the north shore and surrounding mountains?  I have been borrowing my buddies eBike and taken it on 2 rides, both about 20km in length with between 900 - 1200 meters of climbing, and both times I have basically drained the battery and made it back to the truck on fumes.  His bike is a few years old and has a 504 Wh battery.  That's not much bigger than some of the options available on "mid weight" ebikes like the Transition Relay or YT Decoy SN.

I'm thinking about getting an ebike of my own and I'm trying to decide what would work best for me.  On both of my previous rides I stayed almost entirely in trail mode and only switched to Eco when the bike did it for me - and it made me realize that the last thing I would want is to have to pedal an ebike uphill for any amount of time without any assistance.

At the same time would the 720 Wh or 900 Wh batteries be overkill?  If I am being realistic it would be rare for me to do many rides much longer than 2.5 hours or 20km - even with the assistance I was still pretty spent by the end of the ride.

do you want to turbo every climb?

Posted by: Sethimus

do you want to turbo every climb?

No.  I experimented with boost for short bursts but found trail to perfectly fine.  In fact it was more than fine.  The climb in trail mode was so much fun.  We had a blast railing corners, picking our way through tech sessions, all while keeping the heart rate in a manageable zone.

I've had a Rocky Powerplay for a year now, 720 watt hour battery, i am about 150lbs and rarely come close to killing the battery doing 20-25km loops with 1000-1400m elevation gain running in 80-90% of power.

if you have ride buddies with ebikes get something similar to them so there isn't range anxiety....body weight makes a big difference on battery usage so keep that in mind.

Thanks Gramm - I appreciate that sort of feedback!

kenevo sl, 320+160wh is good for about 1500-1800hm if you ride mostly eco

1st gen orbea rise was 360+252wh, good for 1800-2100hm if mostly eco

i‘m +- 95kg with gear

One thing I saw working at a store that regularly sold and serviced Bosch, Shimano, and Rocky Mountain ebikes is that when it comes to expected range, 500w in a Bosch isn't the same as 500w in Shimano. We regularly had our Bosch customers report better range than their Shimano (on the previous gen system) for similar or same watt hour batteries. I don't know if it's been addressed with the update. We experienced this ourselves when we took a bunch of demo bikes on a ~60k all-over-town ebike ride, the Shimanos were sucking fumes and the Bosch and Rocky bikes had about 20% remaining.  User weight also plays a big role, with lighter riders experiencing significantly better range than heavier ones. This difference increases in higher modes of boost.  In the full fat, full power e-bike realm, it seems there's two typical battery sizes, ~500 and ~700, with 900 being rare (or the result of a ~700+200 range extender doohickey). The only 900 I can remember off the top of my head is on those Norcos with the non-shimano battery and wiring harness. I can't stress this enough, however: Even though the sale prices are insane, do not buy one of those Norcos with the non-shimano battery and wiring harness. DO NOT BUY ONE OF THOSE NORCOS WITH THE NON-SHIMANO BATTERY AND WIRING HARNESS. They were little but trouble for our shop with a frankly insane failure rate, and now Norco has whole-hog moved away from them.. Who knows how long the non-shimano e-bike parts will be available for. 

Anyway, if you're talking full power, I don't know why you'd go less than the ~700 park. 500s are becoming somewhat uncommon these days.

As to full power vs mid-weight, well, my advice there is "buy whatever your friends have", but generally would avoid any ebike system without a hot-swappable battery for quality of life reasons.

imho the only custom shimano batteries you can buy are the orbea ones. avoid the rest.

This is great info as well Sethimus and Jotegir.  I'm a total nob to motors and batteries and have been trying to learn as much as I can.  

I'm not all that interested in any of the non-mtb brand eMtb's (GasGas, Husqvarna, etc). Not that I have anything against those brands I just feel more comfortable buying a bike (even an electric bike) from a bike company that I know something about.

I was actually looking at the Norco's but I had not looked into what batteries they were using/running.

Nothing wrong with Norco's 2024 and newer bosch-equipped ebikes like the fluid or the various high-pivot sight/range things (noting that you should be getting a nice deal on the sights because Norco teased what is undoubtedly a new sight VLT for 2025). It's the 2023 and earlier shimano equipped bikes you want to steer clear from.