I’ve been doing a bit of (non e-bike) riding in poor weather of late, and it’s really surprising just how wet and dirty everything gets. After a wet road ride, every surface is covered in black, greasy dirt. It rots fabric, makes grinding paste in mechanical parts and generally makes everything worse. You need really good seals to keep that crap out.

If it's a Chinese e-bike, it's probably lying about being IPX67.

OTOH, Riese & Müller $15k USD e-bikes aren't IPX anything because the Bosch components aren't. If you get it wet, just kiss that money goodbye. Absolutely bonkers.

it's not surprising to me that the bosch mid-drives are failing, they're typically placed at an angle that catches all the run off from every tube at the lowest point on the bike (except on recumbents), and the controller is (usually) integrated.

mid-drives are great, the gear advantage rocks; the bosch units suck but unfortunately they had so much industry sway that a lot of ebike frames are coming out built around the unit -- which is absolutely unlike any other unit out there aside from vague similarities to the bafang units in the same range -- so it forces replacement with the same garbage, or a total re-engineer of the gear train; a big pain.

one thing to be said about the bosch unit : it looks sleek and it integrates well. This is likely a lot of the reason behind the mass adoption, aside from Bosch's presence itself.

I mount a 350€ Bafang motor on my bike five years ago. I use it almost every day to go to work, even on rainy days (and this year is very wet). The display now shows almost 16000km. It never failed, although it's given as NOT waterproof...

From my perspective water is only at best a proximal cause. The big problem is that if the motor needs replacing five times during a two year waranty period that is a lemon and the manufacurer should give back the money one paid for it.

Anecdotally, my wife's Magnum Premium 2 has held up well for 4 years of all weather use in west coast Canada. This includes pulling a cargo trailer or kids trailer year round - salty and sandy slushy snow, pouring rain, sun...

For two of the years she hauled him to school everyday, in all weather, and did all of her shopping and errands with the bike. About 100km every weekday. I'll have to look at the odometer sometime and see what it's at.

I believe it has a Bafang motor and I think we paid about C$2200 as it was in clearance.

With The Right Stuff though:

LandCruiser 'Mudcrab' driven 7km under water across Darwin Harbour

    A rag-tag team of engineers, commercial divers and rev-heads have successfully driven a waterproof electric vehicle 7 kilometres under water across Darwin Harbour, in a stunt they claim has broken two world records.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36928038

"The latest units are protected against dust and splash water, according to protection class IP54, and most error codes caused by magnetic interference disappear on restart."

This used of "latest" implies Bosch's engineers initially assumed dust and splash water aren't a thing, so by the sound of it they design indoor bike motors for people who hoover very regularly.

It's the second part that worries me more, though: "most" (= not all) error codes disappear on research, i.e. you have to regularly reboot your e-bike, like a 1998 Windows PC? Sorry, I never want to reboot an appliance, because real bikes never required that in the past, so it has been shown it is possible.

I never want an e-bike, and I don't like throwing away engines because of the environmental damage. Don't people bike because they want to get fit? If not, get a proper motorbike.

Somehow this is not a big deal across the Channel in the Netherlands. Yet another case of the British not learning from the Dutch?

The article provides zero insight beyond anecodes. The fact a a specialist ebike repair company sees lots of broken ebikes tells you practically nothing about the frequency of problems. The anecdote about 5 failures in a warranty period sounds a bit suspicious and if true is probably a combination of bad luck and extreme usage, or possibly a design flaw in a specific bike model. It's also from a forum post from 5 years ago . That said, as a Bosch ebike owner myself, I'd love to see some decent stats on reliability of different systems. Had no problems myself so far and love it.

Good to hear this, since it encourages me to stick with the VanMoof I bought in 2019. Fancier, swishier bikes abound, but the VM just keeps on truckin’

There is a simple scale for water and dirt ingress, e.g. IP65 for protection from water jets and fine dust:

https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings

There are labs that test equipment and verify the claimed ratings. It should be simple for the bike or motor manufacturers to upgrade their seals by one IP step. Most suppliers provide a significant range of IP coverage in their catalogs. The price difference is probably small.

The only issue is that any maintenance on the motors has to respect the seals - understand how to disassemble and reassemble without compromising the join.

I converted my regular bike with a Tongsheng motor. It probably is of less quality than Bosch, but I like the repairability aspects of this approach. Spare parts, instruction videos, modularity and lower price. It looks a bit uglier but has worked well for me so far, about a year of riding at least once or twice per week.

hmm just an extra data point. I've ridden my 2018 bike in wet Scottish winters, across spring rivers, and summer beaches in summer, and it's been fine.

could be luck of courser

Friend of mine has a e-bike from cowboy. The thing is 8 years old and has rust and other forms of oxidation on all kinds of places.

Meanwhile my 20 year old koga miyata bike (which I also used for 10 years for my commute in all kinds of weather) has no sign of rust anywhere.

£700 for a replacement motor? Bloody hell

Do manufacturers really test the stuff they sell nowadays?

What is going on with that guy's bike. It is like the Canyonero XL Extreme of bikes. What kind of riding is it suited to? You wouldn't pop down to the grocer in a Unimog, right?

In Japan almost everyone uses non electric fixed gear bikes and it seems to work okay. They are dirt cheap too (under $100)

[dead]

I notice that we've been seeing a lot of articles here about how e-bikes have motor problems, how EVs don't sell, how EVs have issues, how they "aren't really green", etc, yet we never see any such articles for ICE cars and motorcycles. I wonder why there's such interest in maligning green ways of transportation.

Wait until they realize what such an environment does to your housing, and health.