Courtesy of Curtis S., Green City Acres, Kelowna, BC
My current rig is the Bionx HT 350. It cost a pretty penny, around $2400 after install and mods, but so far, I’m pretty happy with it. I was going to have to hire another employee this year to do deliveries, but after getting this, that potential employee has been made obsolete.
It’s pretty sweet to be cruising with 500 lbs of stuff at 34km / hour, and not totally exhausting myself either. We’ll see how it survives the season though. LIke I said, so far so good, but I’m probably giving this thing 10 times more use than anyone else ever has. It’s got a 2 year warranty. If it lasts this season without any problems, I think that’ll be a good sign.
The trick with these things is that they don’t have any torque when you’re hauling a heavy load, but once you get a bit of momentum, after start up, then you can really go. But you have to be careful with them, and your bike. You really use your gears like crazy, cause you go from so slow to so fast right away. So, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get used to it. What I do when I starting to move after stopping, is turn the engine all the way down, so there’s no assist, once I’m starting up, then after getting a bit of momentum, then I turn the assist on full. If you torque it too hard, you kill you battery. But once you learn how to use it, you can make the battery last way longer.
Here’s a picture.
See also Paul Hoepfner-Homme’s post.
