Enviolo starts the year with the presentation of a new gear hub for the rear wheel. In the e-bike sector, the manufacturer is well known for its stepless gears for e-cargo bikes and other ebikes. Now it is expanding its range with a model that is technically simpler and therefore less expensive.
Less shall be more
The hub with the name “Urban” is the first from the manufacturer in which Enviolo only uses four planets instead of the usual six. It provides a gear ratio range of 250 percent. The Shimano Nexus Inter-5E, which is also approved for ebikes, comes in just above this with a range of 263 percent. The Enviolo Trekking or the Enviolo Heavy Duty, both of which have a range of 380 percent, are still quite a distance ahead.
There is a clear economic calculation behind the reduction to four planets. In this way, the price of the hub is reduced. This in turn allows ebike manufacturers to offer models equipped with the Urban at a lower price. “By lowering the number of planets it gives us the opportunity to make the stepless shifting technology widely accessible for the mid-market bike segment,” explains Billy van den Ende, Director Brand Experience at enviolo in a press release from the manufacturer accompanying the product launch.
Stepless Enviolo Urban rear hub gears for ebikes
Relying on the tried and tested
The Urban shares many similarities with the enviolo models already on the market. One of them is that you can shift steplessly over the entire gear range. There are no predefined gear ratios, as with the aforementioned Shimano model. There, the range is divided into five gears that you can switch between. The range in between is only theoretically available, but cannot be used practically.
Furthermore, there will be a manual as well as an automatic version of the hub gear. As with the more premium versions, the latter will allow you to focus entirely on riding and braking, while the ebike system will do the shifting.
According to Enviolo, the Urban is largely similar in design to the rest of the range. Of course, a few differences result from the reduction to four planets. The magnetic rings responsible for speed measurement are somewhat smaller. Deviations also seem likely in the cables and the interface. At the moment, however, we do not have all the details from the manufacturer.
Urban hub with its own character
Overall, the Urban hub should weigh about the same as the other gears. However, it does not withstand the same loads. A motor combined with this rear hub may have a maximum torque of 50 Newton metres. In addition, Enviolo specifies an upper limit for the maximum permitted total weight of the ebike. This must not exceed 140 kilograms.
Enviolo dresses up these technical features in the formulation that the hub is suitable “for shorter daily trips in urban areas”. In view of the figures just mentioned, it is clear what is meant by this. Nevertheless, the limitation to “short daily trips” poses a few riddles. How long is short? Let’s just assume seven kilometres. What happens if you ride it for eight kilometres at a stretch? Or twelve? If you ride short distances every day for many years, you automatically accumulate a lot of total kilometres. That is anything but short.
Our guess is that it makes a difference which profile the short distance has. Are we talking about seven kilometres that lead steadily uphill with varying gradients? Or twelve kilometres that are flat throughout, perhaps requiring no more than two or three different gears? The stress on the hub is likely to be very different. Especially since in the first case, the desire for a larger gear range would probably arise more quickly.
Test ride in the not too distant future?
What the ebike manufacturers will ultimately make of this Enviolo model will probably become clear in the course of this year. According to the manufacturer, the first examples are already coming off the production line. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2023. So it’s quite possible that we’ll soon be seeing the first ebikes with the Urban hub for the 2024 model year. Possibly at the Eurobike in Frankfurt in June.
Pictures: Fallbrook Technologies Inc.
