Stars of deconfinement, electric bikes abound in the streets. We subjected one of them, the Elops 920E from Decathlon, to a long race to see what his battery was in his stomach.
In the Decathlon family of electric bikes, I would like the mid-range. Abruptly, this is how we could present the B’twin Elops 920E of the French sports giant. Slightly less well equipped than its big brother the 940E, this model of VAE (Electrically Assisted Bike) tries to combine performance and efficiency for a price slightly below the market sizes.
Sold at € 1,500, the 920E is the model designated for “Boost your city trips and your bike rides” according to Decathlon. A way of saying that this velocipede is mainly intended for urban use such as commuting or going out for the weekend. It is intended for those who cannot put € 2,000 in an electric bike, but who want a quality of race above what the 500 E can offer, sold € 700 by Decathlon.
In our possession for three short weeks, we took advantage of the deconfinement to see a little more closely what the beast had in the belly autonomy question. After all, if the machine is doomed to make the daily commutes, we might as well know when it might let go.
Better autonomy than that announced
But before getting into the hard stuff, a few technical details. Almost comparable to the 940E physically, the bike makes some concessions in terms of its technology. The engine is a Brose Drive T Alu with a torque (its power, in a way) of 70 Newton Meter (Nm), enough to give a good boost during your walks. The range announced ranges from 50 to 70 km depending on the mode used, and the battery capacity peaks at 418 Wh (36 volts / 11.6 Ah). But what do all these beautiful figures give in practice?
To find out, we got on the bicycle in mode 3 (the highest) to see how far a 920E pushed at full power could carry us. And after 2h55 of running under a sun and a summer temperature, we put the battery flat. In all, the bike will have covered 55 km (with 389 m of elevation gain), a bit above the 50 km promised in this precise mode. We were therefore able to demonstrate greater autonomy than the promises made by Decathlon, a real good surprise. For information, the race was done at an average speed of around 19 km / h.
Refill, the only black spot
This last fact is important because the 920 E has a power sensor that will adapt the electric assistance to the pedaling effort. Simply put, the more pressure you apply to the pedals, the higher the assistance. We will come back to this point in a full test, but be aware that assistance cuts off when the speedometer reaches 27 km / h. Note also that, unlike the 940E, the 920 does not go into Eco mode (mode 1) once below 10%. As soon as the device is dried, the battery turns off altogether and the control panel spits out an error.
So be careful not to fall in the harbor anywhere because stopping assistance is brutal and 26 kg of bike weight… it feels quickly.
If the autonomy is therefore rather pleasing, recharging the battery is much less. The charger delivers 84 W of power (42 V, 2 A) and will take approximately 6 hours to fully charge the battery. Suffice to say that you will have to get up early if you want to take two long walks during the day. The battery can be recharged on the bike or separately.
Find the full Elops 920E test soon on Digital.