Why claimed range is never the range you get

How a maximum range figure is made

Start with the part most buying advice gets wrong. A brand claiming 65 miles is usually not inventing the number. Somebody genuinely rode that far, or a model predicted it from a measured consumption rate. The problem is the conditions.

A maximum range figure is generated with almost every variable set to its most favourable position at once:

• The lowest pedal-assist level, with the rider pedalling throughout.
• A light rider — often around 155 lb — and no cargo.
• Flat ground, smooth surface, no stopping.
• Little or no wind.
• A steady, unambitious speed, frequently around 15 MPH.
• Mild temperature, somewhere near 20°C or 68°F.
• Correctly inflated tires and a brand-new, fully charged pack.

Every one of those is defensible on its own. Stacked together they describe a ride nobody takes. You are heavier than the test rider, or carrying a bag; your route has junctions and hills; it is windy, or cold, or you are in a hurry. Each departure costs a percentage, and the percentages compound.

What "up to" is doing in that sentence

"Up to 65 miles" is a legally careful phrase. It states a ceiling and promises nothing beneath it. A bike that manages 22 miles on your commute has not broken the claim, because 22 is up to 65.

This is not unique to e-bikes. Broadband speeds, car fuel economy and phone battery life are all quoted the same way, and buyers have learned to discount them. E-bikes are newer, the numbers are larger, and the gap between the ceiling and the median is wider, so the discount most people apply is not steep enough.

The useful mental correction is to stop reading a range claim as a prediction and start reading it as a boundary. It tells you what the bike cannot exceed. Everything about what it will actually do comes from the battery's watt-hour figure and your own riding, which is why our battery and range guide spends its time on watt-hours rather than on miles.

Why the incentive runs one way

Range is the specification buyers filter on. A listing that says 35 miles loses a search-result comparison to one that says 65, even when the two bikes have identical packs and one brand simply tested harder. Until buyers reward honest numbers, the pressure runs towards best-case figures. The counterweight is publishing conditions, or a band, or a second figure — which some brands do.

Range bands, and who bothers to publish one

A single figure hides the variance. A band admits it. When a brand publishes "30 to 65 miles" instead of "up to 65 miles", it is telling you the shape of the distribution as well as its ceiling, and that is considerably more useful.

Two of AMYET's three listings do this, which is worth crediting because most of the sub-$1,000 market does not.

That EB26 disclosure is the most useful sentence on any of their product pages. It tells you the throttle-only figure is half the headline, which is exactly the ratio the physics predicts, and it saves a buyer from assuming the 60-mile number applies to the way they intend to ride.

The S8 is the one that needs the most interpretation. AMYET claims 70 to 75 miles maximum. The pack is the largest of the three at 1200Wh, but the bike has two 1000W motors, and a maximum-range figure for a dual-motor bike is almost certainly generated with one motor doing the work at low assist. Run both motors on the loose, steep ground the S8 exists for and consumption rises steeply. Treat 75 as the ceiling under the gentlest possible conditions, and plan against something closer to half of it. Our EB26 vs S8 comparison sets the two claims side by side.

The eight things that shorten range, roughly in order

These are ranked by how much they typically cost a rider over a normal week, not by how dramatic they sound.

1. Rider and cargo weight. Every pound has to be accelerated away from every stop and hauled up every rise. The gap between a 150 lb rider with nothing and a 250 lb rider with a loaded pannier is the single largest variable most people control. If you are near the 330 lb payload figure AMYET quotes for all three bikes, read our guide for heavier riders.
2. Cold. Lithium cells deliver less of their capacity at low temperature — commonly 20–30% less below roughly 40°F. The energy returns when the pack warms; the miles do not come back on the day.
3. Sustained speed. Aerodynamic drag rises with the square of velocity, and the power needed to overcome it rises with the cube. Riding at 28 MPH instead of 18 costs far more than the 1.5× the speeds suggest. This is why a 32 MPH top speed and a long range claim can never both be true on the same ride.
4. Gradient. Climbing is simply lifting mass, and the arithmetic is unforgiving: a heavy bike, a heavy rider and a long hill will drain a pack faster than anything else on this list on the days it applies. See our hill-climbing guide.
5. Headwind. The same physics as speed, delivered by the weather. A 12 MPH headwind at 18 MPH ground speed is aerodynamically a 30 MPH ride.
6. Throttle versus pedalling. On throttle the motor provides all of the propulsion; on assist you might be adding 100 to 200 watts yourself. AMYET's own EB26 figures put the difference at roughly half the range.
7. Tire pressure. Fat tires run soft feel wonderful and roll badly. Dropping from 20 PSI to 10 PSI noticeably increases rolling resistance. It is the cheapest range you will ever recover. Our fat-tire guide covers where the sensible pressure window sits.
8. Stop-start riding. Accelerating a 70 lb bike plus rider from rest is expensive, and a city route with a junction every quarter mile does it constantly. A steady rural ride at the same average speed uses considerably less.

Notice that six of the eight are conditions rather than components. You cannot buy your way out of them, which is why buying more watt-hours than you think you need is the only real defence.

Estimate your own range in three steps

This takes about a minute and gives you a number you can plan a route around.

Step one: find the watt-hours

Multiply the battery voltage by the amp-hours. The three AMYET bikes work out at 48 × 20 = 960Wh for the G60, 48 × 15 = 720Wh for the EB26, and 48 × 25 = 1200Wh for the S8. If a listing only gives you volts and amp-hours, that multiplication is the whole job.

Step two: pick your watt-hours per mile

Be honest about how you ride rather than how you intend to ride. For a heavy fat-tire e-bike, roughly 15–20Wh per mile covers gentle pedal assist on flat ground; roughly 22–28Wh per mile covers ordinary mixed riding; roughly 35–45Wh per mile covers throttle use, hills, heavy loads, cold or high speed. Most people should use 25.

Step three: divide, then subtract a fifth

Watt-hours divided by watt-hours-per-mile gives a raw estimate. Take 20% off it and that is your planning range — the distance you would be comfortable committing to without a charger at the far end.

• G60: 960 ÷ 25 ≈ 38 miles raw, so roughly 31 miles planning range. Against a headline of 65.
• EB26: 720 ÷ 25 ≈ 29 miles raw, so roughly 23 miles planning range. Against a headline of 60.
• S8: 1200 ÷ 25 = 48 miles raw, so roughly 38 miles planning range — and if you are running both motors on rough ground, use 40Wh per mile instead, which gives 30 raw and about 24 as a plan.

The reserve is not pessimism. A battery's last 20% is where voltage sag is worst, where cold bites hardest, and where a headwind on the way home turns an inconvenience into a two-hour push. It is also the part of the cycle that ages cells fastest. Leaving it unused costs you very little and buys you the difference between arriving and walking.

Why a percentage readout beats five bars

The display is the instrument you manage range with, and there is a large practical gap between the two common types.

A five-bar gauge divides the pack into five blocks of 20%. Each bar covers roughly eight miles on a 960Wh pack in mixed riding, and the bars do not empty evenly — voltage falls slowly through the middle of the discharge curve and then quickly at the end, so the last bar disappears far faster than the first. You get a warning at the point where it is already too late to change the plan.

A percentage readout, particularly alongside a live voltage figure, lets you do the arithmetic mid-ride. If you are 12 miles in and showing 60%, you have used 40% for 12 miles, so the full pack is worth about 30 miles today, in these conditions, with this rider on board. That is worth more than any manufacturer claim, because it is a measurement of your actual ride.

AMYET lists an LCD showing speed, battery, mileage and assist mode on the G60, and on the EB26 an LCD with five assist levels plus battery, trip and odometer readouts. What we cannot confirm from the listings is whether the battery indicator is a percentage or a bar gauge on any given unit. If this matters to you — and if you ride to the edge of your range, it should — ask before ordering. We flag exactly this kind of unpublished detail rather than guessing at it, as explained on our how we review page.

The habit that beats any display

Note your odometer and your battery percentage at the same two points on a route you ride often. After a fortnight you will know your own watt-hours per mile better than any specification sheet, in summer and in winter, and every range decision after that is straightforward.

What to do when you misjudge it

Everybody gets it wrong once. A cold morning, a detour, a headwind that was not in the forecast, and the display is showing 15% with nine miles to go. Assume nothing dramatic happens: the bike does not stop, it just becomes progressively less helpful.

1. Drop the assist level immediately. Going from level four to level one roughly halves consumption. Doing it at 15% is worth several times doing it at 3%.
2. Stop using the throttle entirely. This is the single biggest lever available mid-ride.
3. Slow down. Because power to overcome drag rises with the cube of speed, dropping from 22 MPH to 15 MPH cuts the aerodynamic share of your consumption dramatically. It costs minutes and buys miles.
4. Use the gears. All three AMYET bikes list a 7-speed drivetrain. Drop into a low gear and spin — your own 100 to 150 watts is a meaningful fraction of what the motor is being asked for at low assist.
5. Do not chase the last few percent. When the battery management system cuts off, it cuts off. Better to arrive having pedalled the last two miles than to stop dead on a main road in the dark.

A heavy fat-tire e-bike is genuinely hard work to pedal unassisted, which is the real argument for the 20% reserve. The gears mean the bike still functions with a flat pack — they do not make it pleasant.

If range anxiety is shaping your shortlist rather than your route, the fix is at purchase rather than on the road: buy the largest pack you can, and read the power side of the sheet with the same scepticism in our motor wattage guide.