In the wake of Electric Bike Report’s September, 2021 review of the Tower Beach Bum 2the brand reached out to us noting that their bike, which uses a 500W rear hub motor, had gone just as fast or faster up our test hill than some 750W e-bikes we’ve reviewed.
The 500W Tower Beach Bum 2 has a motor specially tuned for climbing, according to Tower’s founder.
Better yet, the brand’s founder, Stephan Aarstol, pointed out in an email, the Beach Bum electric cruiser bike had climbed faster than several Class 3 750W e-bikes, while the 500W Tower was limited to Class 2 speeds. In fact, he said, the Beach Bum was near the top of our hill test all-time leaderboard (at that time).
Aarstol wondered if we unlocked the Beach Bum to Class 3 speeds, if it wouldn’t be one of the quickest climbing bikes on our test hill. His bike, he explained, had a motor that is specifically tuned to climb hills quickly.
So, to test Aarstol’s claim and attempt to answer the question of if bigger is better, we devised a plan to pit the Beach Bum against a similar but higher wattage e-bike.
The Blix Sol Eclipse uses a 750W rear hub motor and was an exceptionally good performer up our test hill when we reviewed the bike in 2021.
The location would remain the same; we’d use our test hill, Hell Hole, a one-third of a mile long section of bike path with an average gradient of 12 percent. To keep the playing field relatively level, we chose the Blix Sol Eclipse electric cruiser bike as the more powerful challenger. That bike is similarly priced, similarly spec’d and of similar style to the Tower, but uses a more powerful 750W rear hub motor. It’s also an electric cruiser that put down an exceptional time on our test hill when we reviewed it last year.
Like in our standard review process, we’d conduct two timed laps up Hell Hole on each bike. One lap using just the throttle and the other using PAS 5.
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