We’re conditioned by the automotive industry to think about a vehicle’s horsepower as an indicator of its performance. Horsepower is a measure of power output, although watts can be a more useful unit for power measurement, particularly for electric bikes, which are usually limited to 250 watts continuous output – that’s 0.335 horsepower.
Arguably more important is the maximum torque that a motor can deliver, whether it's an internal combustion engine in a car or an electric motor in an e-bike. It can be tricky to understand why power and torque are both significant and in what circumstances each matters. So here, we’ll delve into torque, what it is, and why it’s an important contributor to the performance of an electric bike.
