Calorie count on an electric bike

[Ketsjap]

For the past year I've been using an ebike (electric bike) to commute to work. I'm tracking each trip with the Workouts app on my Apple Watch, using 'outdoor cycling'.

I am not sure how accurate calorie count is, though. With an ebike you still have to work the pedals to move, but not as hard as you'd be doing on a 'normal' bike.

Does this make the calorie count inaccurate? Does the 'outdoor cycling' only use heartrate to calculate the calories burned, or does it also use parameter such as gps signal, speed, elevation.... ? In that case the electrical assisance provided by an ebike would distort the data...

Any thoughts?

 

[HengenJL]

Outdoor Cycling does use heart rate, speed, and gps data from what I've read in the past. With an ebike your calorie count is going to be much less than what the workout records due to the assistance of the motor in the ebike. A buddy of mine stopped tracking his ebike commutes as the calorie count was very inaccurate.

 

[gtjeta]

I also have an e-bike. I was asking myself the same as you. So I checked using a well known calorie estimation based on hr (I found it on a web I now cannot remember) and it was precise to the calorie.
So I am quite sure Apple Watch only uses hr (and height, weight and age) to estimate calories for cycling.

This is perfect for e-bikes, as the actual effect of it for your calories is taken into account through the sharp reduction of the hr. With e-bikes I have typical average hr of 100-120, while with no assistance I have 120-150.

Of course, hr based calculation has its own problems, but having an e-bike does not increase them.

 

[Tiggy2]

Has the issue of exercise minutes been verified by Apple yet? When I was logging in my Outdoor Rides using the Work Out app it calculated way more exercise minutes than when I just let the watch recognize the increased HR as exercise. Which is more accurate?

 

[deeddawg]

Probably would have been better to create a new thread, @Tiggy2, as your question doesn't seem related to the nearly two year old thread you resurrected.

What is this "issue of exercise minutes"? If you log a 60 minute Outdoor Ride, the Workout app logs 60 minutes. Haven't seen any inconsistencies here. Now if you spend 30 of those minutes sitting at a cafe and don't pause the activity, you'll end up with an overstatement of "active" minutes but that's not really the watch's fault. Auto-pause should help with that though.

 

[Tiggy2]

Probably would have been better to create a new thread, @Tiggy2, as your question doesn't seem related to the nearly two year old thread you resurrected.

What is this "issue of exercise minutes"? If you log a 60 minute Outdoor Ride, the Workout app logs 60 minutes. Haven't seen any inconsistencies here. Now if you spend 30 of those minutes sitting at a cafe and don't pause the activity, you'll end up with an overstatement of "active" minutes but that's not really the watch's fault. Auto-pause should help with that though.

I thought it was related, sorry didn’t know it was improper to ask on an older post if anyone had found rhe answer to ebikes and accurately logging exercise on the Apple Watch. I did find the answer elsewhere though,and it seems logging the exercise using the indoor cycling setting may get the most accurate measure. http://franceskfit.blogspot.com/?m=1

 

[deeddawg]

I thought it was related, sorry didn’t know it was improper to ask on an older post if anyone had found rhe answer to ebikes and accurately logging exercise on the Apple Watch. I did find the answer elsewhere though,and it seems logging the exercise using the indoor cycling setting may get the most accurate measure. http://franceskfit.blogspot.com/?m=1

People often don't notice the date of a post that pops up as "new", and would waste their time answering the two year old question when the person who asked it hasn't even been here in months.

So while improper may be a strong term, many would say it's at least discourteous. Just something to think about for future.

Glad you got your matter solved.

 

[deeddawg]

Probably would have been better to create a new thread, @Tiggy2, as your question doesn't seem related to the nearly two year old thread you resurrected.

What is this "issue of exercise minutes"? If you log a 60 minute Outdoor Ride, the Workout app logs 60 minutes. Haven't seen any inconsistencies here. Now if you spend 30 of those minutes sitting at a cafe and don't pause the activity, you'll end up with an overstatement of "active" minutes but that's not really the watch's fault. Auto-pause should help with that though.

@duncansby what in particular - from my nearly three year old comment - upset you?

 

[Saturn007]

Maybe because Tiggy's question was relevant to the OP's query, yet you chided him back then for being off topic?!

Even labeling it “discourteous” may have been a bit too Emily Post-ish! 😁

Still, you resurrected an important topic—how well does the Watch track e-bike riding?

 

[Bichon]

My polite suggestion is to leave the moderating to the moderators, and use the "! Report" button to let them know about a problematic post instead of arguing about it in the thread.

And to get to the topic of the thread; my guess is that the outdoor cycling workout might not be able to assess the fitness benefit of an e-bike ride accurately. The GPS would let it know that the bike was proceeding up the hill briskly, and the heart rate sensor would show only a modest increase in pulse, but how would the watch know whether it was because the rider was an incredibly fit tour-de-France competitor, or because an electric motor was stepping in to help?

 

[deeddawg]

Maybe because Tiggy's question was relevant to the OP's query, yet you chided him back then for being off topic?!

Even labeling it “discourteous” may have been a bit too Emily Post-ish! 😁

My polite suggestion is to leave the moderating to the moderators, and use the "! Report" button to let them know about a problematic post instead of arguing about it in the thread.

No, I still don't see how the question about exercise minutes from a Workout vs exercise minutes just letting the watch monitor HR is connected to the OP question about accuracy of calorie count while riding an ebike.

And yes, while my initial sentence was a bit Emily Post-ish, my second sentence genuinely asked to understand the issue with the aim of providing helpful advice so that I might provide advice to solve the problem.

Still, you resurrected an important topic—how well does the Watch track e-bike riding?

And to get to the topic of the thread; my guess is that the outdoor cycling workout might not be able to assess the fitness benefit of an e-bike ride accurately. The GPS would let it know that the bike was proceeding up the hill briskly, and the heart rate sensor would show only a modest increase in pulse, but how would the watch know whether it was because the rider was an incredibly fit tour-de-France competitor, or because an electric motor was stepping in to help?

My experience is the Apple Watch - even with the improvements in watchOS algorithms over time - significantly overstates the calorie burn of an outdoor cycling workout. Like by over 60%

I ride a Specialized Creo (e-roadbike) using the motor to take the edge off hills and spend a lot of time with no motor assist. The bike measures how much power I provide at the crank and relays that data to my Garmin Edge, giving my actual measured "work" in kilojoules. I also often record an outdoor cycle on my watch, which is estimating power from gps/speed/HR/etc but no direct measurement of power.

Three recent rides:
12.5 miles - watch said 605 active calories - garmin/bike said 374 kJ work (active calories)
23.5 miles - watch said 1164 active calories - garmin/bike said 704 kJ work (active calories)
12.6 miles (diff route) - watch said 574 active calories - garmin/bike said 345 kJ work (active calories)

As mentioned, I don't use the motor a lot - so I can imagine the overestimation might be substantially worse if I used the motor a lot more. Here's an example of the amount of motor used - time (minutes) x assist mode (0/1/3/5)

 

[duncansby]

@duncansby what in particular - from my nearly three year old comment - upset you?

It just seemed a bit mean

 

[jdoll021]

Hello all, bringing back this thread because I recently got an e-bike(1) and noticed over counting of calories also. The funny thing is, I thought Apple had updated the outdoor cycle workout to account for e-bikes? I remember that it was supposed to be implemented in WatchOS 8(?) where it would adjust calorie count based on effort. But then I also found this patent application from Apple that is dated last year which would seem to suggest that they're still working on it?

In any case, all I know is that when I use the outdoor cycling workout on my bike for my 30 minute commute, it says I burn almost 700 calories. But if I use mixed cardio instead, then it gives a more accurate 350 calories. This also roughly matches the calories count I get from the outdoor cycling workout on my regular bike for the same ride time (30 minutes). I don't know if the Watch makes a difference, I'm using a Series 6.

1) If anyone is interested, it's a Gazelle Medeo T10+, which is a Class 3 or speed pedelec bike (28 mph/45 kph).

 

[Howard2k]

Hello all, bringing back this thread because I recently got an e-bike(1) and noticed over counting of calories also. The funny thing is, I thought Apple had updated the outdoor cycle workout to account for e-bikes? I remember that it was supposed to be implemented in WatchOS 8(?) where it would adjust calorie count based on effort. But then I also found this patent application from Apple that is dated last year which would seem to suggest that they're still working on it?

In any case, all I know is that when I use the outdoor cycling workout on my bike for my 30 minute commute, it says I burn almost 700 calories. But if I use mixed cardio instead, then it gives a more accurate 350 calories. This also roughly matches the calories count I get from the outdoor cycling workout on my regular bike for the same ride time (30 minutes). I don't know if the Watch makes a difference, I'm using a Series 6.

1) If anyone is interested, it's a Gazelle Medeo T10+, which is a Class 3 or speed pedelec bike (28 mph/45 kph).

How would Apple calculate it from the watch?


Riding an e-bike on 100% power you’re burning almost no calories. It’s not really exercise at all.
Riding an e-bike on 0% power and you’re burning more than a regular bicycle because you’re also pushing the extra weight.

Most of the time neither of those scenarios are true and you’d be somewhere in that massive area in the middle.

Eventually we’ll probably get some sort of load calculation out of the bike and into the watch and that would allow further granularity and accuracy.

 

[deeddawg]

How would Apple calculate it from the watch?

They could just look at HR for estimation of effort, as is common for most stationary activities. It's still an estimate, but it can be done.

Trouble is that doing a cycling workout with an ebike is the watch is also (presumably) looking at other data such as speed and elevation, which will lead to an overestimation when the ebike is supplying some of the power.

Eventually we’ll probably get some sort of load calculation out of the bike and into the watch and that would allow further granularity and accuracy.

Some current ebikes utilize a power meter at the crank, broadcasting the rider's power input. I use a Garmin Edge cycle computer with my Specialized ebike and get pretty accurate calorie burn estimates since it's getting the data from the bike itself rather than trying to estimate it from distance/speed/elevation. And yes, my Apple Watch regularly overestimates calorie burn relative to what the Garmin shows - as expected for the above reasons.

 

[Jackbequickly]

No way you are going to get an accurate result on an e-bike.

 

[Doebldodl]

My e-bike (Bosch engine) comes with an app that connects to the engine via Bluetooth so it tracks the calorie count during the ride and adds it as an activity.

 

[gtjeta]

Several years ago I had the same question and after making use of internet calorie estimators I concluded the calorie estimation in cycling is only based on hr, and therefore it is as accurate for e-bikes as it is for other bikes. It is consistent with my average hr.

If at least it was the same for swimming, where they give me twice the correct value….

A simple check: make all calorie estimations just based on hr, and I will be so happy …

 

[jdoll021]

The Gazelle I ride was a floor model that uses the previous generation Bosch system, so it can't use the Bosch app. Which is unfortunate since having the bike tell the app "this is how much the motor supplies and this is how much power the user is supplying at the crank" would probably give more reliable readings. I would think the Apple Watch would calibrate based on heart rate and be able to work out that if I'm cruising at 28 mph with the same heart rate as 16 mph, then maybe I'm on an e-bike and it should scale back my calorie burn.