On the occasion of the member’s general meeting of the German service and bicycle association (VSF) last year the German product testers who had caused quite a sensation with their harsh pedelec test had promised repeatedly to get an idea by themselves of alternative and more realistic test procedures for pedelec frames and components of Dirk Zedler (photo) and his team.
Recently, a StiWa trio composed of the scientific director Elke Gehrke, the test director Dr. Holger Brackemann and the project manager pedelect test Kolja Oppel, was personally on the spot.
"Our test set-up was simple and descriptive; as we operate several testing systems for each load case, we could test frames side-by-side in comparison. To compare them directly we had modified one test stand respectively into the StiWa configuration which had not only been criticized by us", states Zedler.
In doing so the Ludwigsburg testers hope "that the presentation of dynamic tests which are much closer to the actual everyday use will convince the colleagues from StiWa to critically rethink their own static, over-determined and therefore unnecessarily product damaging test set-ups." In addition, the presentation was accompanied by visualizations on a ready-for-use bicycle.
In summary, the meeting with StiWa was described by Dirk Zedler as "absolutely constructive": "And we are very excited to see how StiWa will proceed in future with their fatigue tests".
In his opinion this not only announced, but actually carried out visit of the Berlin product testers is all in all "a very welcome conclusion of the discussion which has led us through the summer and the winter and to which we as test institute could deliver a good deal of competent input". And: "Convincing in an objective manner is still worth the effort", says Zedler conclusively.
Text: Jo Beckendorff/Zedler–Institut für Fahrradtechnik und -Sicherheit GmbH,
Photo: Jo Beckendorff
