Would You Ride It If It Weren’t An E-bike?
Before you buy any e-bike, ask yourself, would I ride this if it weren’t an e-bike? If the answer is no, don’t buy it!
You ride bikes with lightweight hydroformed and/or butted ROUND or oval tubed frames. We haven’t used heavy, buzzy and dull straight gauge aluminum in 30 years! Show me one quality bike with stiff, heavy, square tubing.
Do you demand quality components? Why would you pay $1500-$5k for an e-bike with parts you see at Walmart?
As most of you know, I got in to building custom e-bikes because my friends were getting ripped off. What you don’t know is that I sincerely wish I had no reason. It is hard work. I am lazy and frankly, I spend too much time warrentying my mistakes (it makes me feel bad when a customer has to leave their bike). I’d fight to get an affordable line of high quality factory e-bikes in-house. They just don’t exist.
Our shop is a way too small corner in a craft brew taproom! Obviously, I am buying things one at a time, as needed, not at discounted bulk prices. I should not be able to take a new gravel bike off the floor, add a torque sensing mid-drive kit and end up offering a lighter, quicker, better handling, longer range bke. I charge half as much! BTW, that’s with a color display and USB accessory ports (the BEST competitors are still using monochrome).
Sure, most can get by. They aren’t riding far. They aren’t tackling a lot of steep hills. Handling and quick, reliable shifting don’t mean much to them. Our Retrospect Rev+ bikes work fine and affordably for them. Still, folks should be able to get more for their money.
Take an overly generous $1500 off for a low powered motor with a small, low voltage battery and a barely legible monochrome display, on a factory e-bike ($2k to $5k). There is no way you would spend the remainder for the remaining traditional bike.
Now, before you point to the many low end hub motor bikes out there, know that once you get an e-bike you are going to ride an average of twice as far. You are going to, on average, ride twice as often. Lifting, locking, storing and just handling a 60-90# bike is a pain! They still have poor performing components, geometry and frane materials. This is to say nothing of things like inappropriate tires and suspensions from the 90’s. It isn’t even that these do not work, for many they do. It is that the quality, performance and range still do not justify the price!
If the e-bike does not look like the traditional bike you would choose for the same ride, it is not going to be efficient as an e-bike. Don’t buy it.