Should I Buy an Electric Bicycle? Here's Everything You ...
A few months ago, Graham Hill (the founder of the site you're reading this on) asked me for some help in choosing an electric bike. I wanted to help, but I knew that my knowledge of electric bikes was limited - there are so many models, with progress being made all the time in battery tech and power electronics - so I pointed him to someone who I knew was a real expert: Court Rye, the e-bike demigod behind ElectricBikeReview.com. But Graham's question also made me realize that he certainly wasn't the only one trying to figure out if an electric bicycle was right for him, what were the pros and cons, and if it did make sense, where to begin and which models to have a look at first.
This led to the interview below, where Court generously shares the e-bike wisdom that comes from having reviewed 300+ models since he started covering the space in 2012 (prolific guy!).
Why Buy an Electric Bike?
Well, electric bicycles offer the same great benefits as traditional bicycles including cost savings (no licensing or insurance required), improved well-being, and connection with community.
The real advantage to ebikes in my view is efficiency in climbing hills or fighting the wind combined with better range. If you experience knee pain or exercise-induced asthma, for example, electric bikes can breath new life into the sport of cycling. They might convince your friend or significant other to join you on the trails more often or they might enable you to commute to work in extreme heat without perspiring so much. I've owned cars and mopeds before and neither felt as safe or refreshing as cycling along community paths, away from traffic.
Electric bikes remove many of the roadblocks and challenges that people face with traditional pedal-powered cycles but they aren't perfect. They can be expensive, complex, and heavy which is a real pain if the battery runs out halfway.
Which E-Bike Conversion Kits Are Best?
Since the early days of electric bikes in the United States (starting in 1999 with the EV Global Motors Ebike from Lee Iacocca) frame styles and drive characteristics have really proliferated.
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In addition to simple DIY kits there are also systems like the Ridekick Power Trailer now which add ebike performance in addition to storage utility! This system in particular is even easier than installing a kit and can be easily shared between family members and friends using regular bikes or recumbents as a platform.
© Court Rye
What E-Bikes Are Good for New Riders?
Today it is possible to dive head first into electric bikes or dip your toe in for a little taste. In some towns you can even rent electric bike to get a better feel for them... Rocket Electrics in Austin Texas for example, offers foodie tours and also has a multi-day SXSW and F1 race week package for people who want to dodge traffic and get an up close view of the city. For the purest experience, purpose built ebikes are the way to go (bikes that were designed and sold as being electric, not converted later). They are lighter, tougher and more capable than ever. Whether you need a folding bike to stow in your loft or take on a plane, a tandem to rent and ride with your friend on vacation or a downhill bomber for free riding on mountain trails (no need for a chairlift!) there is definitely an ebike out there that's fully capable.
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Do E-Bikes Have Drawbacks?
Obviously, I'm a huge fan of the technology and it's true that the breadth of products has grown thanks in large part to widespread acceptance in Asia and Europe but there are some things ebikes still struggle with.
If you're a purist mountain biker who is barely accepted on hiking paths to begin with, ebikes may seem like a threat. In much the same way that snowboards used to be outlawed at ski resorts like Vail Colorado in the 80's ebikes are still in their early days. Eventually snowboarding became mainstream and Burton helped to gain mass acceptance by launching a viral initiative challenging holdout resorts. These days, Deer Valley Utah remains a "ski-only" resort but you can snowboard pretty much everywhere else and I feel like that will become the case with ebikes as well. Once the technology becomes better understood and appreciated it won't feel so threatening to some. I think traditional bikes are awesome frankly and I still own one for silent, light weight cruising.
To be honest, I mostly use it on wet and snowy days or when parking overnight in high-crime areas where theft or vandalism could be a risk. That said, I recently picked up bicycle insurance and am feeling a lot more comfortable from a theft and liability standpoint. To sum up the cons of electric bikes: they tend to be heavier, louder and almost always more expensive than traditional bicycles.
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What Are the Types of Electric Bikes?
Having reviewed over 300 electric bikes to date, taking photos and shooting video for each and posting back at my site ElectricBikeReview.com these are the primary "use cases" I've identified to help people navigate the space: Cargo Hauling, Relaxed Cruising, Trail Riding, Mountain Biking, Downhill, Neighborhood Use, Kid Hauling and Grocery Getting, Road Bike, Sand and Snow (Fat Tire), Tandem, Touring or Trekking, Traveling (Folding) and Urban Commuting.
It feels like there's a bike out there for any occasion, some have very small wheels and are designed to be easy to pick up and carry onto trains and busses (or even airplanes if the battery is under 300 watt hours) while other models are almost like mopeds or motorcycles with 100+ mile range capability and regenerative braking.
© Court Rye
There are so many types of light electric vehicles now that I actually started a second website called ElectricRideReview.com to cover electric motorcycles, skateboards and kick scooters.
What Are the Price Ranges?
As far as traditional ebikes, prices really vary and can be shocking at first... so brace for impact! The low end starts around $1,000 but a recent crowd funding campaign generated a lot of attention by offering a bare bones $700 model (it was sold as $500 + ~$200 shipping).
My feeling is that $1,500 is the lowest level worth exploring right now. I've seen too many unhappy customers who purchased online and are now struggling to fix a throttle mechanism or find a replacement battery pack because the cells they got were of very low quality. There have even been some fires when cheap batteries were damaged and didn't have an electronic management system in place to prevent overload. At the upper echelons of the ebike world there are products selling for $50k+ but those are almost like art.
For ~$4,000 you can get a high quality, Euro-proven, German engineered product with two years of comprehensive warranty support. Bikes like this offer intuitive controls, integrated dynamo lights, fenders and racks and an overall beautiful aesthetic.
© Court Rye
Bikes in this premium class range up to $7,000 for pro-level components and while that may shock some people, it's actually not far off from pro-level pedal-powered bicycles.
© Court Rye
Now let's go back to the middle-range and dig a bit deeper into costs. The first electric bike I purchased was $2,500 and it saved me $2,000 in parking alone over the first year (I was working downtown Austin, TX where parking is very expensive).
In YouTube comments I regularly see people upset by the perceived high price of electric bikes, claiming that a used car would be cheaper... I think they often fail to recognize the high price of car repairs, preventative maintenance like oil changes, insurance, licensing and parking. Cars and ebikes are not investments, they are tools or toys that depreciate with use, their true value is highly dependent on the environment and task at hand or entertainment preferences of the owner.
So for example, if you live on a highway and commute 20 miles to work each day an ebike might not be a great tool. To that I say, consider renting an apartment near your job and buying an ebike!
Life changes aside, let's do a quick hypothetical costing example, if you took all of the car maintenance stuff away for a moment and just looked at a $3k brand new car vs. a $3k brand new ebike and left gas at $2 per gallon... an average electric bike gets ~20 miles per charge and cost less than $0.15 to fill (even using Hawaii's scale-tipping $0.37 per kilowatt-hour rates). So let's say that your car gets 30 miles per gallon and a gallon is $2 and your bike gets 20 miles per charge and a charge is $0.15, the bike is way cheaper right? But that's not the whole story. A premium electric bike battery costs anywhere from $500 to $800 to replace and lasts 1,000+ charges so let's treat this like a fuel cost and divide $500/1,000 charges... we get $0.50. So we add the $0.15 charge cost to the $0.50 battery use cost and get $0.65.
Basically, electric bikes are about three times less expensive to operate than cars from a current fuel cost perspective. Beyond user operating expense they also cost less in terms of negative externalities because they don't create localized pollution. Ebikes are awesome but so are cars and even when self-driving electric cars replace the costs of ownership and reduce pollution, there will still be enormous value in cycling... and why not have an assisted cycle?
It's like comparing a mechanical typewriter where you forcefully push the keys down to modern laptop that can be operated much easier, faster, in more environments and it will save your work digitally! Maybe some people would claim that the sheer muscular joy of old fashioned typewriting and the ever-present danger of a misspelling will always hold a place in their hearts... and good for them, it's not really an issue and with ebikes or traditional bikes, we can still ride together and have fun!
How Far Can You Go on a Charge?
A good rule of thumb here is to divide watt hours by 20. So electric bike batteries have voltage and amp hours and a typical pack right now in the US is 36 volts of power with 10 amp hours of capacity for 360 watt hours total. If we divide 360 by 20 we get 18 miles. Given variation between throttle only electric bikes and pedal assist that 18 is really a floor that can go up as riders contribute pedal-power to the system or different drive systems are leveraged.
For example, mid-drive electric bikes can benefit from driving the rear cassette and gears to empower the motor for improved efficiency. In the same way that you would want to shift down when climbing (instead of standing up and working extra hard), so too does the motor and these mid-drive systems offer that flexibility because they pull the bicycle chain along with you. I've seen some electric bikes with that same "360 watt hour" battery capacity reach 50+ miles per charge on a low level of assistance (equivalent to half of the rider's pedal power output). That's pretty amazing to me.
Solskin / Getty Images
Are E-Bikes Faster Than Regular Bikes?
Not really, most low-speed electric bikes won't go over 20 miles per hour under motor power alone. You can always pedal faster than that or drop a steep hill but federal regulation limits this top speed in exchange for classification as a "bicycle". Some recent compromises have been made whereby pedal-assist electric bikes may reach ~28 miles per hour assisted but only if the rider is pedaling rigorously. A similar class of electric bikes called "speed pedelecs" exists in Europe and have become popular for commuters.
Take note however that efficiency drops off significantly as riders gain speed as a result of drag. That is "forces acting opposite to the relative motion of any object moving with respect to a surrounding fluid" or in this case air. The power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of its velocity while "air drag" is approximately proportional to the square of velocity.
In short, as you go beyond 15 mph on an ebike, drag really starts to cut into the range you can achieve so speed comes at a high price!
Can I Do DIY Maintenance on My Electric Bike?
This is a great question! When it comes to electric bikes I usually recommend that people buy locally if possible. This is because the bike will be assembled properly, following specific torque ratings on screws and such, and will be fit to the rider for improved comfort.
In the bike industry, many shops that sell both traditional and electric will tell me that ebikes see 10 times the use. This is based on customer feedback and tuneups that they provide. People just ride electric bicycles more, and further, and faster! Some of that wear can be serviced by the end user but when it comes to throttles, batteries and computer systems things can get tricky.
Electric bikes marry mechanical systems with software and electrical complexities. There is a reason that Apple calls their tech support "Geniuses", right? Advanced knowledge and a specific toolset are required to truly maintain electric bikes as well, in my opinion. The most basic bikes that do not offer torque sensing pedal assist, LCD display readouts or frame-routed cables may be self-serviceable or simply disposable given their lower price point but the more purpose-built offerings really benefit from that professional touch and often times have locked computers with special diagnostic tools much like automobiles.
What Bikes Do You Recommend for E-Bike Newbies?
I spend a lot of time answering one-off questions back in the Electric Bike Review Community Forums where people share their budget, height, weight, intended use and style preference. Feel free to jump on over and ask for yourself! Alternatively, I've put together a "Top 10" list with recommendations for value and performance models ranging from Cruisers to Kits. Bikes that I've actually purchased for myself over the years include the Pedego City Commuter, Easy Motion Neo Jumper (now replaced by the Evo Jumper) and the Haibike XDURO FS RX 27.5 but I've been eyeing the new Specialized Turbo X and Felt Outfitter which are remarkable because both companies are long standing purists that focus on performance and racing specs. Seeing them put out electric bikes is a real vote of confidence for the space.
© Court Rye
Any Closing Thoughts?
I think electric bikes are remarkable because they compliment the human body and mind while connecting us with others.
If you'd like to learn more on the topic feel free to download my ebook called "A Practical Guide to Electric Bikes" on Amazon Kindle. The book includes photos, videos and a deeper look into topics like motor design so you can better understand the trade offs between hub motors like I had on my Pedego or mid drives like I had on my Haibike. Feel free to drop me a line anytime and ride safe out there!
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Cycling is probably more accessible than it has ever been before. With better infrastructure (although we still have a long way to go), more trails, more clubs and ever-increasing types of bike on the market, it has never been easier to pick up a bike and ride than the present.
One such type of bicycle that has changed the game is of course, the E-bike. Coming in all shapes and sizes, it seems that various bike companies have finally cracked the code on how to make a power-assisted bicycle that rides well and doesn’t financially cripple your family for three generations.
You can now get an E-bike for every type of terrain, whether it be a road bike, mountain bike or even gravel bike – this last combining the two biggest trends of recent years. And they look good too. When power-assisted bikes first emerged, they were generally quite clunky, ‘steampunk’-looking machines, but with the integrated models that have hit the market in the last two years, it can be difficult to distinguish them from standard bikes. Indeed, the slicker, swisher contemporary E-bike is possibly the closest we have got to making Blade Runner’s world of flying cars and synthetic humans (set in 2019) a reality – well, that and anything Elon Musk dreams up.
E Road Bike: On the road
The ones we will be focussing on here though are probably the best looking, most difficult to distinguish models of E-bike, motor-driven performance road bikes. These are fantastic bits of kit and have helped to make the sport increasingly accessible to riders who would otherwise have left behind – or never picked up – the freeing enjoyment of riding a bicycle on the road.
Historically, E-bikes were mostly used for commuting, so they didn’t have much of a performance angle. The next genre to gain prominence was the E-MTB, which promised the rider the chance to ride more trails by saving them effort on the uphill. Now, the E-road enters the fray.
Here at YellowJersey, we are seeing a huge increase in E-bike cycle insurance policies being sold and we suspect to see many more.
We asked ourselves, what are the pros and cons of this ever-growing side of the bike industry?
There are a lot of myths about road E-bikes, misconceptions about how they ride and their safety, mainly. In our experience though, the latest generation of E-road machines are not unwieldy, twitchy monsters that are difficult to control, but rather they feel exactly like a standard road bike, just your legs are on a really, really good day. You still get back the effort you put in and, in that respect, riding a power-assisted road bike can be quite liberating.
We’ve found that road E-bikes are just as fun – and at times more enjoyable – than riding a standard road bike. Although there is an image that E-bikes are just for non-serious or older riders looking for a bit of assistance, this is largely untrue. Although E-bikes are very beneficial to these schools of rider, anyone can swing their leg over one and get powering up some hills or facing down harsh headwinds. They have in-built speed limiters as well, so you won’t actually get to the point of going uncontrollably quick.
One advantage of the E-road bike is it’s a great way to keep up with your speedier friends when out training, or just to ride for further and longer than you may have previously thought possible.
You can socialise on your long rides a little better as well. As you are not putting as much lung-busting effort in as usual, you enjoy your ride a bit more and the company you keep on it. For older riders, the use of a road E-bike can be incredibly useful, as the riding tends not to be as strenuous, thus helping riders keep their fitness without becoming a slog. For these reasons, we are expecting to see a rise in the use of E-road bikes in 2020 as more riders strive to ride further and longer than ever before.
Unfair advantage?
Of course, the rise of the use of road E-bikes does not come without issues. Concern about their use in competition for example and how the technology can be abused. The likes of the Femke Van den Driessche motor doping case at the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Zolder, and the regular UCI X-Ray bike checks, are very real issues that the pro peloton faces now which could/may well have already, trickled down into the amateur where there are no such checks. The technology used in commercial E-bikes is obviously different, but it’s getting ever harder to spot as integration and minimisation improve year-on-year.
One complaint that does arise from time to time – which we feel may need to be taken with a tiny pinch of salt – is the idea that people might use their new electric-assist road machine to take the hard-earned Strava KOMs of other riders doing it ‘au natural’. We’re not sure how likely this is to actually happen, or really how much it matters in the grand scheme, but we do know that Strava has added a feature where the user can hide their own times from segment leaderboards. If E-road bikers are using that feature, we don’t see a problem. Maybe one day soon Strava could implement a separate E-bike leader board.
On the whole, E-road bikes are a positive addition to the market. Naturally, over time the technology and engineering behind E-bikes will develop and evolve and could well take us to a point where is no discernible difference between the E-road bike and a top-notch performance road bike. E-bikes are very much in their infancy and it remains unknown whether legislation is changed or brought in that will affect their use in the future.
In short, an E road bike will eat up more miles with less effort (unless you turn the motor off), perfect if you are less fitness-focused and want to enjoy some miles at your own pace whilst keeping up with the group.
If you need electric bike insurance, we can help. Click here for a free quotation.
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