We will discuss how to choose an electric bike, by the way, I love electric bikes. Electric bikes are great for those who are trying to give themselves up. Electric bikes are great for people who may be carrying a lot of cargo, including their kids, compared to riding them entirely on their own. Electric bikes are for those who want to go faster, go further, and carry more weight.
There are four main decision points for choosing an e-bike: class, motor, battery and function. Bikes fall into three basic categories.
The first category is pedal assist at 20 miles per hour. The second category is throttle assist, meaning there will be a one-size-fits-all e-bike, and their use is more limited. The third category is pedal assist up to 28 mph. The obvious difference between Level 1 and Level 3 is where pedal assist stops. This means that the first category is usually more and is accepted on more and more trails. And three shifts, there may still be some restrictions, mostly cycling in the mountains, but not only that. Also check with your local authority to make sure your bike can travel on these trails.
Now let's talk about motors.
There are generally two types of motors, either in that bottom bracket called mid-drive motors, or they'll be in the front or rear hub. It's called a hub drive motor. The difference between these is usually the middle drive. It will feel a little more balanced and reflect your natural pedal stroke. Hub drive motors tend to feel more push or pull depending on where they are located. When you're considering whether you might need a mid-drive motor. The thing to consider is again the position of the motor and the fact that it frees your wheels to make them easier to maintain, e.g. if you have an apartment, much easier to pull your wheels off change apartments yourself.
In addition, the intermediate drive motor work with your gear system.
This allows for more efficient use of the battery. Two other major considerations for motors electric bikes are torque and power. So torque is the force that helps the bike move forward. Wattage is electricity or power or the juice needed to move that bike.
Wattage says how fast otherwise the battery will drain very quickly.
Generally any electric bike you're buying
In most bike shops, either have 250 watts or 500 watts. In some cases, you may find 750 watts. Everything is a trade-off, the trade-off will be whether or do you want longer battery life or more power. Usually you would admit to one of them, depends on how you sell
and the type of terrain you are in. Let's talk about the difference of low wattage, lower torque and higher power, higher torque,
and where one or the other might be more useful to you
riding style. When we talk about lower torque, lower power, bicycles are usually more efficient, you might do more work on your own light pedal assist. The benefit of this is longer range. Where you may need more power and more torque is a workhorse. If you are looking for a bike, you need more power from the bike under load. You may end up with more burdens. So you need more power, you may need less range comprehensive. It's also great for hilly terrain and a wide variety of where training those extra strengths is very useful.
About the battery, the first is where the battery is placed. Usually you would have an internal but removable battery or internal non-removable battery. Then the third option is an external battery. These advantages and disadvantages are evident inside batteries. Whether or not removable, it just makes the lines on the bike sharper, makes everything feel more like a regular bike. Looks like in this case it also allows you to choose, some brazing and you can actually still connect the water. Take bottle cages, for example, in the case of an external battery, as you see a few bikes, they will be easier to remove and generally easier exchangeable. They can live in many different areas on the bike.
The second consideration of a battery is the capacity of the battery.
Typically, you're going to find that batteries in E-bikes range from about 250 watt hours to about 500 watt hours. And you might find some numbers in between that depending on
the brand of the bike. This really just reflects how much capacity the battery has. The thing I want to address now is the question that
everybody asks when they are looking at E-bikes. And that is how far will this bike take me? What's the range of the bike? And the easiest most simplest way to answer that is it depends on how much pedal assist you're using. The more pedal assist you use, the lower the range.
There are a couple of final considerations that you might want to think about when you are choosing your bike. E-bikes start to have a lot of other really cool integrated features like built-in lights and built in security and locks. If you want those things incorporated into the bike. That is something also to think about when you're shopping
for a bike. One of the most important tools on the bike for most riders
is going to be the controller. The controller is the thing that actually powers the bike on and off. And it will also allow you to choose the level of assist that you want. The other things that it may show you, depending on the level of sophistication of the controller would be battery life, speed, and where you are in your total range. Some controllers have more information than others. So if it's important to you to have more information at your fingertips, you might want to think about that when you're choosing the bike. The last thing is the weight on these guys can vary quite a lot. They can be anywhere from 25 pounds to 65 pounds. So keep in mind how you're planning on transporting the bikes and storing the bikes so that this bike will fit into your particular lifestyle. This should give you a lot of information to start the process for shopping for an E-bike. As always size and fit are really important.