Things You Should Know Before Buying Your First E-bike

When walking down the street, you might come in sight of riders pedaling their ebikes at a faster speed than regular bicycles since the electric bike is growing in popularity. This may interest you and you might be questioning whether an e-bike is a necessity for commuting or workout. Once the decision is made, all manner of issues and questions have emerged:

What is an ebike? How does an electric bike work?

Does an ebike fit for a newbie/rider?

Why should I use an electric bike rather than a regular bike?

Which type of ebike is best?

How to choose the right ebike?

No direct answer! The advent of various e-bikes has brought a formidable task for first-time buyers who might possess vague notions and hardly determine which one is right for them. Keen to grasp some rudimentary knowledge and technical concepts of e-cycling? Here are a couple of things you should know first.

1.Get to know what you'll use it for

Before making up your mind, it is advisable to consider and figure out: What will you use an e-bike for? Where will you ride it frequently? There are different types of electric bikes whilst varying in functionality and performance, which are designed to accommodate diverse terrains and meet all needs.

Commuters could make use of these bikes across bustling streets, being even faster than vehicles in traffic jams and cutting down their commuting time. When on vacation or having routine activities, e-bikes riders could cruise around for relaxation and recreation. Tellingly, pedal-assist e-cycling for workout and fitness once a day allows riders to do more regular aerobic exercise that may burn up more calories, rather than excruciatingly strenuous cycling once a week. Those who suffer knee injuries and pain avail themselves of pedal assistance to tackling steep slopes and hills.

There is little doubt the ebike manufacturers and retailers offer a wide selection available for consumers - a variety of electronic bicycles to cross all sorts of terrains: highway riding, off-road riding, trail riding, sand riding, uphill, and so on. Coping with these issues, they respectively assemble e-bikes with a fat tire, extra battery capacity, and reformative motor to a faster and further cycling.

2.How many kinds of e-bike are there

In general, the difference of ebikes can be found in the manipulation and engagement of the motor which adds pedal assistance to your pedaling. Aside from the pedal-assist system, electric bikes with purely throttle-powered mode allow you to move without pedaling. Often we tend to embrace an idea to hybridize the former and the latter. For this reason, hybrid E-bikes come to the attention of the public. A hybrid ebike is an immaculate trade-off among simply pedaling mode that works as regular bicycles, the pedal-assist mode that adds more or less pedal assistance (determined by its torque or cadence sensor), and throttle-only option with no need for pedaling. You could easily switch back and forth.

3.Folding or not

Recently, what captures e-bike enthusiasts' imagination- especially urban dwellers living in a small home and commuters taking a public-transport transfer- is the significance of folding ebikes. Of all kinds of electric bikes, foldable e-bike taking prominent advantages of portability and compactness, can be easily folded anywhere and anytime, and go back in a second. Folding e-bikes, being capable of stowing away in a car trunk than full-sized electric bikes, is convenient to use for an e-bike trip when on vacation or weekends. You can just toss them in the trunk when you don't need them. Moreover, it seems to be a favorable option to ride a folding bike for a commuter who takes more than 30 minutes to walk to a bus station, which helps save much time and energy. It is worth mentioning that one folding bicycle differs from another concerning designs and weight.

4.Battery range per charge

Factors that contribute to a further range of electric bikes could be the capacity of battery packs, their maximum current and voltage, motor factors like how much power the motor delivers, and different working modes like pedal-assist mode of lower power consumption. Once e-bikes possess any of the above variables, the range is distinct from at least 35 miles up to 100 miles.

Today's e-bikes adopt Li-ion or Li-polymer technology, leaving at least 500 times of charge and discharge cycles. Generally, recharging a battery that is fully drained may take 3-6 hours, that remains residual juice will take less. Other factors of batteries, aside from the performance must reach technical requirements, that we should take into consideration are cost and maintenance.

5.Power of motor

Does the power of the motor matter a lot to an e-bike? Or you might suspect of and feel confused that whether or not the ebikes could go faster with larger power like 1200 wattage. Actually, among e-bike variables like the adoption of mid-drive motor or hub motor, the power of motor serve as an important role in range and speed modulation but not decisive. The benefits have been exaggerated.

The general powers of e-bike motors are 250-watt, 350-watt, 500-watt, 750-watt, and 1000-watt. But the motor of 350-500 watts is enough for daily use or workout. Riding an e-bike with a well-designed motor enables you to get far and explore more with the power of 350 or 500 watts than a higher power.

6.Top speed

Many of the features that make e-bikes so prominent among regular bicycles, vehicles, and public transport, are that you could shuttle back and forth on urban roads of rampant motorization, and gain electric assistance to climb hills at a faster speed to cut down unnecessary time. More and more people become passionate about speed. In the United States, mopeds can be classified as Class1-3 that top speed up to 28mph.

Class 1: pedal assist, max assisted speed of 20mph

Class 2: throttle assist, max assisted speed of 20mph

Class 3: pedal assist, max assisted speed of 28mph

7.Electric bicycle maintenance

How to do e-bike maintenance? Except for the motor and battery, you can do maintenance on a regular basis to all the conventional bicycle parts. You can lubricate the chain, check if the tires are inflated and the brake still works well. On the base of that, you should do a few additional maintenances: your battery and motor.