I'm not saying it makes no difference but you are often faced with a situation where to buy local support you pay a price premium so you end up with a ebike with lower quality parts than a model you may have bought more directly for the same money. Also some ebikes have more proprietary parts which are hard to replace whereas others use standard parts that are more replaceable. You may get two ebikes one at £600 and another at £1500 and they both use the same Shimano 7 speed freewheel. It's the same part and the same quality. I'd always dig deep into the spec of an ebike. I've seen ebikes around £1400 in a local independent bike shop but the spec of the hub motor is low and its battery capacity is small it has very limited range and torque for hills. Elsewhere that £1400 may buy something soo much better which should last much longer and need less maintenance.
There are quite a few deals on ebikes and always worth looking on hotukdeals and other sites to see offers.
I totally agree with your last paragraph that is the same as I have been saying a long time. For a bike mainly used on the road I feel a hub motor is far superior for general use mostly. The only time I would buy a mid-drive ebike is for off-road use as it seems pointless to me to have such a bike for road use especially if you are doing long trips and frequent commuting. Apart from their higher cost and inferior reliability they are thief magnets too.
I watched a video of Wheelers at Large on youtube yesterday. A person in the group of riders had bought a Porsche ebike and I looked online to see how much that cost and it was £12k. Of the group of riders the only bike that had a mechanical was the Porsche ebike and it was brand new. The chain snapped. The type of riding they were doing did not need that bike at all. It was light gravel type riding, a few puddles etc. Totally overbiked and pointless in my opinion. I can't quite work out what it's for as the wheels don't look too strong for off-road use. I think its more a stylised bike rather than designed for any specific use. Who would take it off-road anyway as once the frame gets damaged its pretty much off to landfill as replacement cost would be astronomical often more than half of the cost of the bike new. Just seems like a poor product for badge snobs only.
I think we are basically singing from the same hymn sheet.
I was just thinking of a buyer with very little ebike knowledge where a better brand and by that I am not thinking expensive, probably quite the opposite for a first bike, would offer a bike with tried and tested components, not overpriced, well screwed together inspected before sold and with very good customer service for when the inevitable happens and some help to fix it is required.
My first ebike as a newbie was an Oxygen Emate City, so a very Chinese generic, geared rear hub bike, cadence controlled, with a throttle and a silverfish battery. It came with mudguards, rear rack and rudimentary lights. I bought it in June 2011 from 50 Cycles in Richmond for £1,395 on a ride to work scheme.
When I got my first real problem, unusually for a rear hub bike a motor issue I found the dealer 50 cycles very unhelpful. They liked selling it to me but washed their hands completely when I needed help. So no help at all from them. Lesson learned, never dealt with them again.
In contrast the then owner of Oxygen, Andrew, was fantastic when I emailed him, and after some correspondence agreed to supply a new motor wheel for free if I was prepared to do the work required to swap bits over.
After that I then rang Oxygen direct if I needed parts or help up until their last change of ownership when the knowledge and parts for my bike seemed to have gone. After all it is nearly 12 years old!
However it is still working and winning over a new convert at the moment. My younger son who has not yet passed his car test is using it to get to a new shift work job about 6 miles away. That son is about half my weight and has given the bike a new lease of life and it flies along and climbs steeper hills with ease that it could really struggle with me on it. I think it was Colin Chapman of Lotus who coined the phrase " simplify and then add lightness". Of course it has needed parts and attention from time to time but being a generic bike it has been easy to source bits and fix it.
