Entry level bike?

[hgoodliff]

Hi! New to the electric bike community but have been looking at investing in one for commuting/errand running within about a 40 mile radius (not a current requirement but would be good to have decent range for longevity). Live in quite a steep area of cornwall, hence considering an electric bike, so would need something that could handle hills with some luggage (groceries) and 65kg me! Looking for something that would give an upright position, with a step through frame. I'm a 5"3 female and on a student's budget so looking for something in the range of £1000-1200. Very specific ask but wondered if there were any recommendations.

Much appreciated!

 

[Bonzo Banana]

If you aren't mechanically minded you may need the support of a local shop so try to factor in to your purchase decision what happens after you buy it, general maintenance, dealing with worn out components etc. If you are ok doing that yourself or have friends who can help you then you can buy online and deal with the issues. Many local bike shops don't like dealing with ebikes not bought from them and of course if adds to costs.

Mid-drive motors are typically the most powerful for hill climbing (legal ebikes anyway) but there are many exceptions. You are probably outside the budget of a mid-drive motor prebuilt ebike so you really need to be looking at a more powerful geared hub motor. Perhaps something around 60Nm peak torque if you have some very nasty hills. That is about the limit for hub motors. Some of the smaller wheel ebikes with hub motors have more torque.

That said it sounds like you are young and lightweight so most ebikes will deliver good results for you I would of thought.

Anyway my recommendation is this one with a rigid fork. They recommend it for hilly cities probably because the motor is more torquey because of the smaller wheels and it has a high quality freehub based drivetrain rather than freewheels of most ebikes at this price point. This gives you higher gearing for flats and downhill. Remember ebikes only assist to 15mph but most conventional bikes can go faster than this. It also has a thumb throttle which you may prefer to give you boost control of power when you need it. Also its in stock. Please note the height requirements though, for people under 5'5" they recommend the rigid forks (which I would recommend anyway) and a low profile seat post.

The Rambletta | Powerful Foldable Electric Bikes with 10.4AH semi-hidden battery from Woosh

The Woosh Rambletta is the most recent 20kg folding bike from Woosh, with a large 36V * 10.4AH semi-hidden battery, very easy to stowaway, perfect for camping / caravanning.

wooshbikes.co.uk

Sadly there is no mention of the actual torque I can see.

Also bear in mind the £ has fallen recently so there will be huge inflationary pressure on ebike prices (again) soon for new stock coming from China and Asia. The £ will buy far less in future. So its a good time to buy probably before the next wave of price increases.

 

[Woosh]

Sadly there is no mention of the actual torque I can see.

42NM.
The last price rise was last January 2022. In view of the 20% fall in GBP exchange rates since then, all Woosh products will go up in price on 01-October by 7% on average. I expect we'll have to increase price again in January 2023.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

42NM.
The last price rise was last January 2022. In view of the 20% fall in GBP exchange rates since then, all Woosh products will go up in price on 01-October by 7% on average. I expect we'll have to increase price again in January 2023.

Same here I am afraid, like Woosh we try very hard to keep our prices affordable, however unfortunately our prices are due to rise between 5 and 10% on January 1st due to the collapse of the £. All ebikes will be getting a lot more expensive next year. Unless something dramatic happens.

All the best, David

 

[guerney]

The collapse of the pound is totally Kwasi

 

[Woosh]

The collapse of the pound is totally Kwasi

he should change priority from growth to controlling inflation and help for British exporters. That's where the bulk of extra borrowing goes anyway.
It was his stupid reaction to the market's rejection of his plan that caused our borrowing cost to double over the weekend. When you need to borrow a very large amount, your creditors need to know how you are going to pay it back. If you give the wrong answer, they may say no or are going to demand more interest before taking the risk.

 

[guerney]

he should change priority from growth to controlling inflation and help for British exporters. That's where the bulk of extra borrowing goes anyway.
It was his stupid reaction to the market's rejection of his plan that caused our borrowing cost to double over the weekend. When you need to borrow a very large amount, your creditors need to know how you are going to pay it back. If you give the wrong answer, they may say no or are going to demand more interest before taking the risk.

It's a Kwasi return to Reaganomic boom/bust at a high price during a far less fortuitous time than the 70's - any metrics which have any chance of putting the Tories in any kind of positive light, from the resulting boom which might occur, will be focused upon in order to make the Tories look more electable to their natural base, but they'll lose the red wall voters who can't afford escooters anymore because of high interest rates, weak pound and general economic adversity.

It was his stupid reaction to the market's rejection of his plan that caused our borrowing cost to double over the weekend.

He's probably shorting the pound on eToro.

 

[hgoodliff]

If you aren't mechanically minded you may need the support of a local shop so try to factor in to your purchase decision what happens after you buy it, general maintenance, dealing with worn out components etc. If you are ok doing that yourself or have friends who can help you then you can buy online and deal with the issues. Many local bike shops don't like dealing with ebikes not bought from them and of course if adds to costs.

Mid-drive motors are typically the most powerful for hill climbing (legal ebikes anyway) but there are many exceptions. You are probably outside the budget of a mid-drive motor prebuilt ebike so you really need to be looking at a more powerful geared hub motor. Perhaps something around 60Nm peak torque if you have some very nasty hills. That is about the limit for hub motors. Some of the smaller wheel ebikes with hub motors have more torque.

That said it sounds like you are young and lightweight so most ebikes will deliver good results for you I would of thought.

Anyway my recommendation is this one with a rigid fork. They recommend it for hilly cities probably because the motor is more torquey because of the smaller wheels and it has a high quality freehub based drivetrain rather than freewheels of most ebikes at this price point. This gives you higher gearing for flats and downhill. Remember ebikes only assist to 15mph but most conventional bikes can go faster than this. It also has a thumb throttle which you may prefer to give you boost control of power when you need it. Also its in stock. Please note the height requirements though, for people under 5'5" they recommend the rigid forks (which I would recommend anyway) and a low profile seat post.

The Rambletta | Powerful Foldable Electric Bikes with 10.4AH semi-hidden battery from Woosh

The Woosh Rambletta is the most recent 20kg folding bike from Woosh, with a large 36V * 10.4AH semi-hidden battery, very easy to stowaway, perfect for camping / caravanning.

wooshbikes.co.uk

Sadly there is no mention of the actual torque I can see.

Also bear in mind the £ has fallen recently so there will be huge inflationary pressure on ebike prices (again) soon for new stock coming from China and Asia. The £ will buy far less in future. So its a good time to buy probably before the next wave of price increases.

Thanks for the recommendation! I had a look at Woosh and they seem to do some really good bikes. I was also considering second hand to stretch my budget a bit further, but feel it's a bit of a minefield as I'm not too familiar with a lot of the brands yet. There are a couple of bike stores close to me that stock a variety of brands; are there any you would recommend avoiding if I were to go down this route?

 

[AndyBike]

what happens after you buy it, general maintenance, dealing with worn out components etc

I know maintenance. Built multiple bikes over decades, so the mechanical and servicing side(Shocks,Forks,Disc brakes, drive-trains etc) I know what I'm doing.

That said. My first(and current) ebike I've not touched mechanically in the first year. Nothing, nowt, not even a cable tighten, or a disc brake clean/pad replace.
In fact I've only washed it once and wiped it down about 3 times.

So its not just a worry about added costs, because pretty much in the first 6 months or so you won't need to do anything, and for the 2nd 6 month period it might only be tighten up a gear cable, or replace a disc brake pad.

Putting the motor and battery aside, its just a bike, so buying a book like "Zinn and the art of mountain bike maintenance" will go really far in explaining maintaining the basic parts.
You tube is also your friend here, with literally thousands of how to vids walking and talking you through any task, no matter how technically advanced.

2nd hand on ebay - £3.99

Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance by Lennard Zinn (Paperback, 2010) for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance by Lennard Zinn (Paperback, 2010) at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!

www.ebay.co.uk

 

[Bonzo Banana]

Thanks for the recommendation! I had a look at Woosh and they seem to do some really good bikes. I was also considering second hand to stretch my budget a bit further, but feel it's a bit of a minefield as I'm not too familiar with a lot of the brands yet. There are a couple of bike stores close to me that stock a variety of brands; are there any you would recommend avoiding if I were to go down this route?

The issue with secondhand ebikes is the battery could be end of life, you get about 500 full charges out of a battery and then they start reducing in capacity significantly but for smaller lower capacity battery packs they may not last that long. Someone regularly commuting on an ebike could be charging the battery twice a day especially a lower capacity battery with only a enough range for each commuting trip. A two year old ebike used for 150 days of the year could be end of life. So the issue of buying a secondhand ebike is it could be a false economy. However that's not to say secondhand ebikes aren't a good option but be very wary of paying close to full price. I saw a commentator on hotukdeals who bought a cheap ebike a few years ago for £300 and pretty much used the battery up and with price inflation he managed to sell the ebike for over £400 so actually made a profit on the bike. That ebike would have needed a new battery very quickly unless the person was happy with a low range. He was very pleased with his sale but I wonder if the purchaser would feel the same down the line.

With regard new ebikes you need to look at the full spec. If you are considering a model perhaps mention it on this thread and allow people to give their opinions on it. Halfords do a lot of Carrera models based around the Suntour HESC hub motor system. There has been some reliability issues with the system but more importantly long term ownership could be difficult as it seems Suntour don't support the system with spares like internal motor hub parts. I personally prefer pre-built ebikes with less proprietary components which means they have a much better chance of being repaired and used long term. However I have to say Halfords are huge sellers in the UK. About 25p in every £ spent on cycling in the UK is spent at Halfords and for bike sales that could mean as much as 40% of bikes sold in the UK come from Halfords as they are at the value end of bike sales typically. At one point they stated 11% of their bike sales were ebikes which I think was around the pandemic time and many of the Carrera ebikes are their best sellers so there are a staggering amount of Carrera ebikes out there which you have to put into the context of faults. If there are 25-40 Carrera ebikes for every single Bosch equipped ebike then you have to factor that in.

I feel Carrera ebike faults are likely to be far less significant than reported in forums because I don't see 25-40x as many faults reported as bosch ebikes in fact it seems to me that you see 3x as many faults reported with mid-drive ebikes despite representing a niche in the market due to their typically much higher pricing.

 

[Woosh]

If there are 25-40 Carrera ebikes for every single Bosch equipped ebike then you have to factor that in.

I saw/see far more Bosch bikes and large direct drive hub kits fitted to Carreras than e- Carreras with Suntour HESC.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

I saw/see far more Bosch bikes and large direct drive hub kits fitted to Carreras than e- Carreras with Suntour HESC.

I always look at other people's bikes either moving or parked up outside shops etc and I don't see many kit ebikes around here but I did see a mid-drive kit ebike at Street recently, the first one I've ever seen. Generally I just see mostly hub ebikes. I saw some teenagers at Morrisons in Taunton riding together it was about 6 Carrera's together most were conventional bikes but 2 I think were Suntour HESC based. I remember it as you don't often see 6 people all riding the same brand bike together. I probably see 50-60 hub based ebikes around here for every 1 mid-drive ebike but then I don't do off-road mountain biking which is skewed more towards mid-drive motors and where most of their sales are. Amazon are a huge seller of ebikes now and if you search Amazon's best selling ebikes last time I looked it was mainly hub motor ebikes (complete) atlhough there was some kit sales for mid-drive. I saw a Viking 20" ebike the other day, a really cheap model and yet it looked like it had done years of work, it was in a very rough state being ridden by a woman in the rush hour coming home. It's still around here maybe 1 ebike for every 10-20 conventional bikes.

Of course buying an ebike doesn't mean it is being used and people who spend less on ebikes may use them less often possibly. Also there may be regional variations. The south east of England where there is more money often have different consumer patterns to poorer areas of the UK.

My area is fairly low population density (rural), average to low for crime and probably average for wages. There's probably about 6 Halfords or more in a 30 mile range of here with a lot of smaller towns where Halfords is the only mainstream bike shop for perhaps 4 of those towns or the competing bike shops are high cost specialist shops like off-road only.

I have seen gig economy couriers on youtube, a few are using Carrera HESC models. This one is in Bristol. He must have racked up many, many thousands of miles on it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOtaF2WKa0wNysH4ZRH8-w/videos

Others are mainly using hub motor ebikes for the gig economy. I've not seen anyone using a mid-drive motor although I'm sure they are out there but would of thought the cost in drivetrain wear and likely motor faults for such high mileage would be prohibitively expensive. Saying that I might have seen someone with a kit mid-drive motor as a courier, not sure now that I think about it again. The Carrera Subway ebike was used by one of the couriers who did his own videos for a short while and are often seen used by some of the other competing couriers in videos. Definitely seem hub motor ebike kits used in such videos too.

I have a strange fondness for watching gig economy bicycle courier videos on youtube just to see different places and find them quite relaxing.

 

[Woosh]

Others are mainly using hub motor ebikes for the gig economy.

we have dozens of them around Southend High Street, mostly deliveroos.
After e-bikes, we have electric/hybrid cars (Toyotas) and motorbikes.

 

[Laser Man]

Is there a bike shop in Cornwall which would support Woosh or Wisper bikes if there was a problem?

Both these makes offer excellent value for money and because they are not "main stream" give great customer service, but local support is not a given.

Common "bicycle" faults are easily fixed by any bike shop, but electrical faults can be tricky so it's best to get a make of bike that has local support and repair facilities.

 

[StuartsProjects]

Common "bicycle" faults are easily fixed by any bike shop, but electrical faults can be tricky so it's best to get a make of bike that has local support and repair facilities.

I would agree with the sentiment, but in practice how could you do this ?

Maybe not so easy.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Is there a bike shop in Cornwall which would support Woosh or Wisper bikes if there was a problem?

Both these makes offer excellent value for money and because they are not "main stream" give great customer service, but local support is not a given.

Common "bicycle" faults are easily fixed by any bike shop, but electrical faults can be tricky so it's best to get a make of bike that has local support and repair facilities.

Hi Lazerman, Top Gear in Penzance stock our bikes and will look after you.

All the best, David

 

[Laser Man]

Hi Lazerman, Top Gear in Penzance stock our bikes and will look after you.

All the best, David

Not me - it was the OP I was thinking about.

 

[Nealh]

When it comes to lekky issues most shops won't have a clue all they will do is swap bits out if a dealer otherwise they are missing a trick by not having a knowledgable person to run simple diagnostics on simple hub motor bikes.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Not me - it was the OP I was thinking about.

Ooops sorry!

 

[Bonzo Banana]

Hi Lazerman, Top Gear in Penzance stock our bikes and will look after you.

All the best, David

What about the general electrical nature of your ebikes if you don't mind me asking. Is there much proprietary about them, as the years pass will there be issues replacing batteries, controllers or the hub motor itself with third party options? I realise if the battery pack is designed for the frame itself, re-celling may be the only option or fitting the battery elsewhere on the bike. Is there any reason after lets say 4 years of reasonable to high use with battery end of life or hub issues you couldn't fix it with more generic parts? Is there any proprietary handshaking between any of the components like controller to battery or controller to display etc?