Halfords St.Helens told me that none of the Halfords shops in the UK actually stocks electric bikes, but that they could order any of them into stock if requested (presumably all the ones except the "web exclusive" ones).
I have noticed that about 1 month ago, Halfords only sold e-bikes costing 899 GBP or more. However, about 3 weeks ago they introduced the Pendleton Somerby for 750 GBP as a new product, and about 1 week ago they introduced the Coyote Classique at 600 GBP.
This was very encouraging, but still they could not provide a bike that I personally was happy with. I didn't want one in white or salmon pink, and I didn't see why I should pay an extra almost 200 GBP on top of the cost of the Decathlon one, when the gains were minimal and the replacement battery cost would be higher (50 per cent more cells, 36V). Decathlon wanted 240 GBP for a replacement 24V 8Ah battery. I shudder to think what Halfords would charge for a replacement 36V 10Ah battery, for example. Cost of the replacement battery was one of my strongest concerns.
Also there is a 2 year warranty on the Decathlon bike's electrical components and battery, but only 1 year warranty on the cheaper of the 2 Halfords bikes' electrical components (i.e. on the Coyote Classique).
In addition there were no reviews on the 2 new bikes from Halfords, which didn't overly encourage me, and the Coyote was 36V instead of 24V, but at a mere 6.6Ah, and th Coyote bike is as heavy approx. as my Elops 500,, and mine has 8Ah capacity of allegedly Samsung branded cells (though I can find no reference to Samsung anywhere on the battery, charger, or packaging, the charger says "Shenzhen Modiary Co., Ltd", the battery pack itself says on it ;- "Manufacturer : Simplo", battery has code number of "8298480", and the battery and charger box say "Trend Power Technology (changshu) INC" and code number "61550"). My battery is 1.9Kg, and Li-Ion, which at least is an improvement on the 4Kg weight of my Brother's Giant e-bike which was Ni-MH.
Actually thats's one thing I cannot understand - if each of my cells in the battery pack is even as low as let's say 2Ah, and there are as many as 4 of them in parallel to get to 8Ah, and they use 7 groups of 4 to get their 24V 8Ah battery pack, so 28 cells, at say 40g each, that is still only 1120 grams at the worst, so how it gets to 1.9Kg I don't know? Unless the additional weight of the plastic battery pack casing and the presumably BMS inside and / or Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) make up the rest of the 1.9Kg weight?
Come to think of it, where is the ESC in this type of bike, generally?
BTW I had to ask Decathlon to order the Elops / Bebike 500 in from their warehouse, as Huyton shop hadn't got one in stock for me to try (although it was available in stock at some other "local" Decathlon branches). There is a long aisle (spelling?) with short pile carpet in the Decathlon shop where I got to try out the bike, by riding up and down it carefully. They would not let me take it outside to try it before I bought it LOL.
Regards,
Alistair G.
