It's a personal thing but I prefer to pay for quality parts for my bike. I would have been prepared to pay this price if it is a high quality product and exactly what I wanted. In the UK many electric bikes kits and parts are very low quality which is not the case in Europe. Maybe that is why we are so far behind them in take up of electric bikes.
The reason that the UK lagged behind other countries in their take-up of electric bikes has nothing to do with quality.
Your average Chinese hub-motor will outlast and outperform most of those European offerings, and they're a lot easier to fix in the rare cases when they do need attention. To me, that means that they're quality products.
Many of the features that you get on expensive non-electric bikes become moot when you have an electric motor. 12 gears are completely unnecessary for a rear hub-motor. Low tech 9-speed is more than enough. If you ride in circumstances where you need one of those 12-speed setups, a rear hub-motor wouldn't be the best choice, regardless of the type of axle. For normal use, a though axle doesn't really bring any advantage unless you want to keep taking the wheel off to put the bike in your car or something like that. Even then, it probably isn't as easy as a non-electric bike. I can see a big torque arm on the brake side. How do you deal with that when removing the wheel? Also, that torque arm looks quite wide and the disc looks to be a long way away from the frame. How does that work?
Your average rear Chinese motor is near silent, light, powerful and durable. Why would you want anything else?
Some of us have been on this forum a long time. We've seen all sorts of fancy stuff come and go. It's great that people try these things. It's all a learning experience, but those that stick with their winning formula are still riding their bikes after many years. I spent more than £20,000 trying all these new things until I found ebiking nirvana 7 years ago. I go to the shows and try everything new, but nothing since then has tempted me away from what I have, even with my unlimited budget.
