You get what you pay for!!

l paid £1500 for my folding ebike and have seen plenty of bikes at half the price, making me wonder if l had spent too much.

l've also had people on the forum tell me that my bike was too expensive and l can get a similar one for half the price.

Today l had a chance to try a folding ebike that's similar to mine in appearance, including the unusual rear suspension frame design, but costs £700.

l was prepared to order one today, as l need a second bike for my wife, and £700 sounds a lot better than £1500.

Unfortunately it seems that you do indeed get what you pay for. The cheap ebike looked great but to be honest mine is in a different league.

The cheaper one wasn't as nice to ride, the single gear was too low, the speed controller wouldn't assist to 15mph except on the highest level and didn't stop assisting properly when you stopped pedalling, the front suspension fork was totally useless and crashed so badly over pot holes that it knocked the mudguard on to the wheel.

The brakes were one good aspect, cable discs and very good. But the general ride comfort was poor, the rear elastomer unit did nothing and the saddle/seat post adjustment was really poor quality.

There was also a sticker advising against riding the bike in wet conditions. Where mine is designed for wet weather use.

Plus it weighs 5kg more than mine, 22kg as opposed to 17kg

Ridden in isolation it would seem reasonably okay, but compared to my £1500 bike it seems the extra money was worth it.

Which is a shame, because l don't want to have to spend another £1500. I guess l will just have to save up.

Edited July 8, 20223 yr by lightning

Hah,

• The term 'bicycle like object' comes to mind!
  
• Your experience proves that despite appearances, you really do have to test ride a bike before purchase.
  
• Having said that, the law of diminishing returns plays a part here too as in is a £3,000 bike twice as good as a £1,500 one or just an improvement.
  
• Then of course there's marketing hype that gets folks buying (at a premium) brand names rather than less well known but equally functional 'other brands'.
  
• My own ebike (a conversion) cost a tenth of my friend's recently bought ready built ebike.
  
• He gets enourmous pleasure from his purchase of course but functionally, anyone would be hard pushed to determine if it was ten times better than my own machine. Better it indeed is, but.........
  

While I agree in principle you get what you pay for as a very rough rule there are products that have much higher margins than others. When you look at the cycling industry there are many brands that give themselves huge margins because their costs are much higher and they want bigger profits. Pinorella CF frames are made by Carbotec in Asia and in their home markets costs about 1/10th as much as the Pinorella frames.

Also of course many ebikes may be on clearance, promotion or end of season discounting etc.

Lastly many ebikes are poorly configured with parts that aren't great or are poorly designed. Money can be spent on an ebike that you don't need spent. Maybe lightweight components when really an ebike doesn't have to worry about that so much.

Ebikes start at about £500 nowadays and I actually think some of those are really good products. Simple, reliable low maintenance designs. I mean this cheap ebike looks great to me and only £550. I can't really see a compromise as a single gear ebike is ideal in some situations, i.e. urban traffic where you want to focus on riding and not thinking about gears. It's large wheels and thick tyres will cope well with poorer road surfaces without the use of naff low end suspension. A strong frame and forks. I'd say this is a very good ebike for some uses especially a extremely low maintenance commuter ebike. Single speed chains have a very low wear rate, no cross chaining or wear from changing gears, they have a perfect chainline and are thicker chains and easy to re-tension with horizontal dropouts plus of course with a hub motor that massively reduces drivetrain wear anyway with simple maintenance you could be using that same chain 4 years from now. No proprietary components either. Later on you can replace the battery without issue although it would likely have to be mounted outside the toptube. I guess my point is its easy to design a cheap ebike if you base it around necessary components rather than chuck on as many garbage components as you can like poor suspension and low grade gearing.

https://www.evanscycles.com/brand/muddyfox/electric-avenue-hybrid-bike-700516#colcode=70051611

I paid £650 for an ADO A20 it has 7 speed shimano set and im pretty happy with it.

I couldnt really afford or justify an expensive ebike. Im getting old now and dont ride too much and am not doing any belting off road stuff either. The the front suspension could be better (tyre can bump mudguard going off kerbs). But if your wife is just pootling around with occasional use expensive options may be overkill. But if shes out with you all the time. Maybe not

horses for courses. Best of luck in what you choose.

I paid £650 for an ADO A20 it has 7 speed shimano set and im pretty happy with it.

I couldnt really afford or justify an expensive ebike. Im getting old now and dont ride too much and am not doing any belting off road stuff either. The the front suspension could be better (tyre can bump mudguard going off kerbs). But if your wife is just pootling around with occasional use expensive options may be overkill. But if shes out with you all the time. Maybe not

horses for courses. Best of luck in what you choose.

I don't know the spec of that bike and the width of the wheel but it might be worth looking out for a rigid fork to replace the front suspension. I always avoid cheap suspension as I don't find it works very well or lasts very long and the cheapest suspension has no way of adjusting it so it only works barely with average weight riders. Often it ruins the ride of cheaper bikes rather than improves it.

l paid £1500 for my folding ebike and have seen plenty of bikes at half the price, making me wonder if l had spent too much.

 

l've also had people on the forum tell me that my bike was too expensive and l can get a similar one for half the price.

 

Today l had a chance to try a folding ebike that's similar to mine in appearance, including the unusual rear suspension frame design, but costs £700.

 

l was prepared to order one today, as l need a second bike for my wife, and £700 sounds a lot better than £1500.

 

Unfortunately it seems that you do indeed get what you pay for. The cheap ebike looked great but to be honest mine is in a different league.

 

The cheaper one wasn't as nice to ride, the single gear was too low, the speed controller wouldn't assist to 15mph except on the highest level and didn't stop assisting properly when you stopped pedalling, the front suspension fork was totally useless and crashed so badly over pot holes that it knocked the mudguard on to the wheel.

The brakes were one good aspect, cable discs and very good. But the general ride comfort was poor, the rear elastomer unit did nothing and the saddle/seat post adjustment was really poor quality.

There was also a sticker advising against riding the bike in wet conditions. Where mine is designed for wet weather use.

Plus it weighs 5kg more than mine, 22kg as opposed to 17kg

 

Ridden in isolation it would seem reasonably okay, but compared to my £1500 bike it seems the extra money was worth it.

 

Which is a shame, because l don't want to have to spend another £1500. I guess l will just have to save up.

If I could think of any decent folders with good components and suspension, I'd suggest you buy one secondhand and convert it. My folding bike conversion cost 809 = 100 (Dahon Helios p8 bought from a friend many years ago) + bbs01b conversion kit (19.2ah battery with LG MH1 cells). Works a treat, but I do wish it had suspension when riding over some of the deeper potholes. For more comfortable pothole transits, I had to change the wheels to accommodate 1.75" Marathons (£160-ish). Turns out, 2.125" Big Ben Plus are a viable option for the new rims.

Edited July 10, 20223 yr by guerney

3 questions to the knowing of the Ebike, and those are

Q: What is it.

Q:2 What do you want it to do.

Q:3 Would you rather have a sports SUV or a Morris Traveller ?

I've only ever had 'cheap' bikes, ie £550 for my first Seago ePower 20" folder and now my £750 20" Basis Finch.

I used the Seago most days for rides of 20-30 miles over about 4 years with never a single problem. The later Finch had a battery failure after a year for which eBikes Direct arranged prompt collection, repair and return.

Both bikes were comfortable to ride, very adjustable to accommodate my longer than average legs and everything performed as it should and continues to do so.

I can't compare the ride with a bike of several multiples of its price but I doubt I would obtain several times the personal value. If I had an expensive bike, I would be too worried about theft or accidental damage whereas now I can relax and enjoy my rides knowing that it's not the end of the world or irreplaceable if the worst happened. Nor has it been a case of 'buy cheap - buy twice' false economy.

l think the law of diminishing returns applies, as suggested above.

l would say that any ebike under £1,000 is better off rigid (no suspension)

The guy who owns the £700 ebike l mentioned above thinks it's great and highly recommended it to me.

Q:3 Would you rather have a sports SUV or a Morris Traveller ?

A Morris Traveller was indeed a Sports SUV.

In 1961.

Most bikes we buy here are garbage products when exposed to the harsh working life of Africa for example with terrible roads, dust and used daily as essential transport. Halfords have sent over 100,000 bikes to Africa and transformed many lives and these are the type of bikes that can handle that environment however to many in cycling forums these would be bike shaped objects as the gears are too limiting and the bikes too heavy but about 95% of the world rides cheap high tensile steel bikes across Asia, Africa, South America etc. Products designed to last decades and be fully recyclable plus very easy to repair, re-weld if necessary and cheap parts. Great bikes to fit ebike kits to and one of the less desirable type of bikes to steal when chained up in a bike stand outside work or at a shop.

These are the bikes recycle cannot send to Africa because of aluminium frames with butted tubes or hinges that will fatigue and fail quickly, suspension, thin tyres, lightweight components that wear quickly and are expensive to replace, carbon fibre components etc these are re-sold here when donated. Lightweight high maintenance designs typically. I take the view keep a bike simple using good quality parts where needed to keep it extremely low maintenance which means a bike always ready to ride pretty much.

https://re-cycle.org/buy-a-bike/

Africa

It's hard to quantify that owning a bike in some parts is considered as well off, we are extremely spoilt in the west and we still moan.

It's hard to quantify that owning a bike in some parts is considered as well off, we are extremely spoilt in the west and we still moan.

Sadly huge poverty is coming to the UK. We still don't have any politicians with proper economic policies and the UK population are still happy to export most of their wages causing huge debts. We are heading for poverty that none of us would have experienced before in our lives. Even the article below is written with an utterly clueless solution. We need to return to a trading surplus and live within our means and pay back our huge debts. Increased taxation needs to be focused on reducing imports and increasing exports by reducing costs and taxation on manufacturers and farming. We have to restore the industries we have lost to generate wealth. We have become a vile selfish consumerist nation that just expects to borrow money that future generations will pay off for us.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/07/uk-unsustainable-debt-set-to-reach-320-of-gdp-in-50-years-obr-warns

Sadly huge poverty is coming to the UK

I fear you will be right, times will not just be tough but impossible to bear for some. I have only just manged to claw out of poverty myself to be dragged back into it with future energy costs. I personally estimate my gas and elecy in Oct, factoring in the Gov "help" to be over £350 per month, more than I pay in rent and my worst fear is that the poorer in society will not cope.

I fear you will be right, times will not just be tough but impossible to bear for some. I have only just manged to claw out of poverty myself to be dragged back into it with future energy costs. I personally estimate my gas and elecy in Oct, factoring in the Gov "help" to be over £350 per month, more than I pay in rent and my worst fear is that the poorer in society will not cope.

There will be much more help with fuel costs from government, simply because there will have to be, but of course that will just make the national debt even worse.

Unless of course we simply go back to buying the very low cost Russian oil and gas. That is what much of the world is still doing.

.

We have to restore the industries we have lost to generate wealth.

Indeed so.

Boris's plan to encourage Tory Party Donors Russian Oligarchs to invest in the UK did backfire somewhat, so clearly a new policy is needed.

I think it would help (others in particular) if you were to name the bikes you mentioned in your original post.

Otherwise it's reads like a rant without substance, despite all the highly respected responses from some other ebike owners.

Name and shame, or praise with pride.

It wasn't really a rant, it was just observations, the guy with the cheaper ebike is happy with his choice.

I've got a Mirider 1.

The cheap ebike was a "Hitway" foldable electric bike. The frame and general design looks a lot like mine.

I fear you will be right, times will not just be tough but impossible to bear for some. I have only just manged to claw out of poverty myself to be dragged back into it with future energy costs. I personally estimate my gas and elecy in Oct, factoring in the Gov "help" to be over £350 per month, more than I pay in rent and my worst fear is that the poorer in society will not cope.

People will have to adapt unfortunately. Central heating is relatively new, people may have to heat their homes differently or even heat themselves directly, more clothes or even clothes with heat pads using low power battery packs. At least heating yourself directly means you are warm in any environment, doing the garden or working in the shed etc. Many will go back to open fires perhaps as a necessity. I think the real problem will be people get angry when their living standards reduce and we could face riots and other damaging events. They won't reason that they have caused the damage to the economy themselves they will look for someone else to blame. Admittedly if you look at who has done the most damage to the economy it is the middle classes who typically import the most cars and have the most holidays and send a huge part of their wages outside the country which has led to huge problems but of course there are many other factors including the EU, the pandemic and now this Ukraine/Russian war. For some reason despite our huge debts and horrific financial position Boris was very generous sending help to Ukraine. Yes morally right to do on one level but perhaps not morally right from the viewpoint of our own debt level.

A good viewpoint of where we are is the NIIP rating (net international investment position) it shows the nations overall assets vs liabilities and its pretty grim reading from a UK perspective. Other moronic governments are the french and spanish who seem to be equally cursed with incompetent politicians and a horrible selfish population happy to destroy their own economies.

I think its one of those things where until people hit rock bottom they won't come to their senses. So many people are so politicised that its almost like taking the side of a football team rather than the rational process of discussing problems and their solutions.

There's not much sign of poverty round here. People are still tossing new cars onto their drives and the kids are all riding around on £2,000 mtb's

Extensions are appearing on houses and money is being spent on driveways, kitchens, motor homes etc

The streets are crammed with cars, if anything more than ever, clearly £2 per litre isn't having much effect.

We were lucky to buy into this area when houses were £80,000

Now there's an 18 month waiting list for a new Land Rover that costs as much as that.

A lot of it seems to be inheritance, most of my friends have had large sums biffed into their accounts after various family members passed away.

One friend had two houses thrown at him, another just trousered £140,000. Another gets more in family wealth handout every Christmas than l earn in a year. l guess it's good, if it happens to you.

Sadly not here, my dad left me £5,000 but l never got it because my stepmother "needed it to decorate the house before it was sold"

l bet people in the third world think the streets are literally paved with gold here, £180,000,000 lottery prizes, people paying £20,000,000 for an old car, half a billion for a football club?

l wonder if they know how much the bicycle frames they assemble sell for here, £12,000 for a high end mountain bike, it must seem

like a dream world.

Edited July 10, 20223 yr by lightning

l bet people in the third world think the streets are literally paved with gold here

Aye the haves and have nots, the divide will deepen.

middle classes

As for the middle class spending a tad too much on imports is a tad finger pointy imo if people wish to be angry that's fair, but this "blame assigning" & "in fighting", poor against middle class to name a one without causing to much contention, really needs to be prevented at all cost. If anyone wants to blame someone a good place to start would be Jerome Powell or the western Oligarchs.

l'm not sure what "middle class" means these days.

lf it's to do with wealth, many will have become "middle class" because of the massive rise in house prices !!

Admittedly if you look at who has done the most damage to the economy it is the middle classes who typically import the most cars and have the most holidays and send a huge part of their wages outside the country which has led to huge problems

But we are all 'guilty' of sending large amouts of money out of the UK, even the less well off in UK society;

Mobile Phones.

Electronics in cars.

Most all other electronic stuff we stuff our homes with.

Ebikes, batteries, motors etc.

Remember a few months back, when the current Government was so keen on the 'Global Economy' (sending money out of the UK was OK, what could possibly go wrong ?) that they shut down a large gas storage site off the East coast of UK as clearly with 'reliable' supplies from 'Europe' (meaning Russia) the storage facility was just not needed, buy supplies from 'Europe' instead.

My Brompton (origionally non electric) is I think made of mostly UK manufactured parts, is there an eBike equivalent ?

l would say that any ebike under £1,000 is better off rigid (no suspension)

I'd agree with that unless you have access to a high end short travel fork. Maybe a Marzocchi Z2 or something along those lines.

I'm more about self build, but not self build the motor/electrics etc, more self build the actual components that make a bike a quality bike.

Cheap bikes are a cobble together of cheap and nasty parts, almost always the bottom of the range and not built for longevity.

l think self build is the way to go if you can do it.

The "suspension fork" on the ebike l tried was just two springs in the tubes and was worse than nothing

Well, as in, my ebike with no front suspension rides better.