- The question I want to ask you is,
how do you tell somebody on an E-bike
from somebody who's not on an bike?
You can't, because that audience is exactly the same.
(laughs)
(clapping)
- All right, one more time with that.
I'm Valerie from REI
and we're going to talk about how to choose an E-bike.
By the way, have I said, I love E-bikes.
The person who rides an E-bike is virtually anybody.
It could be you, it could be you, it's definitely been me.
There is virtually every style of bike
available in the form of an E-Bike.
E-bikes are great for people who are trying to give up their
cars, who might be commuting just long enough distances,
that it makes more sense for them to have some pedal assist
versus doing that riding completely under their own power.
It's great for people who might be carrying a lot of cargo.
And that could include their kiddos.
E-bikes are for people who want to go faster,
further and carry more weight.
There are four main decision points in choosing an E-bike.
Class, motor, battery and features.
Ooh, let's talk about E-bike classes.
There are three basic classes of bike.
Class one is pedal assist to 20 miles per hour.
Class two is actually a throttle assist,
meaning that you are going to have a motorized bike for all
intents and purposes, not sold at REI,
and they are more restrictive in their use.
Class three is pedal assist up to 28 miles per hour.
The clear difference between class one and class three is
where that pedal assist stops.
And that just means that class one is generally more
accepted everywhere on more and more trails.
Whereas class three,
you might still have some restrictions primarily in mountain
biking, but not exclusively so.
So you want to check in with your local authorities to make
sure that your bike is permitted on those trails.
Now let's talk about motors.
Motors generally come in two types,
either placed in that bottom bracket
called a mid-drive motor,
or they'll be located in either the front or the rear hubs.
So a hub drive-motor.
The difference between these generally is that a mid-drive
is going to feel a little bit more balanced and mirror your
natural pedal stroke and hub-drive motors,
depending on where they're located
will tend to feel either more push or pull.
When you're considering whether or not you
might want a mid-drive motor.
The things to consider are again the placement of the motor
and the fact that it frees your wheels up to make them
easier to maintain so that if you have flats, for example,
a lot easier to pull your wheels off
and change the flats yourself.
In addition, mid-drive motors,
work with your gearing system,
which allows for more efficient use of your battery.
The other two major considerations in what a motor does for
an E-Bike are torque and wattage.
So torque is the force that helps move that bike forward.
And the wattage is the amount of electricity or power or
juice that's required to move that bike.
Wattage speaks to how quickly
or not quickly the battery will drain.
Typically any E-bike that you're going to purchase
in most bike stores is either going to have 250 Watts
or 500 Watts.
In some occasions you might find 750 Watts.
Everything's a trade-off and the trade-off will be whether
or not you want more battery life or more power.
And typically you're going to concede one or the other,
depending on how you're peddling
and what type of terrain you're on.
Let's talk about the differences between lower wattage,
lower torque and higher wattage, higher torque,
and where one or the other might be more useful to your
riding style.
When we are talking lower torque, lower wattage,
the bike typically will be more efficient and you might be
doing a little bit more of that work on your own with just
light pedal assist.
The upside of this is longer range.
Where you might want higher wattage and higher torque
is if you're looking for that workhorse of a bike.
You need the bike to provide more power under load,
and you might be carrying more load.
So you need bigger power and you might need less range
overall.
It's also great for fairly hilly terrain and a lot of varied
train where that extra power is super useful.
There are two primary things that you want to know about
batteries.
The first is where is that battery placed.
And typically you're going to have either an internal but
removable battery or an internal non-removable battery.
And then the third option is an external battery.
The pros and cons of these are that clearly in an internal
battery, whether it is removable or not,
it just makes for cleaner lines on the bike,
makes everything feel a little bit more like a regular bike
would look like.
And it allows you also the option for in this case,
some braze-ons where you can actually still attach a water
bottle cage, for example.
In the case of an external battery,
as you see behind me here on a couple of these bikes,
they will be more easily removable and typically more easily
exchangeable.
And they can live in a lot of different areas on the bike.
The second consideration of a battery
is the capacity of the battery.
Typically, you're going to find that batteries
in E-bikes range from about 250 watt hours
to about 500 watt hours.
And you might find some numbers in between that depending on
the brand of the bike.
This really just reflects how much capacity the battery has.
The thing I want to address now is the question that
everybody asks when they are looking at E-bikes.
And that is how far will this bike take me?
What's the range of the bike? And the easiest most simplest
way to answer that is it depends on how much pedal assist
you're using.
The more pedal assist you use, the lower the range.
The less pedal assistance you use the longer the range.
When you're considering what the range of the bike is,
do consider that manufacturers will
A - post what that range can be.
It might be 20 to 40 miles.
It might be 40 to 50 or 50 to 70 miles.
And also know that that range is based on the least amount
of pedal assist being used in that bike.
There are a couple of final considerations that you might
want to think about when you are choosing your bike.
E-bikes start to have a lot of other really cool integrated
features like built-in lights and built in security
and locks.
If you want those things incorporated into the bike.
That is something also to think about when you're shopping
for a bike.
One of the most important tools on the bike for most riders
is going to be this guy, the controller.
The controller is the thing that actually powers the bike on
and off.
And it will also allow you to choose the level of assist
that you want.
The other things that it may show you,
depending on the level of sophistication of the controller
would be battery life, speed,
and where you are in your total range.
Some controllers have more information than others.
So if it's important to you to have more information at your
fingertips,
you might want to think about that
when you're choosing the bike.
The last thing is the weight on these guys
can vary quite a lot.
They can be anywhere from 25 pounds to 65 pounds.
So keep in mind how you're planning on transporting the
bikes and storing the bikes so that this bike will fit into
your particular lifestyle.
This should give you a lot of information to start the
process for shopping for an E-bike.
As always size and fit are really important.
So check out my video on that
and we'll see you out in the trail.
(upbeat music)
You can put a motor on any of these (high pitched beep)
Yes, you can.