Guide to buy Electric Bikes

There are so many electric bikes on the market now that it can be difficult to choose between different brands and different models. Many of the electric bikes brands have bikes that look identical and have very similar specifications but with widely varying prices.
So how do you choose where to spend your money and ensure you get what you expect?

For any of you that have tried several e bikes you will no doubt have noticed that even when the specifications are identical, e.g. 200W motor and 24V Li-Mn battery, the performance of each model can be a world apart. There are straight forward reasons for this and I hope reading this guide will answer all of your questions.

The important features of an electric bicycle

WEIGHT
The weight of an electric bike is essential to its performance, there are also legal limits for weight(see Rules & Regulations). The heaviest parts of an electric bike is the battery, the frame, and the motor.
Manufacturers have been busy reducing the weight of these parts.

Frame:
Lightweight frames are always good, unless you plan to do serious off-roading where a light weight frame sometimes sacrifices flexibility and strength. People nomally prefer AL alloy frames.

Battery:
Lightweight batteries are really coming along and in the more expensive bikes will usually provide power equivalent to the uncompromising heavy batteries.

Motor:
Through continuous improvement and increased investment (thanks to you) motors are becoming smaller but like any of the latest technology the best ones are more expensive. Better motors will have lighter more durable materials and sometimes they will be smaller in size and weight while still offering the same power output.

HOW TO GET THE BEST FROM YOUR BATTERY

SLA: Like a car battery your lead acid battery takes a few cycles to get to peak performance, once there it should be topped up as often as possible. The reason you get a 3 year warranty with many car batteries is that they are being charged every time you run the engine and this means they rarely experience ‘deep discharges’.

Nickel: NiCd and NiMh batteries are tremendously robust; they can deliver high amounts of current and be ‘exercised’ back to life when they start to die. As with most batteries the most important thing is to keep them topped up, however they are known to suffer from ‘memory effect’ or ‘floating voltage’. To address this problem they need to have periodic full discharges and as they age the number of full discharges required each time increases. For a NiCd battery this period is every month and for a NiMh it is every 3 months.

Lithium: No matter which type of exotic lithium chemistry is used the battery maintenance follows a simple rule: keep it topped up! A lithium battery that will perform say 500 full cycles may well perform 1,500 or 2,000 half cycles. The trick is to get a bigger battery than you need for your journey or carry the (usually small) charger with you and take advantage of ‘opportunistic charging’. Reducing deep discharge cycles increase lifetime and performance over the lifetime.
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