Foldable ETrikes - Everything You Need to Know | Folding Electric Tricycles for Adults

Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry and today I'm going to talk to you about everything you need to know about folding e-trikes. Stick around.

All right, so today I'm going to talk to you about everything you need to know about folding e-trikes. But before I do, hit subscribe below. Stay in touch with us here at Sixthreezero. Be the first to know about all the new content we're putting out, giveaways we do, and of course, new product releases. So hit subscribe.

All right, folding e-trikes. Let's say you're in the market for an electric trike and you're looking at a folding version. What do you need to know? What are the different options? What's important to you? Right here I have the Sixthreezero Easy Transit Folding Electric Trike. This thing is awesome, and super easy to ride. I'm going to walk you through these features of this electric trike and explain to you everything that you'll need to know, that you can find in the marketplace for a folding electric trike.

Now, first thing, you're looking for a trike or a folding e-trike and you're considering the motor sizes. When you're considering the motor size, number one, you have to think about your weight, because that's going to have a big impact on the motor size you're going to need. And also where are you going to ride it? Are you going to do primarily flat ground? Are you going to do hills? Are you going to be riding on dirt paths? Things like that. This trike has a 750-watt front hub motor, which is a lot of power. It can power riders up to 350 pounds uphills. Anywhere you need to go.

Now, if you're going to primarily ride flat ground, let's say you're just going to ride in a community and you don't need a lot of power, you could consider 250 watts. Sixthreezero also offers another electric trike with 250 watts. And honestly, I've seen, we've had riders on it up to 400 pounds, and the 250 watts is great if you're just looking for flat ground. But if you are going to ride up big hills and you want to get to some more top speeds or you plan on carrying bigger loads in the basket back here, then I would consider no less than a 500-watt, and a 750-watt is great.

Now, you may think, "750 watts, that's a lot of power." Now, on a lot of the-trikes, e-trikes in particular and folding e-trikes, the top speed's going to be limited. The reason you want the bigger motor is really to power the riders from zero up to cruising speed, right? And to also help you with hills. So, something to consider.

The other thing too is this is a front hub motor. I love the front hub motors for the electric trikes. The reason being, should you ever have any issues with your folding e-trike at any point in time, this is connected with one cable here and it's as simple as disconnecting and putting a new wheel on if anything ever happened with the motor at any point in time at all. If you had something in the mid-drive here or even the rear, replacing that motor, and fixing it's going to be more difficult.

There are some folding e-trikes on the market that do have the motor in the rear. Again, the disadvantage, I think, is going to be for future maintenance or fixing it in the future. It's going to make the rear end a little bit heavier, not necessarily a bad thing, totally up to you. There are also mid-drive ones, which I believe I have seen before as well.

And again, I personally want to make sure that if you're going to own this for years, you can take care of the maintenance. That's why I like the front hub motor. But in terms of power and what you're going to get out of the e-trike, you're not going to see a huge variation between having it in the front, the mid, or the rear. So it's just something to consider if you're looking for a folding electric tricycle.

Now the other thing is the wheel size. You can see on this Sixthreezero, it's a 16-inch wheel. The reason I like that is that this is a very low wheelbase. Also, by minimizing the wheels and the rims, you're going to reduce the weight. If you have a 20-inch wheel on there or a 24-inch wheel, or even a 22-inch wheel on there, it's going to increase the weight. And if you're looking for a folding electric trike, I'm assuming weight is going to be important because you're going to maybe want to be able to pick it up, put it in an RV, put it into a car, or a hatchback. You're going to want to transport it potentially or store it in a house and you want it to be easily removable.

So we've, on Sixthreezero, reduced the wheels down 16 inches. It's not going to hinder your ability to ride this, and I'm going to demonstrate it for you here in a few minutes, but it's going to reduce the weight. Less metal, less tire, all going to bring the weight down. Now, not going to be a ton of weight if you want to consider a 20-inch or a 22-inch. But just also keep in mind when you're folding it up, there's just going to be more bikes to fold.

So really what's most important to you, the other thing to consider is with the 16-inch tires, it's going to bring step-through height down. So if you have a 20-inch tire, you're going to raise the bike. So if we had a 20-inch tire on this model, you can just imagine, now you've brought the whole bike up four more inches. If you bring it up to a 24-inch, now you've brought it up eight inches. So that's going to elevate this off the ground. That's going to potentially bring the lowest seat height up. That's going to bring the step-over height up. This is a 13-and-a-half-inch step over height. So that's important for you to consider, the mounting and the dismounting. Is that going to be an important element to you? Do you want the step-over height to be low? Again, bring the tires up, bring the whole bike up, and potentially going to raise the seat. Something to consider when you're looking for your folding electric tricycle.

Now, in addition to that is a braking system. This is a disc brake on this model. I think that's the best option. It's going to be the safest, and give you the most power. But if you're doing flat ground riding around town, you're not hitting top speeds and you have a lower motor, you could consider the caliper brakes with brake pads. You may not need disc brakes. I like it because they are going to be safer, especially with the 750-watt motor that we have featured here as well.

Now, the other thing you want to consider, obviously, or what you know about folding e-trikes is how they fold should be pretty similar amongst all folding e-trikes, but again, it's not created equally. And again, with the smaller tires, it's going to fold up a little bit easier.

The other thing to think about is its adjustability. Because if it's a folding e-trike, you're going to need to be able to adjust the seat and the handlebars to accommodate varying heights of riders. On the Sixthreezero one, we have a double-seat post. You can see it's adjustable here and it's also adjustable here. So this is going to accommodate riders up to 6'4". So again, depending on how tall you are or how short you are, you're going to want to have that adjustment feature on your folding e-trike. Now, this also gets the seat down to 30 inches in the lowest position, and you can easily step onto the pedal and get on. If you're 4'11" or have a shorter inseam, you're still going to be able to ride this folding e-trike.

You also want to consider the adjustability of the handlebars. This has a quick release to easily bring the handlebars up and down right here. Makes it simple to adjust for you, and you just easily lock that in.

Okay, now let's get into the folding capability and what you need to know. And one thing I should mention too. You have your battery right here. I love this location because it's super easy to remove. You pop a key in, come right out, and you can click it right back, back in. And you can remove that to load and unload. It's only going to weigh eight pounds, so it's going to reduce the weight, of course, if you have to lift the bike.

There are batteries sometimes located in the frame. Creates a little bit more challenge. Again, if you're folding, you got to take it out. It's just a little bit more difficult. It could hide the battery, but again, what's most important to you? If you're transporting it, I like this, click the battery off, and fold it up. Boom, you're on your way.

Okay, so let me show you the folding. Now, some of these have different locking, but most are going to be fairly similar. This is just you fold this down right here. Now your handlebars are easily down. And you have a clamp right here. You're going to pull that out. And from there, you're going to be able to fold this up.

Now, obviously, this is a tricycle, so it's not going to fold completely flat because you have two wheels in the rear here. But from here, you can go ahead and grab it. And again, with the battery removed, it'd be much lighter and you could go ahead and put that in the back of a car and store it as you see fit.

Now, the other thing I want to mention about this folding e-trike is we have the front basket on right here. So when you're talking about transporting and bringing with you, if you wanted to simplify it, you could take the basket off. Not all folding e-trikes come with that. Sixthreezero comes standard with the front and the rear.

Now, to fold this backup, just putting it like that, clamp this down, that's clicks in. That's your lock and you're back up and running. Now, the other thing, I'm going to say, that varies amongst folding e-trikes is gears. A lot of the folding electric trikes do not have gear systems. On the Sixthreezero, you do have a seven-speed derailleur. So you have to think about what kind of riding you're going to do. Do you like having gears? When you've had bicycles, did you have gears? Because if you want to ride this without the electric, having those gears are going to be a huge benefit. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So if you have some light hills, put it first, going to be super easy to pedal. Or if you're hitting higher top speeds, you can go into four, five, and six, giving your legs more of a workout.

And on a lot of electric trikes, some actually don't have the pedal assist option. So I've seen that before, where they just have a throttle. On our e-trike, we give you the option. You're going to have the pedal assist or the throttle, it's up to you. The pedal assist has one through five, one being the least amount of assistance, and five being the most. You can engage those as you pedal, and I'll show you here in a minute, and it's going to assist you. And you can also use the throttle and not pedal at all, totally up to you. Or you can ride it without electric. That's what the gears are going to be great to help you with.

One thing also with folding electric trikes, you want to make sure it's going to fit through a standard doorway. This folding e-trike is 31 inches wide. Standard interior doorways are 32 inches. The exterior is going to be wider, so this is going to be able to be brought into the house, driven through rooms, stored in rooms, and also driven through stores, and amusement parks, it'll fit into places you need to go. If you want to use this as your mobility device, again, you can drive it in. It'll fit through doorways and it's very nimble. I'm going to show you here in a minute how nimble it is.

And don't forget our rear cargo basket, and our front basket, you can bring tons of stuff in here with you. Easily pop this up, and clamp down right there. Now it's in place. So put your groceries in there, put a bag in there, you name it, and you've got the front for additional storage.

Now, also, should you not want these, no big deal. You can just loosen a couple of screws. These come off. Same with the rear. Four bolts, take it off. If you don't want the basket, it's totally up to you. If you like the look of it without, or you just don't need the storage, or you want to be able to fold it up into less space for transportation, take the basket off on the front and the rear. This is going to fold up much smaller now.

All right. Let me go ahead and give you a quick demonstration now of what you should know about riding a folding e-trike. So the cool thing about folding e-trikes is they're very nimble and easy to ride. One thing though, you should consider, is not all folding e-trikes have a reverse feature. Now, the Sixthreezero has a reverse feature. I can pull the throttle and I go backward. So pretty cool. So if that's something that may or may not be important to you, make sure you look out for that on the feature list of the trike you're looking at.

Other than that, it's very simple and fun to ride. If you're going to use the throttle, you would just pull the throttle like this and you're off and running. And you can see, with the 16-inch wheelbase, I'm very balanced, very easy to ride, and very nimble. And the cool thing now is to let me show you guys this. The reason you want gears is for this. I can, let me go ahead and downshift here, so I'm in a little bit lower of a gear. There we go. Now I'm not using electricity at all. This is the benefit if you want the speeds on your folding electric trike. You can see, I pedal. I'm not using electric at all right now. So if you have a day where you want to get some exercise, no problem.

And now, let me go ahead and turn the motor on. Now my assistance kicks in and you have the five levels. So folding electric tricycles are a lot of fun to ride, and very nimble. The smaller wheelbases make them super nimble and safe. Tipping is not going to be something you have to worry about. And on this e-trike and a lot of other ones, you've got a zero turning radius. So check this out, I can just go in circles. This is kind of the difference between bikes and trikes, which is the ability to kind of turn at any degree. Whereas bikes, you can't quite turn that steep.

That's everything I think you can need to know about a folding electric trike. If you have any other questions at all, please comment below or reach out to us, at theteam@sixthreezero.com, or call us, at (310) 982-2877. You can find this folding e-trike on sixthreezero.com. Also, if you don't know what you're in the market for or you don't know what bike is right for you, take our proprietary body fit quiz on our website. Answer a few questions about your body and your life, and we'll recommend the perfect e-trike or bike for you.

In addition to that, we have a 30-day test ride with your e-bike policy. If you don't love it in 30 days, send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pocket. We have a one-year warranty as well. So in one year, if anything goes wrong, we'll take care of it, no questions asked. Get all the parts to you, cover all the labor, you name it.

Lastly, before you purchase, join the Facebook Pedalers group and download our app. The Sixthreezero app, Sixthreezero Facebook Pedalers Group. Talk to existing riders before you purchase. See how they like their products, their bikes. Then after you purchase, join the groups, track your rides on the app, compete on the leaderboard, and make new friends. It's tons of fun. So thanks for sticking around, and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.