How to Choose the RIGHT Electric Bike For You | Choosing an E-BIKE

Hey guys, Dustin here, CEO of Sixthreezero, and today I'm going to show you and tell you how to choose the right electric bike for you. Stick around.

All right guys so today I'm going to show you, tell you how to choose the right electric bike for you but before I do hit that subscribe button below, stay in touch with us here at Sixthreezero and be in the know about everything we're doing here including monthly, weekly giveaways for bikes, e-bike accessories, you can download our app to be a part of that as well so hit that subscribe button. All right. So you're in the market for an electric bike, you're seeing everyone's getting them. But the question you're asking yourself is, "Man, how do I choose how to get an electric bike?" Well, let me try to help you. So I've got some of our Sixthreezero electric bikes back here. And as you can see, we've got a pretty filled-up lineup as well and this is just some of our bikes. And there's a lot of electric bikes on the market so how do you choose the right one? So I'm going to give you some tips, tricks, and at least a framework for the most important things to consider when looking for an e-bike.

Okay. So first thing, how to choose an electric bike, think about how do you want to use your bike? Now there are a couple of parts to that. Number one is how fast do you want to ride? So are you looking for some just basic assistance or are you looking for the bike to hit top speeds of 20 easily? And I say that because there are different motor sizes and different power outputs. So now depending on where you live, what city, what state, electric bikes are regulated with top speeds. In California, the top speed you can go with the full-throttle is 20 and the pedal assist is 28. But if you're going off-road you can get motor sizes in excess of 750 Watts and you can hit top speeds north of 20, 30 miles an hour, just with the electrical assist. So you have to think about how fast do you want to go? How much do you want the bike to do?

So and the reason this is important is that you don't need to pay for the power you don't need. E-bikes for the streets typically come in 250 Watt, 350 Watt, 500 Watt, and in California, 750 Watt is the max. Now because everything's limited by the speeds, it's 20 miles an hour max pedal assist, and 28... Sorry, 20 full throttles, 28 pedal assist, having the extra power you have to decide if you want to pay for that. It's just like a car. I mean, you can have a Lamborghini that can go 200, or you could have a more affordable sports car, let's say a Nissan 350Z or something that could go 170, but you're never going to use that, right? So it's up to you if you want to pay for that or not pay for that. If you like to have the extra power that's totally up to you.

Okay. So coupled with that though, is also thinking about your body type and your weight as an example. I am 220 pounds, I really don't want anything less than 500 Watts because the heavier you are obviously the harder the motor has to work. For me, a 250 Watt still gets to me around on the flat ground but if I'm doing hills, I need at least 500 Watts to really propel me up the hill and make it easy for me. So you've got to think about that motor size, how you're going to ride it, where you're going to go and how much power. So, the first thing you need to settle on when choosing an electric bike is how much power do you need and what you want. Back here we've got electric bikes in the 250 Watt and 500 Watt range. We currently don't offer anything in 750 Watt as of today, but in the future, we possibly will.

And again, the 500 Watt can easily get you up to 20. They actually can get you a little bit over 20, but they're regulated with the controllers to stop at 20 and cut out. And then pedal assist is really up to how fast do you pedal and how fast can you get the bike going. And that leads me to the next thing about how do you choose, is also what kind of e-bike do you want? Do you want just a pedal-assist e-bike or do you want one that also features throttle and I'll go ahead and wheel this bike up here real quick? So if you are going to use the bike and still like to pedal and do things like that, you could opt for something that just has a pedal assist. In this case, all of our e-bikes have two options, one is pedal assist and two is full throttle.

Meaning you can either pedal and have the motor work, or you can literally just pull the throttle and the bike does all the work. I'll show you a quick demo. Okay, so let me show you here. So this is a 500 Watt and I'm going to turn the motor on. Now I will show you, I'm going to put it in pedal-assist four, actually, I'll just do three. And now if I just want a pedal and have it assist you just go and the motor kicks in, you can see that little jolt.

And it works. Okay. So that's the most standard way of e-bikes and then the other feature is the throttle. Now some e-bikes have a thumb throttle and some have a twist throttle. It's nice because if you ever just want to stop pedaling, you can use the throttle, but it's important to think about some e-bikes are not legal in certain locations if they do have a throttle. It really depends on where you're riding. National parks I believe don't allow throttle, but if you're not using the throttle you could probably ride your e-bike there if you're just doing pedal assist. But again, look up your local laws. We did a video on it. There's also more information out there about it, but I'll just show you if you do throttle, you can see I'm off and running and I'm not pedaling.

So it's a lot of fun if you just decide you're too tired. So when choosing an electric bike, think about how much power do you need, which power's going to correlate to the type of riding you're going to do. So a couple of suggestions, if you're in excess of 250 pounds, you're going to want to look at no less than 500 Watt, but I would recommend 750 Watt. If you are 200 and under a 250 Watt is still going to be good and I can actually show you right now what do I look like on a 250 Watt. You're not going to notice much difference, honestly, for flat ground riding a 250 and 500 Watt isn't going to be significantly less unless you're doing major hills. So I'll just show you. I'll just put this up and let me show you the throttle. Now, this is not adjusted accordingly to my body, but you can see I'm doing full throttle. This is 250 Watt, and I'm still going pretty fast. And then I can just do pedal assist and I'll just decrease the motor a little bit there.

So you can still see I'm getting ample power to go pretty fast. But when you're choosing, think about how much power do you need? What kind of hills are you riding? If you have a lot of hills, constant Hills, you definitely think about a more powerful motor, 500 Watt and above. In addition, there's another piece to this which is the location of the motor. So there's something called a mid-drive motor and a rear-hub motor, and also a front-hub motor. If you're going to do mountain climbing or serious inclines, or even a lot of hills with a lot of inclines, a mid-drive motor is something you want to consider. Now for most pavement riding rear hub motors are pretty sufficient and the reason you want to try to go with the rear-hub versus the mid-drive is cost. The rear-hub motors are always going to be less expensive than the mid-drive motors.

Now on flat ground, they're both going to perform about the same. Again, we're limited here to certain speed limits by the government. So a rear-hub and a mid-drive, 500 Watt are both going to get you 20 miles an hour. Where the mid-drive performs a little better is on hills. So only if you're going to be tackling large hills, a lot of the off-road mountain bikes that are doing serious inclines that are actually motors in excess of 750 Watts use mid-drive. They have more toque. They can get up the hills easier, things like that. So if you are heavy in excess of 300 pounds, a mid-drive motor of 500 Watt might be something you want to consider even for pavement riding. But generally speaking, a rear hub motor for pavement riding is going to be sufficient. You can see right here, with the mid-drive motor here, I'm flying around here and I'm 220 pounds.

So really important to consider when you're choosing and then the other thing is considering your battery size. So how do you choose? Well, you can look at the amp hours of the batteries and the voltage, the larger the battery, the more expensive it's going to be. You really have to think about the range that you want to get out of your ride. Are you going to do five miles a ride? 20 miles a ride? 50 miles a ride? Because the bigger the battery you get, the more expensive it's going to be. So, as an example, in a 250 Watt, we have a... I'm trying to remember now, I believe it's a 46-volt battery and there are different calculations on the batteries. There are amp hours, there are volts, and there's wattage as well. So 46-volt battery. This is going to take you on a 250 Watt with our battery. It's going to take you, I would say if you did full throttle the whole way, anywhere from 15 to 25 miles, full throttle. Pedal-assist is going to be in the range of 30 to 50 miles.

Now the ranges are so broad because the riding conditions really vary and the terrain really plays an impact on how the battery can last. So the range of the battery really varies, also the rider weight has a big impact. The heavier the rider, the less you're going to get out of the battery. But what you need to think about is the combination of all of those things. What kind of terrain? What's your body type? And how far do you want to go? If you really want to go for long-distance rides, think about getting a bigger battery or the beauty like with, not this bike because actually, this is an internal e-bike, which is more for simplicity, but our other models have these rear-mounted batteries. So you can actually travel with spare batteries and replace that battery very easily on a quick trip or not on a quick trip. You can replace that during a trip. So if you're looking to go 60, 70, 80 miles, you could travel with a separate battery. When one battery dies, you can easily swap it and keep going.

So that's an important thing to consider when choosing your e-bike. So thinking about the range that you want and how you want to choose and which one to choose is important, but you don't want to buy an e-bike necessarily that will give you tons of range because they're going to pay for it, right? So the e-bikes that have really large batteries are going to cost more money. So if you can dial into what's the perfect range for you and you can check the specs, we tell you the ranges on our e-bikes. On this one, as I said, and then on the other 500 Watts, the range is about the same. It's about 15 to 20 miles full throttle and again about 40 to 60 miles actually pedal assist on the 500 Watt, because those do have a little bit of battery, but in terms of the wattage on the motor and the battery size, the amp hours of the volts of the size of the battery, you're going to pay for that the larger you go.

So you can save yourself money if you think about what's perfect for you. So check specs, check the ranges, check what they say because you may... And if you see two bikes where their specs are the same and one's more expensive, well then you're paying for the brand or the aesthetic or something of that nature. And those things are valuable as well because good companies that back up their products are something worth spending money on but important to think about the range that you want. The other thing I think that's important to think about is when you're choosing and how to choose is what are you going to use the bike for? Because the battery comes mounted in many different locations. We have right now, two locations, actually three, because we have our tricycle. And we've got this one is internal in the middle and a lot of companies have in the middle.

We have the rear one here and then we also have one over here on our tricycle below the down tube. Now benefits to all of these, the rear rack. I like it because it's very, very easy to take the battery on and off you just take the key, turn it, battery slides in and out. So if you're riding to the store or you park your battery in the garage at night and you want to charge it in the house or your commute to work and you want to bring the battery in, you want something that's easily removable and you can slide right back on. I mean you see how simple that is. With an internal one on ours, it's a little more difficult to get it out. So if you're going to bring this in and out of your house and store it inside.

This is just very simple and protected, so it's a very clean design and also with the middle mount battery, the weight distribution in the middle feels a little bit different than the rear, so that could be a benefit if you prefer the middle mounted with the weight disbursement that way. Lastly, we've got the battery behind the down tube, that's another mid-mount one and it's just a different style. That battery's easily removable and can be brought inside with you as well. So that's something fun, something easy to bring in with you also. So where are you riding? How are you going to use it? Where are you going to charge? When are you going to charge? All things important things to consider when thinking about which... How to choose and which bike's right for you. And this bike is... This video is called how to choose. What I really want to do is give you all the knowledge and information or as much of it as I can so you guys can choose what's right for you by explaining the different benefits and different elements of the bike.

Another thing I think is important is the display. Displays can vary some, we have simpler ones here. We have a wider display here so you can see the readout a little bit better. Some people prefer the bigger display, some people like the smaller display, that's totally a choice that's up to you but that does exist as an option as well. Okay. Now I would say the other thing is when you're choosing an electric bike are thinking just generally about the bike makeup itself. You've got all the electrical components, you've got the motors and the batteries, we talked about that, but how do you choose? Well, I think at the end of the day, think about what is the most important thing to you, right?

Is it the speed? Is it the look? Is it the offroad capability? Is it the power? You've got to make a list of your one, two, and three and shop that way, right? And then you can put one thing above the other because not all e-bikes are going to be created equal. One may have a big battery, one may have a big motor or to save cost, you might choose one spec over another. If you want the whole shebang, you may end up spending $4,000, $5,000 $6,000 quite honestly. So think about what your numbers one, two, and three are. But the other really important thing to think about is your body and which kind of bike is best for your body just like a normal bicycle. When we look at all of our e-bikes and all the e-bikes that exist out there, there are different styles, different comfort levels.

Our EvryJourney here is an ergonomic riding position, the bars swoop in, your arms are relaxed, your back is upright and it's geared for comfort. In addition, it's a step-through frame where you can step on and off. So if the mounting and the dismounting is important to you, then you should really consider that when looking for an e-bike, if mounting and dismounting is the most important thing to you and that's something you're worried about, but that at the top of your list, don't put the power output at the top of your list. Because you can see here, we've got different styles. This is a step-through as well, some are not step-throughs, some have a high bar, it's a city's e-bike. We also have a tricycle. So if balance is an issue for you, something to really consider when looking at an e-bike, are you worried about balancing?

Have you not been on a bike in a very long time and you're concerned with tipping over? Safety. Things of that nature. So there's a broad spectrum of different styles of e-bikes. The one thing I will say is you can take our body fit quiz on our website. We have a proprietary algorithm that will ask you some questions about your body and your life and it will recommend the perfect e-bike for you. But from there, if this video just confused you more or you're still not sure on how to choose the right e-bike, you can always reach out to us the team at Sixthreezero.com or call us (310) 982 2877, and as I said, you can take our body fit quiz. And lastly, you can join our communities. We have a Facebook Pedalers group they are a great resource of people to talk to.

It's all existing Sixthreezero Pedalers, you can join before you purchase. You can ask them questions about anything. What e-bike do they ride? What e-bike is right for their body? And it's great because they can give you all of their input from actual riders and then be a part of the group after you get a bike. Post photos, post your rides, it's a lot of fun. In addition, download our app Sixthreezero Pedalers on iOS and Android. You can see and track other people's rides on their bike and you could see specifically somebody who's riding the Every Journey 500 Watt, how many miles they're logging. You can see what type of rider they are, where are they riding, what their rides look like, what distance.

So you can really get a sense of the performance of the bikes before you purchase. So the app is really helpful for that and in addition after you get your bike, log bike rides on there, communicate with other riders comment on photos, and post photos of your rides and bikes. It's a lot of fun. So thanks for sticking around. I hope that helps and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.