How to Operate an Electric Bike | E-Bike Tutorial and Tips

Hey guys, Dustin here, CEO of Sixthreezero, and today I'm going to show you how to operate an electric bike. Stick around.

All right. So today I'm going to show you how to operate an electric bike, but before I do, hit that subscribe button below, stay in touch with us here at Sixthreezero, so you're the first to know about all new content, products, everything we're putting out and also monthly, weekly giveaways for shirts, E-Bikes, bikes and accessories, sorry, lost my voice, but please hit subscribe.

All right. So electric bikes gaining lots of popularity, lots of questions on how do they work, how do I operate them? I have a couple of examples today of our Sixthreezero E-Bikes. I'm going to show you how they work, how they operate. And I think it's going to cover, for the most part, a lot of electric bikes. So what I have here is our Reacher Destination 500 watt electric bike, and we've got the battery mounted on the rear, our controls up here in our display.

Now, there are going to be different locations of the batteries, depending on the type, brand of E-Bike you have. Commonly they're on the rear rack. Sometimes they're mounted in the middle here in the frame, and other times they're behind the seat tube here. In addition to that, you're going to have different motor locations, our's in the rear hub right now, some are in the mid-drive, in the crankset here, and sometimes they're in the front hub, on our tricycle, that's actually a front hub motor, so different locations. In terms of the operation, how they work, usually very similar, but just kind of giving you a heads up, there are different places for all these things. Then, up here you're going to have your screen and your controls. If you have a throttle, that will either be here at your thumb or there are twists throttles as well.

And then you're going to have controls, typically on the left hand to do up and down for how much pedal assist you to do on the bike. So, with that said, let me take you through this. Now, some batteries are going to require an on/off switch. At Sixthreezero we actually have an on/off switch for the battery. It's used, so if you have the bike sitting, you can just turn that off, reduce the power. Not all E-Bikes will necessarily have that. Our battery has the switch underneath here. So if that is not turned on, the motor and the display, nothing will turn on. So again, look for that on the batteries of some E-Bikes, not all. We have other E-Bikes that don't actually, like our tricycle and our internal every journey E-Bike, they do not have switches to turn the battery on and off.

In addition, you're going to have your charging port back here, and you can take the battery on and off in this case. We have another video about that or several videos, but today I'm going to show you strictly just how to operate the E-Bike. So the first thing, and I'm just going to put my helmet on, safety always first, you got to get that battery turned on if it's required. Then you're going to have a power switch up here. So if you can come in a little bit closer, you're going to have a power switch located somewhere on your handlebars with the controls, usually for the pedal assist. So in this case it's right here, and we turn that on and then that's going to turn on the display. Now your motor is officially on and ready to be used. Now also you're going to see a pedal assist level and I'll show you a different display we have in a second. In this case, you can see we're in pedal-assist one, we've got miles per hour, the battery juice, and then our odometer here.

This is a fairly new bike. We've only gone two miles, so very low, but now you're going to have these controls here for the up or the down. So if you want to bring the camera right here, I'm going to show you, if I push the down button, pedal-assist can go down to zero, right? And so you can change these while you're stationary or while you're riding, this is the level assistance the motor is going to give you when you're pedaling, you can either have a level one, and this is basically if there are five levels, each level's going to give you about 20% more output from the motor than it's capable of, right? So in pedal-assist one, you get about 20% of the motor, 40%, 60, 80, a 100 percent of the motor in level five.

Now in this case too, this is different for some E-Bikes. Now some E-Bikes won't even have a throttle, in our situation we've got two different types of models actually. In this model, the pedal assist level actually dictates how much power you also get with the throttle. So if this is in pedal-assist zero, and I click the throttle, the bike actually will not move anywhere, right? Now, if I put this into pedal-assist one, and I'm just going to do a quick demo and I put this, you can see the bike will move, right? So that actually will also dictate the throttle level. Now that is not true for all E-bikes, I'll actually show you another one where, regardless of what pedal assist level you're in, you hit the throttle and the bike will go. Now it's actually a nice little safety feature to have that because if you put this in zero, it's just nice to know everything's disengaged and you don't have to worry about the bike taking off on you or something.

So that's pretty much it. The bike is now on and the motor is on and everything's ready to go. So in terms of just operating it, you would start pedaling and then I would engage, or I would increase the pedal-assist for the motor to then kick in. And then when I stop pedaling, the motor will disengage unless I pull the throttle, right? So let me show you, I'm going to get going. Now I'm in pedal-assist zero, right? So watch me, now I'm shifting into one, and now two, and I'm off and running, and that's it, we're operating an E-Bike. Okay, now I'm going to swing around.

Okay. Now I'm going to take this down to zero when I stop, so now the motor's disengaged, pull the brake, and come to a stop. Now, if I'm going to engage the throttle, the process is very much the same. I'm in zero right now, see that safety feature, and I can just get going. Now I'm just going to get going, upshift, sorry, increase my pedal-assist to two or three. Okay. Now I'm just going to stop pedaling and engage my throttle and I'm off. And now I'm just under the full power. I'm at 15/16, and I'm coming around. You're losing sight of me. And now I'm back and here I come, and I'm just full throttle and this is working. Now I'm just going to break and I'm going to take this down to zero when I stop. And I'll just... I'll do a quick loop. So I'm on zero, and pop that into one and just use the throttle to help me out, take it down to zero again and come to a safe stop.

Now, like I said, there's different... Now I have it in zero when I'm dismounting and I'll put the kickstand down and I'm just going to turn the motor off. I would say in a perfect world, turn the motor off before you dismount, but in this case, I did have it in level zero. Now I'm just going to show you, if you can come in a little closer, the operation premise is really the same and actually the tricycle... I take that back, we do have a power switch here.

So same thing on the battery here. There's a power switch and that needs to be turned on. And then we have a different display, but the premise is completely the same. You can see we've got our pedal assist levels. We can just go one, two, three, four, five. Now in this case... Let's just test this really quick. Now this one I believe too... So same thing, when you're in zero, nothing engages. Put it into five, well actually let's get pedaling first. Oh, sorry, here we go. Okay. I have it in seven-speed, a little tough, there we go. Okay, now I'll just engage the motor. Okay, now the motor's going and I'll just, and we're operating and then I can pull the throttle, put that up to level five. There we go.

Okay, now I'm going to come to a stop. I'm going to downshift put that into zero, stop. And then I'm going to turn this off and engage the brakes to just get off. So that's the tricycle and I'll show you just one more which is our every journey. One more different display, but again, operation is the same. And in this case, we just have a power button here. Just hold that on. And in this one, let's take a quick look here, heads up for a second. Okay actually, so anytime you're in zero, it's disengaged, right? So the throttle disengages. So that's good to know. But it's the same premise, everything's the same, you're going to see different displays, but the premise for all E-Bikes is the same. Again, all of our E-Bikes have throttles, not all on the market do, so I'm going to start out in zero, push this up, and we're pedaling.

And I'll take that down to zero, and I'll turn it off, and there you have it. So, that is how you operate an E-Bike. If you have any other questions at all, please don't hesitate to ask. You can comment below. We always respond to our comments, or shoot us an email at, theteam@sixthreezero.com or call us at (310) 982-2877. And don't forget, visit our website sixthreezero.com and take our body fit quiz. You're going to answer a few questions about your body and your life, and our proprietary algorithm will fit you to the perfect bike for you.

And we have a 90-day test ride on your E-Bike policy. In 90 days, if you don't love your E-Bike send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pocket. In addition to that, join our community. We have a Facebook pedallers group and an app for iOS and Android. You can join the group before you purchase and talk to real riders who have bikes already, ask them how they use it, how does it perform, and see in the app actually how many miles they ride and on what bike. So it's a great place to get a lot of information before purchasing. And after you purchase, join up and be a part of the fun. You can compete on the leaderboard for weekly giveaways. You can also share photos and make new friends, we'd love to have you. All right, so thanks for sticking around, and don't forget, your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.