Tricycle w/ Two Wheels in Back or Front? What is Better a Tadpole or Conventional Tricycle?

Two wheels in front or two wheels in back on your trike? Which is best? Hey, everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry. And today we're going to talk about two wheels in the back or two wheels in front. Which is best for your electric tricycle? Now, electric tricycles, can either have two wheels in the back or two wheels in the front. Now, two wheels in the back are more common. That's a conventional tricycle. But two wheels in the front is a unique approach to a trike. Now, you see this in the motorcycle world. And at sixthreezero, we're one of the first to come out with it here. And there is a difference. Now, there's also a difference in how you design a two-front wheel for each trike that I'll talk to you about in a second. Now, what a conventional trike is good for is if you want just absolute sitting stability. And what I mean by that is if you want to be able to get onto your trike, sit here and no balancing is needed whatsoever. The other benefit is when you're riding, staying upright, and balancing is very easy. Again, doesn't require much or anything at all from the rider to balance on the trike whatsoever. Now, the one thing about riding a conventional trike is the steering and balancing are significantly different than a two-wheel bike. So what I see is a lot of people transitioning from a two-wheel standard bike to a three-wheel conventional tricycle there's a learning curve. The steering is different. The balancing is different. Now, once you figure it out, most people figure it out pretty quickly. They're off and running. So. If you need to be completely balanced and, you know, you're not looking to go at really, really high speeds, a conventional trike is the way to go now. One thing about the speed I'll say is this does go up to 16 miles an hour. It's very balanced at 16 miles an hour with these small 16-inch wheels. It's very low to the ground, which makes mounting and dismounting very easy also. Now, two wheels in the front tadpole trike. In particular, our design has a tilting steering mechanism. Now you can see the wheels lean like this. Now, with that said, that means that the trike can balance on its own. However, it does tip over if you push it. So this does require the rider when seated in it, you actually have to have your feet on the ground. And when you're riding it, you do need to keep the bike straight, the handlebar straight, and steer. Now, the balancing required on this is much less than on a two-wheel bike, but you are required not to balance necessarily, but to steer.

You have to keep the wheels in a certain straight. So if you're somebody that's looking for assistance, you still have some balance, but you also want to go fast, because that's the advantage to having this tilting steering and the two wheels in the front is the nimbleness and the ability to corner and the speeds. This is going to ride and balance and feel like a two-wheel bike but you have the added support in the front. Now you can see, though, again, I can't pick my feet up and balance or the bike will tip over. So that's the big difference. Now, there are some two front-wheel trikes that can balance on their own and you can stand here. In that case, you're gonna have limited you're gonna have limited tilting with the front wheel. So as you limit that, It's going to allow it to balance more, but it's not going to make it as nimble around turns and allow you to take curves. This is the type of trike where you take a turn, you actually can lean into it because you have the tilting steering. It's a lot of fun. And we've got other demos out there, videos on YouTube that you can take a look at as well. And I'll give you a quick demonstration of what I mean, and I'll show you a ride on how both of these work. OK, so you can see I'm all mounted up here and I don't have to do any balancing whatsoever. The other thing, too, is that we have reverse on this trike in particular. So if that's something that you need or want, you have that option available to you. Now, I'm just going to go up here and take a curve and I just kind of want to show you. You can see, you know, I don't have to do much. Now, when you take turns on a trike, though, conventional trike like this. Turn up the assistance. All right. Now, when I come in here, you generally want to slow down a little bit into the turn, right? And you want to make sure you're nice and balanced.

Now let me leave this trike here, and I'm just going to grab our two-wheel trike, our two-wheel in the front. Okay, now I'm keeping the wheels straight, okay? So when you start, I have to keep the wheels straight, and I can be off and riding. Now the cool thing about this is... Oh, I've got to put my kickstand up. There we go. Now you can see these kind of hairpin turns I can make. Let me my assistance up here. And you can see I can really come in fast and corner very sharply. And it feels like a two-wheel bike, but you have the added support of the front. So on these two front wheels, you don't have to worry as much about your speed to stay balanced. On a conventional trike, you need to monitor your speed in order to balance appropriately. Now, on the EZ Transit, I can go pretty fast because of the low center of gravity. But, oh, we got a car. Oh, we're good. So I have to make sure like this, I'm keeping the wheels down on the two-front-wheel trike, it just cuts right in. So coming around this way now, you want to make sure you keep that down. So you can tell they ride differently. They balance differently. My suggestion is if you're somebody who's lost all ability to balance, you're going to want a conventional trike. If you're somebody who feels like the two added wheels in the front can help you, that's enough to help your balance. The two front wheels are great because it'll feel like you're on a standard bike, but the two wheels will give you assistance, almost like training wheels in a sense. But they're going to have that maneuverability to go fast and take turns tight. So I hope that helps if you're thinking about a conventional or a reverse trike.

If you have any other questions or comments, please reach out to us at theteam@sixthreezero.com, or call us at 310-982-2877. We also have a 30-day test ride on your e-trike policy. If you don't love it in the first 30 days, send it back. No questions asked, no money out of your pocket. In addition to that, we're going to warranty everything for up to one year. If anything goes wrong in the first year, we'll take care of it, parts and labor. And lastly, join our community, our Facebook group called sixthreezero Pedalers. There are thousands of members in there. Connect with existing riders before you buy your e-bike. Then when you have yours, post in the group, make friends, and download our app to track your rides and compete in the leaderboard. So thanks for sticking around and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.