“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it…if you live” -Mark Twain
Well, another year has gone by, and electric bicycles have continued to grow in North America. Due to the $8/gallon gasoline in Europe, E-bikes remain hugely popular there, but…also due to the surprisingly low gasoline prices in the US ($2/gal in many places) I have a feeling that E-bike sales probably took a dip the last two months of this year (more of a dip than the normal winter droop in sales).
Europe is leading the world in developing sophisticated products for the mature E-bike market there (though often considered expensive and low-powered by US standards), and the affordable end of the market is still driven by China. Millions of Chinese workers cannot afford a car, and the previously popular 2-stroke gasoline scooters have been banned due to the horrible smog in the cities, so…E-bikes and kits are booming there. And by “booming” I mean millions of E-bikes sold per year (not a typo).
This is the first year that electricbike.com was at the Interbike show in Las Vegas. We were able to meet several important people in the E-bike industry, which is a valuable way to get the inside information about likely developments for the next year, so lets get to it…
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Trends seen in 2014
Fat Bikes. Several bike industry insiders expressed reservations that fat bikes were just a trend that will fizzle. I personally believe that the sudden interest we have seen this past year does have some trendy-ness buzz about the top half of the sales peak, but…when the temporary fuss dies down, I believe they will remain useful, with a steadily growing sales curve. They provide a comfortable ride without needing complex and expensive front or rear suspension, and they are the absolute best platform for sand and snow (see: winter in Canada, Europe, and Russia…any customers there? ).
The Luna cycles Fat bike
The BBS02 “slide-on” mid drive has started a revolution. The high-end of mid drives is still dominated by expensive and well-designed units that use a proprietary mounting interface (Bosch, Panasonic, TransX, etc) High-end bicycle producers have collectively decided to separate themselves from cheap “big box” store bicycles (Bicycle Shaped Objects/BSO’s from Walmart, Amazon, Ebay, etc) by moving towards 27.5-inch wheels, attractive hydro-formed tubing, and proprietary mid-drives.
This leaves the Bafang BBS02 as the best option for the millions of cheap bikes that are sold every year. Just as we predicted, there are dozens of low-end and mid-level bicycle manufacturers who have been able to add a mid-drive to their catalog by simply contracting with Bafang (no changes to the bike frame are needed). The way I can tell that the BBS02 is a huge success is because there are now several competitors introducing an almost identical design in the spring of 2015. Perhaps imitation truly is the greatest form of flattery?
The 2015 Volton 36V frame, now with BBS02 mid drive option
2WD…some of the early experimenters may have thought that 2WD would be just an obscure attempt to simply be different, but there are significant benefits worth considering. Two controllers are required, but, sometimes a dual-motor system is cheaper (or equal) in price to a powerful single-motor E-bike of the same power. So why add the extra effort and complexity? Doubling the tires’ traction of a high-powered bike is something that has to be felt to be fully appreciated. I have seen a dramatic increase in 2WD’s listed for sale to the public this past year, and…more options are on the way for 2015.
The AWD model from High Powered Cycles / HPC
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Factory E-bikes in 2014
The three biggest E-bike retailers in North America in 2014 have been Currie, Pedego, and Prodeco Tech.
Currie Technologies is a global leader that owns a variety of brands such as Haibike (an upscale full-suspension with the Bosch mid drive), eZip Trailz (an entry-level E-bike), IZIP, and eFlow. The Bosch mid-drive system is very popular in Europe on a wide variety of bike frames, but if you are a North American customer and want to buy a bike with one of these tomorrow, your best bet is a Haibike (shown below).
The 2015 Haibike with a Bosch mid-drive.
To be fair, if all the individual Currie brands were measured on their own, Pedego would actually be the number one sales success in North America this last year. It’s difficult to find accurate verified figures, but according to the best available data, Pedego has sold roughly 8,000 E-bikes in 2014.
Pedego has had a strong response from their customer base about the color selections, so Pedego now has more color options than any other factory E-bike.
Pedego is doing quite well, in spite of having only a simple rear hub kit…and their best sellers are simple comfort cruisers (although they are adding more models now). They emphasize marketing to older customers and women (two customer groups that are often ignored), plus having the best possible customer support.
The next biggest sales success in North America was Prodeco Tech.
Prodeco Tech has some dramatically improved models coming in 2105. The E-bike shown is one of their most popular models from this year.
Prodeco Tech has a lower price for an E-cruiser that is comparable to the performance of Pedego E-bikes, but a frequent complaint of customers is their weak “bolt on” rear battery rack which almost always breaks (Pedego’s battery racks are frame-welded). I mention that because for 2015, Prodeco Tech is moving towards a battery mounted inside the frame triangle.
While I was at the Interbike meet, I took every opportunity to talk to E-bike shop owners, especially ones who carry a variety of brands. They verified what Pedego had told me…test rides (and E-bike rentals) sell E-bikes better than any salesman could. Also, I heard that the BH-eMotion (from Spain) was selling fairly well, because out of the recent batch of factory E-bikes with the battery built-in to the downtube, the eMotion has the lowest price.
Multi-brand E-bike shops have stated that the BH eMotion brand has been a top seller for them in 2014.
Speaking of price, back in 2013 we saw a LOT of advertising and news buzz over the Specialized Turbo and also the Stromer ST-1. However…2014 was not kind to these two very polished factory E-bikes. It seems like everyone who rode them said they liked them, but…the $7,000-ish price tag for the Turbo was too much of a shock for most buyers. The Stromer (based in Switzerland) is much less at $3500-$4200, but even then it is still only a 500W rear hub. The comparable hardtail BH eMotion Neo Cross can be found for $2700, and even the full-suspension Neo Jumper is only $4,000. The Stromer is a much more sophisticated than the E-bikes from BH, but with this much of a price difference, the BH eMotion line is selling better than Stromer in North America.
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Hub-Motor Kits in 2014
I still haven’t found a reliable way to accurately tally how many kits have been sold, but my unscientific polling of everything I read leads me to believe that a hubmotor kit is still the most popular way to end up with an electric bike, due to how cost-effective it is. Also, from the sellers perspective, it is easier to start-up a garage business by selling kits, so…there will likely continue to be a lot of competition for the cheapest variety of kits.
If you are willing to pay a little more than the price of a “risky but cheap” ebay kit (controller, throttle, battery, hubmotor mounted in a wheel)…the standout vendors are still ebikes.ca (“Grin Tech” in Vancouver, Canada), em3ev.com (in Hong Kong, China), and ebikekit.com (based in Philadelphia, USA).
At the risk of sounding like a fan-boy, Justin at ebikes.ca is a pioneer in the ebike movement. However, if he was just resting on his laurels, this would only mean that he had still earned a place as a historical footnote. Instead…Justin and his crew have continued to make risky investments in developing cutting-edge products (see below), and they are limiting themselves to high-quality components for the upscale buyer who values reliability.
Paul at em3ev.com saw that there was a market for a kit supplier who produced reliable products that are one step up in performance compared to the affordable “street legal” kits that the majority of customers tend to lean towards for their first E-bike, and the mass-market is notoriously price-sensitive. When someone buys a cheap kit and then…decides they now want more performance (or are disappointed in quality and reliability of ebay-kits)…Paul wanted em3ev.com to be their second E-bike kit. Of course, smart buyers sometimes make him their first kit.
Of course, if you stand behind your products with a respected level of customer service, the variable nature of China quality can be a problem. Paul realized years ago that in order to reduce warranty claims and provide the consistent level of quality he wanted, he would have to base himself near the factory. His office and shop are in Hong Kong.
Jason at ebikekit.com is a successful and hard-working businessman who has made it out of the dynamic and unstable ebike market of 2012, and his astute business choices put him on very stable ground in 2013 (which is when he first caught our eye). His company in Philadelphia is well-managed and is keeping his crew very busy during a time when many other kit-sellers fell by the wayside. When he was starting out, he sourced completed wheels from China, but too many customers were unhappy with the variable quality of the spokes and rims.
Jason demands quality when he buys a product, so he knew what his customers needed. He made the bold choice to buy individual components and build his own wheels here in the USA (even though labor is cheaper in China). This way his crew can sort out the occasional substandard part. His catalog of products is focused on only a few of the most popular types of kits, but what is not at first obvious is…how he has continually improved each product. At the Interbike meet, we discussed how he had added strain-relief to the cable bundle of the controllers (which can’t even be seen), plus he had changed the connectors to make the installation easier for customers.
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New Products in 2015
Lightning Rods Industries has produced a mid drive kit that really knocked us out. we actually bought the first two kits before they were manufactured, after we saw Mike Backus’s design. It fills a niche that no other kit does. Due to the low 250W power limits in Europe, there are many low-powered mid-drives to choose from, but if you want to run between 1,400W to 2800W through the bikes gears (such as is needed in slow uphill off-roading), this kit provides the maximum power that would I recommend running through the bikes gears. If you need more power than this, use a hub-motor or a left-side chain to the rear wheel with a mid-mounted motor.
The Lightning Rods mid drive with the torque-multiplying 33:1 reduction from the motor to the Bottom Bracket (BB)
The Xiongda “double speed” motor is a milestone design. It takes a simple and easy to install hub-motor kit, and dramatically increases its hill-climbing ability. This creates a 5th ebike system category (direct-drive hub, geared hub, mid-drive through the gears, mid-motor left-side-drive, 2WD, and now…2-speed geared hub). The only size available right now is a small hub designed to work with the European 16-MPH speed limit at 36V. The good news is that I’ve been informed that E-bike giant Bafang was quite excited about it at the 2014 Taipei bike show and we may be seeing a collaboration between these two in the near future. I can only hope that it is a larger US-legal 20-MPH hub at 36V X 21A = 750W.
The Xiongda geared hubmotor, with two separate internal gear-reductions acting as a 2-speed transmission for the motor.
The one product that seems to have created the most buzz as soon as it was introduced was the MXUS 3000W Direct-Drive (DD) hub. It is only slightly smaller than the monster cromotor (a 45mm wide stator compared to the Cro’s 48mm), but it has a much more affordable price. The stock V3 Cro has a 145mm wide axle shoulder, so standard 135mm drop-outs have to be spread just a bit, but the MXUS just drops in with its 135mm axle shoulder. Of course they both still only fit a single-speed freewheel, but if you want to dump a TON of amps into a rear hub on a bicycle, these are your two beefiest choices.
The MXUS 3000W DD hubmotor with a 45mm wide stator for massive amps.
MXUS is getting TWO new product shout-outs in our end-of-the-year round-up. They also introduced a small geared hubmotor with helical gears. Helicals only cost a little more, but they are quieter than the common straight-cut gears. The first model is small, just a 350W geared hub, but…wouldn’t a 2WD E-bike with the pair forming a 2WD US-legal 750W system be interesting?
The 250W MXUS geared hub with helical gears.
TDCM introduced a direct drive hubmotor with a Sturmey-Archer 5-speed IGH integrated into the center of it. I don’t like DD hubs for hills, but for a relatively flat commute, this is a wonderful project (DD hubs can run almost silently with a sinewave controller). IGH’s have no external gears or derailleur for a sleek and less-cluttered pedal-system. I’ve always liked IGH’s, and…they plan to have a 7-speed IGH available in 2015.
The IGH / DD- hub hybrid from TDCM.
Justin Lemire-Elmore at ebikes.ca discontinued the common 9-Continents DD hubmotor for a couple years ago (27mm wide stator). I suspect sales were slow due to many potential customers settling for the super-cheap Ebay kits of a similar size. He continued carrying the Crystalyte H35 series (35mm wide stator) which was capable of more power than the 9C, so it was a high-performance option with room to grow if you wanted more power in the future.
The 9C has returned to ebikes.ca in an improved form. The cables exit from the axle from a side-slot located inside the frame (just like the H35), instead of the common hollow axle-tip (where it was easily at risk for damage). Also, it now uses a much stronger splined cassette freehub, instead of the old-style “screw-on” freewheel. The stator is slightly wider for more copper mass (at 30mm), and it comes from the factory with a temp sensor already installed inside. Last (but not least) the improved side-plate shape on the left now provides a full 20mm of clearance to allow for every common disc brake caliper to be used. If you are looking for a DD rear hub, I’d say this one would work quite well at 48V X 30A = 1,440W
The new 2015 9-Continents hubmotorfrom ebikes.ca
I can’t discuss new developments for 2015 without mentioning the new Satiator charger from ebikes.ca, Justin and his crew decided to put their money where their mouth was, and develop a robust and adjustable charger that upscale customers could depend on. This is not a re-branded generic China-box…it is a ground-up in-house design by people who really know ebikes and love them. I you want to know how I feel about these, I have one right now just a few feet from me as I write this article…
The Satiator charger from ebikes.ca
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Custom Build Gallery for 2014
All 2013 and earlier Custom Build Gallery entries are listed and linked in our 2013 year in review.
Here are the custom builds we have featured for 2014…
Martins Cromotor street commuter
Nick’s eTownie Cruiser
Ben’s 2WD folder with custom battery
Roy’s Astro-powered mid drive eCortina
Millyard custom frame with GNG mid drive
Deecanios Astro-powered mid drive
Matt’s Astro-powered 20-inch street fighter
Hannes’ custom-framed MAC mid-drive
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ElectricBike.com T-Shirts
We are excited to announce we will order and sell some T-shirts with the ElectricBike.com name on the back. They will only be high-quality T-shirts, because if nobody buys them…we will be wearing them! Stay tuned to see the information here in January, 2015.
If they sell well, we will add more colors, sizes, styles, and image options, but…if they don’t sell…this may be the only batch.
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And last, for those who may want a quick look back…here is a link to our end of the year review from 2013.
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Written by Ron/Spinningmagnets, December 2014