Question: Do you hire out electric bikes?
Answer: Yes, they’re $35 per day and $150 per week. Regular bikes are $25 per day and $80 per week. If you purchase an electric bicycle off us within a week of hiring one then the hire price gets deducted from the purchase price so this is a good way to test one out and explore options such as bike style and range.
Question: How fast do they go?
Answer: Roughly 25-30km/h.
Question: How far do they go?
Answer: Roughly between 30-60km before you need to recharge. A lot depends on rider, terrain and battery option chosen.
Question: How expensive is it to run an electric bicycle?
Answer: Running costs are extremely cheap. It costs about 25 cents to ride 100km. The main cost is the original purchase and then you should assume that you will want to replace the battery roughly every 3 years.
Question: How should I take care of my battery?
Answer :You should not regularly run it flat, you should not leave it in a flat condition, turn off the switch when not in use, give it a full charge and remove from bicycle if you’re not going to use it for over a month.
Question: Do you have battery gauges that can measure how much power is left in the battery?
Answer: There are indicator lights on the battery but they are not that useful, only give a very rough indication. You really need to ride it flat once to know your limit as ranges vary quite widely depending on rider, bicycle and terrain. The best gauge you can buy is from Grin Technologies in Canada, it’s called the “Cycle Analyst”, it will cost about $150. You need to wire it up between the controller and motor. This measures how much power you’ve used rather than basing measurement on voltage like nearly all battery lights or gauges do. It’s far more accurate. But, you don’t really need one, once you’ve ridden it flat once or twice you’ll be pretty sure of your range. If the battery does go flat, the best practice is to turn it off and ride home and charge it up as soon as convenient. You can damage batteries by running power through them when they are flat.
Questions: How do I charge an electric bike?
Answer: Each electric bike comes with a charger. You plug the charger into mains power and connect it to your battery. The charger will turn off when the battery is fully charged so there is no danger of over-charging but it’s good practice to disconnect the charger when done. Click here to see methods to solar charge an electric bike.
Question: Do your bicycles have regenerative braking?
Answer: No, we’ve decided that the pros of regenerative braking don’t out-weigh the cons currently. Benefits include about 500m extra battery life per charge. Problems arise from torquing the motor both directions in the bicycle frame that can weaken it over time, potential damage to charging battery too quickly or over-charging, higher controller failure rate, a need for extra cables from the brake levers.
