Ask Lemmy

My advice is that range/battery life depends greatly on things like rider+cargo weight, terrain hilliness, and which assist setting you're using (or worse, if you're just using the throttle and not pedaling at all). Get more battery than you think you need. (The exception is if the bike you choose is more of an "e-road bike" that would still be pleasant to ride without assist, but most e-bikes are not like that, and you wouldn't want that kind of bike for commuting anyway.)

Otherwise, the 750w bikes are perfectly fine -- you do not need that "super cool dual-motor bike" for commuting.

IMO, the other main factors you should be considering are cargo capacity, drivetrain style and budget.

Regarding cargo: you can carry groceries etc. with a basket and/or rack on a regular-style bike, but if you want to carry a lot of stuff (or kids as passengers) you should look into long-tail cargo bikes or even a box bike (a.k.a. "bakfiets" because they're popular in the Netherlands).

Regarding drivetrain style: there are two main types, rear-drive and mid-drive.

Rear-drive tends to be cheaper but slightly less pleasant to use because it relies on a cadence sensor to activate the assist. In other words, when you start pedaling there's a bit of lag before the assist kicks in, and when it does it's either on (according to the setting you picked) or off. It's not "variable" in terms of responding to how hard you're pushing the pedals, only whether they're turning or not.

In contrast, mid-drive systems can sense the torque being applied to the pedals, and can apply assist more immediately and more smoothly in response to how much effort you're trying to use (at least, that's what they say -- I've never tried one myself). However, they tend to cost more.

Based on my use-case (which involved carrying two small kids to school), I bought a Lectric Xpedition, which AFAIK is the cheapest electric long-tail cargo bike currently available. I've been very happy with it so far and think that bike, and Lectric bikes in general, are a good recommendation for people who want the best value-for-money.

For people with other circumstances, I might make some other recommendations:

• If you're doing a mixed bike+transit commute, taking the bike with you on airplane trips, or otherwise carrying it around a lot, I think going all the way to the smallest/best-folding bike you can reasonably have -- an electric Brompton -- is worth it.

• If you want to carry a lot of cargo, but (unlike me) you also have plenty of money and space to store the thing, a high-end bakfeits with a Bosch mid-drive and Gates carbon belt instead of a chain is what you want. Those things can cost $10K, though!

• If your needs are generic -- you don't specifically need cargo capacity or folding -- and you aren't completely mechanically hopeless, then get a rear-drive bike from a lower-end-but-still-well-known mail-order brand like Rad or Lectric (either new or used via Craigslist).

• If you are mechanically hopeless and/or still clueless about what you want and/or have a higher budget and are willing to pay for good service, find a local e-bike shop and let them sell you one of their bikes that they recommend. It'll cost more than the previous suggestion, but they'll have the best support and will be able to do the maintenance on it for you. (This is apparently a bigger benefit than it seems, because although you can get a regular non-electric bike worked on anywhere, I've heard that lots of bike shop mechanics are unwilling to work on e-bikes they don't sell themselves.)

One last thing: whatever you do, avoid random no-name Chinese bikes from Amazon/Ebay/Aliexpress/whatever. This is one of those cases where you really do want a company with a US presence (it doesn't have to be a "US company," but they need to at least have a US phone number/mailing address) to hold accountable for warranty issues and to have some confidence that they're complying with US safety regulations so the battery doesn't burn your house down or something.