New E-Bike Guide for Beginners – CleanTechnica

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E-bikes are all the rage. Electric car sales have been growing fast, but so have electric bike sales — we just don’t have tracking for them like we do for electric cars. With more and more people thinking about getting electric bikes every day, though, we decided it would be helpful to create an e-bike guide for beginners. Thanks to support from Lectric, we’ve created this e-bike guide. Below are the first two sections of the guide, written by Jennifer Sensiba. Enjoy, and feel free to share any additional thoughts with us down in the comments. —Zachary Shahan

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Introduction

When I first got curious about e-bikes, my first stop was a local bike shop. Generally, that’s a smart move, because you can get a better bike assembled by skilled people. More importantly, you have them there to help if things go wrong! But, on the other hand, the higher standards bike shops have mean that the bottom end of the market doesn’t really get served. I honestly can’t blame them for not wanting to stake their reputation on junk, though.

Sadly, the higher prices kept me out of the game.

Now, a decade after expensive e-bikes started showing up at local bike shops, the whole landscape has changed. Not only have many non-local companies started offering better quality bikes, but local bike shop prices have come down, too. The price of batteries has come down, and intense international competition has led to some serious price drops, too.

In this new world of affordable e-bikes, it can be a little confusing, though. So, I wanted to write a quick guide to e-bikes that can help people shopping at different price points navigate the process and get the right bike for them!

What’s An E-Bike, & Why Do I Want One?

Not everyone is familiar with electric bikes and their benefits. So, before I get into what you should look at, let’s talk first about why most people should be considering picking an e-bike up to begin with. In short, an e-bike is a bicycle that has an electric motor to help you do things like go faster, maintain speed, and climb hills. Most models have an adjustable “pedal assist” mode, where you can tell the bike how much help you’d like. With maximum assist, you can ride almost effortlessly and do things like commute to work without getting all sweaty. Many bikes also have a throttle on the handlebar that allows you to ride without pedaling at all.

But, if you want to get some more exercise and get sweaty on the way home from work, you can turn the assist down or even off completely to get some exercise, making e-bikes a great exercise option. For pure exercise and not commuter use, it’s great to be able to ride until you’re totally pooped and then use the assist or throttle to get home. For this reason, many people counterintuitively get better and more exercise with an e-bike than a normal bike!

Finally, e-bikes give you nearly all of the other benefits of bike riding. Being able to zip through the urban maze on the way to work, avoiding traffic and frustration, can be great. You don’t need to pay for a parking space in larger cities with an e-bike. They’re also a lot more environmentally friendly than an electric car, as they don’t have big hunks of steel and battery cells that took carbon-intensive manufacturing, nor do they shed much rubber or make much noise.

Read the rest of the e-bike guide for more: A Quick & Dirty Guide to Buying an E-Bike.