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How to Buy Your First Ebike: A Guide

Not sure which ebike is right for you? We’ve got you covered. 

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There are three classes of ebikes. Each relates to a particular speed at which the bike’s electric motor will take you, and whether or not the bike has a hand throttle that lets you accelerate without pedaling.

Broadly, class 1 ebikes only provide electrical assistance up to 20 miles per hour. That’s pretty good compared to a non-electric, analog bike rider’s average of 12-15 MPH. Class 1 may be the slowest class, but it’s not slow.

Class 2 ebikes’ motors also cut off after 20 MPH, but they have a hand throttle. Class 3 ebikes can reach up to 28 MPH, but you need to pedal to hit the full top speed. The hand throttle cuts out at 20 MPH.

We’ve got an explainer here that goes into more detail.

You can buy an electric mountain bike (eMTB) if you plan to hit the off-road trails, or if you’d prefer a road-focused bike that can handle some light unpaved paths, consider what’s called a gravel bike.

Cargo bikes are exactly what they sound like. Some, like Urban Arrow’s lineup, are focused heavily on transporting kiddos. Others, from Lectric to Tern, focus on providing plenty of racks for cargo-carrying bags and for helping you fetch groceries and cart packages home from the post office.

Folding bikes, well, fold. They’re best if you have nowhere to store your bike except in your home or tucked under your desk at work. Their folding mechanisms tend to make them heavy, though, and most of them have smaller-than-normal wheels that can make them feel twitchy or darty while you’re driving.

Most ebikes fall into the commuter category. Also called city bikes, these are your general-purpose bikes. They won’t carry a ton of cargo, go far off-road, or break any racecourse records, but they will do most jobs for most people most of the time.

2. buy a safe battery

Who can ignore the spate of news stories about dodgy batteries causing home and apartment fires? To know you have a safe battery, make sure it says somewhere on the battery itself that it’s UL2271-rated. That’s a safety standard that means your battery isn’t just a sketchy mystery waiting to catch fire.

Look for UL2849 marked somewhere on the ebike, too. That’s another safety standard that should be on your bike frame or in the owner’s manual, and it too means that it’s a tested and certified product that won’t burst into flames or injure somebody due to poor engineering.

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