What to know before buying a cheap ebike?
Actually, in the market you can find so many brands and models of electric bikes, each one with different tech specs and prices. If you have a low budget you may think that it's good to buy the cheapest one, but is it worth it?
Today we talk about what you need to know before buying a very cheap ebike, because you should avoid wasting your money and time. A bad quality ebike can turn your riding experience into a nightmare, with troubles and annoying problems.
You would like to find yourself in the middle of the street with a broken motor? Surely not..
Safety, quality control and reliability "aren't free", and neither is the post sale service. Very cheap products lack for sure about the quality, because producers need to cut production costs. In fact, we remind you that an electric bike is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack, and some more components that are quite expensive, so super cheap models will have for sure low quality components to stay in the budget.
What can lower the cost to sell an e-bike under 1.000 USD? Surely the quality of the motor and the battery, because beginners can easily ignore tech sheet details. The lack of quality can cause a quick damage of components, a motor failure or in worst scenarios battery in fire or short circuit.
Cheap motors are very delicate, and they are made with a very bad quality control, so a failure it's a very common scenario!
So, you still think that a super cheap electric bike is worth the buy? We are sure you got the point, but we want to give you some more details and information.
Ebike Brand or unknown producer?
You may think about brands and unknown producers, and if you consider the first category it will be immediately clear that good brands have higher quality products and higher prices. Because they have to spend more money on product design and production, customer service and advertising.
They have a website and a dedicated customer service, pre and post sale. All those services contribute to giving you a good customer experience, especially in case of troubles.
On the other hand, in the market we can find many electric bikes with unknown brands that suddenly went on sale in marketplaces with super cheap prices: often it happens that they didn't even have a dedicated website, nor a background about the production line. That should be the first "alarm signal" that has to let you run away from those low quality products.
In fact it happens that scammers produce a certain amount of products and quickly sell it, then they change the name to put again in production the same low quality item, avoiding the complaint about who already bought it!
In fact it can happen that a random unknown brand disappears after 1 year of sales, and leaves all the buyers alone with their troubles..
Unknown product, bad service and no spare parts
When you buy an "unknown" cheap product you may have problems with electric components, and the worst part is about the lack of customer service and spare parts.
Low budget ebikes didn't even have a stock or warehouse of spare parts dedicated to the post sale service, so you can wait for a shipping from overseas and a very long time before getting a spare component, and if the damage happens after a long time (one year or more), maybe they will not be able to provide a replacement component!
On the other hand, well known brands that use quality components will for sure have a good quantity of spare parts in local warehouses, and will also be easier to find aftermarket.
Battery quality matter the most
The quality of the battery it's "hidden" in the tech sheet, you shouldn't only look for the voltage and capacity, but about the quality of the cells. Quality battery packs are built with high grade cells, for example: Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Sanyo.
Super cheap products will use "Chinese Cells" that sometimes can be about a good quality but most of the time are about very poor performances, in terms of power given to the motor, lasting performance and long term reliability.
Bad quality cells can wear out quickly and after some months of intense usage they start to lose a part of the total capacity. So, after a certain amount of time you will get a lower miles range, compared with the first period you used the bike.
High quality battery packs can be cycled more than 1.000/1.500 times without losing any performance, instead low quality can lose capacity after 200/300 charges.
High quality battery packs also contain sophisticated chips that regulate the flow of the current, to ensure perfect cell balancing and avoid short circuit or damages. Cheap ones didn't even have it!
What about the right ebike budget?
We recommend you to look for your first ebike in a price range that starts from 1.500 USD to 2.500 USD, in that case the quality will be granted with long lasting components and a good brand service.
In that case we can say that "Who spends more, spends less.." because will not have any trouble with components and will be supported by an efficient after sale service, in case of needs.
If you're looking for your first electric bike we suggest you give a look to the Gallop electric bikes that are offered with the best quality price match!