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Folding e-bike advice including on the Ezego EZE Fold

Hi All,

Firstly my apologies if I've posted this message in the wrong place becuase I know that there's an e-bike version of the Road.cc website being eBikeTips but I couldn't find a forum for that part of the website and so I hope that it's okay to post this here.

My mother & father in-law have come to me asking for advice on buying a folding e-bike and I'll be grateful to anyone who can help me with this.  They've come to me because I'm a cyclist  but I've never ridden or owned and e-bike so I'll hold my hands up and say that I know nothing about them and so I don't have a clue what either is or isn't a good one.

Just as some background my parents aren't cyclists but they were away in their caravan and they got chatting to some other people who had folding e-bikes and they really liked the idea of them.  They have no interest in traveling long distances and I don't envisage that they'll do much main road riding.  It'll be a case of a mix of perhaps quiet country lane riding whilst on holiday, short trips popping to the local shops and maybe some very light off road trail stuff if for example they go to a country park somewhere and want to do a loop type ride with the grand children but it would be fairly well maintained hard packed gravel track type riding nothing in the realms of technical off road riding.

They have said that they definitely want a folding bike because they want to be able to easily take it away in the caravan or to be able to fold it and put it into the back of the car to take somewhere for days out.  In terms of budget they don't want to spend too much with £1,000 being the maximum that they want to go to and so I appreciate that this budget in itself will severely limit the options to only a few bikes.  But at around this price point I have absolutely no idea what features they should be thinking about in the pros and cons cases when comparing bikes.

The sort of bikes that they've looked at include the folding e-bikes that are available at Halfords such as the following:-

Apollo Transport folding e-bike at £599
https://www.halfords.com/bikes/electric-bikes/apollo-transport-electric-folding-bike---20in-542248.html

Carrera Crosscity folding e-bike at £899
https://www.halfords.com/bikes/electric-bikes/carrera-crosscity-electric-bike-298734.html

After visiting Halfords they also went to their local bike shop and the LBS sell e-bikes by a company called Ezego and there was a bike called the Ezego EZE fold.  In particular my mother-in-law liked the LS version of this bike which is a low set over and she has bad knee joints and so she found it much easier to step over the frame and get onto this bike:-

https://ezego.bike/folding-electric-bicycle

​However I've never before heard of the brand Ezego and nor can I easily find any reviews if this bike and so I wondered if anyone has ever heard of the Ezego Fold and has any thoughts about it?  This bike was at the top of their budget being at the £1,000 mark.

One thing I thought is that if they do buy an e-bike from their LBS at leats hopefully they'd get some support and help with it down the line if they ever needed it.

Thanks for reading this and if anyone has any tips, thoughts or ideas on advice that I could give to my parents in-law that will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

John

 

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5 comments

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matthewn5 | 3 years ago
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The A to B website is really good on this:
https://www.atob.org.uk/

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Tom_77 | 3 years ago
1 like

At the moment with bikes it's probably largely a question of what you can get your hands on. I think any of the 3 you've looked at would do the job. Decathlon do a Tilt 500 folding eBike that's also worth a look, although availability might be an issue.

 

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John_S replied to Tom_77 | 3 years ago
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Hi Tom, thanks for your message and I'll look up the Tilt.  However that's a good point about what is currently available and that may dictate choice as much as anything else.  Cheers, John

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jollygoodvelo | 3 years ago
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There are quite a few Ebike makers who were never in the business of making 'unpowered' bikes.  Ezego have been around for a while, similarly Ebco, Wisper, etc.

With any ebike under £1k there are very serious compromises on battery size (and therefore range), motor efficiency, component quality and therefore weight/reliability etc, so it's very important to compare specs.  The battery especially - sometimes a cheap model will come with a very small battery that seriously compromises usability.

I would certainly say that buying from 'a shop' is worthwhile for any less experienced or perhaps less mechanically capable owner - but look for a specialist shop like https://www.theelectricbikeshop.co.uk/bikes/folding-bikes in their local area.

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John_S replied to jollygoodvelo | 3 years ago
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Hi jollygoodvelo, thanks for your message and advice.

I'll ty to look as carefully as I can at specs and compare them between bikes but at the moment I am finding this is a bit tricky becuase whereas with a standard bike I'm fairly comfortable with comparing specs and knowing what componentry is better quality but I'm finding that with the e-bike world being completely new to me there are things like battery and motir quality which are all new to me and so when looking at two bikes against each other I don't necessarily appreciate which has the better components but I'm trying my best to get my head around it.

Cheers, John

 

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