Beertender
New Member
This spring I purchased a Greenbike USA GB1 Fat Tire bike. It is a folding frame bike with 20" fat tires similar to the RadMini or the AddMotor M150 or the M150R7 except that it has a 500 W rear hub motor and six selectable physical gears. The PAS has 9 levels. There is front fork suspension. Battery is a 48V (52v Peak) 10.4Ah 'silverfish' battery. There is a very robust rear carrier, fenders, integrated headlight, tail and brake light, turn signals. There is a walk mode. The motor is controlled by throttle or by cadence sensors. The seat is a "Velo" model that seems very robust and has a lever that allows the seat to flip out of the way when pulling the battery. The seat also has a quick release. There are mechanical disk brakes front and back. The front hub is quick release, as are the handlebars (though one would have to demount brakes, PAS controller, and other switches and grips to utilize it.
I have been generally happy with the bike, but it is my first e-bike. I selected this bike because of the generally poor condition of the concrete surfaced roads in my city, not because I have multiple fat tire bike attractive trails. This model and brand offered all the features that I wanted (suspension, rear rack, fat tires to absorb bumps and float over large cracks, foldability, color options) at a price less than the AddMotor or Radmini.
Top speed with throttle on a flat surface with no headwind has topped out at 24.7mph with this 220+\- Lb rider.
GreenbikeUSA advertised that this bike would run up to 50 miles on throttle only, and 90 with pedal assist. When I purchased the bike, I knew this was BS. MY real world results indicates about 20 to 30 miles with throttle only (closer to 20 if blasting around at full throttle 100% of the time). I haven't yet formed an opinion on the PAS distances to be expected. I usually use PAS 3 if I'm in a hurry. Otherwise I will vary between PAS1 and PAS3. With a little bit of pedaling, ALL hills on paved roads in my area (eastern Iowa) are easily conquerable. If you are willing to go 5 mph or less at full throttle, almost every hill on a paved road in my area is conquerable with motor only.
My disappointment is that I did not realize just how heavy it was (and it looks like the RadMini, Addmotor, Ecotric, etc. models are just as heavy). There are really very few reasons to fold this bike. YOU DO NOT want to fold it and attempt to carry it down or up stairs. It is just too heavy and bulky. I also see little logic in the seat and handlebar quick releases (separate from the folding mechanism on the handlebars). Its hard to imagine these were added to make the bike less expensive.
The six gears instead of seven are also somewhat of a disappointment, though I doubt that you could really keep up with the motor at its top speed even with an extra gear. 9 levels of pedal assist (actually 10 if you count level 0 which is no assist but the throttle is live), seems like a waste. As stated before, I use 3 of these levels and that is about it. I believe I went as high as level 7 once and discovered that this tends to eat through the battery more quickly than if you were to simply use the throttle full time.
The bikes seem to be shipped to California, yet it is an outfit in Florida who is in charge of the whole operation. Shipping was free for me, but it took a rather odd route from Chicago to west of Kansas City to finally end up at my place four hours west of Chicago (thanks UPS). The delivery driver needed my help and hand truck to get the box successfully from his truck to my garage. I had one problem with the bike, a turn signal stopped working. I reported this to GreenbikeUSA, and within a week they had a new part sent to me (however, they need to work on their communication as I was not certain that they had taken any action). I've heard others have had good but not very verbose response from their customer service. I have tried to submit a review of my bike to their website, but the website still says 0 reviews for their bike. I imagine that others have had the same experience. Similarly, I have had to create this thread on this forum. Reviews are few and hard to come by for this brand which seems to have a number of e-bike offerings which may be variants of models offered by other brands. My experience has been overall, very positive, so I would like to encourage EBR to contact GreenbikeUSA and do a review. I also hope that EBR will move this thread to its own Product Forum page.
I have been generally happy with the bike, but it is my first e-bike. I selected this bike because of the generally poor condition of the concrete surfaced roads in my city, not because I have multiple fat tire bike attractive trails. This model and brand offered all the features that I wanted (suspension, rear rack, fat tires to absorb bumps and float over large cracks, foldability, color options) at a price less than the AddMotor or Radmini.
Top speed with throttle on a flat surface with no headwind has topped out at 24.7mph with this 220+\- Lb rider.
GreenbikeUSA advertised that this bike would run up to 50 miles on throttle only, and 90 with pedal assist. When I purchased the bike, I knew this was BS. MY real world results indicates about 20 to 30 miles with throttle only (closer to 20 if blasting around at full throttle 100% of the time). I haven't yet formed an opinion on the PAS distances to be expected. I usually use PAS 3 if I'm in a hurry. Otherwise I will vary between PAS1 and PAS3. With a little bit of pedaling, ALL hills on paved roads in my area (eastern Iowa) are easily conquerable. If you are willing to go 5 mph or less at full throttle, almost every hill on a paved road in my area is conquerable with motor only.
My disappointment is that I did not realize just how heavy it was (and it looks like the RadMini, Addmotor, Ecotric, etc. models are just as heavy). There are really very few reasons to fold this bike. YOU DO NOT want to fold it and attempt to carry it down or up stairs. It is just too heavy and bulky. I also see little logic in the seat and handlebar quick releases (separate from the folding mechanism on the handlebars). Its hard to imagine these were added to make the bike less expensive.
The six gears instead of seven are also somewhat of a disappointment, though I doubt that you could really keep up with the motor at its top speed even with an extra gear. 9 levels of pedal assist (actually 10 if you count level 0 which is no assist but the throttle is live), seems like a waste. As stated before, I use 3 of these levels and that is about it. I believe I went as high as level 7 once and discovered that this tends to eat through the battery more quickly than if you were to simply use the throttle full time.
The bikes seem to be shipped to California, yet it is an outfit in Florida who is in charge of the whole operation. Shipping was free for me, but it took a rather odd route from Chicago to west of Kansas City to finally end up at my place four hours west of Chicago (thanks UPS). The delivery driver needed my help and hand truck to get the box successfully from his truck to my garage. I had one problem with the bike, a turn signal stopped working. I reported this to GreenbikeUSA, and within a week they had a new part sent to me (however, they need to work on their communication as I was not certain that they had taken any action). I've heard others have had good but not very verbose response from their customer service. I have tried to submit a review of my bike to their website, but the website still says 0 reviews for their bike. I imagine that others have had the same experience. Similarly, I have had to create this thread on this forum. Reviews are few and hard to come by for this brand which seems to have a number of e-bike offerings which may be variants of models offered by other brands. My experience has been overall, very positive, so I would like to encourage EBR to contact GreenbikeUSA and do a review. I also hope that EBR will move this thread to its own Product Forum page.
