Your friend has a "geared " motor- much better torque and the little 500 watt motor will peak at 800 watts, so it is pretty peppy, the XP I had was very peppy the problem was the battery went down quickly Your "FATBear has a Direct Drive motor, for the regen qualities and these motors do not have the torque or low rolling resistance of the "geared motors.
On my Yamee FB+, the controller is bad and apparently, they are not going to send me a new one, I had to pull the old one out to get a picture and info( I didn't want to do it) and I had a rough time trying to get the controller to work right apparently the color code is not right on the wires( and boy are they tiny wires)