If a newbie shows up here and wants to try ebiking with zero experience, there is not much choice but to send them to a dealer. It’s too risky to point to a CF campaign or an online dealer, for someone who may not be able to assemble a front wheel.
The people who live in Seattle or San Francisco, and say how wonderful dealers are, represent the ‘one percent’ of ebikers. The dealer close to me let me ride a bike or two. I bought a bike he was discontinuing. I went and looked at another bike, 6 months later, and a year later he was no longer a dealer for that bike. In what sense was he a dealer for the product line?
Most people, in most parts of the country, are forced to accept the fact that ebike dealers are worthless, that it is a completely failed concept. Most people will never see a dealer, or the product line will be shifted, or the dealer will go broke. There are fine dealers, but it’s not a functional model for a product with sales around 200k per year. Yeah, I should wait to buy an ebike until there is a Haibike dealer in my metro area of 30,000 people. I’d love to defend the dealers, pay their high margins for executive levels of service. But I ain’t got no dealer.
So you (anyone) buy online. I buy parts and match the parts to a bike. It’s an afternoon’s work, basically, until you need another part to finish. If you buy a bike online, I’d say keep it simple. As Nirmala points out, the business model that matters is basically what Dell calls “Depot Service”. You send back a part and get another. If you can reduce the replacement parts to a motor and a battery, life is good. If the company goes broke, well, most basic bikes are made from generic parts. You can swap to another battery. Hub motors are somewhat interchangeable. If you don’t buy a fancy bike, with proprietary parts and ludicrously complex electronics, most parts are either 1) the bike any LBS can fix, and 2) parts you just sub out.
I’m not going to defend this bike because I don’t know much about it. The two parts that matter, the motor and the battery, seem to be high grade. They made some good design decisions. They kept the bike simple. They understand that a throttle is a pedal assist, while the big Euro companies demonize throttles, and pretend that pedal assist has some magical value. It doesn’t, and throttles are a great type of pedal assist.
You could argue that the Mega ebike company has guaranteed failure for itself. The product line is too expensive for volume sales. They have dealers where there is wealth. If you live far from their dealers, you can buy from an online discounter, basically. But the online discounter is destroying their dealers where the market supports enough sales. In other words, pretend there is a ‘great’ dealer in the Bay area, Nostromoto. I’m not driving to Frisco, so Nostro is SOL with me. I could buy from a dealer in the Great Lakes region, Nutty Nelly, and she will give me a great deal, but not much else. Her bike is going to be proprietary, so every part will have to come from Nelly.
This sucks. If Haibike doesn’t have a dealer near me, then screw Haibike. I’d go with the online Haibike discounter, but you know that’s not a model that works for Haibike and all those other dealers. The seller that anyone can depend on does not exist. I would say depend of EM3ev, Luna Cycle, and Lectric Cycle, and they basically sell parts. But they have phenomenally good reputations. There are other companies, but I follow these companies.
So, I am going to buy parts that are just out there, build a bike, or buy something basic like this. I’m impressed that this company is trying to make it seem like they don’t just get a few bikes from China and slap their logo on it. If they buy parts, frames, and motors, and assemble the parts, they will have better quality control.
I don’t know who the newbie is going to find, if they want an ebike. They might find a dealer. They might find online forums and reviews. They might just go to Amazon. Walmart and Costco may start to screen bikes and look for a volume bike. In the past, their efforts have been pathetic. What you say about Amazon is correct. Eventually someone may find the right mix and start selling bikes, through Amazon, in high volumes. Why guess who that will be? But I think the simple bike has advantages for warranty issue, parts, etc, and I know that a basic bike works very well.
