Lectric XP 2.0 - Real World Woes

[emh203]

I wanted to post my real world experience w/ the Lectric XP 2.0

Background:

I have never purchased an E-Bike. My office is about 6 miles from my house (lots of hills). I had some pretty serious ankle surgery last fall and wanted something to get some exercise + motion on the ankle and ease into it.

Also, I an Electrical Engineer w/ 20 years experience in power electronics (relevant in the content below)

I thought I would play the lotter a bit and run the experiment w/ the Lectric XP 2.0 @$1k

Experience:

I did my homework and saw that this was a "Alibaba" bike w/ US marketing. You can find the bike on Alibaba for roughly $500. They are design to be customized (i.e. The Lectric Logo, etc) for volume orders. Lectric is simply rebranding an existing bike from Asia and providing a customer support front end and US based store/distribution.

It took roughly 3 weeks to get the from initial order. Took about 2 hours to unpack, inspect, inflate tires, etc.

Mon: 1st Ride went OK.
Tues: 2nd Ride Went OK.
Wed: The bike powered up w/ E 007 error code (flashing). I powered the bike on/off and it went away. I made it to work. The website said to check the connects to the controller. Everything looked OK. I reseated all the connectors.
Thurs: The Bike came up with the E 007 code again. I rechecked the connectors to the controller, cycled power, etc but could not solve the E 007 error.

I contacted support. A few days of back and forth. You generally get 1 email a day w/ support so it can take awhile to work through the tech script. They sent a new controller and I got it in this past Sat. I wired it in, double checked connections, etc. Upon "closing" the bike I heard a snapping sound. The contacts to the battery/controller plate had indications of serious arcing.

At this point I stopped as I did not want a battery fire. I believe the 2nd controller was DOA with a shorted switch bridge (I have designed BLDC controllers for very large motors),

I contact support again. They are sending more parts. My gut feeling is that the battery has some level of short circuit protection (or else there would be a lot of fires).

Conclusion

I believe the 2nd controller may have taken out the display unit. My guess is the motor is OK. Battery may be damaged. Based upon my prior experience w/ designing motor controllers, the motor controller supplied with the bike is not rated for the 500W motor. I tracked down the part numbers in side the controller and it is marginal at best. I would expect a lot of issues across all the bikes.

So, if you are considering the bike, make sure to price in the fact that this is just a rebranded Asian bike and are playing the lottery. I rolled the dice and it the odds were not in my favor. Also keep in mind that your local bike shop may not help you at all with service. My experience is that it is not cost effective for them to help with this type of product.

Next time I would spend more $$$ to get a better product. What I saved in $$$ was eaten up in time. It might also make sense to buy a decent bike and add the electronics/hub motor yourself. You might have better control over the quality of the parts.

I'll post a follow up when I get more parts. Unfortunately you can't purchase the controller or display from the website. You can find parts on the web that are similar but you are on your own to figure it out.

 

[Dorkyman]

Sorry but also very surprised to hear of your troubles.

We bought two of the XP 2.0 st bikes just before Christmas 2021 and have ridden then extensively, now that the weather up here in Oregon is decent. The bikes have been wonderful and completely predictable. The controllers peak at 18 amps, meaning that the motor can provide about 1 hp of boost for perhaps10 minutes and 500w (or about 2/3 hp) continuously.

We have numerous hills around us and the bikes slog up them just fine, drawing 18 amps from the 48v 10.4ah battery pack. No issues at all. None. Over perhaps 5 minutes continuous.

Given that Lectric has sold many thousands of these ebikes over the past few years I have to conclude that they've done their homework and the bikes are, in my view, quite competitive with other brands at twice the price, and the components are holding up fine. I rode street and mountain bikes decades ago quite extensively and know a few things about bikes. Nothing carbon-fiber or exotic here, but given the hundreds of millions of bicycles around the world , there is nothing "rocket science" about bicycles, and the electrics on our two Lectric ebikes are performing just fine. I did hard-wire a 5v charging port into the battery connectors (on the controller side) to keep our smartphones happy while using GPS. Idle current drain is minimal; we keep the keys on both ebikes turned on continuously. I've added a number of accessories, including a wireless alarm/horn, folding basket for the rear rack, a smartphone holder, an 11-34 freewheel (the most important improvement, truly a major difference) and a side-view mirror that mounts to the end of the left handlebar. Bike came with the excellent Lectric folding lock and a suspension seat post. The only factory shortcoming was the brake cables were dry, so removing them and generously lubing them made a world of difference. Oh, and also FlatOut in the tires.

Anyway, sorry to hear of your issue, and I hope the young and enthusiastic gang at Lectric in Phoenix can get you going quickly. As you can no doubt tell, we love these things and think they are a remarkable value even compared to $2K ebikes.

 

[emh203]

Update.

I have gone through 3 controllers, a new motor and 2 batteries. The bike is working in the throttle only mode. Still working on the PAS sensor. It looks like it got wiped out from the the 2nd controller malfunction. A new one got sent. Still waiting on a crank puller to be able to swap it out. 3+ days of riding and 1 month of down time waiting for parts, back and forth w/ Lectric support, shipping transit times, etc.

In the mean time I decided to purchase something from by local bike shop. It was a lot more money but I decided to trade money for the ability to have something reliable.
Hopefully I can get the lectric running as my "hoopty" backup. Long term I think I will forgo the warranty and rig up a better controller. I took one of the bad ones apart to do some basic analysis. The FETs in the motor switch bridge are under designed by a factor of 2. The controller really isn't designed to handle the rate current/power of the installed motor. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of controllers failures in the field long term over all the bikes. Lectric could use a trained EE on the design team to get this right.

I'll post another update when I get the PAS sensor working.

 

[emh203]

Another update.

Received another PAS sensor and associated cabling. It did not fix the issue.


I have been through:

Three controllers
Two motors
Two batteries
Two PAS sensors

The only thing left is the display.

 

[Taylor57]

Another update.

Received another PAS sensor and associated cabling. It did not fix the issue.


I have been through:

Three controllers
Two motors
Two batteries
Two PAS sensors

The only thing left is the display.

You sound like a good candidate for a complete new bike from Lectric. I would call your first one a lemon...

 

[FrankR]

Hmm. This seems like a lemon situation compared to tons of other Lectric success I have read about.

Would you mind posting a link to the Alibaba bike you think the Lectric is based on? I have a Paselec bike that looks like a clone of the Lectric.
I am unable to get any parts support from the OEM. Lectric, on the other hand, seems to Excel at such support.

 

[emh203]

Here is the next update in the saga....

My daughter (all 130lbs) took the bike for a ride to test the PAS. The seat broke, tilted which jolted her into a telephone pole. 7 stitches later at urgent care we still have a non-function e-bike with a broken seat.

 

[Taylor57]

Here is the next update in the saga....

My daughter (all 130lbs) took the bike for a ride to test the PAS. The seat broke, tilted which jolted her into a telephone pole. 7 stitches later at urgent care we still have a non-function e-bike with a broken seat.

View attachment 126824

Is that the stock seatpost and seat?

 

[emh203]

Is that the stock seatpost and seat?

Yes.

 

[Taylor57]

Yes.

Wow, have you asked Lectric to send you a new XP?

 

[emh203]

Not yet. I will after the new screen arrives and doesn't fix the issue. This is now a Ship of Theseus.

 

[Dorkyman]

Similar thing happened to me, although I didn't crash. The seat spring is normally half above half below a flange, and if the spring is not rotated tightly enough then the spring above can pop out and go below the flange. It's easier to visualize than in words, but it means you need to get a wrench and rotate the spring until only the closely-spaced portion is below the flange. Or just get another seat.

Hope that makes sense. Sorry to hear about your incident, although when it happened to me the only effect was my right rear end dropped an inch or so.

 

[emh203]

Another update....


Got a new screen. PAS and the speed reading still do not function. I requested a new seat. They said it would take a up to mid-august for a replacement seat.

I requested a full exchange for a new bike. I'll post again when I get a response.

 

[JES2020]

Another update....


Got a new screen. PAS and the speed reading still do not function. I requested a new seat. They said it would take a up to mid-august for a replacement seat.

I requested a full exchange for a new bike. I'll post again when I get a response.

Sorry for your troubles. Good thing to warn others of this issue.
I almost bought this bike when I was first looking.
I decided on a 1500w kit and have had no extreme issues 2300 miles later. Note: I did have to mod my 22a controller that was only topping at 18 amps.

 

[JohnFilmore]

Hmm. This seems like a lemon situation compared to tons of other Lectric success I have read about.

Would you mind posting a link to the Alibaba bike you think the Lectric is based on? I have a Paselec bike that looks like a clone of the Lectric.
I am unable to get any parts support from the OEM. Lectric, on the other hand, seems to Excel at such support.

FrankR, there seem to be a bunch of knockoffs of the XP 2.0 Step-over frame all over the place you can find on Amazon, Engwie EP-2 is one I was looking at on Amazon that comes to mind.

I havent ran into a Step-thru knockoff, maybe cuz its more recent?

But one glaring difference I've seen missing from all the knockoffs is the Lectric 4-bolt mounting-face on the front stem for a front rack.
I have only seen that once on a Cargo bike, that looked like cross between a Lectric step-thru and a Electric premium.

I dont know why, maybe its the same factory selling excess capacity to the knockoff importers, remove extra features to save money.

The vast majority of step-thru off-brand imports I've seen looked like copies of the Radcity step through with the battery behind the seat post.

I mean this mess sounds pretty bad, but of the $999 ebike pricepoint Id rather be dealing with part replacements from Lectric with english-speaking tech-support and parts in the US than with email support.

The Engwie EP-2 looks like a frame-clone and about $100 more than the 2.0 Step-over, and you get cast alloy wheels and a bigger 14Ah battery, but it has email-only support from China, and several reviewers had quirky controller problems with their throttle and pedal-assist, at this point its a "bargain" I dont want, if they are ao careless as to not check the bikes they send their own reviewers for Youtube, then you can bet your bike is gonna arrive half-assed and youll likely spend riding time documenting problems by email trying to get it fixed.

I might do a knockoff as a 2nd tinkering bike but if I go trail riding I want the thing to work.

A significant mfg cost is quality assurance testing and record-keeping, I work in mfg as an automation engineer I can assure you the big customers parts are more often checked, small buyers the crappy mfg do checks if they have time, but Lectric buys enough product if they drop a factory that factory could go under in low-margin mfg.

 

[jdar15]

Not yet. I will after the new screen arrives and doesn't fix the issue. This is now a Ship of Theseus.

I followed this thread, as my XP 2.0 failed a controller. I tend to agree with the wisdom here of well thought out, US customer service, etc. As a Navy electronics tech retired, I of course wanted to find the failure. Other than little thermal heat sink paste, I saw no obvious failure visible. I simply swapped controllers with our other bike and just fine so Lectric is sending a new controller to hopefully cure the issue. Our bikes have otherwise been flawless. The batteries have their own management chip internally, which may have started your snowball? Well, best of luck

 

[Rexlion]

Another update....


Got a new screen. PAS and the speed reading still do not function. I requested a new seat. They said it would take a up to mid-august for a replacement seat.

I requested a full exchange for a new bike. I'll post again when I get a response.

Any update on this? I hope they replaced the ebike for you.