Where is the bike that can travel 40kms a day,5 days a week all year round without falling apart on the southern west coast of British Columbia. What the name of the bike that has a warranty accepting this challenge. Until you have the warranty, you don't have a reliable mode of transportation,you have an unreliable expensive toy.
A long warranty is good. A reliable product can be even better, since warranties are often only against defects and not against something wearing out (which can happen during the warranty period, and not be covered). A high quality bike pannier that'll stand up against wear (but only has a 5 year warranty) can be a better buy than a medium quality pannier that won't stand up as well against wear but has a lifetime warranty (but one that covers defects only). I look at bikes the same way.
Shimano's warranty is 2 years on their entire electric system (including the battery) against manufacturers defects. My experience dealing with dozens of people who own e-bikes with Shimano systems is pretty much zero problems from early 2016 to now, so nearly a four year period. (I can't think of any warranties at all, but I'll say "pretty much zero" in case I forgot one!) One woman I dealt with did finally start having a reduction in power assist strength after nearly 20K kilometres of riding, but after a re-and-re it was working fine again. And 20K clicks is no small amount of riding to need her first significant servicing!
I think Bosch and Yamaha are also probably nearly equally good to Shimano in overall quality. Brose I'm less sure of, I've experienced a lot of quality-assurance (or lack thereof) problems with Brose motors.
If buying Canadian is important to you then both Devinci and Opus are Canadian companies that exclusively use Shimano motors. Kona is a company that started in Canada (and the Canadian office is still very influential within the company) and uses a mix of Shimano and Bosch. Norco is also Canadian, and is also the authorized Bosch service centre for Canada through its Live to Play Sports division (though, amusingly, Norco sells e-bikes with Shimano motors almost exclusively, despite being the Bosch parts and service centre for Canada!).
I think buying from a Canadian company can have advantages for a Canadian citizen (if a part needs to be ordered in, it might come in faster for example coming from that company's warehouse than from the U.S. or China), but the reverse may be true when buying from a company that's re-badging Chinese bikes. There are lots of companies in Vancouver doing that, and good on them for being entrepreneurial but I'm concerned about the long-term parts and service availability of these no-name bikes.
For a do-it-yourselfer, it might be the right thing to go with a no-name bike if you like to tinker, or if it offers features and the ability to tune it in ways that the class-1 bikes from the big players don't. The rest of us are usually better served partnering with a bike shop that they get a good vibe from, and buying a brand name bike with a brand name motor. And there I'd recommend any of the big local bike shop brands mentioned in this thread, except for Specialized and Giant since my understanding is they expect you to go to a Giant or Specialized dealer only for service and for e-bike-specific parts. Whereas you won't have that problem with Devinci, Opus, Kona, Norco, Trek, etc. If you stick to Shimano or Bosch, you can go to any Shimano or Bosch dealer of which there are untold numbers of each.
But overall when you look at price, long-term durability, size of the dealer network, quality level, weight-to-cost ratio, weight-to-torque ratio, Shimano is usually far and away the best bang for the buck for anyone looking for a class 1 e-bike. For class 2 or 3 you obviously have to look elsewhere.
Full disclosure I do own a bike shop on Vancouver Island, but we sell all four of the big players (Shimano, Bosch, Yamaha, and Brose), and routinely check out new entrants (we just got a bike in with a Promovec motor, and have a bike with a Bafang OEM mid-drive on order). But if that makes me biased, it's only because the Shimano bikes offer us the fewest problems by far.
