594 we did it! or did we?

In the world of ebike buying, there are basically four options. 

1. Buy from a known brand at a brick and mortar bike shop. This is what's known as the safe route. This will get you your Specialized, or Trek, or Tern, or Reese & Mueller, or even new brands like Aventon. These offer all of the benefits of warranties and the customer care of a real bike shop. You can also probably test ride the bike and take it home the day you buy it.

2. Buy from a "direct to consumer" brand. These are basically online sales only, where a brand sources a bike from a manufacturer in China, puts their brand mark on it, imports a bunch, and resells them on their website, or on Amazon or Walmart. Sometimes they actually have a hand in the design, but more often not. They usually offer some sort of warranty and customer care, some better than others. A few D2C brands are starting to be hybrids of #1 & 2, like Rad Power Bikes with their retail locations and service vans. You generally can't test ride the bike, but they usually ship fairly quickly and have some sort of limited return options.

3. The hail mary method, which is buying a bike directly from China. This is usually accomplished via a third party website like Alibaba, although there are a couple Chinese brands starting to cut out that middleman, like Frey and Sobowo. There's a fair amount of finger crossing in this method, shipping is a bit of a black hole of information, customer care is likely non-existant, and even if there's a warranty from the manufacturer, what are you going to do? Pay to get the bike shipped back?

4. We can't overlook the used market. While many used ebike sellers seem to be smoking crack as far as the prices they're hoping to get, generally buying used stuff can get some pretty good deals. There's even a company going after this market, Upway, that adds some reassurance and convenience to this type of purchase.

Which is all a very long way of introducing the next few months of this blog: the waiting game.

Because after a couple years of deliberation, we pulled the trigger on two bikes.

One is an eMTB called the "Cyberbike Mullet R." This is a #2, direct to consumer brand. We got it at a $1000 off black Friday deal, for about $2k. The components and capabilities compare well to a number of $4k plus bikes. The old model has a few YouTube reviews, the new model has none. It's expected to ship in January, according to the banner across the website, although when we bought it they said it would deliver last week. It didn't.

This sucker ticks off so many of the check boxes, one might wonder if it's too good to be true. That's certainly what a number of people on Reddit and YouTube have been asking. (Also, it's 500w mid-drives, not 750w as I have noted on the screenshot.)

So, now we wait. Will it arrive? Will it be any good? These are questions only time will answer.

As if that wasn't enough nail biting, for the other bike, we opted to roll the dice even more blindly. 

Basically, I wanted two types of bikes. An eMTB, for area trails and keeping up with brother-in-law, and a cargo bike, for hauling stuff around, including myself. 

And the are two of us. See where I'm going?

So I convinced Deb that the eMTB is for her-ish, and we ordered an appropriate size for both of us, hopefully, and that left me free to go looking at cargo bikes.

Now, I was still a bit hung up on eMTB capabilities (really, there are a lot of dirt roads around here). But I wanted a rear rack, for holding stuff. 

That's not really practical on a full-suspension bike. Attaching a rack to a moving rear structure just doesn't really work. So, I was looking at hardtail bikes. Also, I knew we wanted mid-drive (or as it's called in China, "center motor", more on that to come). Basically, the word on the street is that if you're serious about riding a bike, you want a mid-motor, or at the very least, a torque sensor. 

So, I narrowed down my search to a few great options, most of which were on sale, because it seems like basically everyone over-ordered stock for the year during the last couple years of shortages, and now people are dumping ebikes at great savings.

At this point, I reached out to one of the manufacturers/importers, BPM Imports, to see if they could cut me a deal in exchange for a couple reviews. They agreed, offering me a $500 discount. So, I could have gotten this bike, the BPM F-1000 for $1700, discounted from $2200, discounted from $3k plus. That's a pretty sweet deal.

But when it came down to pulling the trigger, I didn't. Because, my gut.

This seems like a fine bike and I'm sure I would have loved it. Tons of power, decent battery, pretty good looks, and a rear rack! (That front rack is garbage and probably would never be attached, not that there are actually attachment points for it, there aren't.)

However, my sister-in-law made the sage observation, "don't buy it just because of price."

That got me around to thinking about some other bikes I've seen in this search. The one I've liked the looks of since seeing it on Alibaba is this one:

The B-17 by Livelytrip. (Or whatever you decide to call it, they're not picky about whose brand it is.)

Long story short, I was able to order it with a huge battery (24.5Ah, should be good for about 50 miles of not peddling?) in matt black with no branding.

The price quoted for one sample was $1488. 

Plus $150 because we're only ordering one, plus $420 for shipping, supposedly to our door in the USA. 

Now, again, we wait. How long? 

Well, the maker says it could be 70 days before it's ready to ship. Then whatever shipping takes.

It's winter here. And while it's not as snowy as we would like, it's still not prime biking weather. I'm guessing this could be between two and five months. 

So, expect a review sometime between February and May of 2024. Fingers crossed, because we did the hail mary method.

(Honestly, that was a bit of an attraction, too. I want to see what this process is like. I'll let you know!)

In the meantime, I'm already thinking about some mods.

Yeah, I think we're just getting started here.