Rad Power RadWagon 4 Review: I Ended My Friendship With My Car
The e-bike that wants to be a minivan.
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I came here just to say that I love your username. I’m even going to read this article after I post this.
Edit: here is the problem with electric scooters and e-bikes and stuff. I am an American in the south. The only thing going for us down here is our incredibly delicious and unhealthy food. I am 6’2” and 250 lbs. that means if I want a battery powered something I have to spend big bucks.
Now we’ve never bought a really expensive electric scooter, but my partner uses one every day to get to work. I think the one they have now cost is almost $600, and we’ve been running this legal scam.
See, we buy a scooter and get the assurion insurance. My partner rides it about 4 or 5 miles everyday round trip. It breaks after about 6 months of use. Contact insurance, they send us a check, wash, rinse, repeat.
But I can’t imagine spending $1000 plus dollars on an e-anything as fast as these things wear out with daily use.
i sold my car so that i could buy an ebike back in february, i now have 400 something miles on it and haven't had to spend a dime on any maintenance (although i probably should have...) but when it comes to PEV's they're definitely one of those things where if you spend more money to get a better quality product you'll have a much better experience. also since bikes are more standardized its easier to find replacement parts and if you're willing to put the time into learning how to mess with it you wouldn't even need to rely on a repair shop.
Oh yeah. I’ve seen some scooters and bikes that are bad ass. If I had the money I’d get one in a heartbeat. I’m not saying all of them suck. Also, I love to tinker with stuff. Also, I think that the good ones aren’t as bad of a price as a lot of people would think.
But to extend on my issues. I live in the foothills in a main city. Like the city literally sits atop a mountain with steep hills all around it. So, not only do I have to take into account my ummm girth, but also the inclines add another level of difficulty.
So, in closing. I know that there are some that can carry me, but even a starter in my range would be a sizable investment.
I think the one that my partner has is a 500w motor, and they have one hill in their commute that they have to walk up, but they have to go the long way around to avoid as many hills as possible.
They love theirs though and look at riding it as the best part of their day. Which doesn’t say much for me hehe
ah yeah i live around seattle so i understand the need for hill-climbability, my bike was not cheap at all and it handles all the hills around here like a beast. if you ever get an opportunity to try out a 1000w ebike i think that would be able to cover the pitfalls you're talking about, but i do agree it is a bit of an investment to get started, i definitely wouldn't have my bike if i wasn't able to sell my car.
Yeah, we live in Birmingham, Al. It’s in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s crazy you go 2 hours south of here and the ground is flat as far as the eye can see. But here you’re either going uphill or downhill.
Definitely look into an ebike: Even when the motor dies, you still have a bike!
Sounds like you bought a crappy scooter, honestly. Which one did you get? Most of the generic Chinese brands are basically disposable.
Sorry I just realized I didn’t answer your question. It was an iScooter. Which is fine for my partner as they are smaller than I am. And with our little grift. Every time it tears up we get the check add to it and buy a slightly better one. But we started at around 300 and for real maybe this one was 500. Maybe it wasn’t 600. But there really hasn’t been much improvement and definitely not 200 dollars worth.
Yeah I mean it is. But once again if you want one that isn’t like that it’s going to be far more expensive.
Sure, but you get what you pay for here. If you spend $500 you're gonna get a disposable piece of crap. If you're willing to step up to a nice brand (Rad bikes have a decent reputation) then you'll get something that's going to last several years, and the expendable parts (motor, battery, chain, gears, tires) are all replaceable. Theoretically, if you keep replacing those parts, a good e-bike will last forever. Whether or not you live near an e-bike repair shop is definitely a factor to consider, though.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. Truthfully, I would like one that folds but is suitable for off road. Like my partner rides theirs to work daily. I wouldn’t want to ride on the streets here it’s too dangerous for my taste. I do, however go fishing in some pretty remote places.
What kind of maintenance do electric scooters need?
Also, just to clarify. New tires you can do yourself. On scooters usually the tire and rim are one thing. So you just order a replacement from the factory. The problem is that one of them has the motor built into the rim so it’s a little more expensive. But still totally doable. Some come with inflatable tires which are cheaper to replace but have the obvious disadvantage of going flat if a hole is poked in them.
The batteries are the thing specially that no one messes with in my area, and by my area I mean my state.
So, you need new tires every once in a while. Other than that maybe new batteries? But there’s no where around here that does that kind of work.
IDK, I bought my ENGWE EP2 Pro for $700 a few months ago, have put about 500-600 miles on it, and so far so good.
I ride a regular bike too and have probably put about as much money into buying and upgrading it over the last 10 years or so. Love them both.
I rarely drive anymore, saves a lot of money on gas and I can avoid traffic. I am lucky to live in a bike friendly area though.
Btw, the EP2 Pro can support 330 lbs and is pretty height adjustable, there's better ebikes out there though.
Number 1 love the username.
Number 2 I just took a ss of this comment because my partners scooter probably has about 2 months left on it. So, we’ll definitely look into this one when it dies. Thank you.
Haha, glad you got some amusement out of it.
If you're cheaping out, Lectric is another similar brand but you're better off getting something higher quality from Trek, Specialized, Tern, Magnum, etc..
Either way, electric bikes beat scooters all day in my book because even if the power goes out, you still have a bike you can ride home/to the shop. Conversely, with a hub drive, if your chain breaks, you can still ride with power only. Mid drives are objectively better in just about every way except for that redundancy IMO, but they are more expensive. They are especially good at climbing hills.
If you have a local bike shop you can trust, go there before you buy anything: They should be able to sell you something they can service so you don't have to keep replacing shit every 6 months. A properly maintained bike can last a lifetime or even longer (I've been riding my regular bicycle - a steel frame hard tail hybrid - for 15 years now, only replacing the chain once and tires/tubes once - steel frames can last a long time and take a lot of abuse).
Thanks man I’ll check out the local shops. I’ll probably still have to go online just because of the clientele they are used to. Like, the bike shops are all basically in mountain brook. Which doesn’t mean much to outsiders. But this paragraph sums it up really well.
According to a list compiled in 2008 by Stephen Higley, it is the ninth wealthiest community in the United States.[13] It is often referred to as "The Tiny Kingdom" due to its high concentration of the region's business and professional leaders,[14] and the disparity of wealth between it and Birmingham where according to census data nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line.
Like, you’ll probably think I’m joking, but I am dead ass serious. Here, riding a bike is rich people stuff. So all the bike shops are in the rich neighborhoods and incredibly expensive.
But I could probably at the very least go there and test ride some things. That way I have a better idea about power, and options.
Thanks for the info. I’ll ss it. That way I have a record of it when the time comes round again.
For anything less than 10miles in one go, do you really need electric assistance? 4-5miles that's like 20min of fairly low intensity biking on a regular roadbike, hardly worth spending money on an electric bike/scooter for that.
So where I live it’s SUPER hilly, and I mean steep hills. You mix that with no bike lanes, and super heavy traffic. Like, my apartment parking lot dumps you straight out on to a 4 lane road right in the city.
So, all of that mixed with the fact that we aren’t trying to do this to lose weight. We don’t cycle cause it’s fun to us. It’s literally because I have the only drivers license, and the only car. But they need their own local transportation.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the weather! Down here starting in may the weather goes into death mode. The summers here stay in the 90’s, and very often break 100. With an average humidity of around 80%
So, we don’t cycle as a hobby. I mean riding 10 miles maybe nothing to you, but the hills alone. I’d rather take a severe beating than ride 10 miles. In the summer it gets deadly hot. They are riding this thing to work to be less than 2 feet from clients. So, don’t need to be sweaty. There are just sooooo many reasons that this thing really needs to get them there and really not be pedaled at all preferably.
Which that is one advantage of the cheap scooter. Scooters aren’t allowed on the road. So they can ride it on the sidewalk avoiding crazy drivers.
Reasonable trip time is 30 minutes. 4 miles is about the edge of that for most people on a regular bike. 7 miles is in that range on an ebike. Sure I have ridden by regular bike 12 miles before, but the trip took over an hour.
12 miles should definitely not take you more than an hour, thats definitely a leisurely average pace. A reasonable and realistic pace for a complete beginner biking for transport is around 15mph on a regular road bike in relatively flat terrain (less than 600 feet of total elevation)
The terrain was not entirely flat, I had several stops for traffic lights. It wasn't much over 1 hour, but it was a few minutes over. Sure downhill I went faster, but uphill I went slower. By the end I was getting tired as well and so slowed down even more.