I usually drive with my kids (3 years and 5 years old) and use the subway when it's just me or me and my husband. But using the car with current fuel prices is taking a toll on our overall expenses. So we want to get an e-bike that we can use for daily school drop-offs or shorter trips with the kids.
The prices are kind of confusing because there are literally some $1k bikes on Amazon and some even cheaper on AliExpress, but then some go all the way up to $7,000. Our budget is around $2k to $4k. We don’t want to buy something expensive just because we have the budget, but at the same time, we don’t want to buy the cheapest bike that might be unsafe with kids.
I have found 3 categories of bikes from different price ranges, but I’m not sure which range of specs is more suitable for our use:
Aventon Abound at $2k
I liked it the most, but it has a hub motor, and I think they are not suitable for hilly areas, which might become an issue in our neighborhood.
Tarran L1 at $3k
This has an upgraded version which is more expensive, but lower one has a 100Nm mid-drive motor and a 693 Wh battery in the $3k version. If mid-drive motors are more suitable for hilly areas, then I would go for it.
Tern GSD ($5.8k)
While I really loved this bike and it has very good reviews, we still think it would be too expensive for us, given that we won’t be fully replacing our car. We will still use the car for long trips.
Pleaseee help..
by RoundDatabase8343
5 Comments
I’ve had an Aventon for five years. Been great.
I was in a similar boat to you when we bought our lectric xpedition 2. As much as I wanted the bike to be the second car, we still need a second car so I couldn’t spend a bunch of money. It’s been 6 months now and I really like this bike. My kids are three, six and nine and they all go on there
Aventon seens to be the best of the “mid tier” brands. They seem to be pretty well built for the price. Tern is the gold standard of the mid tail bikes, and really popularized this 20 inch wheel style. I have a cannondale cargowagen and have really enjoyed it and it’s less expensive than the GSD.
Edit: The trek fetch+ 2 is on crazy sale right now. Really worth looking at one of those if you can find one in person. Comes with the bosch system like the cannondale or the tern.
Check out Specialized’s Globe Haul. Bicycling Mag’s ’23 Bike of the Year and Gear Junkies Best Overall E-Cargo Bike 2024
I heard some really good things about the safety features of f the Tarran bucket bike and the L1 seems to have all of those. If you live in an area with bad bike infrastructure, a back camera that doubles as a dashcam is a really nice +
And the carbon belt saves a lot of time on maintenance