Originally Posted by chvid

I think those look like a nice comfortable ride. I have a Townie D7 Fat Franks with Crystalyte DD hub front hub motor, and would think it is a similar ride. I do like having seven gears though. I just think the ebike business is a very tough one, with lots of vendors thinking it "should be" a great success. People that ride normal bikes tend to frown on ebikes naturally, if they are young, and those bicycle riders who need the assist are older and have the time and experience to make their own kit ebikes to save a lot of money over pre-fabbed ebikes. I think the price barrier to pre-fabbed ebikes is significant for the average person - with very particular niches being sought - the lightweight road bike with a small geared motor, or the cargo bike/edgerunner/extracycle type etc. People are not willing to pay more than about a thousand dollars for a bicycle, and so many of the pre-fabbed bikes are relatively lame powerwise, and fail design-wise as regular bikes, and expensive. And it takes a lot research and worry to understand what you are buying and the pitfalls - scepticism about range, battery life, fly-by-night operators, unavailable replacement parts, shoddy third-world parts, risks of online buying/shipping, etc. I've built a lot of ebikes myself for my use, but I can't think of any prefabbed bikes I could have aquired with a similar bang for the buck. And I'm an almost retired science geek. So I think ebikes won't take off until battery technology is a lot better and a lot cheaper. For now, it is a risky business model, unless you just sell parts, like Grin Technology (ebikes.ca). I'm not sure if better marketing will help much. And you will have tons of support headaches as a vendor, with failed batteries used outside their recommended charging pattern, and dead bms'es etc. No easy fixes. Another thing is the sort of buyers of pre-fabbed bikes are often from a non-cycling background - smokers or DUI types or whatever, and don't consider these bikes to be a true hybrid vehicle which includes human effort/pedalling - rather as lame motorcycles or scooters. If that's the comparison ebikes will certainly not compare to a gas-powered scooter. In my case I want to be able to ride the multi-use trails as a bike in a stealth fashion, for ranges up to 100 miles, which involves dual packs, recumbency, fairings and the like. So no easy answers. In a coastal environment (I'm in one) you get a lot of visitors for rentals on a daily basis, and I'm sure many of them would enjoy trying ebikes. That could be a gateway experience for them to get their own bike, or even make their own. But I don't think you would see them buying the bikes without considerable skepticism and a ton of comparison shopping.