Published on: 2025-09-23
Written by NWP
Summary
To keep this to the point if you don’t care about the details - I wouldn’t buy this bike again but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t enjoy it. If you want a lightweight e-bike without a throttle and plan to ride it at max power most of the time and don’t ever plan to make changes to the bike, this is a good option for the price. If, like me, you ride this as it is advertised, a fitness bike, you might want to look elsewhere. The gearing sucks.
Full Review
Some specs of me and the bike for reference
I won’t go into the detail of all the specs here but I will throw a few in and some info about me to compare. I am 5’ 10.5” and 200lbs. This puts me right in between the recommendations for the regular and large sizes. For some insight into the range I get, I have ridden 50 miles on mixed hills/flats and still had maybe 10-15 miles left on the battery. When I first got the bike I tried running it until dead and got about 70 miles on a single charge. Both of these instances were on the lowest power setting and the lowest assist level and leaving the default speed limit of 20mph. Speaking of the power settings, they can be a bit confusing if you’ve never dealt with this before. There are 3 power levels (ECO, TRAIL, BOOST) and 5 assist levels. This bike has a torque sensor, so it only assists you based on how hard you push. The maximum power it will output changes with the power level. Just to give an example, I don’t know the actual numbers here just guessing, in ECO mode the max output of the motor is maybe 150W, in TRAIL mode maybe its 250W and in BOOST maybe 350W. When you get that full 150W of output power (ECO mode) in relation to your effort on the pedals changes with the assist level (1-5). So if you are on ECO mode and level 1 assist, you will have to be putting in a lot of effort to get that entire 150W of assist but if you are in assist 5, the 150W kicks in sooner. Hopefully that makes sense.
Initial Purchase, Setup, and Customer Support
I purchased this bike to my house so I had to put it together myself. It was pretty simple, almost anyone could do it. The bike isn’t too heavy considering it is an e-bike (says on the website 38lbs) but it ships without the front wheel so you’ll have to have somewhere to lean it while you deal with that. I did it solo but an extra set of hands would probably be nice. After the initial setup and a few rides, I noticed a clicking sound coming from the head tube area when turning the handlebars. This occurred with both bikes I ordered (one for my partner). It got worse and didn’t sound very nice so I emailed support to ask about it. They told me to tighten some stuff down and that didn’t help and eventually I was told to take it to a bike mechanic. Here is what the mechanic said:
We finished the work on your bike. It ended up being a headset overhaul which costs $35. It appeared that from the factory they did not grease any of the bearings, and the pre load was way too tight. We added grease and set a proper pre load so the bearings don’t creak anymore
This seems like a pretty big QC issue. No grease on those headset bearings is really fucking bad. Maybe the preload was my problem because I do recall tightening some stuff up around the headset so I won’t mark them down for that. This whole exchange took over a month but that was mostly because I had to wait for the mechanic and such. They usually replied within a day. After I had already dropped the bikes off at the mechanic they offered to send new bikes over and send back my old ones but I didn’t really want to deal with that hassle. They paid for the repair work so overall the support for that issue was good.
Making the bike my own - Problems with upgrades
One of the first things I wanted to add was a bike rack. Velotric sells one but I wanted the Topeak MTX 2.0 rack because it is highly regarded and has some cool attachments. I bought the rack at REI and proceeded to install it only to find out the mount points are non-standard. The bolt holes for most bolt on racks point to the side, while these point upwards. This is my first annoyance of non-standard features on the bike. You can still install the rack with some small L-brackets which is what I ended up doing and it has been working fine since. I used nylock nuts to ensure that they don’t loosen with vibrations over time and haven’t had issues.
I also wanted to change the handlebars mostly just for fun, but I also wanted more hand positions on the bike. I went with Velo Orange Crazy bars which are much wider and have a greater sweep back for a more comfortable ride. This is where being right between the two sizes became a slight problem. The stem angle is adjustable which is nice but since I am on the shorter size for the large, to be in a moderately comfortable position, I have to put the stem pretty much upright. This means shifter and brake cabling becomes a bit tighter. With the wider bars, it means the cables are difficult to get on. If you do want to do something like this, you must leave the bars unmounted until you get your shifters and brakes on so you can maneuver them around the cables. I wouldn’t say Velotric did anything wrong in their design with this one. It is just a quirk of being between the two sizes I think. If I were taller, I would have the bars angle more forward, giving more slack to the cables.
Problems with Gearing and the listed specs
So if you go to the web page for this bike and go to the specs, on initial inspection it might look fine. But then you try to buy spares or upgrades and you’ll find that the spec sheet is lacking. For example, the drivetrain lists the rear derailleur as Shimano 8 speed. Which one? You’ll have to guess based on looking at the part on the bike. Same for the shift lever. Rims are double wall aluminum alloy but what depth? What width? Who knows?? You can’t even look them up because they are Velotric branded. The brakes are Tektro hydraulic disc brakes but the rotors are “160mm front and rear” - but which model? What attachment method? You can probably figure this stuff out yourself by looking at the parts but it is really annoying to not have a spec sheet with details all in one place. It actually really fucking pisses me off for some reason.
Additionally, as I started riding bigger hills and longer periods I found I wanted a lower gear - and then the more I thought about this the more I was baffled by their gearing choices. This bike is advertised on their website as a fitness bike, meaning you’re supposed to be putting in some effort here. That is exactly the type of bike I wanted! But why then is the gearing so shit for hills? It is like they geared it for someone who is riding this on max assist BOOST power mode. But someone who wants to ride like that probably wants more range and a bigger motor, because the 40NM of torque this one offers isn’t ideal. That person also probably wants a throttle which this bike doesn’t have. I just don’t understand the choice here. The front chainring is 46T and the largest gear on the back is 36T. Maybe you have no idea what that means but if you’re like me, you’re going to want as close to 1:1 gearing as you can get with this bike. Especially if you load it up with gear for longer trips. Ok so lets just upgrade the cassette problem solved! That is just what I thought too. The problem is that the rear gears are NOT a cassette. They are something called a freewheel (not a freehub, a freewheel). This type of gear ring (?) threads on to the motor instead of meshing with a spline of a cassette. I really wanted to put a cassette on so I even emailed Velotric asking to confirm the motor connector pinout is standard because I read on some forum at some point that it isn’t. I was going to buy a new motor with a cassette mount on it, I was committed. They responded that it is PROPRIETARY! THE FUCKING MOTOR CONNECTOR PINOUT! What could I possibly even do with that? Oh man that fucking pissed me off. Let me work on my fucking bike holy shit fuck you guys. Ok, ok caLm down. I already bought my cassette but no big deal I’ll just get a freewheel. Well there is another problem there - I couldn’t find a single freewheel with a gear larger than 42T. I searched everywhere and that was the best I could do. Note to others - if you are going to do this yourself, you’ll need a rear derailleur extender and a 1mm cassette spacer. This upgrade has helped a bit but I am so frustrated at the use of these dumbass oldass stupid ass parts. Just use fucking modern standards! I am sure Velotric can give me some reason why they HAD to use a freewheel but I don’t fucking care to be honest.
I do understand another solution is to change the front chain ring to a 42T or something but the reason I did this way was a couple of reasons - initially I had purchased an 11 speed group set before I realized it was a freewheel, so I kind of had the idea in my head already to change the rear gears. I searched far and wide for an 11 speed freewheel with a granny gear but I only found one manufacturer that even made 11S freewheels and the largest gear was like 34T or something. Additionally, when I went to try and take apart the bottom bracket/chain ring area the attachment point wasn’t anything I was used to. It was like a mix of a threaded bottom bracket and a square taper. Whatever it was, I didn’t have the tool for it or even know what to look up to get the tool.
Solar bike - probably just a me problem
I always thought it would be cool to get a solar panel on my ebike. I know it won’t add much range while riding but I often park my bike out in the sun and figured it would charge all day while I am at work. The bike charger that comes with it doesn’t allow you to power on the bike while it was charging, but they do sell a extension battery so I knew there is some way to deliver power while the bike is on. I emailed them to ask about this and I bet you can guess their response based on the motor connector debacle. Its a proprietary CAN protocol that they won’t share. Idk man I know no one else will worry about this but this shit is so wack dude. I just want to fuck with my bike. Its my bike. Let me fuck with it. I want to do weird shit with it sure, but I should be able to.
Conclusion
This bike has pissed me off but here I am riding it almost every day. The brakes feel good, its relatively comfortable, and I haven’t gotten a single flat. Take from that what you will. I begrudgingly rate this bike 6/10. The proprietary BS is a huge let down. The gearing sucks. The rest is pretty good.