Does anyone have a 21 speed ebike?

[Jimebikenewbie]

I am looking for a 21speed ebike.
I know of wallke ebike 21 speed but I hear there is basically no customer service (china).
I want a ebike that I can also ride like a regular bike when I choose to.

 

[m@Robertson]

Ebikes with front derailleurs border on being unicorns. They will only be found on hub motor'd bikes, which puts them in sort of a low-performance class. The Wallke touts itself as a 'mountain bike'. e-mtbs usually have mid drives because of an inherent limitation in a hub motor's capability - it powers thru the hub, single-speed, and cannot take advantage of the gears - in fact you can take the chain clean off of a hub drive bike because the motor doesn't use it. You can still pedal it just fine and the pedal assist will transmit to the motor and give you power. The chain is only for the rider's muscles. Thats why you aren't going to see many ebikes with triple-front cranks. Its a band aid to try and make up for a weakness in the design.

So Wallke gives you 21 gears so you can grunt your way up the hill yourself - the motor is a simple Bafang G020 with a 22a (peak!) controller and its only good for I think 45 Nm.

I sympathize with what you want to do, but this isn't the answer. Better to consider an ebike with a 1x drivetrain and a big rear cassette cluster in back than that awful little $15 (retail) 7s freewheel like the Wallke has.

Realistically, once you have an electric motor you don't ride them with the power off. Since they are inherently so heavy, what you want to do is reduce the power assist to the point where the motor only makes up for all the extra weight and the bike feels like a bike again. If the concern is about range anxiety, that is something you learn to deal with very quickly and fairly easily. You learn your limits and don't exceed them, because muscling a 45+ lb ebike home is always going to suck no matter what.

 

["A"]

You gotta be more specific, what do you mean by "a ebike that ride like a regular bike when you choose to"?
Do you ride in terrain that require specific gear range?
More importantly, what is your budget for an ebike?

If you just turn off the electrical system or remove the battery, ebike would just ride as a normal bicycle.
Even bicycles with 21 speed could have lots of redundant gearing that over lap each other, range of gearing is still close to those with single chainring and 9 or 10 speed.
I have an e-road bike with 18-speed with a front derailleur.
Do I need the 18 speed? not really, but that's just the way the bike came.
Do I ride it like a normal bicycle? not if I don't need to; hopefully never will I need to.

 

[Django]

I ride a modified Yamaha Cross Core. I swapped out the 2x10 for a Shimano SLX 1x11. Because it is heavier that a traditional bike, riding on eco+ makes it feel more like a traditional bike and provides about the same workout. If I step it up to eco, it matches my input. I don’t tend to use standard, (180%), or high, (280%), but it is nice to have when desired, (at 67, I am sure that standard and high will be used more often before too long). When I am riding at speeds that exceed the 20 mph assist, it becomes a regular bike anyway. I live in rural New Hampshire and we regularly ride hills that exceed 20% grades, but most of our hills are only about 6%. The 1x has worked very well with the mid drive. The front derailleur has always been the problem child of derailleur systems.

 

[Smaug]

Ebikes with front derailleurs border on being unicorns.

Yes, because with electric assist, we don't need to have just the perfect gear all the time, as we do with a purely mechanical bike.
Actually, I am surprised that we have progressed to bikes with so many gears. It's really unnecessary for most people. Schwinns in the 60s and 70s with a 5-speed rear cassette were fine for most people. Adding a front derailleur was an unnecessary complication, except for racers.

Realistically, once you have an electric motor you don't ride them with the power off. Since they are inherently so heavy, what you want to do is reduce the power assist to the point where the motor only makes up for all the extra weight and the bike feels like a bike again.

This isn't true for everyone, M@. You tend to favor heavy bikes, as you like the fat tires and the ability to carry a lot of stuff.

If the concern is about range anxiety, that is something you learn to deal with very quickly and fairly easily. You learn your limits and don't exceed them, because muscling a 45+ lb ebike home is always going to suck no matter what.

Yes, the range anxiety thing is a Catch-22: We can buy more electric range with bigger batteries, but that makes the bike heavier and less "pedal-able". The other approach is to keep the bike light, with a minimal power system and efficient, high-pressure tires, so that when the battery DOES die, it's easier to pedal. Think of a road bike with a simple 36 V system. It might weigh 5-10 lbs. more than a "proper" road bike, and the electric is only used for hills and stiff headwinds. One could keep up with a peloton of fitter cyclists on a bike like this, or easily get home after the battery is depleted.

I was thinking if getting a dual-battery eMoped for my next bike, but they are priced about like gas scooters, which cost more in day-to-day operation, but there is no range anxiety ever. I'm thinking now of an electric road bike. Still pretty light, weaker power system, but so much more mechanically efficient that the range wouldn't ever be an issue.

****************

Back to the OP: don't worry about having 21 speeds. The typical 7 or 8 will be plenty. Focus more on the type of bike you want and on quality. As you point out, direct-to-consumer Chinese bikes with no support based in your home country can be a great value on paper, but you're likely to get bitten by something.

An example I like to use is my heybike Ranger: It had screeching brakes from the start. I reached out to them, they told me how to align them. Nothing I did would stop the screeching. Probably nothing THEY could do either. It was just poor quality componentry. Do look for name brand brakes, like Tektro.

 

[m@Robertson]

Yes, because with electric assist, we don't need to have just the perfect gear all the time, as we do with a purely mechanical bike.
Actually, I am surprised that we have progressed to bikes with so many gears. It's really unnecessary for most people. Schwinns in the 60s and 70s with a 5-speed rear cassette were fine for most people.

Thats the general ebike consensus, but I have found I REALLY prefer more gears, not as an ebiker but as a cyclist. Cycling is about having just the right cadence, and the only way to get that when the terrain or your endurance changes (other than pumping the power up or down) is more gears. 11s is noticeably better than 9s. The desire for fewer gears is something that arose in the ebike era.

Adding a front derailleur was an unnecessary complication, except for racers.

No thats not right. I was an analog cyclist riding road bikes exclusively in the 1970's thru the 1990's, both recreationally with ordinary civilians, with pro and club riders, and as a commuter. This bike below was my daily driver (just pulled it out of mothballs to get it back into shape again). Everyone had a dual front chainring and the reason was you needed it in hills. The racers were the ones who didn't use the smaller front ring.

As you can see I had the bright idea of using a touring crankset - a triple instead of a double - on a non-touring bike - triples were commonplace for cross country road bikes. My thinking was this enabled me to keep a straight block in the back but still have the gear range to take steep hills. In actual practice, it was too much work to figure out the shifting combos with that 32T mini ring up front and I pretty much never used it.

7s in back which was common for the era. So its a 21 speed bike, but a reality not mentioned previously here is that means 21 possible gears. You can't actually use all of them, thanks to gear overlap and chain alignment. Mine was never a racing bike thanks to that triple front crank. Otherwise it had the same components on it that a TDF bike had at that time. That whole bike weighs in at just under 20 lbs. Which was amazing in 1984 when I built it.

I went further down the road to apostacy by using P clamps to put a Blackburn rack on to carry groceries and work clothes and whatnot.

This isn't true for everyone, M@. You tend to favor heavy bikes, as you like the fat tires and the ability to carry a lot of stuff.

Well I have largely left the fatties behind, although normally riding cargo bikes thats certainly in the 'lot of stuff' category. This little thing is mighty nimble. But with a 7 lb battery and a 6 lb motor I still would not want to ride it unpowered, even if it is geared for it.

Back to the OP: don't worry about having 21 speeds. The typical 7 or 8 will be plenty. Focus more on the type of bike you want and on quality.

^^^ This x 10. All that cyclist cadence stuff I'm spouting above is not how most people ride and neither will you on the kind of bike you are showing us. What you REALLY want is a bike that uses quality parts, and the cheap Chinese stuff isn't that. You'll see fails not so much in the motor but in the chainrings, the crankarms, the brakes... corners are cut pretty much everywhere.

 

[eTouringOldie]

I'm not well-educated about ebike design etc enough to chime in on most of this discussion. That said, here are a couple 21-speed ebikes:

Senada Archon
SMLRO XDC-600

There are many others.

 

[hsdrggr]

I run a dual front chainring on the e-bike I use for touring so I can get my pedaling cadence into the sweet spot for riding. It’s a 38t/47t, it splits the ratios up nicely so the is no duplication of ratios.

 

[Smaug]

No thats not right. I was an analog cyclist riding road bikes exclusively in the 1970's thru the 1990's, both recreationally with ordinary civilians, with pro and club riders, and as a commuter. This bike below was my daily driver (just pulled it out of mothballs to get it back into shape again). Everyone had a dual front chainring and the reason was you needed it in hills. The racers were the ones who didn't use the smaller front ring.

Yes, the racers would be fine with a single, larger chainring, as racers are strong and light. Muggles would be fine with a smaller chainring, as they're not strong enough to pull the big gears except down a mountain.