Originally Posted by
Doc_Wui
Crilex, I would forget 30 mph, as I saw the word "legal" in one of your posts, if you plan to abide by that. Per the class system, the fastest you can go w/o pedaling is a class II at 20 mph. The class III are not allowed to have throttles. To go 28 mph on a class III, the pedals have to be moving. And since most of those bikes use torque sensors to detect the pedal force, any baby footing on them will rapidly slow you down to what the bike thinks is appropriate for that level of force. That means you can forget many of the no-throttle mid motors, all nice bikes but they require pedals moving for the motor to be moving.
I feel 20 mph is a good speed for a low power electric bike. While most of my ebikes will max out at that speed because of their motor/controller, I'd rather that the guts of the bike limit my speed, not a governor.
If you want to be quasi-legal, the bikes imported from China by Juiced, Rad, Volt will have throttled motors with pedal assist, and they can cheat a little and surpass 20 ,mph. Very few bikes will do 60 miles with no pedaling w/o a pair of batteries.
Thanks for the advice Doc_Wui. You know what is interesting? I've read on different forums and also I've watched some YouTube reviews and every single time I hear a completely different brand name or no name that is recommended/mentioned. If one asks about cars, there will be generally the same few manufacturers that will be recommended from different people however with bicycles it's completely different, hence my confusion. I wish they will have a place where you can actually go and test side by side different bicycles, but unfortunately in Atlanta GA the stores that I've visited so far they don't even have e-bikes for sale. It's really hard to buy a few thousand dollar e-bike online, when you have no idea if you would like it or not in person.
Never heard of Juiced, but I'd look into it.