We make it our business to tell readers about notable deals on products we like, and scour the web for legit offers during Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day to help you save money.

But probably the greatest discount out there is available year-round, it’s not restricted to an older model that’s been superseded by a newer release and the product is legitimately life-changing.

The UK government’s Cycle to Work Scheme allows payroll employees to get their hands on any e-bike for commuting and have the cost taken out of their salary in monthly instalments before tax—like a buy now, pay later that you always have the funds to cover. Because it’s taken out of your salary before you’ve paid tax, you save between 28%, 42% or 47%, depending on which tax band you fall in.

There are many Cycle to Work Scheme providers, but Green Commute Initiative is one of the more straightforward and as a social enterprise it’s doing everything it can to get more people cycling—a mission Coach wholeheartedly supports. For instance, it doesn’t charge a 7% fee at the end of the scheme like some traditional providers do, you just make the maximum savings available to you.

It also has a plain explanation of how the scheme works for employees, as well as a more detailed step-by-step guide, because, to be honest, it’s pretty convoluted. But when there’s the chance to save hundreds or even thousands of pounds on a better way to get to work, that’s a minor worry.

Still not convinced? Here are four good reasons for cycling to work on an ebike, informed by my experience of testing a dozen-odd ebikes on my commute.

1. Riding An E-Bike Is Easy

I regularly cycle to work on a normal bike. It’s great and the three subsequent reasons to commute all apply, but it’s not always easy. Hills, wind and the tiredness that builds up after a long week can make some rides a bit of a grind. And even if I take it easy, I sweat enough to warrant a shower and a change of clothes once I arrive at work, which adds time to my commute and bulk to my backpack.

An ebike has none of those problems. Suddenly you just become really good at cycling and cruise into work without breaking a sweat. In fact, I’ve learned to wrap up warmer than I normally would because I’m not working hard enough to raise my body temperature.  Through Green Commute Initiative, you can add clothing to your bike package so you can get the right gear for your commute and make big savings.

I’ve also found that cycling an e-bike to work is the easiest, most reliable way to get into work as you’re far less likely to get caught in traffic or the delays that can plague trains.

2. It’s Healthy

Even though you won’t necessarily get sweaty riding an e-bike, it’s still exercise and you’ll still do yourself the power of good. There’s an aerobic exercise target, recommended by various health agencies around the world, of 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. You really don’t have to work that hard to start racking up the minutes—a brisk walk or riding an e-bike, say—but the benefits you get from clocking up this amount of time doing low-intensity steady state are immense. If there was a pill that could deliver the proven benefits of regular aerobic exercise, you’d pay through the nose for it.

If your weekly commuting time adds up to 150 minutes or more, you’ll be hitting this recommended target without sacrificing any leisure time. And because it’s easy exercise, it won’t leave you too tired to keep up any sport or activity you already do. In fact, you’ll probably end up cycling to that too for a warm-up—that’s what I do.

3. It’s More Environmentally Friendly

While most of our transport infrastructure still runs on fossil fuels, getting around under your own steam will lower your personal emissions and limit pollution. More than that, the more people who cycle, the safer cycling feels. Making a change to your commute can have a ripple effect, inspiring others to travel in a way that’s better for the environment.

4. It’s Good Value For Money

Cycling to work is not free, but there’s every chance it will save you substantial sums of money compared with driving or taking public transport. Obviously, using Green Commute Initiative to access the Cycle to Work Scheme can significantly cut down your initial set-up cost, and you can negotiate with your employer to spread payments to fit your monthly budget. Just make sure to budget for regular maintenance and replacement parts, as well as insurance against bike theft. All customers of Green Commute Initiative have access to special offers on insurance products. I also subscribe to one of the UK’s cycling membership organisations to access liability insurance and legal assistance in the event of an accident.

I must admit to a love-hate relationship with bicycles. I absolutely love tearing along a forest path on a mountain bike, flying over bumps in the pouring rain. But during my brief stint as a triathlete I discovered I loathe road cycling. It’s boring, excruciatingly uncomfortable for a woman, and there always seems to be a puncture, chain or brake pad to faff about with.

So when I was asked if I’d try swapping my car for an e-bike I had mixed feelings. Being able to whizz up hills was very appealing, but the hassle of putting on a helmet, waterproofs and booties each time I popped out, and trying to find somewhere to lock it up safely, wasn’t particularly appealing.

But I decided to give it a chance and received the Canyon Commuter: ON 7. I used it for all the trips I would normally do in the car, except when I had passengers to transport.

I work from home so I don’t commute and I usually walk my kids to school, but even though most things are within walking distance in the English town where I live I am in the habit of jumping in the car to pop to the Post Office, go to football training half a mile away and travel a mile-and-a-half to my personal trainer. When I am training for an ultra-marathon I tend to run everywhere, but at the moment I'm injured so I have been driving rather than walking.

It was a refreshing change to switch to an e-bike for those journeys and keep the car on the drive. I used the car twice in the course of those five days, once to take my son to a rugby match 20 miles away, and then a second time to drop him and his two heavy bags at school. The rest of my journeys were on the e-bike including trips to the local corner shop, Post Office, coffee shop and personal trainer.  

The Good

The first thing that surprised me was how light the e-bike is. Designed as a bike for zipping around cities its aluminum frame is lighter than the one electronic bike I briefly used a few years ago and pretty easy to assemble. It can be used as a normal bike with Shimano gears but has three support levels.

Although the tires are designed for smooth roads, they are still much wider than a traditional road bike and gripped well when I cut across grass or went along a footpath for a short distance.

I thought the e-bike might be complicated to use, but it was fairly intuitive and I was able to go straight out on an errand as soon as it was assembled. On a fair-weather day it felt good to be in the fresh air on a quick journey, rather than using the car and trying to find somewhere to park.

I tended to use the power when going uphill and found I could keep a constant pace of 25kmph on an incline and on the flat. When going downhill I turned off the electric power and the bike got up to 30kmph on its own. I subsequently discovered the bike only provides motorized support up to 25kmph by law which explains why this was my average speed.

The bike really came into its own when I was coaching my running group on Tuesday evening. I had two back-to-back hill rep sessions and I was able to motor up and down the hill with my runners for two hours without working up a sweat. The following day, however, I had very bad saddle sore and had to dig out my padded shorts to use on subsequent rides. 

On the next ride I needed to take a parcel to an In Post locker, a job I would normally do in the car. It was pouring with rain but I shoved on my waterproofs and within 10 minutes I was at the locker. Unfortunately it was full so I had to ride another 1km to another locker—which was also full.

It was rush hour at the time and despite the rain I was actually relieved to be on the bike. I passed all the traffic while riding in the cycle lane and I didn’t have to worry about parking—I just cycled straight up to the lockers. The whole round trip took 30 minutes, and with traffic and parking it would have taken the same amount of time in the car.

Traveling to my personal trainer on the e-bike was also a breeze. While it is normally a five-minute car journey, on the bike it only took seven minutes and I was nicely warmed up when I got there.

The Bad

Although I enjoyed all of my seven journeys, by the fifth day the muscles over my ischial tuberosities (inner buttock) were extremely bruised and tender. The seat was far too hard for me and I know from experience that my muscles don’t just get used to it.

I was also surprised that my legs were quite sore and fatigued, and going uphill felt harder each day. Although the e-bike made it easier to cycle, it didn’t make it easy. You still need a relatively good level of fitness to be able to get around on one.

It was also not always practical to cycle. On Thursday morning I usually drive my eight-year-old son to school and then meet a friend at a nearby café for coffee. This is because I have to carry his heavy electric guitar. But this week I had to precariously balance the guitar on the e-bike whilst pushing it 1km to school. It was a pain and completely impractical, even if it did mean I could cycle home quickly afterward.

In fact, doing anything with the kids meant I couldn’t really use the bike (unless it was a cycle ride) and a weekly supermarket shop wouldn’t be practical either, as we usually have four large bags for life full of heavy food, although I guess I could invest in a bike trailer.

The Verdict

Because all of my journeys were 10km or less I found I really enjoyed them as I avoided the drudgery of long cycles, but there was definitely a time and a place to switch to the e-bike. Chores during the day, nipping to the shop, going to meet friends or cycling to my personal trainer were all perfect to do on the bike.

But taking the kids to matches or moving them and their heavy kit around could only really be done in the car. As a single-car household I think this is reasonable enough, but I will definitely be using the e-bike for those local journeys, particularly since short journeys cause more pollutants, as catalytic converters don’t work effectively on trips under five miles.

So I’ll be getting on my bike a little more often, but won’t be ditching the car altogether.

E-bikes are fantastic for getting around a city, but the initial outlay of four figures is off-putting. That’s why I greet budget options (albeit still in the lower four figures) like the Honbike Uni4 with delight, and hope they work well enough to make cycling with a minimum of effort accessible to more people.

On paper, the Honbike Uni4 looks like great value and it has received a number of five-star reviews. I was initially impressed, but once the odometer ticked into three figures I ran into problems with the battery. It’s a pity because the Uni4 was on track for a place in my selection of the best e-bikes, but there are more reliable budget options I can recommend (see below).

Honbike Uni4 E-Bike: Price And Availability

The Honbike Uni 4 is available direct from Honbike and costs $1,799 in the US and £1,699 in the UK. The only third-party retailer I found that sold the Uni4 is Wellbots.

Design

The Uni4 has a strikingly-designed frame. The vertical seatpost, front fork and head tube are joined by a horizontal J shape that starts at the headtube, runs past the seatpost and then appears to thread through the motor in the rear wheel and finish at the bottom bracket. It’s swooping. It’s elegant. But it has its downsides. 

I was concerned that the lack of separate down tube and top tube reduces the ways to attach a bike lock. The bike anchor in my back garden is at top tube height, which posed a problem when trying to secure this expensive bit of kit. The frame also has a wider-than-usual diameter, which meant I was unable to use my smaller D-lock. 

A minor issue is that the combined top and down tube isn’t aligned with the center of the bike because it comes out either side of the rear wheel. For the first few days I was convinced I hadn’t aligned the handlebars correctly, but it’s just that the crossbar sits at a slight diagonal. Even now I can’t shake the sense that the handlebars are out of alignment.

There are other elements I got on better with. The controls on the handlebars are well-designed, with a three-button set-up by the left grip and a throttle on the right. They’re easy to find and operate with cycling gloves on. The same goes for the bell, conveniently placed for the left index finger, and which was loud enough to raise a cheer from a picket line of teachers.

Another welcome design feature is the belt drive, which means no chain slips, no grease and less maintenance. Power transfer is not as efficient as it is with a chain, but the motor picks up the slack.

The bike weighs 44lb/20kg, which is in the expected range for budget e-bikes, though for many people it will be too heavy to pick up. That’s an issue because you can’t remove the battery, so you may need to pick up the bike to bring it inside to charge as I did. It was unwieldy, and a hassle to bring through my back door and charge overnight. The charging port is where the chainstay of the frame meets the rear wheel.

The Uni4 is available in one size. Honbike says it is suitable for people between 5ft 3in/160cm and 6ft 2in/190cm. In my experience that range feels too wide. I’m around 6ft/182cm tall and even with the seatpost and seat position at maximum extension I found the bike more cramped than my usual hybrid.

The Set-Up

The bike is delivered with all the tools you need to get it started. The instructions specify the recommended tightening torques, which is good to have if you own a torque wrench but can feel surplus to requirements when using the included Allen keys.

The bike is relatively straightforward to assemble and the instruction manual is clearly written, so you won’t need to be familiar with putting a bike together. Attach the front mudguard, mount the front wheel, adjust the position of the right-hand brake, screw on the pedals and raise the saddle. Accounting for the time spent removing the cable ties and protective foam, attaching the mudguard the wrong way round (ahem) and long periods staring at the instructions, it took me about an hour.

How I Tested This Bike

I’ve ridden 144 miles/232.4km on the Honbike Uni4, using it for my eight-mile/13km each-way commute, as well as shorter trips. This is the 14th e-bike I have reviewed and, including test rides, I’ve ridden more than 20.

The Battery And Range

The Uni4’s given range is 62 miles/100km and this is standard among its rivals. The cheaper Raleigh Array, for instance, has a 60-mile/97km quoted range and the more expensive Volt London offers the same range as the Uni4. The Raleigh and Volt offerings are similarly heavy, weighing more than 45lb/20kg.

Using the highest assistance setting on each and along the same routes, I ran the Volt’s battery down in 41 miles/​​67km, while I ran the Honbike’s down in 34 miles/55km. In part that may be down to the carbon belt, but I have other concerns about the battery.

The first is that its performance became increasingly erratic, and the battery discharged more quickly the closer it was to empty. This is frustrating if you’re trying to judge if you have enough juice left to get you home, and was surprising given I received a new bike to test. The second concern was that the assistance tailed off as the battery approached zero. Even when there were two of the five bars left on the handlebar display, the assistance was notably diminished. 

The Motor

The 250W motor—the maximum allowed in the UK—is mounted in the rear wheel, but the assistance it provides feels natural and not like you’re being propelled forward violently from behind, which I’ve found to be an issue on early and/or cheap e-bikes. 

There are three levels of assistance and, in the highest setting, the assistance often had an on/off feel. Sometimes I’d push the pedal slightly and then stop pedaling, but a moment later the motor would give a push. This suggests the Uni4 uses a cadence rather than a torque sensor, using the turning of the pedals (rather than the force put through the pedals) as the trigger for the motor. A torque sensor is usually a feature of more expensive e-bikes as it helps to give a more natural feel to the assistance. However, for the most part, the Uni4 feels natural and I didn’t experience that ill-timed push on lower levels of assistance.

Honbike makes its uphill-assist a selling point and—battery issues notwithstanding—the Uni4 handled steep hills well. I found it wouldn’t keep you traveling at the maximum 15.5mph, but I’d find a speed around 12 or 13mph to settle in at and keep climbing with no more effort than I was putting in along the flat.

There is a throttle by the right handlebar grip that can be used to power the bike while walking it along, though I found the speed was much faster than I could walk.

The App

The Honbike app doesn’t offer much, but it’s easy to use and connects reliably to the bike via Bluetooth, so you can check the battery level and distance traveled. You can also lock the bike via the app, although as far as I can tell that just makes life more awkward for a thief—it does little to deter them in the first place.

The Ride

When everything is working well, the Uni4 delivers an easy, if relaxed, ride. It has the upright riding position of a hybrid bike. The assistance is significant but mostly feels natural, and I could get up to maximum speed or cruise up a hill using a comfortable cadence. 

The 15.5mph limit where the assistance cuts out by UK law really was the upper limit unless I was on a downhill. The bike is heavy, the tires are wider than need be (although they can handle the crater-sized potholes in my neighborhood), it’s single-speed and the carbon belt doesn’t help matters either. All of that comes to the fore when the assistance from the motor winds down and the battery unexpectedly runs out. The bike’s still rideable, but only just. 

Is The Honbike Uni4 Worth It?

Because of the issues with the battery and diminishing assistance, I recommend you steer clear of the Honbike Uni4. If you’re looking to spend as little money as possible I recommend the Raleigh Array. It’s heavy, but I found it cruised along pleasantly and the swept-back handlebars added to its relaxed feel. It also has a detachable battery and gears so you could push past 15.5mph should you feel like it. 

The more expensive Volt London is similar to the Honbike and Raleigh but justifies its higher price by nailing the basics and adding on useful security features, like a key fob that locks and unlocks the bike.

Slightly more expensive again is the Ribble Hybrid AL e, and its distinguishing feature is how much lighter it is—30lb/13.5kg. You sacrifice range and the degree of assistance you can wring out of it, but it covers my daily commute and does the work of getting you going quickly and with a minimum of effort.

Getting around is not as easy as it once was. It seems ordering a taxi on your phone is more expensive and less reliable than ever, and it’s hard to keep up with changing transport timetables. Inevitably you’ll be caught out when you really can’t be late. 

Cycling avoids all that trouble and with protected bike lanes springing up all over the place to help people choose an environmentally-sound way to travel, getting to where you’re going is faster and safer than ever. 

The only downside is that it can be hard to avoid working up a sweat, which is less than ideal if you’re on the way to meet someone. Electric bikes, on the other hand, get you around with a minimum of effort so you arrive fresh, and in all likelihood, early.

The latest electric bikes are a far cry from the heavy, tank-like models you can rent from bike share schemes in cities across the UK. While they do the job and are a lot of fun, the push from the motor is clunky and those things weigh a ton. The new Raleigh Trace is completely different. It’s the lightest e-bike Raleigh has ever made and the help from the motor is smooth and feels natural – like you’re just really good at cycling.

It’s also light enough to manoeuvre into an apartment or up a few stairs, or roll it into a lift on its back wheel. That’s helpful because you wouldn’t catch us leaving an e-bike outside on the street.

There’s a lot more to like about the Trace, too. It doesn’t have a clunking-great battery strapped to the downtube, or an LCD screen on the handlebars. Instead, there’s a discreet button on the crossbar and a very handy Bluetooth-connected app providing you with all the info you need to understand your bike and plan your journey. Turn it on and you’re off. The vivid blue or rich copper colourways, with accent front forks, add to the attractive package.

The Raleigh Trace is also the smart way to get to work and with a range of payment options,  it matches up to most monthly travel cards. It’s also well worth seeing if your employer offers a Cycle To Work scheme which can knock between a third and two fifths off the price of the bike. The bike itself is great value too, with integrated lights, mudguards and pannier racks, unlike many e-bikes.

It’s not just a way to be smart with your money, either. Believe us when we say we look forward to getting to work on an e-bike, cruising past stationary traffic (hot tip, if you’re not in a bike lane, pass traffic on the outside – it’s safer), swooping up hills, and not having to carry and get changed into fresh clothes when we get there. In fact, it’s worth wrapping up warmer than you think you need to because you don’t work up a sweat and there’s a bit more wind chill when you’re travelling at speed.

Cycling to work is also a welcome enforced break from doom scrolling on your phone, giving you the headspace to mentally prepare yourself for work then clear your head afterwards. 

And once the weekend comes, the battery’s 50-mile range means you can embark on epic food trips, cycling for destination doughnuts, dumplings or anything else that’s all over your feed.

The Raleigh Trace costs £2,199 and is available to buy from Raleigh now.

I have spent more time than I care to mention fiddling with apps while reviewing e-bikes, so it was a welcome change to find out how to turn on the Volt London review model when I visited the brand’s south London showroom. Press the button on the battery. Hold the key fob in the general vicinity of the handlebar-mounted display. Done.

That encapsulated my experience of the bike too. It got me everywhere I needed to be in London with a minimum of fuss. It’s up there with the best electric bikes I've tried.

Volt is a well-established British brand which primarily manufactures folding and hybrid bikes as a means of getting around, rather than the enjoyment of a sport, although it’s also released an electric mountain bike. Its range can be split into those that use its proprietary electronics and those that use Shimano’s. The Volt London belongs in the former camp.

Volt London: Price And Availability

The Volt London costs £2,199 and is available from the Volt website and a network of bike shops across the UK. The website offers 0% finance over 12 months, and paid-for finance over longer payment terms. Volt is also part of Cycle Scheme, which allows UK taxpayers who are paid through PAYE to purchase a bike and save 26%-40%, depending on your tax band (our Cycle To Work guide explains more).

The London e-bike sits in the middle of Volt’s range of hybrid and step-through bikes. The Kensington step-through is the cheapest at £1,729, and the range tops out at £2,499 for the Regent step-through or Connect hybrid.

The Volt London compares favourably with the competition on price. The single-speed Cowboy costs £2,590, the similar Ribble Urban AL e costs £2,499, and the Van Moof costs £2,998. The Raleigh Array, however, seriously undercuts it at £1,399.

How I Tested This Bike

I rode this bike for a two-week period and covered more than 90km (56 miles) around south London.

The Motor

Volt uses a rear-wheel-mounted Spintech/Bafang Motor, paired with a Bafang torque sensor in the pedals. Received wisdom suggests that this rear-hub motor style of e-bike doesn’t offer quite as natural a feel as a mid-hub motor, which Volt uses in its more expensive models.

That wasn’t my experience here, however. I never felt the bike jerk forwards unexpectedly, either while getting ready to set off or when setting off slowly in heavy traffic, as I have on other bikes.

The Volt rep who talked me through the bike said most people ride in low or normal settings, which I silently guffawed at, because I only ride in the highest setting. He was right, though – the high setting was a touch too punchy for crowded inner-city roads, and it’s best reserved for steep inclines.

As well as increasing the level of assistance on the handlebar-mounted display when heading up a hill, you can also use the boost button while pedalling to add some more oomph, or to help you pull away going swiftly. If you’re walking the bike you can also use it to get some help pushing the bike along, but in this state the motor cuts out at 3mph as per UK law. One thing I liked about the boost feature is that the button is more like a gear shifter and it pushes in a few centimetres, making it easy to operate even with gloved hands.

The Battery

The London Volt packs a 36V lithium-ion battery (504WH) into the bike’s downtube and the range is quoted as 60 miles (96.5km) with an 11-stone (154lb/70kg) rider on a low setting in good conditions (side note: Volt goes into admirable detail at the bottom of the Volt London page).

I am an 11-stone rider who lives up a meaty hill, has to start and stop a lot for traffic lights (which demands more from the battery) and reside among the embarrassment of potholes on south London roads. I also ride with as much assistance as practicable (normal in this instance, but with liberal use of the boost button) and I rode the battery down in 67km (41 miles), which also included periods of riding with the lights pulling charge from the battery. I rate that as a very strong performance.

The battery can also be removed easily using a key. This is especially welcome in the current climate because using your place of work’s electricity to charge your bike’s battery is much more discreet when it’s not still attached to your bike.

The Ride

The Volt London is no lightweight at 22.1kg, but I was able to manhandle it onto its rear wheel to more easily manoeuvre it past the bikes locked up in my house’s narrow side alley.

The motor is powerful enough that you can get the bike moving quickly and with minimal effort. I didn’t miss gears at all, and even hill starts were easy in the highest assistance level or when using the boost button.

The chunky Schwalbe G-One Puncture Resistant tyres look sturdy, eat up potholes and can slam up kerbs, although these are categorised as gravel tyres by Schwalbe. While that’s useful if you want to go on grass to round a pedestrian when riding on a (shared use) path in a park, the tread will actually make the tyre worse at gripping the surface in wet conditions. Still, the tyres are wide enough that that shouldn’t be a problem, although I didn’t ride in the rain during my testing.

The seat is wide and comfy, and has an integrated spring in the seatpost so you bounce a little when you hit potholes.

The Volt London is a single-speed bike, but the high level of assistance on offer means I never struggled to get the wheels turning. Unlike with the single-speed Humming folding e-bike, I was able to push past 15.5mph when the motor cuts out and cruise at 16 or 17mph at a reasonable cadence.

There were two minor issues I discovered that are worth mentioning. The first is that the London is only available in one size. I am 6ft (182cm) tall and found the 19in frame a little cramped. If you’re unsure if that size will work for you, Volt works with independent bike shops across the UK to offer test rides. This network also means it’s not hard to find somewhere to service your bike.

My other issue was with the included front rack. I am not a fan of these in the first place and find it can affect the steering if you strap something heavy on there. It can also turn the front wheel when the kickstand is down, threatening to topple the bike over.

All in all, though, the Volt London did what I wanted it to – take the effort out of pedalling and be comfortable for the entirety of my 45-minute commute. 

Accessories

The London Volt comes with two accessories that are not always included but which I consider essential: integrated lights and mudguards. If you rode this bike outside of well lit urban areas I’d consider upgrading the lights, since the the beam doesn’t stretch that far in the pitch black (in my experience, one short unlit stretch of Clapham Common), but they’re powerful enough to keep you visible to drivers on lit urban roads..

A kickstand is also included and there’s an integrated Arbus rear wheel lock. The only thing missing, which also feels like it should come included, is the chain lock that works with the integrated lock. The chain is recognised as gold standard by insurer Laka (which offers 30-days of free insurance for Volt customers) and is worth the investment, although it is very heavy.

Is The London Volt Worth It?

Yes. It’s great value and more stylish than a bike this practical has any right to be. It reminded me of the Raleigh Array, another relatively heavy, wide-tyred hybrid with a big battery and powerful motor, although the Volt hides its battery in the downtube. While the Volt London costs substantially more, the straightforward security features are a big draw.

I did find the Cowboy 4 ST a better bike to ride, and it’s only 14% more expensive. However, it doesn’t have the network of bike shops to fall back on for servicing, which is worth considering.

A typical e-bike is heavy: somewhere in the region of 30lb-55lb (15kg-25kg). It’s understandable given you have to integrate a motor and battery to create the best electric bikes, but the weight makes it difficult to manoeuvre when you’re out of the saddle. It’s more of a problem for a folding e-bike when portability is even more important. The best folding bikes tend to come at a premium price because the folding mechanism is harder to design and manufacture than a standard frame, but in return you should be able to carry it around shops and on public transport easily, and into your home to store.

After reviewing six folding e-bikes, I’ve tended to favour the ones that can be wheeled because that bypasses the weight issue. Hummingbird, however, solves it by being lighter than any others – including many electric road bikes – at a weight of 22.7lb (10.3kg).

Hummingbird manufactures exceptionally light bikes to begin with. The brand’s electric bikes also use an all-in-one battery and rear wheel-mounted motor from Zehus. At 7lb (3.2kg), the whole kit is only marginally heavier than the Brompton Electric’s 6.4lb (2.9kg) battery.

Hummingbird even offers a more sustainable Flax range of folding bikes and e-bikes, with the frame made from flax plant fibres. The material has been developed by motorsports engineering company Prodrive, which is also behind Hummingbird, and it is supposed to have remarkably similar properties to carbon fibre. There’s a carbon-fibre Hummingbird of an identical weight and price to the Flax version.

It’s all very impressive, but also very expensive, as innovative things often are.

Hummingbird Folding Electric Flax: Price And Availability

The Electric Flax bike is available from Hummingbird for £4,995 and delivery times are currently two to four weeks. The bike is available to buy using Splitit, a 0% interest credit service that divides payment into three instalments. If you don’t reside in the UK you can buy it for £4,162.50 – the price with VAT at 20% knocked off. 

The full price is £500 more than Hummingbird’s entry-level folding electric bike, which weighs the same and has the same features. It’s also the most expensive folding e-bike I’ve tried. It’s closest competitors are the Brompton Electric P Line ($4,700-$4,810/£3,695-£3,775, 34.4lb/15.6 kg) and Gocycle G4 (£3,299, 17.6kg/38.8 lbs), but you can also find usable options for much less like the the Furo X ($2,399/£1,799, 33lb/15kg).

How I Tested This Bike

I had the Hummingbird for a week and used it for a trip to a supermarket, to drop off a parcel and two cycle commutes for a total of around 37 miles (59km). Unfortunately, I was directed to use an outdated version of the app, but I did squeeze in a 3km ride to test the remote control and regenerative braking feature.

The Fold

Folding the Hummingbird is a four-step process. First, unlock the clamp under the seatpost and swing the rear wheel under the frame. Then unlock the clamp on the head tube and fold the handlebars down, clipping them to the chain stay – this last part requires force to clip in and then to pull out again, and I found it awkward. It’s then a case of unlocking the seat clamp and pushing the seat down. You can stop there, or you can unclip the pedals and slot them into place by the rear wheel. While this part is fiddly, it’s a clever alternative to folding pedals.

I missed having a mechanism that would allow you to set the height of your seat so it is easy to return it to the same place each time. There’s a measure on the back to help but I could never get it quite right. On the Brompton Electric you set the rider height, so you can bang it straight back to where it was without thinking or fiddling.

The mechanism differs from all the folding e-bikes I’ve tried in one respect: the frame does not have a vertical hinge to fold it in two. That leaves you with a long, thin folded bike that can sit in a hallway without sticking out too much and also feels easier to carry. It’s well balanced and not as awkward to hold next to you as the wider Brompton is. I happily carried it around a superstore in one hand and a basket in the other for 15 minutes, although by the end my arm was beginning to tire. It will, of course, depend on what you think is a reasonable weight to carry. My wife, while active (currently training for a marathon), picked it up and immediately dismissed the idea of carrying it around.

The Battery

The range is quoted as up to 50km (31 miles), although on closer inspection that’s 30km of riding with a possible 20km extra coming from regenerative braking. This is the first e-bike I’ve come across that employs this technique, which is common in electric cars, although in my experience of driving you’re not getting anywhere near close to two-thirds of your distance travelled back. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to see how much battery you have clawed back in the app either, so I’m unable to speak to how achievable that 20km is. 

The regenerative braking can be activated either by pressing a button on the remote on the handlebars or pedalling backwards. You don’t brake instantly, but slowly cruise to a stop. I found that the button on the remote was sticky and couldn’t tell if my press had registered. Pedalling backwards was more effective and reliable, but I kept getting caught out by adjusting the position of the pedals a quarter turn backwards to leave my feet in a comfortable position when cruising, which resulted in a touch of braking and loss of momentum.

Perhaps regenerative braking is something that could be mastered if I had longer with the bike, but I suspect I would turn it off and work within the 30km limit, which seemed accurate to me. 

The battery takes three hours to charge and a full charge lasted me 29km, which is good going considering I was tackling hills and stopping frequently at traffic lights (getting going again takes significantly more power than cruising along). The battery is charged via a plug in the rear axle. Normally, I prefer a detachable battery, but since this is intended to be a bike you store inside and that sits along a wall next to an outlet, I don’t hold the Hummingbird’s built-in battery against it.

The Motor

The strangest part of riding a Hummingbird is the default way to wake the bike up and turn the motor on. You need to lift the back wheel and pedal so it “reaches 5km/h” or the equivalent spinning speed. Then you need to ride the bike to a speed of 8km/h, then pedal backwards three times. I live on a close with a slight incline so had an ideal runway to perform this routine and it worked reliably, although I must have looked a little odd. It’s a rigmarole and one that seems a bit much when you’re paying so much money.

If you use the included handlebar-mounted remote and paired Bitride app it is possible to use that combination to start the bike and motor, but on the one time I was able to try the three-button and six-light remote, I found it far from intuitive, and it was difficult to tell if it had worked. 

The app is better than the remote and includes the ability to customise the levels of assistance, regenerative braking and boost. The boost, triggered by one of the spongy-feeling buttons on the plasticky remote, is very welcome though. Without it I felt I had to physically work a bit on hills, which I take as a personal affront when riding an e-bike, but once I had the remote and app working I used the boost on the steepest hill near me and raced up it with minimal effort.

On the flat, the motor delivers a decent punch and applies assistance smoothly and naturally. You can set off in a queue of traffic and pull away swiftly from the vehicle behind, but the assistance is responsive enough that it won’t power you into the car in front. Full marks. The motor makes a high-pitched whirring sound, but that’s a minor complaint. 

The Ride

I personally found the bike didn’t suit my size and strength. Once over the 25km/h limit of the motor, the single speed didn’t offer enough resistance and I was left trying to accelerate ineffectually with too high a cadence. It won’t be the same for everyone, because it depends on your size, fitness and riding style. However, as a 6ft regular cyclist and runner, I gave up trying to go faster than 25km/h, freewheeling until the bike slowed a bit and then starting to pedal again, whereas on a Brompton Electric I’d move up a gear and accelerate. That doesn’t mean the Hummingbird will be slower in urban areas – my commute took a similar amount of time (traffic lights are the great leveller).

I also found the short handlebars made the steering twitchy, to the point where on certain parts of my commute I didn’t signal, preferring the stability of two hands to ride over gigantic south London potholes. Speaking of the south London terrain, the Kevlar tyres withstood riding straight over broken glass.

Accessories

The Hummingbird comes without some essential accessories, which is disappointing. There are no integrated lights: Hummingbird instead offers lightweight, rechargeable Knog lights for £75. Full-length mudguards cost another £72. Like Brompton, there are also bespoke bags and racks that fit the frame, although I didn’t try those. My review model did come in the carry bag (£174), which was a useful way to keep the bike protected and tidied away when I wasn’t using it.

Is The Hummingbird Folding Electric Flax Bike Worth It?

The Hummingbird Flax should be lauded for how light it is and for its use of sustainable materials. While the twitchy steering and single-speed set-up didn’t suit me, there’s a person this bike will suit to the ground, and to find out if you are that person I’d recommend you find a shop that allows you to test ride one. That test should include carrying it around in its folded state, because if you struggle to carry 10kg or baulk at the idea of doing that, I’d point you in the direction of a folding e-bike you can wheel around instead – the Brompton Electric P Line with the extra roller rack, or a Gocycle.

Cycling is one of the best ways to get around, and a Brompton is one of the best ways to cycle, especially in cities. The unique way a Brompton folds, tucking its rear wheel under the crossbar as well as folding the frame and crossbar in two, means it’s small enough to store under a desk, or bring in to shops (saving you locking it up outside), or store in a corner of even the smallest apartment. I discovered that in the course of writing this Brompton Electric C Line review about the company’s first electric effort, as did a different contributor while writing their Brompton C Line Explore review.

The Electric P Line is Brompton’s second electric bike and keeps the same battery and motor, but it costs more than 20% more. It’s not price inflation, though – that extra money buys an upgraded Brompton experience. Brompton has gone all out to cut the weight down, shaving precious ounces off components all over the bike and using a new rear frame design made of titanium (which doesn’t come cheap). While the Electric C Line Explore weighed 36.6lb (15.53kg) without the removable battery, the Electric P Line drops to 28lb (12.7kg).

That new rear frame also allows for a roller rack to be added (for a price) so it can be wheeled when folded, making it more practical for more people. All of which puts it high up our list of the best e-bikes. 

Brompton Electric P Line: Price And Availability

There are two versions of the Brompton Electric P Line, one with the roller frame and one without. The bike alone costs $4,700 in the US and £3,695 in the UK; with the roller rack, that rises to $4,810/£3,775. It can be bought direct from Brompton UK now, with financing options available. If you’re a UK taxpayer, it is also worth investigating if you’re eligible to use the Cycling To Work scheme, which can save you a significant amount.

It is not available to order on the Brompton US website yet, but you can sign up for alerts. 

Both versions are available in muted storm grey or midnight black colourways, with mid or high handlebars at no extra cost, although the high handlebars add a little weight. 

How I Tested This Bike

I tested the Brompton Electric P Line with the roller rack in storm grey with high handlebars. I had the bike for close to a month and rode more than 105 miles (169km), with the longest ride being a 16-mile (26km) trip back home after picking up the bike at the Brompton factory. I used it to cycle to work (eight miles/13km each way), to get to football (four miles/7km) and run short errands of less than a mile.

The Fold

The basic fold mechanism is the same as on any other Brompton – anyone can master the basics in a couple of tries. With the seat down it folds down to 25.3in (645mm) high, 23in (565mm) wide and 10.6in (270mm) deep. As far as I’m aware that’s the smallest dimensions of any folding e-bike.

The crucial difference in the folding mechanism on the Electric P Line is that there’s a stopping block on the version with the roller rack, so when the seatpost is around halfway up you can wheel the bike along without it flapping open. On the Electric C Line you had to have the seat all the way down to lock the bike in its folded position.

It’s a great development, but not quite up to Brompton’s high design standard yet, because there’s no obvious cue that you’ve passed the stopping block. The only way to tell is to bend over and have a look, or lift it and risk looking silly if the bike unfolds in an ungainly manner. It’s not a major issue but as with Apple products, if something isn’t quite right on a Brompton it stands out.

The roller frame works well, especially on the shiny hard floors of supermarkets, train stations or my office. Make sure that if you set it down outside that the ground is flat – I soon found that on a gentle slope or uneven path it would topple over. I took to stepping on the rack when it was next to me just to ensure it stayed upright.

The Battery

The battery is the same 300wh version found on the Electric C Line. The quoted range is 20-45 miles (30-70km), which tallied with my experience – it certainly managed the minimum in that range time and again, and I’m giving it a reasonable thrashing: I’m a 167lb (76kg) rider who travels with a heavily loaded backpack, especially on my commute; sticks to the maximum level of assistance whenever possible; travels in the centre of London where I’m continually stopping and starting for traffic lights, and lives up a steep hill. I am a “power” user, and the Electric P Line still delivered on its promise. 

On my first day with it, it lasted 21.5 miles (34.8km) to get me home from the Brompton factory, even though I accidentally put the lights on (during the daytime). A smarter rider would set the lights to automatic on the battery’s top panel.

I also tested the middle level of assist and was left with 45% charge after 14 miles (23km). The middle level of assist still provides plenty of power when pulling away and up hills, so I’d happily ride in that mode if I had a lot of riding to do between charges without feeling like I might as well have taken my lighter, cheaper hybrid for all the work I was having to put in. 

The battery is detachable so you can charge it away from the bike. It is housed in a bag with a shoulder strap so it can be carried separately to the folded bike, and it’s straightforward to clip the battery on and off. 

This battery bag also has a front zipped pocket with a small opening for a lead, which allows you to connect a USB charging cable to the battery and charge your phone or other device while you ride. When I discovered this, I had another of those moments where I marvelled at how well designed Brompton bikes are. The Electric P Line also comes with a complimentary Quad Lock phone mount, so you can also run the cable to the phone on your handlebars. 

It takes four hours to charge the battery, but you can purchase a fast charger that halves that. Five LEDs on the battery allow you to keep an eye on the charge when riding, and buttons let you cycle through the four assistance modes (one is off) and operate the lights. 

The Ride

The Electric P Line keeps the motor in the front wheel and pairs it with a torque sensor in the bottom bracket, which measures the pressure you put into the pedals along with your cadence, to deliver the required assistance. In practice I found that when taking off from stationary, the assistance didn’t kick in quite as quickly as I wanted it to, but then only one e-bike I’ve ridden has nailed that – the fourth-generation Cowboy. 

Once it does get going, the assistance hits the sweet spot of delivering power without jerking you forwards – an especially hard trick to pull off with a motor mounted on the front wheel. (One other disadvantage is that it may make fixing a puncture trickier, but in this regard Brompton has upgraded the tyres on the Electric P Line to make this less likely, and Brompton has an extensive network of dealerships which will help if needed.)

Crucially, in nose-to-tail urban traffic the assist allows you to keep up with cars as they pull away, so you can take the primary position in the middle of the lane without worrying about impatient drivers behind you. 

The motor also dealt easily with any hill I faced. I often had to change down gear (it seems that too slow a cadence and the motor eases off), but once I selected the right one I whizzed past other riders.

The four gears were also an ideal range and better suited to me than the six-speed Electric C Line I reviewed. On the C Line I found most gears left me with a comically high cadence, while all four on the Electric P Line had their uses.

One minor issue is that Brompton uses calliper brakes, and I prefer hydraulic disc brakes on electric bikes because you can get up to speed quickly so the added stopping power is welcome. To be fair, that’s not a possibility given the Brompton’s design, but I had to modify my riding to allow for a greater stopping distance. 

The App

The Electric P Line connects to the Brompton app quickly and reliably. It doesn’t do a lot, but it’s well designed and straightforward to use, and combined with the Quad Lock makes it easy to swipe between assistance levels and see the precise level of charge in the battery – no more wondering how much of the final 20% is left when the last light’s on.

The Accessories

Along with the Quad Lock phone mount, the Electric P Line comes with integrated lights and mud guards.

Is The Brompton Electric P Line Worth It?

There was something almost life-changing about having this Brompton. The sheer convenience of it – from how accessible it was to get out of the house, to how little effort it takes to whizz around, to being able to take it into shops more easily – made me consider doing errands and trips to the shops I would otherwise have rejected as too onerous. 

While I had a similar experience using the Brompton Electric C Line, the Electric P Line is noticeably lighter when you carry it, and the ability to wheel it was another feather in its cap. If you can stretch to it, I’d say it’s worth paying the maximum amount to get that roller rack so you can wheel it. 

If you want a Brompton Electric but your budget can’t stretch to a P Line, opt for the cheaper two-speed Electric C Line. The gearing is less important because the motor is doing the heavy lifting, and it’s lighter than the six-speed so you do even less heavy lifting.

The Gocycle G4 is priced similarly to the C line, but I still prefer the smaller dimensions of a folded Brompton. In part that’s because I chose to live in a house that favours location over size – if you have more space it may not be a consideration, but the G4 feels noticeably more unwieldy in a shop.

Imagine a version of you that is much better at cycling. You find it a total breeze and can cover miles and miles at a leisurely pace without breaking a sweat or feeling an ache in your legs – a smile plastered over your face at all times.

That is you on an e-bike.

It sounds nice. But it feels even better, which is why we beseech you to try an e-bike this summer, because along with that unbeatable feeling of breezing along with the wind in your face at minimal effort, there are other benefits that can make a significant difference to your quality of life.

We realise that sounds a bit much, but bike and e-bike manufacturer Ribble has given us the opportunity to wax lyrical about e-bikes, as well as introduce the excellent Ribble e-bike range, and we are only too happy to do so.

Riding An E-bike Is Great Exercise

No matter what type of e-bike you ride, you’re moving and pretty much any movement – surprise surprise – is good for you. Riding an e-bike is light exercise, which is fantastic if you’re not that active at the moment as it’s an easy and achievable first step to moving more. 

If you are more active, adding extra movement is still beneficial, especially as it won’t tire you out so you can still participate in the exercise you already do. If you are training hard, perhaps for a marathon or fitness competition, riding an e-bike will most likely see your body working in heart rate zone 1 which is ideal for active recovery. Consider it the smart way to get to and from the gym or the running track.

Cycling Outdoors Is Great For Your Wellbeing And E-bikes Make It Easier To Get Those Benefits

There are also benefits for your wellbeing. Being outside is widely regarded as being good for your state of mind, and we’ve found the act of concentrating on the road helps to focus the mind and be in the moment, leaving the worries of the day behind. Being outside when it’s sunny, incidentally, will also help your body produce the vitamin D it needs.

You can, of course, get the same benefits on a regular bike, but knowing you won’t get sweaty or expend much energy makes riding more accessible in our opinion. We’ve certainly chosen to get to work via public transport rather than cycle at the end of busy week, while a commute on an e-bike can easily be done on tired legs.

You Can Keep Going On An E-Bike

As we get older and slow down (happens to us all), we’ve found that e-bikes have allowed us to cycle distances we wouldn’t consider otherwise. If you’re a road cycling or gravel aficionado and are looking for an extra helping hand, Ribble’s options are well worth looking at. The R&D put into Ribble’s pro team is put to good use across the range and especially in the Endurance SL e electric road bikes – one of the lightest e-bikes there is at a mere 10.5kg. For bike-packing adventurers, the off-road Gravel AL e puts in an extra powerful motor and can take a battery extender to help the assistance last over weekend-long rides.

E-bikes Are Unbeatable For Local Journeys

An e-bike is not just good for leisure rides; you’ll quickly discover it’s a very convenient way of getting around your local area. There is a major push to promote active travel in the UK and worldwide, and some policies are creating a compelling incentive to choose a bike instead of a car for short journeys. 

Often you’ll find doing these journeys by bike either takes the same amount of time or are in fact quicker, and you save on the cost of petrol. You can also load up the bike with shopping in panniers or your child in a child bike seat and let the bike’s motor take the strain.

Ribble has a great range of bikes that will suit wherever you live, whether that’s in the middle of a city or down a rural lane. The easy choice is the Hybrid AL e, the most affordable e-bike in the range and stylish to boot – it was the first Ribble we rode and it impressed us by being far lighter than the competition. 

Since then the range of options has been expanded to include the Hybrid Trail AL e which is equally at home on town or trail, while the practical Urban AL e is a workhorse with swept-back handlebars for an easy riding position.

We’re also big fans of the CGR AL e all-road bike, reviewing it in 2021 and awarding the sporty-yet-comfortable ride an Editor’s Choice badge.

That’s a lot of bikes to consider and as a direct-to-consumer manufacturer Ribble can customise dozens of aspects to get the exact build you want – although there are also popular set-ups to choose from.

Ribble has showrooms across the country where you can find the bike that fits you. If you’re not able to get to a showroom, you can also schedule a one-way video call with a Ribble expert who can talk you through the range and help you work out which Ribble e-bike is best suited to where and how you’d ride it.

Whichever Ribble bike you go for, you’ll get a Mahle e-bike motor and battery, which is light, discreet and intuitive to use, with most models featuring just one button on the crossbar to operate. (There is, of course, an app for people who like to customise and track performance.)

E-bikes Don’t Cost As Much As You Think

We mentioned how using an e-bike for local journeys can help you save on petrol, although that may not seem a bit rich when quality e-bikes cost four figures. The good news, however, is that Ribble accepts Cycle To Work scheme vouchers which will save you at least 25% and as much as 39% for higher rate taxpayers, and help you spread the cost. If you don’t qualify for that benefit, Ribble also offers finance so you can pay in affordable monthly instalments, which most likely will cost less than how much it costs to fill up a family car nowadays. 

Brompton has announced its next e-bike, the Brompton Electric P Line. It’s lighter than other models, making it easier to lug about and can be fitted with a roller rack so it can be wheeled around when folded. Other key upgrades include four-speed gearing and Continental tyres which should cut down on punctures. 

It does cost significantly more than the current Brompton Electric C line models, the two-speed Urban which starts at £2,800 (UK only) and the six-speed Explore which starts at $3,850/£2,995.

The Brompton Electric P Line starts at – drumroll please – $4,700/£3,695, or $4,810/£3,775 with the roller rack. 

So, why make a more expensive Brompton Electric? I put that question to Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams. “What we’re trying to do is make something that's useful and that as many people as possible can use,” says Butler-Adams. “It’s not expensive for the sake of being expensive – it delivers a different experience.

“We spent ages developing the electric drive [on the first Electric C Line] and refining it to get the most efficient, light, useful drive, but the reality is it’s still heavy and for some customers, it’s too heavy.”

The same Brompton battery and motor is used on the new P Line. It has a range of 20-45 miles (30-70km) and a zippy ride that eats up hills and delivers assistance that is powerful without being jerky, which is no mean feat. That has required changes to be made elsewhere to make the P Line lighter.

One of the major weight savings comes from the use of titanium in the rear frame – a material that doesn’t come cheap – but refinements and developments have been made throughout the bike, like the four-speed gearing, to make it as light as possible. 

Minus the battery, the Electric P Line weighs 28lb (12.7kg), compared with the Electric C Line Urban which weighs 32.2lb (14.61kg) and the Explore 34.24lb (15.53kg).

“For the Brompton, weight really does matter,” says Butler-Adams. “With all respect to people who spend a lot of money making their bikes lighter, it doesn’t really make a huge amount of difference when you get on the bike for the average user. But for the Brompton, it makes a massive difference when it’s dangling on the end of your arm.”

I reviewed the Brompton Electric C Line Explore, and I’ve ridden 70 miles (114km) on the Electric P Line so far. The lighter weight is a noticeable improvement, making it easier to take the bike into shops with you. As I – and a colleague who reviewed the Brompton C Line Explore – discovered, the convenience of storing and accessing a Brompton over a regular-sized bike is what makes it a worthwhile purchase. 

That means the more expensive version with the roller rack is another welcome development – it’s easy to wheel along supermarket aisles or station platforms. It’s also something that distinguishes it from the Electric C Line, as it’s the new rear frame (seen in the top-of-the-line, er, T Line) that can accommodate the roller rack.

While we continue our testing ahead of a full review, we recommend UK readers brush up on the Cycling To Work scheme, which can help you save up to 39% on the sticker price and spread the cost.

Raleigh have unveiled the Stride, the first consumer electric cargo bike from the well-known British brand, which is scheduled to go on sale this August. Two versions are available: the Stride 2, a two-wheeled model with a long wheel base, and the Stride 3 trike, a three-wheeled version with two wheels in front and one behind. In each case, a box sits in front of the rider. It follows a template set by others such as Dutch brands Babboe and Bakfiets, which offer similar designs.

The Raleigh Stride is targeted squarely at families, with benches built into the box and two child harnesses in the Stride 2 and four in the Stride 3. Accessories include a rain tent to keep your passengers dry and brackets so you can securely attach a Maxi Cosi car seat for babies.

Of course you can also use the box like a car boot and throw any shopping in it. The box on the Stride 2 can handle 80kg while the Stride 3’s is capable of holding 100kg. (If you don’t have kids and just want to transport stuff, Raleigh has also announced a new range of electric cargo bikes for business.)

The motor is a Bosch Performance CX Cargo Line, which applies extra torque at slower speeds and at lower pedal cadences to make it easier to get the bike moving. The removable battery has a range of 30 to 40 miles (48-64km).

We had the chance to test both models on a shortened track at Lee Valley VeloPark – with guidance by a rider from Pedal Me, a for hire e-cargo passenger and freight service in central London – and found they each felt a little different to riding a traditional two-wheeler. The Stride 2 feels the most similar to a normal bike – it’s just got a longer wheelbase, which makes it a bit like driving a barge, so you need to make smaller steering movements than you usually would. We found the key technique, at least to begin with, was to pedal and brake while going downhill – just to make sure the front wheel doesn’t wobble.

There’s no threat of wobble with the Stride 3 trike, but the rider does need to compensate for the counterintuitive movement of the bike when turning. While a traditional bike leans into a corner, the trike wants to lean out, so you need to compensate by leaning gently into the turn.

If that makes riding an e-cargo bike sound intimidating, believe us when we say it’s not. While Pedal Me offers courses for freight e-cargo riders, we were assured that’s only because those drivers had to manoeuvre multiple times their bodyweight. With a little practice, anyone can ride one safely.

If you ride a bike then the Stride 2 may be more to your liking because it’s more manoeuvrable, but you’ll need to rock it up and off a stand to park it. The Stride 3 has a larger box, however, and a thumb switch for a handbrake.

The Stride will cost £4,395 and the Stride 3 £4,695, although if you’re able to purchase it through a Cycle To Work scheme you can receive a discount of up to 39% and pay for it in small installments out of your wages.

Raleigh managing director Lee Kidger says the company hopes that not only will families in major cities see it as a better alternative to a car, but also that the Stride could replace the second family car outside of cities. That second car is often used for trips of between two and five miles, which the Stride is more than capable of doing.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

This may be an alien concept in the UK, but e-cargo bikes have a number of advantages and – perhaps surprisingly – the first of these is cost. Although you can get a good-quality second-hand car for the price of the Stride, an e-cargo bike doesn’t require anything like the ongoing costs of (ever more expensive) fuel, tax, insurance and maintenance. Then of course there’s the environmental cost of cars, especially older models, contributing to the climate emergency.

An e-cargo bike also supports better health by naturally adding light activity into your day without leaving you too knackered to do anything else. And in our experience of a week’s hire of a Veloe Family e-bike over a half-term, kids absolutely love it.

The biggest impediment remains road safety, which will hopefully become less of a concern with the UK government’s commitment to active travel. While some people may be tempted to wait and see, there’s one major reason to act quickly when the Raleigh Stride is released: demand for all kinds of e-bikes is greatly outstripping supply. Hesitate and you could be waiting months if you change your mind.

Sign up for alerts on availability of the Raleigh Stride | Raleigh Stride 2 £4,395, Raleigh Stride 3 £4,695

E-bikes have been improving dramatically in the past few years and in 2021 there’s been a notable boom in urban bikes, the models designed to carry you and your shopping or work gear from A to B, rather than bikes tailored to the sports of road cycling or mountain biking. However, this type of bike hasn’t really become any more affordable – you can still expect to pay in the region of £2,000 (before you cash in the Cycle To Work discount at least).

Priced at £1,600, the Raleigh Array makes a move to undercut the competition, while still including essential accessories like mudguards, lights and pannier rack. It also cuts quite a dash with a two-tone blue and silver frame, as well as matching tan wheels, seat and grips. The looks are sullied a little by the large external battery, but external batteries tend to give a greater range than integrated ones, and the practical-minded will appreciate how easily it can be unlocked for charging away from the bike.

Compared with Raleigh’s next most affordable e-bike, the Motus (£1,900), the notable change is from a Bosch Active Line motor and range of 76 miles (122km) to the Array’s Suntour Canbus E25 motor and 60-mile (97km) range. The brakes on the Array are also mechanical rather than hydraulic disc brakes.

To my surprise, though, the Array weighs less than the Motus, at 23kg vs 24.5kg. That’s still a heavy bike, though, and it would be worth test-riding one – or an e-bike of a similar weight – if you don’t think of yourself as big or especially strong. As a six-foot tall man even I found it a little unwieldy when parking before and after a ride.

See related

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Raleigh Motus Electric Bike Review

It feels light to ride though, and the assistance is smooth and powerful in the highest of the four modes so there’s no problem getting away from the pack at traffic lights and up to speed. The seven gears gave a range that felt just right for me, giving me a slow enough cadence when cruising along around the limit of 25km/h. I needed the smaller chainrings as well, because the motor lacked a little oomph going up some of the steeper south London hills. Don’t worry that you’ll need to overexert yourself – you’ll still breeze past non-electric bike riders who are working up a sweat.

You’ll be overtaken on the flat though. A combination of the weight, chunky tyres and front suspension (which admittedly can be locked off) make this a bike for cruising in comfort at 25km/h, rather than going faster under your own steam. However, I was thankful for the beefy tyres and suspension when the bike dealt with a crater in the middle of the Trafalgar Square roundabout I’d missed while checking the traffic around me. The pothole was so deep I’m pretty sure I would have come off the usual hybrid I ride.

The handlebar display is tall and neat with an orange power button above the screen and up and down buttons underneath it which are in easy reach of your left thumb. The main number is your speed, with your level of assist, odometer and battery level also included but in smaller text. You can glance at your speed and take it in while riding, although the screen isn’t easily readable in bright sunlight. You’ll need to be stationary to check the other information, however.

While not every frame type (crossbar and open frame) is available in every size on the Raleigh website, if they do have your preferred option I can heartily recommend getting it shipped to you because Raleigh has nailed the set-up process. The instructions are clear, the bike comes with all the tools you need to put it together (including a smart-looking multi-tool), and the right and left pedals are clearly marked – plus advice on the direction to turn the bolt for each pedal is printed on the spanner.

As someone who has set up a number of bikes and had to figure out the final few steps to make them roadworthy in full view of the Cyclist magazine editorial team, I put a lot of value in bike manufacturers making that first experience easy and enjoyable, so kudos to Raleigh.

Beyond that quick start manual, however, instructions were scant and I could not for the life of me work out how to turn on the bike lights, nor could I find the answer on the internet. This eventually resulted in the ridiculous sight of me strapping bike lights to the handlebar and seat post. Eventually Raleigh’s representative confirmed that you have to hold the up button on the display for two seconds.

While the Raleigh Array isn’t the best e-bike I’ve tried, it’s the cheapest one that I have no qualms about recommending. Perhaps the thing I like most about it is that spending a few hundred pounds more won’t get you a dramatically better bike. If you’re not willing to spend more than £1,600, or just have a keen eye for a bargain, it’s a great option.

Buy from Raleigh | Find your local Raleigh stockist | £1,595

This is the sixth folding e-bike I have ridden so I feel confident saying that if you want to shop on the budget end of the spectrum, you should still expect to pay between £1,500 and £2,000. There are some models under £1,000, but the one I tried verged on the unrideable.

The Furo X sits squarely in that sub-£2,000 bracket along with the Volt Metro and Raleigh Stow-E-Way. All of them fold twice via a hinge in the middle of the frame and a hinge on the head tube, so the handlebars fold down to sit next to the front wheel. All have 20in wheels, eight or nine gears, a removable battery mounted on the seat tube, a motor with an on-off feel, integrated front and rear lights which run off the battery, and mudguards and a pannier rack fitted as standard.

The Furo X is at the more expensive end of that price range at £1,799, or £1,999 for the “max” version with a bigger battery. It justifies the extra cost with a carbon-fibre frame which brings its total weight down to 15kg, compared with the 20kg Volt Metro LS and Raleigh Stow-E-Way.

Unfortunately it doesn’t make the most of this weight saving. One of the two chief reasons to buy a folding bike is for a mixed commute – one combining, say, train and bike travel. If you’re lifting a bike onto a train then the lighter it is, the better. But there’s no way to secure the folded Furo X, so it flaps open as you carry it – a surprising oversight given the attention to detail displayed elsewhere on the bike.

It also means it’s too unwieldy to carry comfortably while shopping, so it’s inconvenient for running errands with multiple stops. On my test trip I ended up wishing I had brought a bike lock to park it outside.

The other key consideration of a folding bike is the size of the footprint, since storing it inside in a cupboard, hallway or corner is a definite advantage for the garage-less. This is where the Brompton e-bike distinguishes itself by being substantially smaller than the competition (although it does cost substantially more).

The Furo X is 750mm long, 700mm high and 370mm wide when the pedals are folded in. In comparison the Brompton is 585x565x270mm, but it is more than a grand dearer. The Furo X is smaller than its similarly priced competitors though, which gives it an edge. The Volt is 830x760x460mm while the Raleigh is 880x800x440mm.

It’s easy to fold, with just two hinges to operate and a seatpost to unlock and push down. There are clear markings on the seatpost too so you can reset it precisely each time.

I was also impressed by the inclusion of a clamp on the handlebars so you can rotate them forwards or backwards. It’s rare that folding bikes offer this but it’s a minor tweak that can make the riding experience much more comfortable.

The motor packs a decent punch, although I found you couldn’t just leave it on the highest level of assist as I normally do. The motor takes a beat to cut out after you’ve stopped pedalling, so pedalling to drop down the gears as you come to a stop results in a burst of speed (the brakes were always strong enough to bring me to a safe stop, thankfully). A few times I tried to set off in the highest level of assist and the front wheel lifted off the ground. The solution is to shift up and down through the levels of assist, using the buttons on the display conveniently in reach of your left thumb. With a lot of shifting gears and the level of assist in tandem, you can achieve a pleasantly effortless and smooth ride – but it requires more rider input than I’ve come to expect from an e-bike.

One of the Furo X’s distinguishing features is the indicator lights on the removal battery, which sits above the back wheel on the seatpost. Two buttons on the right side of the handlebars allow you to turn the lights off and on. As on the other e-bikes with indicator lights I’ve tried, what seems like a good idea fails to live up to expectations. At first it’s easy to forget they’re there and I don’t expect other road users to be on the lookout for them either. Then once you do start using them it’s easy to forget to switch the indicator off since I found the corresponding flash on the handlebars barely visible in daylight. As I’ve subsequently noticed, if you lash anything to the pannier rack it may obscure the lights, too. Surprisingly, the indicators don’t run off the main battery – there’s a small, separate charging point.

The front and back lights do run off the battery, but I found the back light surprisingly dim. It also seemed to drain the battery much quicker than I expected.

The battery performance, otherwise, was very strong. I rode the Furo X MAX, which has a quoted range of 60km (versus 45km on the standard model), and wrung 51.4km out of it – pretty impressive since I ride in the highest possible level of assist at all times, and ranges tend to be quoted based on favourable conditions. The battery is removable to make charging easier, but requires a key so you don’t have to worry about it being taken off the bike when it’s locked up on the street.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• The Best Folding Bikes For Cycling To Work
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

The display next to the left handlebar grip lets you keep tabs on the battery level, along with your speed, which of the five levels of assist you’re using, and total distance covered. The screen was easy to read in bright sunlight and also has a backlight so you can see it when riding at night too.

I got on well with the Furo X and being 5kg lighter than its competitors does justify its higher price. It’s a decent option if you’re keen to use an e-bike but can only store your bike indoors. However, if you’re planning to take it on a train I’d think twice. If your budget can stretch far enough, I’d urge you to consider the Brompton Electric which is easier (not easy) to lug around.

Personally, I’d also investigate finding a convenient bike hangar that you can rent a space in, because riding a full-size bike is so much more pleasurable and they’re cheaper. Indeed, Furo’s Aventa hybrid bike starts at £1,399 for a range of 70km.

Buy Furo X from Furo | £1,799-£1,999

Sure, bikes are great, but a growing number of start-ups think they can improve them as a means of urban travel by adding tech to the equation. Companies like Van Moof and Cowboy sell smart electric bikes equipped with GPS chips, and companion smartphone apps unlock the bikes and control features. One-upping them all is French start-up Angell, which has done the most 21st-century thing possible and stuck a screen in the middle of the handlebars.

The most useful feature of that screen is turn-by-turn navigation. Set a destination in the app and detailed directions will display on the screen. Since keeping your eyes on the road is advisable, the handlebars also buzz on either side – briefly as you approach a turn, and for longer as you are supposed to turn.

It’s a great idea and, although I was sceptical of its ability to route me around London, it worked better than I expected. It found addresses I searched for quickly and offered reasonable route options.

However, in what would become a recurring theme, the software could get a little buggy. On one occasion the GPS didn’t kick in automatically and the directions froze for an entire 45-minute ride. Predictions and readings of route distances and times could get a little wonky, too. A ride of 8km which always takes me in the region of 15 minutes was tracked as 24km and two hours 58 minutes. These issues seemed to have resolved themselves the next time the bike was turned on.

The directions are presented as arrows indicating the direction of the next turn, the distance to the turn and street name. Unfortunately that design isn’t well suited to London because street signs are often hidden or non-existent, although it probably makes more sense in Paris where Angell heralds from. I would have much preferred a satnav-style first-person view.

Even though it didn’t match up to a combo of bike phone holder and routing app like Komoot, I have to give Angell kudos for developing and implementing the idea. The screen is easy to read and responsive, and everything about it suggests it will be a feature to make future generations of the Angell e-bike worth buying.

There’s one other innovation that deserves plaudits, and that’s the removable battery which doubles as rear, brake and indicator lights. There are two discreet buttons by the left grip to operate the indicators, and a second set of indicator lights on the ends of the handlebars. The indicators also turn off automatically after you turn. It’s well done, although since it’s such a rare feature (the only other model I’ve seen with indicators is the Wau e-bike) I found it hard to remember to use it. Since other road users also probably aren’t expecting bikes to have indicators I also used hand signals even when I did switch the indicators on.

There are other smart features of note, such as automatic accident detection, which will notify a preset contact if it detects a crash but also gives you a chance to cancel a notification being sent. A good thing too because when I lifted the bike up onto one wheel to manoeuvre it along a tight side passage it triggered the feature.

You can sync Apple Music or Spotify and control what the app on your phone is playing through the screen, although again my attempt to test this was stymied by the buggy software. The Bluetooth connection between my phone and the bike was poor, frequently dropping in and out. It resolved itself when I put away my Bluetooth headphones, although I did find I could use the bike, phone and headphones simultaneously on another occasion.

The bike is also turned on using the app and you can give other people permission to turn your bike on if they set up their own profile on the Angell app. As long as you have your phone on you, the Angell recognises it and brings up your user profile on the screen. Press it and the bike is activated and ready to go (you also set a PIN when connecting the bike to your app account so you can still use it without your phone). Walk away and the bike locks itself. The battery, on the other hand, has an old-fashioned key lock and slides out so you can take it with you and charge it.

There’s an alarm, but even if the bike is stolen the GPS chip means you can find out where it is. Competitors VanMoof and Cowboy have embedded GPS chips but security features and a retrieval service cost extra on those. The last time I checked these prices were broadly similar to e-bike insurance premiums, so it’s good to see Angell including this feature as a matter of course. You will have to use the police as your retrieval service, though.

See related

•  The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

That’s a lot of smart and useful ideas. While the actual experience is still a bit frustrating, the potential is plain to see and really quite exciting. But of course all these additions are undermined if riding the bike isn’t up to snuff – the area where traditional bike companies tend to blow start-ups out of the water.

Most of the time the Angell was pleasant to ride, and the assistance kicked in smoothly and early once you started pedalling. All three levels of assistance make cycling a breeze and the kick on the highest level took me by surprise the first time I used it and the front wheel lifted up slightly.

However, I wish Angell had included gears. Around and over 15.5mph, when the assistance cuts out by UK law, I found so little resistance when pedalling that my cadence was comical. While the optimum resistance while you pedal will depend on the rider, not being able to adjust it at all is going to present a problem for some. If you suspect you might be in that group, there are a couple of Angell ambassadors in London who will let you test ride their Angell for free. Still, the most important thing is that you can get the 15.9kg bike moving easily and reach that top speed swiftly.

I certainly found it better to ride than the VanMoof, which felt heavier (it is 19kg) and whose automatic gear changes weren’t as smooth as I’d like. The Cowboy e-bike I tried was superior because I could push past 15.5mph if I wished – the assistance wasn’t applied as smoothly as on the Angell, although the latest generation of Cowboy may have improved that.

The range of the Angell’s battery is also impressive for the weight and price of the bike. The quoted range is 70km, and since the lightest level of assistance still requires little effort I’d say it even outperforms bikes that quote the same distance but oblige you to use a level of assistance that may cause you to sweat a little.

The battery also recharges in two hours, although be prepared to wait a while if you reattach the battery after running it right down because there’s an onboard bike battery, which will need five to 15 minutes to recharge itself.

The Angell costs £2,690 and it can be paid off in monthly instalments over a year through Splittit. There’s also an Angell /S, available for pre-order, which is £200 cheaper. It has a slightly smaller frame but is still said to be appropriate for people up to 185cm tall.

That makes the Angell more expensive than the VanMoof, which comes in under £2,000, and the Cowboy, whose third generation is also under £2,000 with the forthcoming version costing £2,290.

Angell doesn’t include accessories either, with mudguards (£89), a kickstand (£19.99), front rack (£79.99) and a front carrier (£119) all offered separately. VanMoof and Cowboy e-bikes at least come with mudguards as standard.

If the Angell’s software worked smoothly and reliably, I’d say the bike was worth the extra money if controlling it with your phone is something that appeals. For now, though, I’d recommend buying an e-bike from a bike manufacturer, like Specialized’s Vado SL or Ribble’s AL e hybrid and off-road CGR AL e, or Brompton’s e-bike if storage is an issue. You’ll spend more time riding and less time looking at a screen, and who doesn’t need that in the 21st century?

Buy from Angell | £2,690

There is something heartening about the number of new cyclists birthed from the boredom of lockdown. And if those new cyclists are keen to emerge from a gruelling, housebound winter on two wheels into the sunshine, I’d thoroughly recommend Ribble’s CGR AL e. It’s got a sportier feel than a hybrid bike, which new urban cyclists are normally herded towards, and a smooth application of electronic assistance even in the highest setting.

That highest setting successfully delivers that magical e-bike feeling, which is akin to unlocking God-level on a bike. It’s how I imagine Chris Hoy at his peak felt on a leisurely jaunt – not really trying but eating up the miles nonetheless.

Ribble does hybrid, road and off-road electric bikes, and the CGR comes from that final group. At the top of that range is a proper gravel bike with flared handlebars and technical details, but this step-through version is best described as more of an all-rounder, with chunkier tyres better able to handle light terrain like tracks and towpaths.

I rode the bike around south London, which is pretty devoid of tougher terrain, although I did find the chunky wheels useful for attacking the craters (they’re too big to be called potholes) rather than swerving round them. To test it as best I could I rode the CGR along Waterlink Way, National Cycle Route 20, covering 29km in two hours. With the bike on the highest setting I used two-thirds of the battery and returned pretty fresh, even after climbing some serious hills.

While serious riders may not find that especially impressive, newer cyclists who fancy a bike for commuting and leisure rides on the weekend will surely appreciate the help going distances they’re not used to – I certainly did. It was also a surprisingly comfortable ride, even more surprising given the fact that Ribble doesn’t offer the CGR AL e in the most suitable size for me. The bike is only available in two frame sizes, with the medium/large topping out at 180cm. I’m 182cm, and while I wouldn’t pay thousands of pounds for a bike that’s not perfectly suited to my size, it was fine. In large part that’s down to the high-grade assistance – I would have felt more cramped had I needed to put in more effort.

Ribble’s electric bikes use the Ebikemotion system, which prioritises weight over battery life and power. The CGR step-through comes in two set builds – although everything can be customised if you want to – with both the Sport and more expensive Enthusiast (which I rode) clocking in around a respectable 14kg.

The bike is operated with a single button on the crossbar, which uses a traffic light colour scheme to indicate the level of charge in the battery. If you press it twice to switch assistance level the colour lets you know which of the three levels you’re in.

It’s a pleasantly intuitive system, and the button is discreet. Aside from looking sleeker than bikes with displays and visible batteries, I hope it would disguise the fact that it’s an e-bike and make it less of a target for thieves – although any fool can tell it’s a flash bike and therefore eminently nickable.

I certainly didn’t miss a built-in display. I’ve never been fussed about knowing my speed or the amount of power the motor’s applying, although if that does that sound riveting that data is available through the Ebikemotion app, if you use a holder and mount to strap your smartphone to the handlebars. Without a mount I didn’t have a chance to test the app while I rode, but I suspect it won’t be plain sailing. When I used the app to check the exact battery level, the Bluetooth connection kept dropping, although it picked up again almost immediately.

The app also includes navigation, but you have to pay £3.99 for a set of maps for one year. I didn’t have the chance to try these, but I’d be surprised if that was better value than a subscription to a dedicated route planning app. It is nice to see that there are versions of the app for the Apple Watch or a Google WearOS smartwatch.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

The battery is located in the downtube and can’t be removed, which makes charging more of a challenge. If you don’t have a garage with a mains outlet you’ll have little choice but to bring your bike indoors. It takes around 3½hours to charge as well, so it’ll be hanging around for a while. The best-case-scenario range is 60 miles (96km), which means using the lowest assistance setting, being a light rider and having favourable weather conditions. That’s very much par for the course, especially for a bike this lightweight. Bear in mind you’ll be doing most of the work for those 96km: I rode the 10.5km to drop the bike off in the lowest level of assistance and found it imperceptible (the battery only dropped by 6% though). The 2 x 11 gears meant I didn’t arrive too sweaty, though.

My only complaint, especially as it’s pitched as a bike for city riding, is the lack of integrated lights that run off the battery. The bike can be fitted with mudguards and a pannier rack, although neither preset build includes these.

The Sport build costs £2,399, while the Enthusiast is £2,799, with the extra money going to upgrading the gearing and brakes. Both cost more than Ribble’s electric hybrid, the AL e, which I reviewed in 2019, but the sportier feel is worth the extra few hundred pounds.

Buy from Ribble | From £2,399

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for a competition from Coach stablemates Cyclist magazine. Long story short, we’d like to win an e-bike worth more than five grand, we’re taking a wild guess that you'd like to as well. Enter on the Cyclist website, or if you need more convincing, read on.

We don't need to explain how far e-bikes have come in the last few years, both in reach and technological advancement. As a result, their applications span the spectrum: they make that weekend group ride more accessible for people who want to ride harder or further.

Bikes like Cannondale's SuperSix Evo Neo 2 provide up to 250 watts assistance at speeds of up to 25kmh, so age, injuries, hills, winds and off-seasons are no obstacles to going for a ride any longer.

That's why Cyclist has teamed up with Cannondale to give you the chance to win one, a prize worth a hefty £5,500.

The SuperSix Evo Neo 2 shares much of the same DNA as the bikes raced in the WorldTour by the EF Education-Nippo team. Consequently, it is packed with premium features, using a similar ‘BallisTec’ carbon fibre frame construction, many similar Kammtail tube profiles and the same ‘SAVE’ compliance-boosting componentry.

The SuperSix Evo Neo 2 is as light as e-bikes get at 12kg, and is as aero efficient and comfortable as the multi award-winning regular SuperSix Evo.

Invisible assistance

The SuperSix Evo Neo 2 uses ebikemotion’s X35 drive system. The X35 rear hub-based motor uses a power meter and magnets in the cassette lockring to support the output of the rider up to 25kmh.

It delivers up to and extra 250 watts over a range as far as 100km. The system uses a battery small enough to be housed in the downtube, so the rear hub and subtle ‘iWoc’ control button on the top tube are the only clues the Neo 2 is more than a conventional road bike.

Shimano Ultegra shifting and integrated Cannondale App connectivity round off a well-balanced proposition that might just take your road riding to the next level.

Enter on the Cyclist website

The runaround class of car has met its match. With driving in cities becoming a huge hassle, using a bike to get around is increasingly attractive, and the Brompton Electric is definitively the best for serving this need. At £3,000 it’s admittedly expensive, but I’m convinced it’s worth it.

Imagine you have to visit the post office, then your GP’s surgery 2.24km away, then your bank branch 1.71km away from your GP, then the 1.55km home up a bit of a hill. And it needs to be done in your lunch hour.

I did exactly that using a Brompton Electric and it was a breeze. I cruised along at the pace of south London traffic, often passing cars stuck in a snarl-up; skipped the bother of parking by folding up the bike and carrying it in (it’s 18.4kg with the battery); and glided home up the hill by relying on the motor. It beats a car on all counts. It’s superior to a folding traditional bike because the electric assistance means you’ll never feel too tired to use it, or arrive sweaty from exerting yourself. It bests a non-folding bike because you don’t need to find a place to lock it up and at home it will find a nook or cupboard to live in. Again and again I pulled out the fold-up e-bike neatly stored in my cupboard under the stairs over the hassle of unlocking my regular bike.

The Brompton Electric is also head and shoulders above the other folding e-bikes I’ve tried. Like most other folding bikes – electric or otherwise – there are hinges on the head tube and down tube, but Brompton tucks the rear wheel under the body.

• NEWSFLASH: New Brompton Electric P Line Revealed

This unique design makes for an exceptionally small folded footprint of 565mm high x 585mm wide x 270mm long. Or in practical terms, it neatly slots into my cupboard under the stairs. With other models I’ve had to clear the cupboard out entirely and wedge the bike in diagonally. I’m confident that no matter how small your home is, you’ll find somewhere for a Brompton Electric to live.

The battery is another example of exemplary design. It comes in a carry case and clicks on and off in front of the handlebars. The case has a fold-away carry strap so you can sling it on one shoulder and pick up the bike on the other side if you’re taking it onto a train. A detachable battery is of course much more convenient to charge as well.

That battery can also slot into a 20-litre City Bag (£135), sold by Brompton as an extra, leaving plenty of space for work or errand stuff. As someone who normally uses a backpack instead of panniers, carrying my football kit on the front of the bike was really rather lovely. The City Bag is expensive, but if you can use a Cycle To Work scheme to reduce the cost of a Brompton Electric, accessories like the bag will be discounted too and I’d strongly recommend one.

The battery is proprietary and with a range of 30-70km, it matches up to the competition just fine: the Gocycle GX goes up to 65km, as does the Volt Metro LS, while the Raleigh Stow-E-Way quotes 50km. But really, as long as you don’t think you’ll cover more than 30km on your daily travels, you can whack it on the highest level of assistance and charge it every night if you like – it charges quickly enough in four hours, although a fast charger (£95) is also available which cuts the charging time in half.

As you’d expect from a company that excels in design, there are integrated bike lights which run off the battery, and these also automatically come on when you slot the battery on to the bike if it’s dark.

All great stuff, but there’s a level of detail to the design that only reveals itself after extended use. For instance, after leaving the Brompton Electric languishing in a locked-down office, I returned to give it the once-over and ride it home. The tyres needed pumping up, but the only pumps I could find while raiding Cyclist magazine’s tool cupboard were Presta rather than Schrader valves. Just as I was about to give up I spotted a bike pump on the bike. It hadn’t been pointed out to me when the review model was handed over, and it was so well integrated it was virtually invisible.

The Brompton Electric is also surprisingly pleasant to ride. I’m 1.8m (6ft) tall and feel a bit out of proportion on some folding e-bikes, but I wasn’t uncomfortable at all. I used a model with the H handlebars, which raise the grips compared with M, and I rode the 12km between my home and the office in complete comfort (although I’m not sure how much farther I’d want to go).

With a small 16in (349mm) wheel size, it’s worth keeping a close eye out for particularly deep potholes, but the punchy motor meant I had no trouble keeping up with traffic flows and I often found myself overtaking cyclists on non-electric bikes on the flat. Steep hills posed no problems for the motor either.

The smoothness of the assistance is welcome and a little surprising, especially as the motor is on the front wheel – conventional wisdom maintains that mounting the motor between the pedals results in a more balanced ride. At the highest level of assistance (why ride in any other mode?) you get quite a push, more so than the gradual introduction of power on other high-end hybrid e-bikes I’ve tried, but Brompton has managed the trick of not making it feel jerky. It was continually delightful to get a kick of speed with little effort.

It does require a little effort to get going again, with assistance taking a moment to kick in, so it’s useful to come to a stop in a lower gear if you’re riding the six-gear version as I was. The entry-level model comes with two gears, which I suspect will be more than enough unless you live in an especially hilly area – I rarely used the lighter gears.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• The Best Folding Bikes For Cycling To Work

If you’re thinking of using a Brompton Electric as part of a multi-stage commute I’d recommend it, although only if you can wheel it along stations and platforms and carry it up stairs in its folded-out state, allowing you to pick it up using the crossbar. The folded-up Brompton is fine to lift onto a train or carry a few metres, but beyond that it becomes awkward to carry in one hand by your side, so it’s not ideal for, say, the London Underground.

The Brompton Electric is by no means cheap at £2,875 for the two-gear version and £3,020 for the six-gear. However, if you can buy it through a Cycle To Work scheme, lower-rate taxpayers can reduce that by more than £700, while a higher-rate taxpayer can get £1,000 off. As I think of a Brompton Electric as a mode of transport rather than as equipment for a leisure activity, it’s also worth considering the fuel costs or public transport fares you’d avoid by using a Brompton. If you’re thinking of replacing car trips with it, I’d also take into account the time you’ll save from avoiding traffic and finding somewhere to park.

Beyond these considerations, the freedom it affords to move around a city with minimum hassle makes it well worth the investment.

Buy from Brompton | From £2,875 for two-speed, from £3,020 for six-speed

We’re pretty sure we’re past the “e-bikes are cheating” phase in this country. Particularly in the city, e-bikes are a more convenient way of getting around than a car, and no-one insists you have to power one of those Fred Flintstone style. That’s why we always use the highest level of assist on an e-bike – and why we’re most intrigued to hear that one of the headline developments in the fourth generation of Gocycle is a low-speed start capability.

On most e-bikes you have to get the bike moving before electric assistance kicks in – on previous Gocycles you had to hit 4mph – while on some brands’ e-bikes, there’s a speed-limited thumb throttle which can help get you going. On the new G4 range, however, the assist kicks in from a standing start. That’s exceptionally useful if you live in a hilly area and have to make a lot of starts on inclines. (Although Gocycles were already adept at hill starts thanks to the electric gears which meant you could shift to the easiest one even when stationary.) It’s also useful if you’re riding to get from A to B, rather than exercising.

Other notable upgrades on the G4 include a weight saving of 1kg over the previous generation, leaving the G4 at 16.6kg, and a more powerful but quieter motor. The tyres are wider and can take more air for a smoother ride as well. There’s also a USB port which you can use to charge a device off the battery when riding, and a charge time of three hours (or three-and-a-half hours for the more expensive versions which have a greater range).

That’s on top of what was already a refined and upscale folding e-bike, with design and engineering that reflects founder Richard Thorpe’s experience working with the McLaren motor racing team. Unlike many folding bikes, the Gocycle has a wheel base which mirrors that of a traditional bike, helping to avoid that “circus bear on a tiny bike feeling” we’ve occasionally experienced.

See related

• Gocycle GX Folding Electric Bike Review: A Great Bike With One Fatal Flaw
• Gocycle GS E-Bike Review: Worth The Money
• The Best Folding Bikes For Cycling To Work
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting

The battery is integrated into the body, but can be removed from the housing when the bike is folded for more convenient charging. The range on the standard model goes up to 65km, which is competitive and can be extended to 80km on more expensive options.

It’s also the only folding bike we’ve tried that can be easily wheeled along when folded – particularly useful if you plan to take one through a train station or, as we discovered, when you get a puncture.

The G4 range starts at £3,399. Upgrading to the G4i (£3,999) gets you predictive electronic gear shifting, a daytime light across the handlebars to increase your visibility (although integrated lights for nighttime are still extra), a more detailed LED dashboard and an extra 15km of potential range, among other upgrades.

Pre-order from Gocycle | From £3,399

To say e-bikes are not cheap is an understatement. The most affordable I’ve tried so far, the Volt Metro and Raleigh Stow-E-Way, are £1,500 and £1,400 respectively. So my head was turned by the £700 E-Trends Fly. I hoped I’d have an experience akin to the cheaper end of the sports headphones market, where you can find perfectly serviceable options for a small fraction of the price of top-end products. Unfortunately I was left disappointed.

Anyone who’s as tall as me certainly shouldn’t even consider the E-Trends Fly, and I’m a not-what-I’d-call-freakish 1.82m (just over 6ft). When setting the saddle I tend to start at hip height and fine-tune from there. When set at its highest, the Fly’s seat came just to the top of my thigh. As well as being uncomfortable it meant I felt like a circus bear on a tiny bike, which was particularly odd because I’ve also been riding a Brompton Electric and hadn’t felt like that – even though the Brompton has the same 16in frame and even smaller wheels than the 20in ones on the Fly.

I also found the feel of pedalling odd. There are no gears or varying assistance settings (not necessarily a bad thing and something I’d have accepted as a cost-saving measure), but the assistance is slow to kick in – it takes a good few seconds – and keeps going for a noticeable period after you’ve finished pedalling. It did help me get up hills, but on steep inclines the assistance wasn’t enough and I found I had to put in more effort than I’d have expected to on an e-bike.

The single gear also offered minimal resistance so I often found myself pedalling furiously to go at what felt like a medium speed. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing – I cycle regularly so making the single speed easier will make the bike more suitable for a wider range of fitness levels. But if it’s for a smaller, perhaps less fit person, then it’s not great as a folding option because of its heavy steel frame. At 23.5kg I found it unwieldy to carry from my front porch to the back door, a trip of a mere seven metres.

Some folding e-bikes can be rolled on one wheel when folded, but that requires a way to securely attach the front section to the back. That’s lacking on the Fly; if you use the seat and pannier rack to wheel the folded bike around, the front wheel flaps about.

The bike does have integrated lights, a well-padded comfy seat, a kickstand, a pannier rack and mudguards as standard, which more expensive bikes often make you pay for. All the tools you need to put it together are also included in the box. There are fold-up pedals and a stand in the middle so it sits securely when folded, and at 86cm x 33cm x 63cm it doesn’t take up more space than other standard hinged bikes (Brompton being the notable exception).

The bike hinges in the middle and on the handlebar stem, but rather than just using a latch, there’s a latch and bolt mechanism. It’s a little more fiddly but you can still do it even if your hands are cold or you're wearing gloves.

The battery range is 24-30km, about half of what folding e-bikes twice the price do. The battery also has a key lock on it, both to unlock it so you can remove it from the frame to charge it and also to turn it on. In fact, you have to turn the key to the On position and leave it in there while you ride. On one hand it’s a neat security feature. On the other hand I can imagine myself locking the bike up and leaving the key in the ignition by accident for anyone to grab.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• The Best Folding Bikes For Cycling To Work
• The Best Hybrid Bikes For Commuters

Security-wise, there is a loop around the seatpost to secure a bike lock through. Bikes without crossbars, like this one, can be a bit trickier to lock up so it’s a welcome addition.

I would love a workable folding e-bike option under £700, and the E-Trends Fly gets a lot of the basics right. However, I found the ride so disappointing that it’s not really suitable for riding any appreciable distance. You’d almost certainly be better served by an even cheaper, non-electric bike with gears.

Buy from E-Trends | £699.99

I have a habit of writing long e-bike reviews, where I pick apart the new developments and quirks in great detail. If you’re pushed for time, I can sum this one up much more quickly: the Vado SL is a joy to ride and if it matches your budget and style, then buy it – you won’t be disappointed.

But there’s plenty of detail to come, of course. The style of this e-bike is that of a – don’t laugh – bike. You see, there’s a type of e-bike that adds smart features like GPS tracking, or alarms or new designs. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting and evolving, but I find there are always kinks that need to be worked out.

There’s also a style of e-bike that doesn’t want to replicate the feel of riding a bike, but shunt you along from A to B with the minimum amount of effort on your part – a style popular among delivery riders and people looking to get off public transport for their commute.

Specialized’s Vado SL is designed like a bike and rides like a bike – and an extremely good one at that, as you’d expect from one of the most successful bike brands going.

The entry-level model I tried is 16.6kg, towards the lighter end of the e-bike weight spectrum, and the range is 130km. There’s an optional range extender, essentially an extra battery you fit to the bike using a bottle holder and then plug into the main battery, which can add another 64km – but I wouldn’t bother. For one, 130km is more than enough to cover a day’s errands and commuting on the highest assistance. If you fancy roaming further afield, the Vado SL is so light and easy to ride that you could tackle most of a Sunday adventure in the lowest level of assistance, or no assistance at all and just give yourself an extra boost on the inclines.

Over four rides I wrung out 47km from the battery on the highest assistance and tackled plenty of inclines. The only downside to the Vado SL is that the battery is integrated rather than removable. With a charge time of two and a half hours you’ll have to bring it into your house to charge over the winter unless you own a garage. But it’s a trade-off between looks and practicality and plenty of manufacturers take this approach, including Ribble and Ampler.

The bike has a refreshingly pared-back and intuitive system. There’s an on/off button on the crossbar with a vertical nine-LED battery level indicator and, above that, a circle of three LED lights and another button to cycle through the assistance levels. You can also change the level of assist using a small, neat switch by the left handgrip.

The bike can connect to an app where you can customise the assist levels. You can even add a route and specify how much battery you want left at the end and let the bike change the level of assistance to help you on the hills while still conserving juice so it lasts the entire journey. The app can also track your ride and export it to Strava, and help with diagnostics of the battery and motor – smart and useful features – and most importantly it’s well designed and easy to get the hang of.

The motor is Specialized’s own, the SL1.1. It’s mounted centrally at the bottom of the bike, which helps with the balance of the bike, and the assistance it gives is smooth and measured in proportion to the force you put through the pedals. It’s so smooth there were times when I wondered if the assistance was on, then I reminded myself I was pedalling up a steep hill in a relatively high gear and putting in only a little effort.

There are four builds of the Vado SL: the more affordable two are fitted with ten gears, while the other two, which top out at £3,600, have 12. For the leisure rides I did, ten was more than sufficient, although if you’re a speedy rider you may want to consider 12. Because of how light it is, I was happy to push past the 15.5mph where the assistance cuts off so a couple of higher gears may turn out to be useful. That’s not been the case for me on heavier bikes where it’s too much effort to gather speed and I cruise along just below the cut-out point.

Other differences include Future Shock integrated suspension on the more expensive models, although I found the aluminium frame didn’t rattle me around on south London’s potholed roads. In fact it even outperformed the other e-bike I recently reviewed, the Wau with front fork suspension turned on.

Whichever build you buy, the Vado SL comes with disc brakes that perform well in all conditions, tyres that can handle roads and light terrain including grass, and integrated front and rear lights that run off the battery. The front light is 210 lumens (310 on the more expensive models) which works for urban riding but you’ll probably need something brighter where there aren’t street lights.

The EQ build I rode added front and back mudguards, a rear pannier rack and kickstand, and you can upgrade the tyres for an extra £200.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• How To Look After Your E-Bike’s Battery

You can certainly find a similar style of e-bike for less money, but I’m confident when I say if you decide to spend the extra you get a better bike and riding experience. The price difference will be flattened if you’re able to take advantage of a Cycle to Work scheme, too.

One good comparison is with Ribble’s AL e. Both are lightweight hybrids with fixed, integrated batteries and motors which sacrifice some power for range (the AL e quotes 100km) and weight (13.5kg in the AL e’s case). With mudguards and pannier rack the AL e is £2,099 and it’s a fine choice.

The Ampler Stout, a fully-loaded town bike, is another competitor. I’ve tried the flat-bar road bike Curt and enjoyed the ride, but considering the Stout is £2,300 and 17.2kg with a 100km range, I think the quality of the Specialized’s ride would persuade me to choose the Vado SL.

I’d also compare the Vado SL favourably with the Canyon Precede:ON, which starts at £4,000. While I’ve only had one test ride on the Pathlite:ON, and it has a more powerful top-of-the-line Bosch motor, smooth automatic shifting and carbon belt instead of a chain, the natural ride on both the Canyon and the Specialized felt similar.

If you’re a regular cyclist who’s looking to upgrade to an e-bike, the Vado SL will bring you heaps of joy. The only problem is that you’ll have to wait – it’s sold out online, and while you can see if a local stockist has any, the stockists of this particular line seem few and far between.

Buy from Specialized | £2,800

Established bike brands are getting into e-bikes in a big way, but there are also dedicated e-bike brands that have led the way in the sector. Some have been around for a while, like the Buckinghamshire-based Volt, founded ten years ago, while more recent start-ups include VanMoof, Cowboy and Ampler. To that group you can add Wau, based in Nottingham. Wau’s bike is on its sixth iteration and it’s is chock full of smart developments.

The marquee feature is unparalleled range, with an option that offers up to 215 miles (346km) – the biggest we’ve come across by far. However, that’s the most expensive and heaviest of three options, and requires an additional rear rack (£110, currently reduced to £89.95) to carry a second battery sold as an accessory (£1,239.95, currently reduced to £984.95). The other two options have a maximum range of 40 miles (64km, £2,397, currently reduced to £1,677) or 100 miles (160km, £2,897, currently reduced to £1,997).

While the numbers are impressive, the battery is actually the least exciting feature. My favourite innovation is the integrated rear lights on the seatstay, which double as brakes and turn indicators. The brake lights come on automatically and there’s a switch on the handlebars to operate the indicators. Kudos to whoever had that bright idea – it makes you and your intentions more visible to other road users.

Like relative newcomers VanMoof and Cowboy, Wau has added security features. There’s a GPS chip so the bike can be tracked via an app, as well as a geofence set up so you’re alerted when it leaves the area. I wasn’t able to try the GPS tracking of the bike because the app wasn’t available in the Apple App Store during the week I had the bike (although it is there now).

The keys for the removable battery also have a keyfob attached which locks the bike, just like with car keys. If the bike is moved even slightly when locked, a high-pitched alarm is triggered.

It only gives a few warning sounds at the first bit of movement, thankfully, as I inevitably forgot about it every time I went to unlock the bike. When locked up in my garden, I doubt it would have woken me when asleep in my bedroom, but it should be enough to make an opportunistic thief think twice. It’s probably best not to use it on shared bike stands, however, since it would be easy for another cyclist using the other side of a Sheffield stand to inadvertently set it off.

I got on really well with the 100-mile range Wau, mostly because it’s the type of bike I’m used to. It’s a hybrid that’s well suited to city riding because of the stability you get from a wide grip on the handlebars and a more upright position than a road bike’ I found the flat-bar road bike style of the Cowboy and Ampler Curt a bit twitchy, and the more upright Dutch style of the VanMoof odd (although I’m sure I would have got used to it). Wau’s eight-gear Shimano derailleur is changed with paddles on the handlebars – a pleasant experience after the somewhat clunky automatic shifting on the VanMoof. If you’re a hybrid user looking to switch to an e-bike, the Wau is an appealing option especially if its smart features will be useful to you.

The Wau is a heavy bike. The 100-mile option is 24kg, the 40-mile 22kg and with the extra battery the 215-mile model is 28kg. It doesn’t feel heavy when riding, however, thanks to a motor that’s powerful enough to get its bulk moving and disc brakes strong enough to bring it to a halt quickly even in wet conditions. While it is manoeuvrable, I wouldn’t recommend it for impatient riders because it’s a bit too wide and weighty to weave comfortably through stationary traffic.

The bike has front fork suspension with a lockout switch so you can turn the suspension off for a firmer, more energy-efficient ride. I found that on this setting the battery and electronics rattled quite a bit, although this is as much a result of the state of south London roads as anything else. Turning the suspension back on made for a far more comfortable ride, although there was still a bit of rattle. For one this should warn off anyone who is wondering if the max range would make this a good option for bike touring, since if there’s rattle on Tarmac roads it doesn’t bode well for even light tracks.

I think this rattle may be a sign of the need for further development of the bike. At first, I thought the location of the battery and electronics in the triangular frame, with a look reminiscent of a butcher boy’s bike from the 1950s, was another piece of smart design, but now I suspect it's because the electronics haven’t been refined to the point where they can be housed in the frame. One advantage, at least, is that the battery can be unlocked and removed to be charged separately from the bike.

Another sign that the Wau bike is not the finished article yet is the crowded handlebars. The model I tried did not come with a front light, although it now ships with one, but it’s not integrated so clips on. Perhaps next to the colour display, which is an optional extra (£160, currently reduced to £129.95), but which won’t control the assistance settings. For that you need a five-button pad to turn the bike on, the lights on and off, and change between the five levels of assist. That pad is next to the indicator switch. And my model included a throttle (more on which later). That’s a lot to cram in, and along with brake and gear cables makes for a thick, exposed trunk of cabling which could do with being tidied up and hidden away. The cables aren’t really a problem, although the crowded left handlebar was, and the placement of the throttle made it a bit of a reach to get to the indicator switch.

Now to the throttle. I had assumed this would be limited to working when pedalling, which would make it street legal in the UK, but it’s not. It’s sold as an accessory (£50, currently reduced to £34.95) you have to install yourself (it won’t be hard), but the disclaimer is that it can only be used on private land.

That’s a failing, primarily because the Wau uses a speed sensor which, in my book, makes a throttle essential for ease of riding. A speed sensor registers when you’re pedalling and turns the motor on at your preselected level of assistance. It gives an on/off feel to the assistance, but more importantly it can take a noticeable moment for the assistance to kick in. A throttle allows you to get an instant kick, removing one of the remaining bits of effort you have to put in when cycling an e-bike. Volt and VanMoof include legal, limited throttles (called a booster on the latter). It’s a pity Wau doesn’t.

Normally I wouldn’t draw attention to this type of feature, which in 99% of cases will be used illegally, but riding a Wau bike without one would be less smooth and take more effort to get going. It also goes some way to explaining why I managed to drain the battery so fast.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

Range estimates normally reflect conservative use of electric assistance on flat terrain in good conditions, so I feel it is my duty to whack the assist on high and go heavy on the throttle (at this point I was under the impression using it was kosher). As the throttle isn’t limited, it’s fair to say my heavy-handed use drained the battery exceptionally quickly (although exactly how quickly I can’t say because the battery reading drops in 20% chunks). My experience suggests that 100-mile range is more like 40 miles in a worst case scenario.

There’s really no need to ride like I did, however, because using less assistance on an e-bike with a speed sensor is a better approach for stop-start city riding. I set out to drain the battery as quickly as I could, and I stuck with it, but your experience should be better and I have no real concerns about the performance of the battery.

I did enjoy riding the Wau e-bike, although I couldn’t shake the feeling that it lacked polish and finesse. Wau has recently applied a global 30% price drop, which the founders told me will be permanent (although it’s still presented as a price reduction on the website), so the price for the bike with the lowest mileage is £1,677. That’s competitive, but it’s worth taking into account any extras you’d like: the throttle, mudguards, colour display and a comfier seat are all add-ons. The 100-mile-range bike I tried had all those additions, which gives a total price of £2,291. Models from VanMoof and Volt come in under £2,000 and include those features as standard.

One advantage Wau does have is that its bikes are available immediately. I hope they do sell, because in a few generations’ time there’s every chance Wau will be up there with the very best e-bikes.

Buy from Wau | From £2,397, currently reduced to £1,677

Pray that the city of the future is more like the utopia of Logan’s Run than the grimy, perpetually raining one in Blade Runner, because in the exceptionally clean urban environment of our dreams we’ll all be young and healthy and getting around on a combination of monorails and something like the new Canyon Precede:ON, a premium e-bike in hybrid and step-through editions that’s as practical as it is beautiful.

I took it for a short spin at the press launch and can report it rides like a dream, feeling much lighter and more manoeuvrable than the 23kg weight suggests. Part of that is down to the top-of-the-line Bosch Performance Line CX motor, centrally located between the pedals. The chunky 57mm-wide tyres and carbon frame with rather fancy Canyon-designed carbon seatpost (that’s £232.95 worth of fancy) were primarily responsible for the remarkably vibration-free ride on cobbled streets and a canal towpath.

It’s the second e-bike we’ve tried that employs automatic gear shifting, and the Precede:ON’s Enviolo system proved far superior to the clunky experience we had on the VanMoof S3. The shifting on the Precede:ON wasn’t noticeable at all and once I had found my preferred cadence setting, I pedalled comfortably at just the right level of resistance throughout.

It’s really rather lovely and easy to ride, and for such a futuristic-looking bike, surprisingly practical as well. There are built-in lights, with two settings on the front, one of which is bright enough to illuminate a road without street lights. A rear rack comes as standard and can bear 25kg of weight, taking panniers or a set of bespoke Canyon baskets. There’s an optional front rack that can handle 5kg, and the ability to attach a Croozer bike trailer for kids, pets or cargo. The main reason Canyon is releasing a unisex step-through version is to make it easier to maintain your balance when mounting a heavily-laden bike.

Mudguards come as standard, and the removable battery is taken out from the top of the downtube rather than the bottom so you don’t have to get intimate with the part likely to have been splattered with dirt and debris. The top-of-the-line CF 9 also uses a carbon belt drive so there’s no chance of getting grease on your trousers. A kickstand is integrated so closely you may struggle to see it when it’s tucked away, with just a small tab peeking out for your foot.

The quoted maximum range is 65km, although it’s likely to be less if you’re a normal person who doesn’t ride in any other mode but Turbo, the one with the most assistance. While that should cover you for the type of around-town trips this bike is intended for, it’s on the lower end of the range e-bikes offer and the 500Wh battery doesn’t charge particularly quickly, taking six hours to go from empty to full.

The smooth cycling experience and well-thought-out conveniences go a long way to justifying the price of (brace yourself) £4,699. It’s worth noting that Canyon works with the Green Commute Initiative cycle to work scheme so you could get up to 47% off the price of the bike if you use it to get to work. You can also pay for the bike in interest-free installments using a Klarna-alike service called Splitit.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• Canyon’s New Road E-Bike Absolutely Flies
• What Is The Cycle To Work Scheme?

There’s a slighter cheaper version, the Precede:ON CF 8 (£3,999), whose main difference is a ten-gear Shimano groupset rather than the belt drive and automatic shifting. But if you’re spending that amount of money anyway I’d be tempted to go the whole hog.

But when considering a bike this expensive (and expensive-looking) that’s intended to transport you around town and therefore, by necessity, must be locked up outdoors in public, theft is a definite concern.

The good news, however, is that like everything else, security has been given a lot of thought. The Precede:ON doesn’t have a built-in SIM like a growing number of e-bikes, which would allow you to track it down (an approach which is not always as attractive as you might expect; VanMoof’s recovery service costs about the same as e-bike insurance, for instance). But what it does have is a removable Bosch Kiox display, which acts as a key – without the paired device the bike is useless.

There’s also space between the seatpost and rear wheel for a lock that’s about as secure as it gets, the Abus Bordo Granit XPlus 6500 folding lock (an extra £111.95).

Lock it, take the display with you and make sure you budget for bike insurance – it’s a bike that’s worth the risk.

Buy Precede:ON from Canyon | £3,999-£4,699

How great would it be if you had a tracking beacon in your bike which meant you could locate it if it was stolen? Pretty damn great. I first found out that VanMoof electric bikes included an integrated SIM to do just that some time last year, and then this year VanMoof announced a new and improved e-bike series that cost less, coming in under £2,000.

The S3, which is the model I tried, has a more traditional frame and is designed for taller riders (1.77m-2.07m) than the X3, with its more compact frame (for riders 1.52m-1.95m) and smaller tyres, which can accommodate taller users but is really designed for smaller people or a range of riders – for instance if one is bought to be used by multiple members of the household. Apart from the frame size, the bikes are identical.

Despite that more traditional frame, it was not the bike I thought it would be. Despite the swept-back handlebars I had assumed this would behave similarly to the flat-bar hybrid e-bikes I’ve ridden, and other electric bikes that hide the battery in the frame, like the Ampler Curt, Cowboy, Ribble ALe or Canyon Roadlite:ON. Boy was I wrong.

VanMoof makes Dutch-style upright bikes with automatic shifting electric gears. The upright position means that I had to adjust my normal riding position from leaning forwards to sitting straight, otherwise I felt like I was sliding off the seat. That position has its advantages in city riding, with a head-up posture that means it’s easier to be aware of what’s around you. It also makes riding feel more relaxed, which suits an e-bike: motor assistance on e-bikes legally has to cut out at 25km/h in the UK and, due to the extra weight of e-bikes, going faster under your own power quickly becomes a sweaty business. Rather than hare through traffic, I believe cruising is the better default riding style, and the VanMoof suits that down to the ground.

The VanMoof is 19kg, and although many e-bikes pass the 20kg mark this is still pretty hefty. You wouldn’t want to carry a VanMoof up multiple flights of stairs.

There are two buttons on the bike, one on the inside of the left handlebar and one on the inside of the right, both of which are easy to press with either thumb. The left button triggers an electronic bell which is loud and grating. You hold the right button for a boost, selecting the highest level of assistance. With the assistance set to level two of four, I could whack on the boost whenever I had to put in any amount of real effort, whether because I was going up a hill or the automatic shifting hadn’t picked the ideal gear. This saved me having to put the work in myself and got me back to easy cruising straight away. Even though you could just set the max level of assistance permanently a manual button is exceptionally useful for when the electronic gear shifting puts you in a sub-optimal gear and you can’t change it.

The bike switches gear according to your speed, something you can tweak in the app. It worked reasonably well, although it didn’t change exactly when I would have, and I don’t think I’d ever be able to personalise to the point where it always felt natural. I can see how it might prove useful for someone who hasn’t cycled for a while and could do with one less thing to manage while making sure they can cycle safely in urban traffic.

The gear changes were neither smooth nor jarring. A little clunky is probably a fair assessment. The highest gear is powerful enough to take advantage of a decline and build up some speed, something I’ve found isn’t always the case with e-bikes. Gocycle e-bikes use three-speed manual electric gears, but even in the highest gear I found I was still spinning the pedals ineffectually down hills.

The gearing mechanism and drivetrain is enclosed so you don’t have to worry about getting grease on your clothes, and a chain-tensing mechanism means you shouldn’t have to worry about chain wear either. VanMoofs also come with mudguards as standard, which is admirable because many e-bikes in this price range charge extra for mudguards. There are built-in front and rear lights, as well as reinforced tyres. It makes for a well-thought out package where almost everything’s been taken care of. The exception is luggage racks, but front (£90) and back (£55) can be added when buying.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

The one inconvenience is the fixed battery, with the plug hidden under the crossbar, which means you’ll probably have to bring your bike inside (or run a cable outside) to charge it. VanMoof quotes four hours to charge the battery, with 80 minutes giving a 50% charge. A full charge should last you a minimum of 60km – plenty for any urban trips, which is what this bike is designed for.

As for the theft protection, you can lock and immobilise the bike (although do use a bike lock too), making it useless when stolen. As VanMoofs become more popular that is the feature which may be the most useful, because without a resale value thieves may wise up and steer clear. But if a thief does get away with yours, having purchased “Peace Of Mind” cover (£270 for three years) means a VanMoof team will track your bike down and if it can’t recover it, it will replace it (up to three replacements during the contract term). That final part is a sting in the tail, as £270 is not too far off what you’d pay for theft insurance on a similarly priced e-bike.

Despite that, there’s a lot to recommend the X3 and S3 and it could really suit people who haven’t cycled since childhood looking for a new means of getting around the city. You’ll have to wait though, buy a VanMoof right now and a September delivery is the best you can hope for. If you’re in a rush the Ampler Curt is delivered in 14 days.

Buy from VanMoof | £1,798

Do you have questions about about e-bikes. Questions like: What are they? How do they work? How fast do they go? How much do they cost to buy and run? What are the regulations surrounding them? All these questions and more are answered in Cycling Electric, a new magazine from the publisher of Coach.

Whether you’re looking to ease yourself into getting active again, continuing to explore long after your legs would normally have given up the ghost, or simply avoiding public transport during, er, a pandemic, then you’ll find everything you need to know inside.

The magazine provides in-depth details on a wide range of e-bike models, from commuter and folding bikes to road bikes and cargo bikes. It is a vital resource for anyone thinking of buying an e-bike for work or leisure.

E-bikes will play a significant role in the future of cycling, Cycling Electric is your ultimate guide to what’s coming.

It’s on sale 7th July, priced £5.99, from shop.cyclist.co.uk, WHSmith, Sainsbury’s and independent retailers.

Electrification has come to all of the major categories of bike now: road bikes, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, hybrids and even folding bikes. With the Cowboy e-bike and now the Ampler Curt, even the more niche flat-bar road bike has gotten the electric treatment.

Flat-bar road bikes split the difference between the more comfortable, upright riding position of a hybrid and the light and stiff frame of a road bike which is built for speed. While two isn’t really a trend, I wouldn’t be surprised if more flat bar road e-bikes were released – partly because cities are becoming more bike-friendly to cope with the people shunted off public transport in the name of social distancing, and partly because e-bikes like the Ampler Curt are very city-friendly.

The weight is one chief reason these bikes are suited to urban living. The Ampler Curt single-speed is 13.5kg (there’s a ten-speed version which weighs 14.3kg), lighter than any other e-bike I’ve tried except the Ribble ALe hybrid (13.1kg). Its flat-bar rival Cowboy is 16.1kg, while most city-suited hybrids I’ve tried are 20kg and over. That makes the Curt more manoeuvrable when riding, and much easier to carry up and down stairs – a real bonus if you live in an apartment block without a secure bike store.

Ampler has pulled off an impressive trick of hiding the battery in the downtube, like the Ribble ALe. But unlike Ribble’s effort, which uses the Ebikemotion system (which trades some power for being small and light), Ampler’s own system hasn’t noticeably sacrificed power, or at least not to the same extent as Ribble.

While hiding the battery makes the Curt look great, there is a flipside, which is that you can’t detach the battery to charge inside while your bike is locked up outside. Not a problem if you plan on keeping your bike in your home, but it could make for an added inconvenience. On the other hand, the Cowboy places its battery vertically on the seat tube and while it can be removed to be charged remotely, it’s pretty heavy and does change the centre of gravity on the bike.

Like the Cowboy, the Curt single-speed also uses a rubber belt instead of a chain, so there’s no chance of getting grease on your clothes – plus mudguards come as standard. And since there’s little need to work up a sweat on an e-bike unless you have to go faster than 25km/h (when the motor cuts out in accordance with UK law), you’re very unlikely to have to change clothes at your destination – making the Curt a very convenient way to get around.

See related

• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

The downside of a rubber belt is that it won’t be as efficient as a well-maintained chain, but then I’m not great at maintaining my bikes and anyway there’s a motor to pick up the slack. Cycling without the motor isn’t even that bad – in fact on my first ride it took a while for me to clock that one of the modes is “no assistance” (why?!). Otherwise there are normal and boost moods, with the latter providing 50% more assistance. I spent practically all my riding time in boost mode, which felt like you were getting turbo-charged assistance. The normal mode did help a little, but I’d rather let the motor do as much of the work as possible.

This did mean I found the battery didn’t get close to the quoted 70km range. On an 8km round trip using the boost mode with the integrated lights (another notable convenience) I found the battery level dropped by around a quarter. It doesn’t strike me as a problem though – this isn’t a touring bike. One 18km-long cruise to the river and back to escape lockdown for a bit pushed the limits of comfort, with the hard seat and stiff frame (despite the carbon fork which reduces the vibrations travel through the bike) better suited to shorter journeys.

The Curt has one button placed next to the charging socket by the bottom bracket, which can be used to turn the bike on and cycle between modes. I’m surprised it’s located there because it’s not very convenient – the Ribble ALe and Cowboy both place their single button on the crossbar so you can switch mode mid-ride. Like the Cowboy, the Curt connects to an app over Bluetooth, allowing you to turn the lights on, switch between modes and adjust the amount of assistance provided in normal and boost modes.

There’s also the ability to plan routes and navigate, although only if you can mount your phone on the bike because it’s visual only, rather than including audio cues. The routing software looked promising, however, choosing quieter back roads rather than the A-roads Google Maps preferred when I did a side-by-side test.

It’s a well-designed, modern app and I only had one connection problem, which was solved with the standard rigamarole of making my phone forget the Bluetooth connection and starting over again. It’s certainly an order of magnitude better than some I’ve tried (cough GoCycle cough), but doesn’t reach the heights of Cowboy’s, which includes support live chat and an integrated tracking SIM in the bike so you can find it if it’s nicked (although you can insure the Curt against theft and damage for the reasonable annual cost of €120 through Ampler).

A few other things are worthy of mention: Curt uses hydraulic brakes, which are more powerful than rim brakes and perform better in the wet. The tyres are reasonably wide and puncture-protected, and in a surprisingly practical move for a sleek single-speed, attachments (sold separately, €25) to the rear axle make it suitable to use with a Thule trailer.

The bike set-up experience is worthy of praise. All other bikes I’ve had shipped to me involve you leaning in and lifting out. That would not have been so much of a problem with a bike as light as the Curt, but it can be a bit awkward. However, with the Curt the box lifts off a base which keeps the Curt upright so you can finish the set-up – turning the handlebars around and attaching the pedals.

It’s all very easy with clear instructions – and bear in mind this comes from someone who once put the handlebars on a review bike the wrong way round.

Perhaps the biggest thing the Curt has in its favour, at the moment at least, is that it arrives in between seven and 14 days. The UK is virtually sold out of bikes, e-bikes or otherwise, with Cowboy on an eight-week delivery schedule and Ribble offering to dispatch the ALe on 15th September.

The Curt does cost more, something like £2,600 depending on the exchange rate (the cost can be split over three months with Klarna, interest-free), in contrast to the Ribble ALe and Cowboy which are both around £2,000. The Curt has advantages over the Ribble in that it’s more powerful, although perhaps less practical (Ampler’s slightly cheaper Stout/Stellar commuter bikes are better rivals to the ALe).

In a straight head-to-head, taking price into account, the Cowboy edges it. Even though the ride isn’t as pleasant, the addition of a SIM and the convenience of a removable battery are major advantages which you pay less for. You’ll have to wait for the Cowboy, though, and if you’re a bit stuck getting around a major city without a car (or are fed up sitting in traffic in one), Ampler will get you in the saddle in next to no time – and you won’t be disappointed with the experience.

Buy from Ampler | Single speed €2,890 (around £2,600)

While we’re a fair way off leaving our places of residence for anything but essential reasons, once the current restrictions are lifted you can be sure things won’t immediately go back to the way they were. If owning a car isn’t practical where you live – a city centre for instance – you may wonder how you’re going to get around. Crowded public transport seems like it will be inadvisable for a long time after limitations on movement are relaxed.

A bike is an obvious and affordable choice, but if you anticipate travelling considerable distances daily it’s certainly worth considering an e-bike.

One that city-centre dwellers in particular might want to consider is the Gocycle GS, especially as it’s just had its price reduced from £2,499 to £1,999. If you plan to use it to commute to work and can access a Cycle To Work scheme, you’ll be able to knock that price down even further – by up to 39%. (NHS workers in London can get a free three-month loan of the GS or other e-bikes from Fully Charged. Register your interest here.)

The Gocycle GS can be packed down to make it easier to stow away in a cupboard when not in use. It’s not a full folding bike like the Gocycle GX (from £2,899), which has a hinge in the middle of the body, but being able to reduce its size is handy for anyone lacking space for a full-size bike.

The eye-catching design of the bike isn’t just a way to attract admiring glances. Having the gears and chain stowed away in the magnesium frame rather than exposed means you’ll avoid getting any mess on your clothes, as well as reducing the amount of maintenance required. The diagonal seat post also means the distance between the seat and handlebars is closer to a full-size bike than a folding one, which we found felt more natural (as a gangly six-footer).

At 16.5kg, it’s lighter than most e-bikes, and that plus the lack of a crossbar makes it relatively easy to carry up stairs. It’s always one of our key considerations when trying out e-bikes, because everyone – including flat-dwellers who live up one or more flights of stairs – will want to keep such an expensive ride indoors.

See related

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• Gocycle GS E-Bike Review: Worth The Money
• Gocycle GX Folding Electric Bike Review: A Great Bike With One Fatal Flaw
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

With a range of 40 miles (64km) the Gocycle GS should be able to handle whatever trips you need to make in a day, and you can recharge the battery overnight.

If you buy the bike now, which comes in white/red, grey/black or white/black, you also get a free Gocycle Portable Docking Station, which can be used to store and transport the GS. The storage is particularly useful, helping you to keep it in a cupboard or neatly in a corner of a room.

Even at its reduced price the Gocycle GS still requires a considerable outlay, and our electric bikes round-up includes some great, cheaper options. However, its stowable design and array of clever features make it a standout option for some commuters.

Buy from Gocycle | £1,999 | Gocycle GS review

We’re big fans of electric bikes on Coach and can still remember the pleasant surprise we had when we first rode one, quickly followed by the thought that we could get used to this. While we could wax lyrical for many more words, nothing beats trying it yourself. If you’re thinking of getting an e-bike but aren’t sure what to go for, or even if you’ve just heard about them and want to find out what the fuss is all about, you can get saddle time on plenty of models on a traffic-free track at the Cycling Electric Demo Day on Saturday 4th July at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London.

Cycling Electric is a new magazine from the publishers of Coach. It goes on sale 29th April, will cost £5.99 and will be a vital resource for anyone thinking of buying an e-bike for work or leisure. (Side note: You should definitely consider buying one to get you to work because e-bikes can be bought through Cycle To Work schemes, saving you somewhere between 25% and 39%.)

Either way, the benefits are the same for commuters, road cyclists, bikepackers and mountain bikers alike – e-bikes offer an environmentally friendly way to get around that’s far easier on the legs. Whether you’re already an e-bike enthusiast or thinking of buying one for the very first time, you’ll leave this event with a better idea of what’s available and what will suit you.

See related

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• How To Look After Your E-Bike’s Battery
• Cowboy Electric Bike Review: The Best E-Bike For Commuting We’ve Tried

Early bird tickets are on sale until 1st March for £20, saving you £5 on the full £25 ticket price. Here’s what your ticket buys you:

Buy tickets | £20

If you have any questions about the event, get in touch with the team at cyclingelectricevents@dennis.co.uk.

Electric bikes have many excellent uses, like making it easier for mountain bikers to get up hills so you can enjoy more downs every outing, or making it a breeze to commute by bike every day so you’re not totally knackered by Wednesday evening.

One common problem if you ride them to work is the risk of theft. You can more easily arrange a decent degree of security at home, but you have to lock it somewhere while at work and since getting around is so little effort it’s also tempting to make diversions to run errands on the way to and from work. E-bikes are valuable – this mid-range model is £1,780 – and all bikes are unnervingly simple to steal, with even the best bike locks only able to slow down committed thieves.

So even though I’ve ridden and enjoyed riding many e-bikes, especially up the hill on the final leg of my commute, the fact that I can’t confidently lock one up in my back garden or at a shop on the way home means I’ve never considered forking out for one myself. Until, that is, I got my hands on the Cowboy.

I get the impression the Belgian start-up has benefited from not being a traditional bike manufacturer: instead, it’s taken a step back and considered how someone would design a bike for 21st-century urban riding if starting from scratch.

Among the clever features Cowboy has included to answer that question is sticking a SIM card in the bike. This means that the electric assistance can only be turned on by the app on a paired smartphone and that the bike can be located by GPS. These are both compelling security features, especially since it’s not an enjoyable ride at all without the assistance.

Of course, just because you’ve located a stolen bike doesn’t mean you’d want to start banging on strangers’ doors, and it remains to be seen whether the police would attempt to use these functions. The most practical application is that it allows Cowboy to provide cheaper bike insurance that offers a like-for-like replacement. Or it will, at least – that insurance isn’t available in the UK yet.

This modern approach extends to the app, which unlocks the bike and turns on the integrated lights (the rear light also acts as an automatic brake light). Yes, if your phone has run out of battery you cannot turn your bike on, but if your phone runs out of battery when the bike is already on then the bike will stay on – either until it runs out of battery or until you recharge your phone and turn it off. You can also set up automatic shut-off after a predetermined period of inactivity.

The most impressive part of my experience involved the chat section in the app, where you can get support. I had a problem with the lights turning on and when I told customer service (admittedly I did mention I was a journalist reviewing the bike), I received a series of prompt responses and the software on my bike was reset remotely. The lights turned on and have worked since.

The other part of the non-riding experience which set Cowboy apart was decidedly old-fashioned – a set of exceptionally clear instructions for setting the bike up, printed on paper. No referring to a series of online videos. No assumption you’ve brought a direct-to-consumer bike before and know how to turn the handlebars round and screw in pedals. Just easy-to-understand instructions with pictures and words, and all the tools I needed to complete the set-up included. It feels like an odd thing to praise, but it got me on the bike far more quickly and confidently than with any other e-bike I’ve had to unpack.

The 2.4kg battery clips on to the back of the seat post and while the instructions discuss how this weight placement may affect how the ride feels I found it natural, perhaps because it made the motor in the back wheel feel solid and weighted. It can be removed with a key and charged separately from the bike. The range of 70km is on the low side, but this is an urban commuter bike so if you’re doing more than 35km each way then a hybrid or touring e-bike is a better choice for you. It takes 3½ hours to charge up with no quick charge feature, so it’s wise to plug it in at work or overnight regularly.

Of course, all this innovation is meaningless if it rides like a pig, but the Cowboy provides an easy ride, injecting assistance earlier than other models to compensate for the lack of gears and rubber chain.

The rubber chain had my office mates at our sister title Cyclist purring, and pointing out that although it’s not as efficient as a new metal chain, the latter will wear before long and the rubber chain will outperform it. Once you hit the cut-off point for the motor the Cowboy can feel a little sluggish and it takes extra effort to go any faster, but 15.5mph (25km/h) is a decent cruising speed and plenty for relaxed urban riding.

It’s worth noting that the wide tyres have no tread on them, although I am reliably informed by a colleague on Cyclist that on commuter and road bikes, tread is just for show. Unless you’re riding on mud, a flat surface provides better grip and energy transfer. Even in the wet I had no issues with cornering or slipping, and the powerful disc brakes brought me to a stop quickly. I did experience a puncture, however, which might have something to do with my negligence of checking and inflating the tyres every week as I do on my regular ride, combined with the extra weight of the battery on the back tyre, or it may be that the Cowboy lacks thick, puncture-resistant tyres.

When I did experience the puncture, I could easily lift the back up by the saddle and wheel it along just using the front. This is because the Cowboy weighs 16.1 kg, putting it very much on the lighter end of the weight scale for e-bikes, most of which are over 20kg.

To go with the single-speed design, the handlebars are narrower than on hybrid e-bikes, which took some getting used to. The steering is a little twitchier and I found myself in a more hunched, tight-shouldered position. Also the Cowboy’s mudguards cost an additional £77, which is very expensive for mudguards.

But those are the very few gripes I have with Cowboy (OK, the name too). And they’re forgivable, because the only other company I’ve seen offer this killer bike-SIM combo is VanMoof, whose Electrified S2 model retails at £3,200, almost double the Cowboy’s price (although it also offers an innovative subscription service, £98 plus £24 a month).

Hats off to Cowboy. This is the e-bike I would buy myself.

Buy from Cowboy | £1,790

More About E-Bikes

• Ride to work in style with our top pick of the best e-bikes for commuting 
• Experts guide you on differences between models and styles in our electric bike buyers' guide 
• Here's how to save cash on an e-bike using the cycle to work scheme

There’s no doubt Gocycle’s e-bikes are real head-turners. Their design is as distinctive as any Brompton; while I was riding it, two separate cyclists struck up a conversation with me about it.

Gocycle’s e-bikes are also a really good ride. I reviewed an earlier model, the foldable Gocycle GS, earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The design mirrored the geometry of the large hybrid I normally ride, the assistance was smooth and in line with the power I put through the pedals, the chain was enclosed so I could cycle in my work clothes without the risk of grease smears, and the mechanical gear shifting – which allows you to change gears when you’re not moving – was a revelation.

Although it can be packed down, Gocycle refers to the GS as foldable rather than a folding bike as, among other quirks, the design requires you to remove the quick-release wheels first.

The biggest change on the new GX is a central hinge, which makes this Gocycle a proper folding bike. Combined with the hinge on the handlebar shaft, this makes for a quick and easy basic fold. The final folding step is to remove the seat post. A plastic cap folds down from under the seat which fits the seat post hole.

However, I rarely bother taking the seat post out because you can leave it in and still use the seat to flip the bike off the stand and wheel the GX about. It’s a feature no other folding e-bike I’ve tried has – that’s the Brompton e-bike, Raleigh Stow-E-Way and Volt Metro – and it’s incredibly useful. Like all e-bikes, folding or not, the GX is heavy at almost 18kg and as a tall but not particularly strong man, I found it a strain to carry even short distances. So when I caught a flat halfway through my 40-minute commute, wheeling it – even on one wheel – was a godsend. I could make it easily enough to the lift on the Tube and to the platform, then back up when the entire Victoria line went out of action and to the bus stop. Then I covered the final leg walking 20 minutes through Soho. It was OK hoicking it on and off buses (two buses, the first one kicked everyone off after one stop), but without the ability to wheel it I would have struggled to make it to my desk before lunchtime.

Once the puncture was fixed and I was back on the road I was reminded of how much fun it was to ride, but also of its limitations. There are only three gears, with the lowest only useful for steep hill starts. I found myself sticking to the highest gear and wishing for something that could give me a bit more oomph. It’s fine for low-effort cruising, but not so good when you’re in a hurry.

It makes the type of stats cycling enthusiasts pore over – like watts and cadence – in the app seem a bit odd, because this isn’t a performance bike. That said, the app has improved since I last used it to review the GS, when it would crash intermittently. The app allows you to switch between assistance modes in the app or customise your own, as well as keeping tabs on the battery level.

The battery is the same as on the GS, offering a maximum of 65km and a recharge time of seven hours. The battery is housed in the frame, but can be accessed when the bike is folded in two and removed in case that makes charging easier.

See related

•  The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

As you may have gathered, I think the GX is an improvement on the impressive GS and it’s only £400 more – very reasonable when you’re operating in the ballpark of two to three large. Do bear in mind though that price rise is for the very basic version, and the host of useful accessories – lock and holster, integrated lights, mudguards etc – cost extra.

The funny thing is, because the GX is closer to being an e-bike I’d recommend without hesitation, a practical problem I’d glossed over in the past loomed large. What exactly are you supposed to do with it when you’re not riding it?

You’re certainly not going to lock it up outside. While e-bike security is not a problem unique to Gocycle, the issue does seem more acute for the GX. The distinctive design attracts attention so it’s safe to assume it’d attract more of the unwanted kind from thieves than an electric hybrid with the battery removed. The GX isn’t the easiest to lock up with the standard U-lock and cable combination – certainly not when folded up – and when it’s in bike mode the seat post and wheels are easily removable, making me fear the bike could be slipped out pretty quickly. Again, a bike with a triangular frame feels easier to lock up more securely.

Not being able to lock it up in public for brief periods matters less when you’re choosing an e-bike that can handle weekend bike rides, but all of Gocycle’s bikes are designed to be – forgive the jargon, mine not Gocycle’s – urban transport solutions. Without more convincing security features Gocycle’s only a partial solution, because you’re obliged to use it to travel from one location with secure inside parking to another.

On top of that the GX suffers from being pretty large when folded down, even with the seatpost tucked away. I felt it was too big for the small family home I live in. I tried it in the small porch where my children’s fold-up buggy is also kept, but then you couldn’t open the front door; when folded up, the GX is a bit awkward and heavy to shift around easily – especially when you’re trying to not waste the time of a delivery driver. It could have fitted in the cupboard under the stairs if that wasn’t chock-full of junk already, and by the back door was fine but not a permanent solution.

I think taking it into work will also present a problem for many office workers. For one, the GX didn’t fold down small enough to fit under my 70cm-high desk unless the kickstand was folded away and balanced on one precisely placed pedal, making the bike unstable. Also, I can imagine there are plenty of businesses where pushing a folded bike with dirty wheels through the office is going to be frowned upon.

That large size when folded down also makes me doubt its use for “last milers”. If you’re travelling in rush hour on a crowded train (is there any other type, amirite?) the GX is going to take up the footprint of two people crammed together and while I haven’t tested this, it’s touch and go if it would fit in the oversized luggage areas at the end of carriages.

While the GX compares favourably to the sizes of the GS, Raleigh Stow-E-Way and Volt Metro e-bikes that I’ve tried, it dwarfs the compact folded-down Brompton Electric.

For all the GX’s positive points, there were too many practical issues around storage and security for me to recommend it. If I can’t use it to make detours and stops between my office and home I’ll stick with a less nickable bike that runs on huff and puff, and if I’m going to store it inside I need it to pack down smaller. I loved riding it, so I’d love to recommend it, but it’s one or two generations of refinements away.

Buy from Gocycle | Buy from Velorution | £2,899

I love riding e-bikes, especially since it makes the commute home easier on the legs after a tough workout at lunch, but I’ve always found the top speed somewhat lacking. Once you hit the 25km/h limit, the weight of most hybrids means it’s so much effort to maintain a faster speed that it’s self-defeating, and you’re left to cruise along being overtaken by a pack of road bikes.

Canyon’s Roadlite:ON feels different. I took it for a couple of laps around Old Spitalfields Market in London and while the 250-watt motor gets you up to speed in the usual e-bike way, the lightness (15kg) and performance of the bike gave me the impression that I could speed along as quickly as anyone else on two wheels on a Cycle Superhighway (and stop just as quickly – cycling in the wet after an unseasonal deluge proved the disc brakes are up to snuff).

The Roadlite:ON builds on Canyon’s Roadlite series, which, to oversimplify, takes a road bike frame and sticks flat handlebars on it. This adds a feeling of stability to a fast and fun ride that’s especially thrilling to someone like me who trundles around on an entry-level hybrid most days.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

The thing that makes the Roadlite:ON stand out, however, is what it offers for the money. At a starting price of £2,499 (more expensive models add an extra gear, and a carbon seat-post and front fork) it’s in the same price range as the Volt Connect (£2,399), a great, functional bike but significantly heavier at 19.5kg. The Ribble AL-e (£1,999), on the other hand, is a lot cheaper and lighter, but lacks the power and natural feel of the Roadlite:ON.

The performance of the Roadlite:ON makes it more versatile too. It’s the one e-bike I’ve ridden where I’d be confident taking it out and keeping up with the road bike enthusiasts I know on a weekend ride, rather than just being able to match the distance they cover. (Use it to ride to work at least once in a while though, because then you can use the Cycle To Work scheme Canyon is allied with and save up to 43% of the cost of the bike.)

My only quibble with the bike so far is that the touchpad control on the downtube isn’t particularly responsive, nor is it easily placed to change the level of assistance. The range is at the lower end of the spectrum, with the motor and battery manufacturer Fazua Evation quoting 50-60km on the lowest level of assistance, although Canyon prefers to describe the longevity in terms of length of time you can use the motor for – two hours, which could last you all day if you’re not stopping and starting or tackling a lot of inclines.

That’s a necessary trade-off for having a battery which can be hidden in the downtube, and in contrast to the Ribble AL-e, the battery and motor can be removed so you don’t have to take your bike indoors to charge. The removable 2.9kg battery and motor can also be replaced with a cover (which makes a convenient burrito-sized compartment) and the bike used without any assistance.

The Roadlite:ON will go on sale this month, with the three models costing £2,499, £3,049 and £3,499. Sign up on the Canyon website to be notified when it’s available to buy.

Ribble’s first hybrid e-bike certainly has the wow factor. I first saw one at the London Bike Show this year and the petrol-blue colourway, contrast tyres, and faux-leather seat and handles are nothing if not eye-catching. The lack of a bulky battery affixed to the pannier rack or down tube also meant I did a double take when I saw the on/off button.

It also made a strong first impression when I hoicked Coach’s review model out of the box – owing to the fact that I was able to lift the bike out of the box without struggling as I have with every other e-bike that’s been shipped rather than ridden over. It’s just 13.5kg, and you’re unlikely to find an e-bike that’s significantly lighter – 20kg is standard for electric bikes around the £2,000 range.

It caused a flush of optimism that this was going to be the best e-bike I’ve ridden. In my experience there’s not been a noticeable difference in power and performance between “urban” hybrid e-bikes from different brands. That’s mostly down to the dominance of third-party battery and motor systems, which are almost invariably made by Bosch and Shimano.

Ribble has used something different in the form of ebikemotion, which hides the battery in the downtube. As well as making the bike lighter, this means it looks and rides more like a traditional bike. The trade-off is that the battery won’t last as long – I got between 30km and 40km out of a charge on the highest level of assist – and the system isn’t as powerful as others.

It’s still easier than pedalling a traditional bike, but I did notice myself having to put in more effort, especially up hills. That’s not a complaint, just an indication of the trade-off brought about by the ebikemotion system.

See related

• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

One complaint I will make is that the responsiveness of the motor has the on/off feel of cheaper e-bikes. As you pay more, better sensors help the motor to produce gradually more power in line with the power you’re putting through the pedals, giving much greater control and a more natural feel.

Instead, as soon as I started pedalling on the AL e, the motor turned on, producing the amount of assistance I selected – there are three and I always went for the highest one. That’s unlikely to be a problem if you’re not cycling in a busy urban area, but I go between south and central London and when pedalling quickly to shift down a gear as I approached a red light, the motor sped me up.

On other e-bikes you can use a console on the handlebars to lower the assist level quickly, and while there is one button on the crossbar which will do this it’s not as quick a process as you need it to be when approaching traffic lights.

In all other respects though, I am a big fan of that button. There’s a light-up halo around it which changes colour between white, green, orange and red with each press. The colour indicates the battery level and, as you start pressing the button, the level of assist you’ve selected. It’s intuitive and means you can get going quickly.

The other advantage of the button is that it’s discreet, which meant I felt more confident locking the bike up outside for short periods because at first glance as it looks like a regular hybrid and therefore, hopefully, less enticing for thieves. It’s not cheap-looking by any means, but neither does it scream four-figure e-bike.

The charging port is revealed by an inconspicuous rubber flap where the down tube meets the seat tube. This does mean you can’t leave your bike locked up outside and remove the battery to charge indoors, but I wasn’t going to leave a two-grand bike outside overnight anyway.

There’s also a partner app for smartphones and smartwatches. In this you can track rides, modify the amount and rate of assist for each level and, if you have a handlebar mount, see live stats on your ride. If you spring for a subscription as well, it’ll add navigation.

The other problem I had is that some of the accessories feel low-quality. The cap from one end of the handlebars fell off – thankfully this happened where I lock up my bike overnight so I was able to pop it back in a few days later when I realised – and the other cap was beginning to come out by the end of the test period. A rip also appeared in the back of the faux-leather seat for no discernable reason, and the seat was too hard for my liking. I also managed to break the Knog Oi Classic bell which comes with the “fully loaded” option (which adds mud guards and a pannier rack, plus a few other extras) by hanging a U-lock on the handlebars while moving the bike around.

It’s for these reasons that I’d be tempted to look at the Orbea Gain F30 instead. While we haven’t ridden it, it uses the same ebikemotion system, is also a hybrid, has broadly equivalent specs and is £200 cheaper. Those aren’t the most substantial differences, so if you only have eyes for that gorgeous AL e, we wouldn’t hold it against you.

Buy from Ribble | £1,999-£2,099

If you’re planning on buying an e-bike to get around a city swiftly and without breaking a sweat, there are two common problems that may make you think twice. The first is that e-bikes are significantly more expensive than regular bikes and the second is that e-bikes are heavy, which makes them unwieldy if you have to take the stairs to get to your front door. And that first point means you’ll want to keep your e-bike inside.

The BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City minimises one of those problems, weighing just under 17kg with the battery attached and 14.2kg without it, all thanks to its carbon frame. This is impressively light for an e-bike – most others I’ve tested tipped the scales at around 24kg. However, that lightweight build comes at a hefty cost – £5,600. That’s an awful lot to spend on any kind of bike and after a few weeks of riding the AMP City I’m struggling to see how it justifies that price.

It’s a great electric bike, there’s no doubt about that. The Shimano Steps 504Wh system delivers a smooth ride and maximises battery life. When fully charged the range shows 183km in eco mode, 128km in normal and 91km in high, which is mightily impressive. With real-world use the numbers do drop a little – after 40km of riding mostly in normal since I most recently charged the bike, I have 100km of range left in eco mode, 70km in normal and 50km in high – but it’s still best in class. Even if you insist on only using the highest level of assist at all times you’ll get through a week of short commutes.

The bike is also light enough to ride reasonably comfortably with the assistance off once you’re up to speed, which is always a bonus if you’re looking to eke out a little extra from the battery. However, I did find it slightly sluggish off the mark in eco mode and I spent a lot more time in the normal and high modes than I have done with other e-bikes. Generally I leave e-bikes in eco, only switching to a mode with more assistance when climbing hills because the lowest setting is usually enough to get me to the 25km/h cut-off point anyway, but with the BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City I had it in normal most of the time.

You can adjust the level of assistance provided by the motor through Shimano’s E-TUBE partner app, but even when I turned on the sportive mode I found the bike a little slow off the mark at traffic lights compared with some I’ve tried. This is probably partly because of the smooth level of assistance delivered by the motor, but a little jolt of speed is no bad thing when you’re trying to get away quickly from a busy London traffic light.

The bike comes with high-quality built-in lights and I was especially impressed by the front light, which was bright enough to ride through an unlit stretch of my commute at full speed with no fear of coming a cropper.

A small console is positioned on the handlebars by the stem, while the buttons to increase or decrease assistance are placed next to the left-hand grip. The console’s screen is small but clear and easy to read, and it has a button on the bottom that scrolls through the various stats available like distance covered and range left.

The BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City is one of the better e-bikes I’ve tested, but I don’t think the difference between it and a bike that costs under £2,500 is great enough to justify the huge price disparity. Bikes like the Carrera Crossfuse (£1,800) or Raleigh Motus (£1,700) are heavier than the BMC and don’t have quite as long a range, but they’re still smooth to ride and you can roll through several commutes without worrying about battery life. The BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City might be tempting upgrade if it was closer to £3,000, but it doesn’t offer enough to merit its £5,600 price.

Photographs: Peter Stuart

I take my hat off to Gocycle. The company has designed a unique electric bike that’s fantastic to ride and will suit a certain type of commuter down to the ground. I am not that commuter, but I enjoyed riding the GS and applaud the smart, creative design.

That commuter is going to be flush, first and foremost, or at least be able to swallow the upfront cost of £2,499 with an eye on the savings they’ll eventually start to make in the third, maybe fourth year of commuting. And they’re going to live no further than 30 minutes away from their place of work. If that describes you, take a good long look at the GS – I think you’ll love it.

If you also live in a reasonably small apartment, where space to store a bike extends to a cupboard, crack out the credit card because the GS folds up to fit such a space, although it’s not a folding bike proper (Gocycle is releasing one of those shortly). For one, the procedure is not as quick as you’d get from a folding bike, but even with some newbie faffing I had broken it down and safely stored it away in five minutes – that’s comparable to how long it takes me to lock my bike up in my garden and put its cover on.

You begin the fold by taking the wheels off. There’s a two-step locking mechanism which means they can be removed quick-smart. Once that’s done, the body pivots at the point where the pedals are and folds in half. The final steps are to unscrew the handlebar lock, fold it down and remove the seat post, and you’re left with a neat, storable package.

It’s a new, creative way to reduce the size of the bike for storage and I liked it, but never mastered it. I struggled with the wheels for no discernable reason, including when I tried to demonstrate how clever the design was to a colleague. I also almost destroyed a floor, because once the wheels are off you’re left with a reasonably sharp edge and to fold the bike in two you need to put pressure on one end, which duly slipped. Thankfully, I was being precious about a newly laid floor and had placed cardboard underneath, otherwise it would have left an unsightly gash. It’s a clever design, then, but not idiotproof.

Those above the ground floor who have to take the stairs to their front door will be delighted to know the GS is the easiest e-bike for getting up and down stairs. Part of that is the lack of crossbar which makes it easy to grab the bottom of the frame, but at 16.5kg it’s also lighter than any other e-bike I’ve grappled with.

Most importantly, it’s enjoyable to ride. Despite its ability to fold I didn’t feel like a bear on a circus bike as I did when I tried the Volt Metro Commuter or a Brompton. To be fair to the latter, I hadn’t realised at six foot tall I should be asking for a taller seatpost and different handles, but it’s a plus that Gocycle’s single size is more versatile.

As befits a high-end e-bike, there’s a torque sensor that applies force from the motor in proportion to the force you put through the pedals, lending a smooth, natural feel to the ride. And although the motor is in the front wheel I never felt like was being pulled forwards as with the Volt Metro. It delivers the experience you expect from a bike in your dreams – it’s responsive when you want to speed up and you glide up hills without breaking a sweat.

One great touch is that you can change between the three gears once you’ve stopped, avoiding the problem of either pedalling frantically to change gear as you approach a red light while also trying to slow down, or having to set off in too high a gear. How it’s done is above my level of technical knowledge, but I do know it’s a really useful feature that improves the riding experience.

Another thing that makes it ideal for commuters is that the chain is hidden away so there’s no chance you’ll get a grease mark on your work trousers. For the first time I wore my work clothes on my ride to the office and arrived both clean and not sweaty. My only complaint is that once I passed the 35-minute mark, the seat got a little uncomfortable.

It’s also not too bad to ride when you run out of juice. As I was about to set off on my first ride I realised the previous tester had left me just 10% battery. I spent 30-45 minutes adding another 10% but after one bit of assistance it cut out for the rest of the ride, probably to continue powering the set of lights included on the bike I was testing (they’re £85 extra). While it was a slower ride than on a hybrid, I could keep up with most cyclists on the road (bar those decked out in Lycra) and I made it up the approximately 60 metres of climbing that finishes my ride without getting off and pushing.

The place where I feel the GS really lets itself down is the app. The bike itself marries a totally unique form with great functions, while the app is clunky and ugly. It does have features you won’t find elsewhere, like power and cadence readings, but the former feels like unnecessary detail and the latter are performance metrics on something that isn’t a performance road bike. You do have to connect the bike to change the mode you’re in, but thankfully most of the time you can pretend the app doesn’t exist.

The other problem that doesn’t have a neat solution is security. The model I tried had the lock holster kit accessory (£115) attached but the lock isn’t big enough to lock up the body and wheels. You can lock the body to a post, but while it looks like you could slip the lock over the body we were assured that wasn’t possible. All the same, if I’m leaving a highly covetable two-and-a-half-grand bike on a London street I prefer the avoidance of doubt, so apart from very brief stop-offs I kept the GS in my house or the office.

So is it worth it? I’d say yes. For one it offers better value than the Gocycle G3 at £3,499. Gocycle has achieved those savings by removing some of the G3’s accessories like integrated lights, dropping high-end features like the console on the handlebars and reducing the battery specs. While I’ve never ridden the G3, the GS didn’t feel as if it was missing anything essential.

More importantly, there are plenty of e-bikes that cost £2,500 but none of them really stand out from the pack like this one. While there are things I’d improve, it justifies its price. Hopefully, as battery technology gets cheaper, future Gocycle generations will become more affordable.

Buy from Gocycle | £2,499

The next wave of dockless bikes is about to hit London and this time it’s going to be electric. Lime, a company backed by Uber and Google, plans to launch 1,000 of its Lime-E dockless electric bikes in to the boroughs of Brent and Ealing before the end of 2018, making cycling more accessible than ever – in north-west London at least.

Here at Coach we’re fans of anything that will get people cycling and we’ve long championed the e-bike as pretty much the perfect option for commuting in cities as long as you don’t have to lug the heavy beasts up a stairwell to your flat, so this is a development we’re excited to see. That said, the potential problems that can arise from all dockless bikes – that people will leave them in inconvenient or dangerous locations – could be exacerbated by the fact the Lime-E weighs a hefty 35kg (consumer versions are generally between 20kg and 25kg). Let’s assume the best of people, however, and rely on them leaving the e-bikes in sensible places.

The Lime-E, like all e-bikes, will only assist riders up to the speed of around 25km/h, after which you’re on your own. Before that point the 250-watt motor will aid your pedalling to make cycling accessible to all, no matter what your fitness level.

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Six Real-Life Benefits Of Cycling To Work

Hiring one of Lime’s bright green e-bikes is pricier than non-motorised options: it will cost £1 to unlock the bike and a further 15p for every minute you ride. A journey of 30 minutes will set you back £5.50 in total, then, while the Santander-sponsored docked bikes cost £2 to unlock for 24 hours and rides of 30 minutes or less are free, while you pay £2 for every additional 30-minute period.

As with other dockless bikes you use an app to locate and unlock Lime bikes, which have a range of around 100km when fully charged. You can check the battery level of the bike in the partner app to ensure you don’t run out of juice halfway up a massive hill.

Lime launched its first wave of e-bikes in the UK in Milton Keynes in late November, but the American company’s signature hire vehicle – an electric scooter – is currently only legal to ride on private land in the UK.

Download the Lime App for Apple or Android

It is hard to provide a completely unbiased review at the best of times, but when the product you are reviewing saves your bacon it’s virtually impossible to. So, full disclosure, this e-bike turned a first-world nightmare into a dream. The first time I rode the Raleigh Motus crossbar, the cheapest of the three-bike Motus range each available in crossbar or low step versions, I had been turfed out of my office thanks to a power cut and I was faced with a seven-and-a-half mile ride home during the height of the heatwave at the hottest part of the day.

Yes, I did sweat – the sun was beating down mercilessly – but I breezed through the ride. It even felt like I was coasting up the two steep inclines that are the final hurdles of my commute.

It was even more surprising given how I strained to carry all 24kg of bike up a tight stairwell from my desk to the door. And that contradiction is why I like to think of the Motus as a penguin. When you’re off the bike it’s like the flightless bird on land – ungainly, awkward, struggling to cover any ground. Once you’re in the saddle, though, the Motus glides around like a penguin in water – it’s practically effortless. The bike even corners far more smoothly than I expected. It’s no racer, but the somewhat bulky looks are certainly deceiving.

A lot of that smooth ride is down to the Bosch Active Line Motor and its placement in the middle of the bike between the pedals. The motor adds power in line with the amount of force you put through the pedals so it avoids the jerkiness that can afflict cheaper motors, while the positioning means you avoid the feeling of being pulled or pushed by motors mounted on the front or back wheel.

The smooth ride is about more than just the motor, though. The sweep-back handlebars help by putting the wrists in a more natural position, and there’s an adjustable stem which should help everyone find a comfortable fit.

There’s also a suspension fork that can be flicked on or off easily, even mid-ride if you wish, making life a little easier on roads that are in disrepair while speeding things up when you hit a cycle superhighway or want to conserve energy when tackling a hill. The tyres are also wider than you’d expect on a hybrid, which contributes to a smooth ride. All that does mean the seat was noticeably firmer and more uncomfortable than the rest of the set-up, which is crying out for a gel seat. Or at least my arse was after 30 minutes of riding.

See related 

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Carrera Crossfuse Electric Bike Review

On top of that, Raleigh has also gone out of its way to add details that make it a pimped-out urban ride, from fixed front and back plastic mudguards, a pannier rack, reflective strips on the puncture-resistant wheels and a bell. Despite all this, I’m still not convinced by the urban commuter bike act.

This may be because I was riding it in London and was not prepared to leave a £1,650 bike locked up in my garden overnight or even in my office’s bike store during the day, meaning I had to lug it up and down stairs, and then perform a merry dance at home every evening – locking it up outside at first, bringing it in when the kids were in bed, then putting it back outside in the morning before they get up so they didn’t pull its hulking frame down on top of them. For me, an urban bike should be the most flexible transport option, not the most restrictive.

That said, it may suit people who live in a city that offers affordable properties with secure garages. Especially if that city has some landscapes worth exploring on its doorstep; the Motus feels more like a light touring bike to me, and I’d gladly take it out of town for day trips of a weekend. Raleigh styles the other, more expensive, Motus bikes (the Tour and Grand Tour) as better for touring – thanks to the bigger 400w battery, giving them greater range – but the distance the Motus can cover is quoted as 90 miles, which feels like more than enough for the casual rider. I managed to wring 40 miles out of it exclusively using the top turbo setting (I still can’t understand why people would use anything else).

There are other reasons to upgrade from the entry-level Motus, like integrated front and rear lights, a better display and, on the Grand Tour, an improved motor. Still, at £1,650, Raleigh has put together a compelling package with the most important components – the battery and motor – being of seriously high quality. If you are purely out for an urban commuter bike, though, take a look at Raleigh’s Strada range, while Halfords’ Carrera Crossfuse e-bike offers similar features minus 5kg and £50.

Buy from Raleigh | £1,650

Electric bikes have something to offer every kind of cyclist, but for the e-bike revolution to truly take off, it surely needs to be embraced by commuters. The Carrera Crossfuse might well be the bike that tempts a critical mass of train and bus users onto two wheels, because it offers almost everything a commuter could want for a price that’s considerably lower than other e-bikes with similar features.

The first thing that makes the Crossfuse stand out is the range – a mammoth 80km to 130km. That means it will only require plugging in two or three times a month for most commuters and can handle long day rides if you want to use the Crossfuse for touring. I got 110km out of one charge riding almost all of that distance in Tour mode, which is the second-lowest level of assistance – there are four in total, running from Eco up to Turbo. If you blast around in Turbo the entire time the range will drop considerably, but unless you live in an especially hilly area you’ll rarely need it – the Tour mode will be enough assistance to breeze through your rides.

The second thing that this sets this e-bike apart is the ride. Thanks to its torque sensor, it delivers assistance from the Bosch Active Line PLUS motor in line with how hard you are pedalling, which makes for a far more natural and smooth experience than when assistance is provided based entirely on what level you pick. There’s no jerking into life when moving away from traffic lights – it feels just like riding a bike. A bike that just happens to require less effort.

The only downside of this kind of sensor is that on a steep uphill it can be nice to slap an e-bike into a high, fixed level of assistance and coast on up, whereas with the Crossfuse you need to pedal a little harder to get a bigger boost. It’s still not exactly hard to get up a hill, especially if you pick that moment to use the Turbo mode.

An important test for any e-bike is how it handles if the battery runs dry. At 24kg, the Crossfuse is a heavy beast, so I was not optimistic on this front. However, it passed just about the biggest test I could have thrown at it. The battery ran out 50m short of the biggest hill on my commute… the day after I ran the London Marathon. That I made it up the hill without assist or having to walk is testament to its rideability. That said, I will be making every effort to avoiding repeating the experience – it’s definitely not light enough that you don’t notice the difference between riding with assist and without.

See related 

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Pinnacle Lithium Ion Electric Bike Review

There is front suspension on the Crossfuse, which you can lock or unlock. In theory city riding should be done with it locked for extra efficiency while riding, but given the state of London’s roads and cycle lanes, I opted for the extra comfort of the suspension for all my riding. After a thin-wheeled racer, tackling potholes head-on while cruising around on the Crossfuse was a joy.

The Crossfuse also has disc brakes, which are a feature to look for on any e-bike, because stopping an e-bike’s considerable weight quickly is a concern, especially when flying downhill.

There’s an awful lot to like about the Crossfuse and I’ve not seen many e-bikes, if any, that can match its feature set for £1,600 – its excellent motor and vast range are more commonly found on £2,000-plus models. However, there are a few quibbles to address.

The first is a lack of integrated accessories. A kickstand, mudguards and lights that run off the battery are all very useful on an e-bike. The second is the display screen on the handlebars, which indicates the amount of battery left through bars only. Many e-bikes will estimate how many miles or kilometres you have left in any given mode of assistance. That means it takes a while to learn how much distance you get from each bar and you risk running out of juice if you push that last bar too far.

These downsides are relatively minor compared with the upsides of the Crossfuse. If you opt for an e-bike in the £2,000-and-up range you will get a little more, mostly in terms of a lighter frame, upgraded gears and a customised motor. But the Crossfuse is a whole lot of e-bike for its price, and commuters in particular will get all they need from it.

£1,600, buy on halfords.com

The basics of an electric bike are the same across all brands and types. A motor, powered by a battery, provides assistance to the rider as they turn the pedals up to a speed of 25km/h, when the assistance has to cut out by law. This means you can ride them without any fear of breaking a sweat or having to climb out of the saddle and walk, shamefaced, up a hill (it’s happened to the best of us).

Beyond the basics, however, there is plenty of variation in the e-bikes available today. So to get a better understanding of the options and how they affect your ride, we spoke to James Olsen, head of own brand development for Evans Cycles, who is part of the design team behind the bike shop’s Pinnacle range of regular and electric bikes, and Peter Hunt, an e-bikes expert at Halfords.

What’s the best battery position on an e-bike?

Almost all e-bikes opt to put the battery in the middle of the bike, just above the pedals, or on a rack on top of the rear wheel. Each option has its own advantages.

“The reason we put the battery in the middle is because weight distribution is important,” says Olsen.

“By putting the battery, which is a big part of the weight of an e-bike, close to the centre and low down you end up with a bike that feels a bit more natural to ride.

“Putting the battery up on the rack on the rear can have advantages, in that you can have a step-through frame because the battery is right out of the way.”

See related

• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Ridgeback E-Flight Di2 Electric Bike Review: The E-Bike That Rides Like A Regular Bike
• Scott E-Sub Tour Electric Bike Review: A Commuter’s Dream

Who are the main motor manufacturers? And which is the best?

Two names crop up a lot when you look into e-bikes: Bosch and Shimano. Both produce motors that are used by many other brands.

“Bosch is the clear market leader at the moment,” says Olsen.

“It got into the e-bike market early on and it’s got electronics expertise. Shimano makes a very good unit as well. We use the Shimano mainly because the customer support from Shimano is very good – not to say that Bosch’s isn’t.”

What’s the best position for the motor on an e-bike?

“Front drive motors are the cheapest and drive power through the front wheel hub, but these can make accelerating out of corners a little precarious,” says Hunt.

“Rear hub motors put the weight at the rear and provide better traction and more stability. Central drive motors are quickly becoming the most popular system, because they make an e-bike ride much more like a regular bike and keep weight near to the bottom bracket, providing optimum stability, which is hugely important for city bikes as well as mountain bikes.”

What is the difference between a speed sensor and a torque sensor on an e-bike?

On cheaper e-bikes the assistance sometimes arrives with a jerk, while more expensive models offer a smoother experience, especially at low speeds. This is more or less down to whether a speed or torque sensor is used.

“Speed sensors feature on cheaper e-bikes and generally provide an ‘on or off’ feel to the motor,” says Hunt. “Torque sensors are more sophisticated and make a huge difference to the ride quality because they provide power relative to the rider’s input, making an e-bike feel more like a regular bike and allowing for more controlled cornering and low-speed manoeuvres.”

Are there any key specs to look out for in a motor and battery?

The power of the motor and the size of the battery both feed into the most important selling point of an e-bike – how many miles it’s going to cover without running out of juice.

“What it comes down to is range,” says Olsen. “Range anxiety is a big thing with e-bikes – people don’t want to be stranded with a flat battery.

“But it’s a really open-ended question. There's a certain amount of power in the battery, but how heavy the bike is, how heavy the rider is, the power setting they are using – all these things matter. It’s like how far you get on a tank of fuel depends on how you drive your car.”

“Generally the battery size will tell you how much capacity you’ve got. That’s the main thing – how many watt hours you have on a battery.”

The overall range of an e-bike fluctuates depending on the amount of assistance you demand from it. Most will have three or four settings running, from an eco mode where you get less assistance but the maximum range available, to a top setting that provides lots of power but will normally cut the range in half.

“As a rough guide most systems will get 50, possibly 60 miles [80-96km],” says Olsen.

“The official stats will tend to be a little bit higher, but like the official fuel efficiency stats for cars, that’s only in the perfect scenario.”

Folding e-bikes and ones designed for short commutes might also sacrifice some range for a smaller battery that weighs less.

RECOMMENDED: Volt Metro Commuter Folding Electric Bike Review

“You want to carry a folding bike,” says Olsen. “If you have a big battery it increases the weight of the bike you've got to carry, and they tend to be ridden not more than four or five miles in any one journey.”

RECOMMENDED: Brompton Announces A Folding E-Bike

How much maintenance does an e-bike require?

“As with any rechargeable battery you’re going to have a limited number of charges and discharges before the battery stops holding capacity in the same way,” says Olsen.

“It’s like your mobile phone or laptop – a couple of years down the line they don’t hold the charge as well. E-bikes are the same.”

“As with any rechargeable battery you’re going to have a limited number of charges and discharges before the battery stops holding capacity in the same way,” says Olsen.

“It’s like your mobile phone or laptop – a couple of years down the line they don’t hold the charge as well. E-bikes are the same.”

But you can do things that will help to wring the most out of your e-bike’s battery.

“Always store your e-bike charged,” says Hunt. “Leaving a battery over winter or storing without charge can lead to your battery entering into a deep-sleep mode, which requires a special deep-charge through a registered service centre to restore it to life. In the long term, this can also degrade the battery and affect its future performance potential. Always store your e-bike with at least a 60% charge and recharge every six weeks when not in use.

“Where possible, charge and store your battery in a warm environment. Batteries hate the cold and if you charge it indoors, the battery will accept more charge. Likewise, if you fit a battery that has been kept indoors to your bike, its range will be longer and its performance superior.”

However, beyond keeping an eye on the health of your battery, which might need to be replaced every few years, there isn’t any more maintenance required on an e-bike than on a regular bike, since you really shouldn’t start fiddling with the motor.

“The power system on an e-bike is not user-serviceable,” says Olsen.

“You plug it in, charge it up and use it like a normal bike. There’s no extra service or maintenance needs. If there’s any problems with the electrical components it will be taken care of by the warranty.”

Is commuting the main use for e-bikes?

Electric bikes are an excellent way to get to the office without requiring a change of clothes while avoiding the crush and potential delays of public transport. However, according to Olsen, they are at least as popular for mountain biking, if not more.

“Mountain biking tends to be quite a social activity,” says Olsen, “and fitness can make a massive difference to how well a group can stick together on a ride.

“A lot of people go downhill happily at their own pace, but climbing is when differences in fitness really show up. I see a lot more people buying mountain e-bikes so they can keep up with fitter riders.”

Touring on e-bikes is yet to really take off in the UK, but it is a common sight in parts of the continent.

“If you go to the Rhine Valley in Germany you see a lot of group tours along fairly flat countryside using e-bikes,” says Olsen.

How much do you need to spend on an e-bike?

You can get a decent commuting e-bike or folding e-bike for around £1,000, but generally you need to spend more like £1,500 to £2,000 to get a quality hybrid bike, and probably over £3,000 for a dedicated road or mountain e-bike.

If you spend extra money on an e-bike you’re likely to be rewarded with useful extra features like integrated lights powered by the battery, automatic electronic gear shifting or the ability to customise the assistance provided by the motor. If you opt for a full-suspension mountain e-bike, that will also increase the cost.

Another trend in more expensive e-bikes is that the frames are custom-built to integrate the battery and motor, rather than the designer adding the parts onto an existing frame.

“The easiest way for a manufacturer like us is to take a proven system like Bosch or Shimano and add it to a proven bike format,” says Olsen.

“With some of the more expensive options, on the other hand, they are creating frames that are designed to house a custom-made battery so the whole thing is hidden, more integrated. It’s a much more expensive engineering process to do that, but it’s becoming more popular.”

To someone who has never ridden an e-bike, the prices you’ll find at the premium end of the market can be hard to fathom. Given that most regular e-bikes already cost somewhere between £1,000 and £1,500, the step up to £2,500-plus seems like a steep price for a bike where the assistance remains capped at the same 25km/h speed limit as all e-bike motors in the UK.

However, when you ride a premium e-bike like the Raleigh Mustang Comp Electric the difference quickly becomes clear. It’s similar to the joy of jumping aboard a £1,500 regular bike having only ever ridden £200 models. The ride is smoother, less effort is required, and it’s simply more enjoyable. Is the difference enough to justify the extra outlay? That’s a question that can only be answered by the individual, but I loved riding the Mustang Comp.

There are three levels of assist available – eco, normal and high – and whichever you choose, the Shimano Steps E6000 motor delivers a ride that’s free from jerks. The assistance is delivered according to how hard you are pedalling, so it’s always the right amount – in fact, it doesn’t feel like you are getting any assistance at all, just that cycling is easy. You can see on the handlebar display how much assistance you are getting within the chosen setting, with a bar that fills up as the motor provides more.

As well as making the ride smoother, this variable assistance can extend the battery range. With a motor that delivers a fixed level of assist depending on the mode you select, you can be getting a boost you don’t really need (or indeed not enough of a boost, but it tends to be the former), which uses up battery life unnecessarily.

The impressive range I experienced on the Mustang Comp Electric certainly suggested that it was not wasting a single watt. I rolled through the 100km mark easily, riding mostly in eco and normal, with one 10km journey ridden in high throughout because it was raining and I was late. By the end, the e-bike’s display estimated that I still had 9km of riding left. If I’d stuck in eco the whole time, I’m sure the 125km mark Raleigh give as the top range of the Mustang would have passed pretty easily.

If you stay in high assistance mode the whole time, the battery life is listed at 40km, but I found that high was rarely, if ever, needed when riding in the city. Even when I turned to it in desperation on that rainy ride, I wasn’t really moving any quicker than with the bike in normal or eco.

The Mustang Comp Electric is also comfortable to ride without any assistance – it’s the first e-bike of the eight I’ve reviewed where I didn’t even notice the motor cutting out at the legal limit, I just carried on riding. So if you do run the battery down mid-ride, getting to your destination won’t be all that painful.

The range is not only convenient because you have to charge it less, it also makes the Mustang a great bike for touring or heading off-road, where you do want to be able to use the high assist mode for uphills without fearing that your battery will run out. Given that the long-term life of e-bike batteries is generally determined by charge cycles, that range should also mean you don’t have to worry about buying a replacement battery for a few years.

If you do want to take the bike off-road, the 42mm-wide tyres will handle most terrains comfortably and I didn’t find they slowed me down on roads.

See related 

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting

The Mustang Comp Electric has disc brakes – useful for stopping its considerable 18.5kg weight when flying downhill – and gears controlled by one shifter, which completely threw me for longer than it should because I’d never used gears like it before. You move the shifter (which is behind the right-hand brake) one click to the left to change up, and two clicks to change down. Just like with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, it’s easy once you know the answer.

On the handlebars you have the Shimano display, which shows the mode you’re in, how much range you have left, your speed or distance covered. You also have three buttons: two change the assistance up or down, the other changes what stats are displayed on the screen. What you won’t find on the handlebars, or on the back of the bike, are lights that run off the battery – always an annoying omission with e-bikes. There is also no kickstand on the bike, so you’ll probably want to fit one – at 18.5kg, the Mustang Comp Electric is on the lighter end of the e-bike spectrum, but it’s hardly a featherweight and a kickstand would definitely be useful.

I used the Mustang Comp Electric almost entirely as a commuter bike, and with its smooth, comfortable ride and huge range it excelled, but it’s also a bike that can handle long rides and off-road cycling. It’s pricy, but it’s a superb all-rounder e-bike that you’ll love riding, whether it’s five miles to work or 50 on the weekend.

£2,800, buy on raleigh.co.uk

There is a conundrum to solve at the heart of designing folding e-bikes, which is that slapping a heavy battery on a bike that’s meant to be as portable as possible is counterproductive. This means you often end up with folding e-bikes that strap on lighter, weaker batteries which give a tiny range of around 20km, so they have to be recharged most nights to avoid running out of juice mid-commute.

Pedibal has leaned towards the other extreme with the Navigata. It is a chunky beast at 19kg, which makes it impractical to carry around for long even when folded. It can be folded into a position where you can wheel it along by the saddle, although if you’re going to roll it you almost might as well leave it unfolded and push it along unless you’re navigating a crowded train platform.

That said, I still think Pedibal made the right call by accepting the extra weight of a bigger battery, because the range on the Navigata is one of its biggest selling points.

Even when moving up and down between the levels of assist regularly, I found I could get through 45-50km without battery concerns. As with all e-bikes, you have to be a little wary of relying too much on the battery indicator, which drops sharply when the motor really kicks in as you ride up a hill before gradually refilling when you’re back on the flat – but unless you spend the whole time in the top level of assist you’ll probably make it through a week of commuting with only one charge required.

It takes around five hours to charge the battery, and there is a handy USB port on the Navigata if you want to charge your phone or whatever else from the battery in an emergency.

Although this wasn’t available on the bike I tested, the Navigata does have a front light that’s powered by the battery, but not a back light. This is presumably because a back light would get in the way of folding it up, but the Volt Metro – another folding e-bike we’ve reviewed – did manage to have both lights, which is a very useful feature.

See related

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting

Of the Navigata’s five levels of assist, I’d say most riders will never use level one and even level two doesn’t provide enough support to bother with. I tried a commute in level two alone and it felt like I was moving in slow motion. The sweet spot for general riding is level three, or four if you hit a hill.

The motor on the Navigata kicks in smoothly when you start pedalling so you’re not bucked off your seat, and although it’s not immediate when you turn the pedals, the assist does arrive fast enough that you don’t hold anyone up at traffic lights.

The ride is as comfortable as you can expect from any folding bike, which is not all that comfortable. But this is a bike designed primarily for short rides under 10km and you’ll breeze through those merrily enough.

The Navigata is easy to fold, and built-in magnets hold it in place when folded, making it easy to store even in a small flat. Style is always a matter of opinion, and mine is that the Navigata is not especially good-looking in either white or black. You may well disagree.

The Navigata is a solid all-round option for commuting, and considering its price of £999, it offers excellent value compared with other options on the market. Even ignoring the very expensive forthcoming Brompton Electric (£2,500 and up), the Navigata is cheaper than most similar e-bikes – including the Volt Metro (£1,299) – and it’s not because Pedibal has skimped on parts or features. The Navigata has Shimano gears, disc brakes, solid-puncture resistant tyres and an excellent range. If you’re after a leccy-powered folding bike with a good range, you should have no concerns about opting for a bargain in the Navigata.

£999, pre-order on pedibal.com

Electric bikes are heading for the mainstream. This is clear from the fact they are no longer confined to specialist shops but popping up in every branch of Evans Cycles and Halfords.

Evans’s in-house brand Pinnacle has even adapted its popular Lithium commuter hybrid to create an electrified option in the form of the Lithium Ion, a transformation achieved by adding the Shimano Steps pedal-assist system.

RECOMMENDED: Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide

As you’d expect, adding the battery and motor increases the weight of the Lithium considerably – to just shy of 20kg in a medium size, compared with 11-12kg for the non-motorised versions of the bike. However, 20kg is not too bad for an e-bike, and I found even with a large Lithium Ion, I was able to lift it up the stairs at my flat without too much trouble (and I have arms like pipe cleaners).

Once you’re up and running, the Lithium Ion is a joy to ride, its wide tyres rolling smoothly through the potholes and drain covers that litter city streets. The assistance is delivered very smoothly, and if you opt for the highest of the three levels of assist, you’ll find you can tackle even long, steep hills with ease.

That said, the Ion is not the quickest e-bike off the mark, even if you switch to high assistance while waiting at traffic lights. Many e-bikes deliver a kick of power when you start pedalling to get you going; this can be a little disconcerting but it does the job at getting the heavy bikes moving quickly. The power arrives more smoothly on the Ion, but that means it takes a while to get up to speed, which isn’t ideal when you hit congested roads with lots of traffic lights and you’re stopping and starting constantly.

RECOMMENDED: The Best Electric Bikes For 2017

I’d also say I spent a lot less time in the lowest, Eco mode of the assist when using the Ion than other e-bikes. The middle of the three settings was great for cruising around town, but it felt slightly under-powered when in Eco. One effect of this is to reduce battery life, although the Ion is still impressive on that front. When riding mostly on Normal mode, switching to High on uphills and Eco/free-wheeling on downhills, I found I could get 70-80km on one charge reliably. It’s not the most comfortable e-bike to ride without assistance, however, so it’s worth ensuring you do have plenty of juice.

A couple of small annoyances with the Ion are the lack of integrated lights and a kickstand. Lights that run off the battery are an obvious inclusion on e-bikes and do away with a common annoyance to cycling in general – forgetting to charge your lights, or indeed forgetting them entirely. And a kickstand is a must on a bike this heavy, because trying to hold it upright with one hand while grabbing something from your bag is no easy feat.

The Lithium Ion offers a solid package as an e-bike that’s great for commuting, but also has the juice for longer rides on the weekend. Lights, a kickstand and slightly more power when setting off would have been welcome, but these are minor grievances compared to the overall comfort of the ride on the Ion – which, thanks largely to its chunky tyres, is exceptional.

£2,000 (reduced to £1,900 at time of publication), buy on evanscycles.com

Electric bikes are funny beasts. Folding bikes are also funny beasts. Logic dictates, then, that folding e-bikes are nothing short of hilarious – but there’s much to recommend in this 2017 model from Volt, a company that has been in the e-bike game since 2008.

A quick summary: it’s ideal for cycling busy roads in central London because of the extra control added by the thumb throttle; the fact it folds up means it can be tucked away more easily in my house at night; and the fat, spongy seat and fork suspension made for a smooth ride over the potholes that pockmark the streets of the capital.

Add to that the usual e-bike advantages of cycling uphill, or anywhere, without breaking a sweat and the relatively low price of £1,299 (relative for e-bikes) and it makes for a compelling package.

That’s only if you’re cool riding a folding bike, of course, which I’m not. But that’s down to a combination of regularly riding a hybrid on my 40-minute each-way commute and my gangly six-foot frame. Volt does say the Metro is for “the smaller rider”, and it has retail partners nationwide that have test models for you to try so you can find out if you fit Volt’s definition of “smaller”

I found the folding action unwieldy, although I admittedly have no experience in this area. The left pedal has to be aligned correctly (an easy detail to forget) before unclipping at the frame joint and folding it – an action I always struggled to do swiftly and competently. I assumed there’d be a clip to secure it in its folded form so it could be transported without swinging around, but no.

Still, I don’t think an e-bike is really suited to be taken on a train then unfolded for the final leg of a commute, as Volt suggests. At 21.3kg the Metro is on the light end of the e-bike weight spectrum, but it’s still on the heavy end of the things-we’re-able-to-carry-easily spectrum. If you’re stronger than me (and you probably are) then perhaps you’d have less trouble manoeuvring it on to a heaving commuter train, but if that’s what you’re intending to use it for I’d suggest you at least look into self-powered folding bikes which will be about half as heavy.

But before you discount a folding e-bike, consider where you’re storing your bike overnight. I keep mine indoors and it was bloody marvellous to be able to fold up the bike and tuck it away in a corner. If you can spare a cupboard, you could easily park the Metro in there.

If you’re locking it up outside, you’ll be pleased with the integrated lock. There’s a D-lock on the frame that locks the back wheel and an extra £30 will buy you a gold standard-rated chain which plugs into the same lock so it can be attached to a suitable fixed post.

It’s a really smart piece of design that saved me lugging heavy locks around in my backpack, although I could always have strapped a bag to the pannier rack. The battery is also locked into the frame so you don’t have to take it with you each time you park in a public area.

My commute along London’s cycle superhighway 7, and through busy areas like Parliament Square and Soho, nicely showed the advantages and limitations of the Metro. It really nailed the stop/start riding in central London thanks to the thumb throttle on the left handle.

The Volt rep who dropped the bike off explained that since these throttles now have to cut out after 3mph if you’re not pedalling, many brands have dropped them, but I found the manual control essential if you wanted to use the motor when pulling away from the lights in a pack. If you try to pull away slowly in a low gear or in automatic, a moment or two after you start pedalling the assist will kick in and a few times I found myself accelerating towards a cyclist who was slow to get going. I never rear-ended anyone (honest, officer), but I did have to brake quickly a couple of times.

The throttle means you can choose when the motor helps. Using it in this way did mean I often changed between the assist gears, and the buttons for this involved a thumb stretch. Not a massive problem by any means, but a better design would have been to make these buttons as accessible as the gear shifts on the right-hand handle.

So the throttle helps to pull away from a standing start quickly, which is great, unless you’re hitting a long straight, like a cycle superhighway, where the Metro suffers from its lack of top speed.

Here’s what happened to me over and over again. I pulled away and got in front of the pack; the motor cut out at 15.5mph; the combination of just eight gears and 20-inch wheels (OK, and a lack of effort) meant I was lucky to hit 20mph; everyone overtook me – until I caught up with them at the next red light. And the whole thing repeated again.

This bike isn’t meant for speed and distance, but it also means on those nights when you leave a little late and want to put the effort in on your ride home to make up the time, you’ll be stymied. That’s not to say my commute took much longer – it was pretty comparable to riding on a self-powered bike.

Volt claims that the battery can take you over 50 miles (depending on the level of assistance) which seems a very robust claim to me after testing. I did 51.1 miles over four-and-a-half hours on one charge, and I rinsed the throttle at every opportunity and used the automatic gear to get the max amount of assistance possible (what is the point of an e-bike otherwise?).

If you’re just looking for a little assistance when pulling away (gears one and two), you’ll go a lot further on a charge. In case you’re worried the lights will drain the battery in the darker months, rest assured that the built-in front and rear LED lights run on their own batteries. And, as promised, the battery charged back up to full after three and a half hour.

If you live in or around a city centre in a small abode, and are looking for an easy, mildly active way into work you’d be well served to take the Volt Metro for a spin – especially if you have to tackle hills to get to and from your job.

£1,299, buy the Metro Commuter E-Bike on voltbikes.co.uk

RECOMMENDED: Ridgeback E-Flight Di2 Electric Bike Review – The E-Bike That Rides Like A Regular Bike

Electric bikes are an excellent way for city folk to get around. They’re fast, reliable (more reliable than public transport at any rate) and require just the right amount of effort to move – around the same as walking – so you can ride into your place of work without needing a change of clothes.

The flip side to this is that e-bikes are usually heavy, cumbersome beasts that trade style for substance in the shape of a huge battery and motor. This is where the Ridgeback E-Flight Di2 sets itself apart, with a sleek, stylish design that means it doesn’t require a forklift to move. Ridgeback doesn’t give the exact weight of the Di2, but it passed the ultimate test of an e-bike’s weight with flying colours – getting it up the narrow staircase to my flat easily.

Ridgeback has taken the design of its regular Flight bike range and added a battery and motor to create an e-bike that’s made for commuting. The svelte frame means you can comfortably slip through stationary traffic and with the powerful Shimano Steps motor spurring on the lightweight frame, you’ll fly along even with the lowest level of assist.

There are three levels of assistance to choose from – eco, normal and high – but aside from hills I never felt the need to move out of eco mode. Punching it up to high was largely pointless because I’d quickly end up going over 25km/h, which means the motor cuts out (by law) anyway.

When the battery’s fully charged the E-Flight Di2’s expected range is around 90km on eco, 75-80km on normal and 60-65km on high. In practice you’ll probably get a little more than this because the bike is speedy enough to comfortably go over 25km/h regularly and thus save the battery a little.

However, the readout on the screen on the handlebars, which details how far you can go on the current charge, jumped around in confusing fashion as I rode. I found that it would steadily climb as I was cycling and I’d finish the ride with an expected range 10km longer than when I started. When I started the bike up again the range dropped to what I assume is a more accurate estimation.

You also have to be careful not to ask too much of the battery. If you start a ride with under 10km of range left in eco, and then pop it into high for just a few seconds, you’re likely to run out of juice. This happened to me halfway up a hill at the start of my morning commute – but it inadvertently gave the E-Flight Di2 a chance to shine as I was compelled to ride it without any assist, which proved surprisingly comfortable.

For most e-bikes, running out of charge is a disaster because their weight makes them unpleasant to ride without the boost. The Di2, in contrast, can easily be ridden as a normal bike, which can really extend the range because you can turn off the assist regularly.

The E-Flight Di2 also offers automatic gear changing. I’m not a huge fan of this as it always drops the gears too low at traffic lights, so you end up spinning the pedals wildly as you try to pull away and the bike ramps back up through the gears. Thankfully, you can switch it off, and the good news is that if you start in a higher gear to move away from traffic quickly, the motor kicks in quickly and powers you forward. It’s also easy to change gear with the two buttons on the right side of the handlebars. The assist level is controlled in the same way with buttons on the left side.

Other nice touches include the bright lights, which are powered by the battery, the stylish brown leather handlebars and saddle, and the large screen controlled with one button which gives all the details on your ride and battery life.

Of course, all of this comes at a price. The Ridgeback E-Flight Di2 falls in line with its electric brethren, costing £2,799.99, but regular Ridgeback Flight bikes cost between £699 and £1,099. Also available for slightly less (£2,499.99) is the Ridgeback E-Flight, which has a less impressive gear set but otherwise matches up with the Di2.

RECOMMENDED: Scott E-Sub Tour Electric Bike Review (£1,999)

On the other hand, it makes more sense to compare the cost with public transport than with normal bikes, because it’s commuters who are perhaps more likely to convert to e-bikes than current cyclists. With an annual Transport for London Travelcard costing between £1,300 and £2,500 depending on the zones involved, you can certainly expect an e-bike to save you money over several years of use.

The E-Flight Di2 is pricy even for an e-bike, but what you get for your money is a very well-designed ride that counters the classic problems of e-bikes, namely the weight and clunky looks. The cherry on top is the ability to ride it easily even when the juice runs out, removing a major worry of e-bike use.

£2,799.99, buy on ridgeback.co.uk

Unless you have the funds for a helicopter or live within walking distance of your workplace, there is perhaps no easier way to get around the city – especially if you’re commuting in London – than an electric bike. They’re generally faster and always more reliable than public transport and, in the long run, they’re cheaper too.

Riding an e-bike also counts as exercise. You have to pedal for the assist to kick in on electric bikes and although it isn’t as much as effort as regular cycling, it’s about the same as walking. This means two things. First, you can expect some health benefits. Second, you can wear normal work clothes.

It all makes for a fine way to spend your time travelling and from the office, especially if you opt for a e-bike specifically designed for commuting like the Scott E-Sub Tour.

The upright riding position is comfortable and the ride is terrifically smooth. The large tyres, overall weight of the bike and front suspension mean you’ll easily roll over any impediment the city streets throw at you.

There are four assist levels available: Eco (the lowest), Tour, Sport and Turbo. I found that Eco was more than enough assistance for almost all riding bar the biggest hills and, given that the assist legally has to cut out at 15mph anyway, the battery-sapping Turbo or Sport levels are rarely required.

The Scott E-Sub Tour is powered by the Bosch Active Line system, which is impressive in delivering a smooth ride and long battery life. The power kicks in rapidly so that even in higher gears a standing start at traffic lights is easy. I also found that when I had to stop on a steep uphill, the assist came in very speedily when I needed to start again. This is important because the Scott is a heavy bike and having to push through the first couple of pedals unaided on a hill start would be tricky.

There was a 400W Bosch battery on the bike I tried and the range was excellent. My standard riding mode was Eco, pushed up into the higher assist levels on hills, and I found the battery lasted past 65 miles reliably. Furthermore, it’s easy to ride the Scott on the flat or downhill with no assist at all if you’re keen on eking a few more miles out of the battery. The official range given is 30 miles in Turbo up to 70 miles in Eco. In between you’ll get about 35-40 miles in Sport mode and 50 miles in Tour.

You control the assist levels on the bike via the nifty Bosch handlebar system. The screen shows your battery level and current assist mode, as well as a range of stats like range left (which adapts as you alter the assist level), speed and distance covered. You can scroll through these and adjust the assistance via a three-button pad on the left of the handlebars. It’s all very clear and requires no instruction at all to get going.

Removing the battery to charge it is simple (you can also charge it in situ on the bike) and it takes about three hours to charge fully. However, you really have to make sure it clicks back into place. One time I thought the battery was in securely – and in fact rode with it for about ten miles – only for it to suddenly fly off after I went over a bump. On the plus side, a thorough if unexpected test of the battery’s robustness was passed with flying colours.

One other slight negative is that while the Scott’s 23kg weight made for a comfortable and secure ride, it was pretty tough to get up and down the stairs to my flat every day. All e-bikes have this problem, though, and the extra weight of useful things like the Scott’s larger tyres and rear pannier are a worthy trade for a 30-second struggle on the stairs twice a day.

The rear pannier with bungee cords is just one of many small features on the Scott that make it an excellent commuter option. The chain is covered to stop it messing up your trousers, plus there are bright, integrated lights powered by the battery and a kickstand. The disc brakes are also sharp and reliable.

There’s really nothing missing that you’d want to have on a commuter e-bike. The ride is excellent and the battery will get most commuters through a week without charging. Even if it doesn’t, it’s very easy and quick to charge. The extra features also mean there’s a minimum of fuss at any point bar tacking stairs.

At £1,999, the Scott E-Sub Tour requires a significant initial outlay, but it’s built to last with little maintenance – even if the battery takes a significant spill on a busy road. The price is also about par for the course for an e-bike with the Bosch Active Line system and this many features. £1,999, buy on evanscycles.com

Bike maintenance, like DIY, is one of those things that’s almost always a little more annoying and time-consuming than you expect it to be. However, the good news is that looking after an e-bike battery involves very little work. In fact, the key is mostly not doing certain things that can slash the life of your battery.

For an explanation of best practice for keeping your e-bike battery purring, we spoke to Dan Parsons, director of operations at e-bike retailer Fully Charged.

How long should an e-bike battery last?

Lithium batteries are typically quoted as lasting a number of cycles, because it depends on how often you use them. A lithium battery will normally last in the region of 500 to 750 cycles, which is a full charge, from empty to full to empty again.

And at that point they’re not dead – that’s when the battery drops to about 80% of its capacity, After that point you’ll notice a reduction in power and range. From our experience you’re looking at about two to five years.

Should you let it go completely flat before charging an e-bike battery?

Lithium ion is like your smartphone battery technology. It doesn’t matter if you plug it in at 0% or 95%.

Does it count as a cycle if you plug it in when it’s 90% full?

No – if you’re only using a tenth of the battery capacity you’ll get ten times that in a cycle.

What factors can shorten the life of a battery?

What batteries absolutely detest is being run flat and then left for any length of time. The chemistry of the battery doesn’t like that, and that can kill them a lot quicker.

Overheating is also bad. It’s just a load of chemical reactions going on inside the battery, and if you heat them up they occur faster, so they degrade quicker. Don’t leave them in hot cars. A black bike in the boot of a car in the height of summer might reach the temperature where the battery will shut itself off.

See related

• Electric Bike Buyers’ Guide
• The Best Electric Bikes For Commuting
• Save £££s On An E-Bike Using The Cycle To Work Scheme

Does the cold affect them as well?

You will notice a drop in range in the winter, because those chemical reactions are happening a little slower. It’s a bit like when explorers go to the South Pole – they shove their camera batteries in their armpits to keep them at a warmer temperature.

In the winter you might want to bring the battery inside to charge it overnight, so it’s kept at room temperature. When you’re using it, it naturally warms up in any case but it takes a while, so if your ride is short it might not warm up and reach its optimum temperature.

Is there any risk to riding in the rain?

Road spray or torrential rain is fine – just don’t go and jump into a swimming pool with it. Some brands will advise you to use the motor more in the wet because the warmth it generates can evaporate any moisture that does build up on them, but there’s no issue really.

Fully Charged is one of the leading stockists of Bosch eBike Systems in the UK. To learn more about Bosch ebike Systems visit bosch-ebike.com, where you can also find a downloadable guide (PDF) on how to look after an e-bike battery