How To Ride An Ebike: A Step-by-step Guide

Any time you purchase something new, there’s bound to be a learning curve. Appliances, tools, vehicles—even when they’re familiar objects or designs, each one can present its fair share of quirks and challenges.

If you’re approaching your e-bike with a bit of trepidation about how exactly to use it, don’t feel bad: This handy seven-step guide will have you confidently on the road in no time.

STEP 1: GET THAT BIKE

First things first, you’ve got to get the e-bike itself! Shop around to see which brand and model fits your lifestyle and price point — if you’re just starting, you might want to get an affordable bike to see if you take to it before committing to a more advanced e-bike with more features.

Shop around your area for e-bike dealerships close to you, or purchase one online. In the case of the ZuGo Rhino, we ship anywhere in the continental United States.

STEP 2: INSPECT YOUR BIKE

While e-bikes look a lot like traditional bikes, they’re not the same. Don’t let their similarities make you gloss over their differences. Take some time to learn every inch of your new e-bike so you know where it’s the same as a traditional bike and where it offers something different.

Pay special attention to three factors especially: battery, display screen, and throttle. For the battery, identify where it goes and learn how to properly seat and remove it.

Also make sure you can find the display screen, typically on the left handle. Practice turning it on and off and learn which buttons to use to change the pedal assistance settings.

Always check the specific things that make electric bikes different from a regular bike -from the electric assistance, electric motor, ebike battery, and bike sizing. These can easily be felt once you ride an electric bike, so you can easily check how it differs from a conventional bike. 

Finally, if your e-bike’s a full-throttle style e-bike, be sure to locate the thumb throttle.

STEP 3: BATTERY CHECK

Now that you know where the battery goes, it’s time to make sure it’s fully charged. Depending on the battery, some will have display lights on the battery that will tell you its charge status while plugged into a charger. Classically, it’ll give you green for fully charged, red for anything less.

If your battery doesn’t have the display lights or if, for whatever reason, you want to know something more specific than just “not fully charged,” the display screen can provide you the answers.

Properly seat the battery in the bike and turn on the screen. The display will typically give you a few different readouts like speed, pedal assistance level, and, most importantly, in this case, percentage of charge. While a full charge is ideal, a quick battery check can let you know the battery is at 87% charged, more than enough for a quick run to the corner store and back. Other times, it’ll let you know that you’ll need to wait a bit longer for that 45% to go up if you want to spend the day exploring a bike trail.

STEP 4: KNOW YOUR LAWS

As with any vehicle, an e-bike does have specific laws that govern its use in your town, county, and state. If you want to ride your e-bike in a way that’s fun and safe, best to keep yourself on the right side of those rules.

If you know the expectations of bike riders in your area, that will be almost all you will need to know for most places. This means you know the hand signs to indicate turning or stopping, you’re aware of how to properly ride your bike on the road, and places in your town or areas close by where bikes are allowed. International distributors don’t usually include laws and bike registration rules in packaging since it differs per country, that’s why bike safety measures are what’s only usually included.

Since e-bikes do differ in some ways from traditional bikes, though, some places do have other additional laws to guide your e-bike usage.

A site like Nolo can provide you with the proper links to look up any federal, state, or local statutes that may apply to your e-bike usage. If you’re at all concerned you might be missing something, you can also reach out to your town hall and ask them to direct you to the proper office or website to answer any of your lingering concerns.

STEP 5: TIME TO PEDAL

The key to a great time is making sure you aren’t still wondering how the bike works by the time you climb aboard. Once you know where the battery is, how much charge it has, and where to set your assistance level, you’ll be free to more fully focus on the fun that e-biking offers. When you start pedaling and start riding, you can easily tell how the level of assistance makes the bike ride a lot more comfortable  and also a lot of fun.

In practice, the actual mechanical process of riding an e-bike’s the same as riding a traditional bike. You push the pedals with your feet and that motion moves you forward. With a full-throttle e-bike, it’ll be more akin to those times you’re going downhill in a traditional bike. That is, sit in the saddle, focus, steer, and let gravity—the motor in the e-bike’s case—do the work of moving you.

STEP 6: START SLOW

As noted above, riding an e-bike works almost the same as riding a typical bicycle. But we can’t forget that “almost” isn’t the same as “exactly.”

Because of the small differences, there are several aspects of the e-bike that you’ll want to get to know when you first start taking it out on adventures. From the difference in center of gravity, to the feel when you stop pedaling, electric bicycles definitely have a different feel whenever you ride them around. The assist system helps ease you into ebike riding, just remember to rarely bike in the rain. Always make sure to get the correct bike accessory whenever you go out so you can ride the ebike safely. Ensure that you have proper bike helmets, a fully charged bike battery, the correct tire pressure (especially when you have a fat tire), and that you’re paying attention to the bike ride as you start pedaling.

WEIGHT

Due to the motor and structural differences, e-bikes are heavier than traditional bicycles including street and mountain bikes. Sometimes an e-bike might be up to three times as heavy as a bike on the same road or path. Because of this, e-bikes will often take longer to get going fast and to stop and handle differently than their non-motorized cousins.

While it’s fairly easy to learn and adapt to these differences, you’ll still need to take the time and put in the effort to do so.

VELOCITY

The weight also contributes to the second difference you must be aware of: the e-bike’s velocity. As it’s heavier, it’ll go slower uphill—when assisted—and faster downhill when gravity gets ahold of it.

The bigger thing is, though, you likely will be riding assisted at some level any time you’re on an e-bike. Even with laws limiting the top speed a motor can propel you on an e-bike, this means every time you pedal, you’ll be generating a higher rate of force than you have before. As a result, you will likely be consistently riding faster than you did on a pedal bike. That’ll take some getting used to for you and those around you.

ASSISTANCE SETTINGS

E-bikes offer different assistance settings, ranging from no assistance at all through maximum assistance and even full-throttle on some bikes. There are no “correct” choices when it comes to your settings so it’ll be up to you to find out what works best.

Try them all in a range of settings, terrain, and inclines to figure out what fits best for you. Also, you’ll want to see how each setting affects the bike’s handling, how fast you’ll go, and what kind of reaction times you’ll need for each setting to be safe for you and others.

BRAKES

Finally, you’ll want to make sure you know how braking works for you.

E-bikes use disc brakes, as opposed to the caliper brakes usually seen on traditional bikes. Disc brakes are significantly stronger than caliper brakes – and this is most apparent when you try using your front brake. They offer quicker and harder stops. This is also the case when compared to cantilever and v-brakes, which you see far less often and tend to come more on mountain bikes or bikes specifically customized for off-road use.

These disc brakes will feel different than the other types listed above. There’s more nuance involved in their use. So, as with the assistance settings, take some time to see how it feels to use them at different times and different speeds.

One thing to keep in mind as you put them through their paces: there’s rarely a reason to fully and completely engage them. Doing so will create a very abrupt stop and one that you might find very uncomfortable.

STEP 7: NAVIGATING AROUND OTHERS

Some, and likely most, will assume your e-bike’s a traditional bike at first glance. As a result, they will likely look at you like you’re a traditional cyclist. While this isn’t bad shorthand, it’ll sometimes lead them to misjudge things like how fast you can go and how long it might take you to stop.

To ensure their confusion doesn’t get you or them hurt, you may have to do more communicating than you did while riding a traditional bike.

Some of them will be familiar. E-bike riders still employ tried and true methods of conveying position by calling out “on your left” or “on your right” while approaching other people on bike paths or in parks.

You may want to include additional quick burst information like “coming up fast” to ensure people have an expectation of speed when dealing with you.

In other situations, you’ll have to be the one to alter your behavior or trajectory to look out for everyone’s safety. As detailed in Travel Safety and Behavior last year, verbal cues will typically be effective when “passing”—that is, moving with the flow of traffic.

When you’re “meeting”—moving against the flow—it’s more about what you do, not what you say. Travel in a straight line and at a consistent speed as much as humanly possible. While meeting, use of the throttle on a full-throttle e-bike would typically be ill-advised as even if it gives you a consistent speed, it may simply be too fast to navigate a crowded path.

In all situations, be they meeting or passing, on the road, on a path, or off-roading, paying attention and being cautious will always be the best approach to keeping you and everyone you encounter safe.

Different bikes have different riding styles, and you’d get to experience this once you hop on and compare a road bike, electric mountain bike, folding ebike, commuter ebikes, and other electric bicycles. You’d definitely feel they’re far different from a conventional bike or regular bike , as the electric assistance and electric motor make it a lot of fun when you ride an electric bike.

Now that you know how to best ride your e-bike, it’s time to head back to step 1 and start your e-bike journey with the ZuGo Rhino.

Read about e-bike classes, components, and more in How To Choose An Electric Bike?

Original post here: How To Ride An Ebike: A Step-by-step Guide