Chinese ebikes / chinese ebike clones ,any of them decent ?

[rumme]

More and more Chinese ebikes/ stealth clones are on ebay/ Alibaba. Is there any of these ebikes that offer decent components / performance for light/medium trail riding/ street riding { no jumping or racing} in the $1500 - $3500 price ranges or even some of the ebike offerings from Russia .

 

[MadRhino]

Chinese are getting better, but they don't do magic. Cheap bike does mean cheaper components. Chinese bikes that are made to compete with western world quality, are not so much cheaper. If you are offered a similar bike for a third of the price, you have to be conscious that they had to save a big part of the cost by building with cheap parts.

 

[rumme]

Chinese are getting better, but they don't do magic. Cheap bike does mean cheaper components. Chinese bikes that are made to compete with western world quality, are not so much cheaper. If you are offered a similar bike for a third of the price, you have to be conscious that they had to save a big part of the cost by building with cheap parts.

quote :

If you are offered a similar bike for a third of the price, you have to be conscious that they had to save a big part of the cost by building with cheap parts

end quote

or cheap labor .

 

[dogman dan]

As long as your riding conditions don't require a $2000 fork to survive it, you'll be fine with the $200 fork. But don't cheap out too much, a $50 fork on the bike is useless off road.

If you ride like Mad Rhino, you need the pricy components. If you ride like me, middle range stuff is fine. It just depends on if you ride, or if you RIDE. But when I do get to ride the good stuff, I definitely notice a huge improvement and appreciate it. I can ride longer before it beats me to death, and in general, take the same trail faster.

If you can afford the good stuff, get it, even if you don't RIDE. If you can't afford, then enjoy what you can. It just comes down to fun budget, how big is it. When I was flying, my fun budget was about $250 a week. I had the money at the time, and it was SO fun I just did not care what the cost was. Now my fun budget is more like 20 bucks a week. I still have fun, but do not have a hot air balloon around costing me a fortune anymore. I just enjoyed flying for a decade because I could afford it at the time.

If now is your time, don't ass around, go get your fun!

 

[MadRhino]

or cheap labor .

Labour is for a little part of the cost of an expansive bike. But yes, cheap labour is getting you some saving when buying Chinese. Then you need to find in what this cheap labour does affect the bike that you buy. I don't mind the assembly, for I would go through a complete inspection and tuning anyway. Yet, I would not want a 10 yr old kid to have welded my frame head tube, for an example.

Cheap chinese components are another story. While some are only heavy with cheap finish, some other are copies that are not up to the task, and a real risk of failure. Maybe I am a maniac, but I don't trust a 7000$ bike assembled at a local bike shop, and go through a complete inspection every time. For Chinese bikes, it is every component and welded joint that I doubt of.

 

[dogman dan]

Yep, if the frame is that cheap, its made with cheap, poor alloy, thin tubes. AND the welds could suck too. At a certain price, they sure don't scrap a defective frame. Bondo, paint, and sell it.

Which means riding the hell out of the cheap frame has its risks. But if you ride medium, that defect weld could hold fine for years.

Again, evaluate the fun budget, and then increase it to at least the level you will be riding. Get a frame you can crash, and it won't taco fold.

 

[rumme]

I wonder if the ebikes from other markets, like Russia, offer better quality then Chinese, but still at a competitive price as China

 

[dogman dan]

Not likely.

 

[i2000s]

I think the main reasons for the Chinese ebikes and components to be cheap as you see are:

1. A huge market with dramatic competitions to lever the quality while to lower the price. It's easy to understand, no need to explain more.
2. Clustered manufacturers for all components in one place. For example, Shenzhen in China has all kinds of factories for making ebike components in one city. But in USA, there is no such place to cluster the whole chain of manufacturers condensed. The transportation and time cost in shipping all kinds of components from all over the world into the assembly place will raise the price by a lot.

There are cheap and low-quality Chinese products, but you can easily find customer feedbacks and comments on those online shopping places. Why not judge based on the customer feedbacks rather than the random comments from people who've never bought a Chinese ebike? I personally DIY my ebike with all components shipped from China with a cheap price yet reasonable quality (no problem in the past year as you can find my records on this forum). If you would like to pay extra fee caused by the high shipping and laboring fee for the western sellers, I won't stop you

 

[LewTwo]

I may be incorrect but I think 90% of all ebike components are made in China. Among other things they have a lock on the available rare earth metals needed to produce the magnets. High end FETs and batteries may be manufactured in Japan or Korea. Most of the frames are also manufactured somewhere is Asia (China, Cambodia, Vietnam all come to mind).

 

[MadRhino]

I may be incorrect but I think 90% of all ebike components are made in China. Among other things they have a lock on the available rare earth metals needed to produce the magnets. High end FETs and batteries may be manufactured in Japan or Korea. Most of the frames are also manufactured somewhere is Asia (China, Cambodia, Vietnam all come to mind).

While it is true of controller/motor/ batteries, bike and ebike components are the same and almost none of them are good that are manufactured in the countries that you mentioned, but Japan. Taiwan is where the good frames are made in the eastern world, so are most of quality bike components. That is because Taiwan does comply with the western requirements for manufacturing and quality control. Most bike components that are made in Taiwan are close to the price of those that are made in EU or America.

Chinese made bicycle components are crap 75% of the time, the other 25% are just heavy and obsolete.

 

[cilveti]

My opinion on that is that the price of an ebike comes from 3 factors:

-Component quality
-Brand( it is related with component quality usually)
-Profit made selling bikes

With chinese ebikes you are not paying the "brand name", and usually are operating with lower profit margin than other western business... so if you care to look for the components they carry , you might find a good ebike.
However, don't expect to find miracles.

(My first comment on the forum!!! )

 

[motomech]

I may be incorrect but I think 90% of all ebike components are made in China. Among other things they have a lock on the available rare earth metals needed to produce the magnets.

Yeah, and since the Clintons sold Russia 20% of our uranium, they now have a lock on atomic bikes

 

[ddk]

I may be incorrect but I think 90% of all ebike components are made in China. Among other things they have a lock on the available rare earth metals needed to produce the magnets.

Yeah, and since the Clintons sold Russia 20% of our uranium, they now have a lock on atomic bikes

oh boy, politics!
one of the many mysteries To Me was the fact that during the cold war we used SR-71 spy planes
Bet you can't guess where the titanium came from... (at the time 100% of titanium was from this source)
IOW there's always more to a story than meets the eye.

Also... once you put a motor on any bike (or BSO) you have transportation that outperforms the most expensive road bike. (at least as far as the battery lasts...)