G-Bike City

[michael.holt90]

Hey,

I am looking at getting this electric bicycle/moped http://www.shopgbike.com/products/city/index.html and was wondering if anyone had any review/opinions on this particular bike. I've been riding an izip via lento for about 6 months now and have loved it, but it's slowly falling apart (at approx. 3,500 miles to date). I bought it originally as an experiment and then lost my car so it's been my primary means of transportation for a while now. I'm looking to get something that won't break the bank but gets better milage than the izip. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Michael

 

[wesnewell]

First, you aren't going to get 35 miles out of a 48V 20ah SLA battery pack. You'll be lucky to get 25. Second, it's a cop magnet because it looks so much like a scooter. This type bike has caused some big problems for others. Third, it's expensive and has SLA batteries. Fourth, it's expensive and has SLA batteries. Fifth, it's expensive and has SLA batteries. To get any kind of range, you'll have to replace the SLA battery pack with lithium. A 20ah 48V lithium pack will cost anywhere from $300 to $1000, depending on what kind you go with. Do yourself a favor and just say no.

 

[dogman dan]

I agree, if you lost your car and your licence, you want to look as much like a regular bike as possible.

The way I see it, the reliability issue of these scooter bikes is related to the number of connectors on it. Invariably they use the cheapest possible plugs, and they tend to have problems with intermittent contact. So a bike kit, with a minimum number of the same cheap connectors is easier to keep running than the scooters. And you can replace them all with better plugs if you really need to.

A really usefull car replacement commuter ebike will have a lithium battery. A 48v 15 ah lifepo4 for example, has 20-35 miles of range depending on the speed you ride. Forget the lead.

To save a few bucks, you can put a motor kit on your existing I zip frame. After some maintenance of course. Learn to true a wheel, and adjust brakes and deraliurs so they don't wear out premature.

 

[dogman dan]

Just looked at that I zip you have now. It has a small 24v gearmotor. One option would be to just buy it a 36v controller, and a lithium battery.

You'd get more power, and at least 5 mph more speed. But I bet,,,, you'd be happier with a much more powerful 1000w 48v direct drive motor that gets you close to going 30 mph. And still goes about 20 miles at that speed.

 

[keepitlight]

I have owned a GBIKE City electric scooter for 2 years now and it's awesome. Nothing has gone wrong on it and I routinely get 40 miles to a charge. So I don't know what that other person is talking about. I'm an average size guy, about 175 pounds. I track my mileage with my i phone and it's totally accurate down to the mile. The lead acid battery works just fine for me and it's showing no signs of wear at all. I'm very pleased with my Gbike and would recommend it to anyone for short distance commuting. I love it and I actually have friends that have bought gbikes because of my good experience with it. customer service is friendly and helpful. Overall, it's a good purchase and totally worth it. Hope that helps!

 

[wesnewell]

Sorry, I just don't believe that. At least not at 18-20 mph on 48V 20ah of sla.

 

[dogman dan]

Sorry dude, but you really talk like you sell em. You are correct to recomend them for short ride commuting. Lead is still fine for that, and very affordable.

Range is elastic, I'm sure that you can ride slow enough to get fantastic range. But we have hundreds of thousands of miles under our collective belt. So we know what the ranges are for 20 mph travel. We also know that absolute range of sla's is meaninless, because you damage sla's quite a bit by riding them down to 100% discharge.

Leaving some energy in the battery, about 26 miles is the best you could hope in all weather conditions for using a 48v 20 ah lithium battery at 20-25 mph.

And in general, you'd get not much better than half that from sla's, AT THAT SPEED. But if you ride reallly slow, then sla's would discharge a lot more of thier rated capacity because of the low c rate of the discharge. In that situation range would be greatly increased. If you like riding that slow, then fine.

But my main concern for this particualr guy, is that if the cops already know and hate him, they will hound him on a bike that looks like a scooter you would need a licence to drive. It's better for the Dui guys, if he is one, to look like a bicycle and not get hassled. Chances are, he could ride an illegally fast bike with no beefs. But get hounded by the cops riding a scooter look bike at 15 mph.

 

[ebent]

SLA's break the bank. Very ineffecient. The lithium costs a lot more up front but cost per mile is a lot better and every measure of performance is better. Even if you paid for it on a credit card, with frequent use and interest cost of credit it is still cheaper with lithium.

 

[TylerDurden]

Nothing has gone wrong on it and I routinely get 40 miles to a charge.

Totally possible if you go 5mph and pedal. :lol:

 

[michael.holt90]

i picked up the G-Bike today and it's awesome, already in love with it over the izip via lento... only thing i'm trying to figure it is how/where to mount a cup holder... would love to have one but there's no handlebars to mount anything to any suggestions?

 

[Spacey]

I bought a G bike and it turned me into a millionaire, women are now way more attracted to me and my Epeen needs its own cloud to host it.

Gotta love these advertisers.

 

[markass530]

LLOL, Do you guys get a lot of that here, Dealers trying to masquerade as people and being all sly while they talk up a product? I Would hope they would at least try to be more discrete, and less obvious

 

[dogman dan]

Well, if you are legit, it would be cool to see you do a really complete and detailed review of the bike.

Hope you like it. But don't expect 40 mile range unless you do ride 5 mph. And btw, i had a gas scooter once with a really good speedometer. It said I was doing 65 mph when I was only going 50. Did wonders for my miles per gallon. 8)

So a good review would include seeing how well calibrated the speedo was, etc.

 

[amberwolf]

LLOL, Do you guys get a lot of that here, Dealers trying to masquerade as people and being all sly while they talk up a product? I Would hope they would at least try to be more discrete, and less obvious

Yes, it happens a lot, and not just here. See this:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/83.htm

re: Professional forum spamming is becoming an increasing problem for us.

There are sites now that specialize in "acquiring targeted" traffic from forums. That is all they do. They go out and find forums that are ontopic to a customers needs and they carefully "spam" the forum to acquire link backs, name dropping, and often direct url dropping to bring back customers.

Some of the techniques they use:

- Tag teams. One or more agents will start and engage in conversations with each other to add credibility to a thread.
- Post count building. Often, agents will increase their post count, carefully contributing to the 'players' in a forum to beef up "nick recognition", and then slowly introduce a topic.
- Classic Q & A with themselves. Forums that don't watch ip addresses real close often have agents that carry on conversations with themselves under two different nicks.
- Name dropping and whisper campaigns. Often they just drop the name of a product with "what do you think of product X". After awhile they come back and work in the url with some member saying, "oh ya, I've heard of them".
- Profile building. I know one company that targets a particular industry, that has two agents with over 50,000 posts around forums under their nicks. With all that posting, those two agents are now considered "experts" in their topic area - and they are nothing more than salesmen.

The problem? They are getting very good at it.

 

[ddk]

LLOL, Do you guys get a lot of that here, Dealers trying to masquerade as people and being all sly while they talk up a product? I Would hope they would at least try to be more discrete, and less obvious

Yes, it happens a lot, and not just here. ....

this has been going on since the internet was invented and in fact precedes the internet.

nothing new here...

 

[amberwolf]

this has been going on since the internet was invented and in fact precedes the internet.

Lies.

Nothing precedes the internet.

First there was the internet, then the big bang, then consipiracy theories about who started the big bang.