If an ebike’s motor is powerful enough to haul 300 pounds of unwieldy person, metal, and cargo up a steep hill, it’s quiet, the assistance feels natural, and it allows for a huge variety of cadence and torque variations over different terrain, then congrats! You’re probably using a Bosch drive system (and you likely spent several thousand dollars on it).
Electra’s latest cruiser has a Bosch Performance Line system with an integrated PowerTube 500W battery in the frame, and it works very close to what I described above. It’s an eye-catching ebike that’s designed to do mostly nothing, but to do it really, really well. I spent a few weeks riding it on and around the cracked streets, dirt, and gravel trails around my home in Portland, Oregon.
My tester was a beautiful white aluminum step-through, with a detailed paint job, fenders, a rack, and big, fat, Schwalbe tires that have reflective stripes and puncture-proof Kevlar casing. If you’re a newbie biker with a spare couple grand lying around and would like a high-performance ebike that doesn’t particularly look high-performance, I have found the easygoing ride for you.
App Happy
This year, one of the most noticeable updates to Bosch’s drive system is its integration with Cobi.Bike, an Android and iOS smartphone app made by a company Bosch acquired in 2017.
You don’t need an app to ri