How Long Will An E Bike Last? The Truth About an Electric Bike's Life Expectancy

How long will an electric bike last? Stick around to find out.

Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and ebike industry and today I'm going to answer the question, how long can you expect an ebike to last? But before I get into it, hit the subscribe button below, stay in touch less here at sixthreezero. Be the first to know about all the new content we're putting out, giveaways we're doing, of course, new product releases. All right, I've got the sixthreezero Simple Step Through E bike right here. It's an awesome electric bike, great for easy mounting and dismount. If you want to check this out, it's linked in the description below and also linked up in the corner of the video. Okay. Let's say you are in the market to buy an e-bike or you already have an e-bike and maybe you're still wondering, how long can I expect my electric bike to last? And it's a great question.

Now there are multiple elements to an electric bike. Well, I mean, I think we know a lot of it, but there's a frame, there's wheels, there's a battery, there's a motor. When you talk about regular bikes, usually your frames, depending if it's steel or aluminum, are going to last for years and years and years. Now, a steel frame, honestly, could last infinitely, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. I think we've all seen our neighbors, friends, or even ourselves. You got a bike hanging in your garage that's probably 40 years old and it's there and it's still rideable. Now, one thing, if you leave a bike hanging up too long, the tires probably will dry rot over time. That's something that would need to be replaced. That's a fairly inexpensive process. I think the biggest concern, and a lot of people are wondering is with the motor and the batteries and also the display as well.

Now, I can't give you an exact timeline. Batteries are going to be dependent on how frequently you ride your bike, how far you ride your bike, and how much you're using that battery. You may have heard something called cycle charges. How many times do you charge and drain your battery? And I hear a lot of times there's numbers around let's say 400 to 600 cycle charges. So in theory, you could charge your battery from empty to full and drain it again, 400, 500, 600 times. So with that expectation, it's going to depend on how much you ride your e-bike. If you're riding your ebike quite frequently, it's not impossible to say that your battery needs to be replaced in six months. I would say on average the expectations should be around every two to three years. You should expect to have to replace your battery. Now the other thing about lithium ion batteries you've probably experienced in your laptop or on your cell phone is they can unexpectedly die or over time start to lose their juice and they start to last shorter and shorter amounts of time.

I think we've all seen it with our cell phones, right? And then it finally gets to the point where the amount of charge that's holding gets to be very minimal. So the same is probably going to happen on your e-bike. Over time it's going to continue to work, but you're going to notice the range that you're getting is slowly decreasing over time. So with that said, it's going to be up to you to determine if your battery can still work for the type of rides you're going to do. Now, it's also not impossible that one day the battery just dies. I've seen that happen as well, but again, I would expect about every two to three years. So if you anticipate keeping your electric bike for years to come, just anticipate that you are going to have to replace the battery at a certain point in time.

Okay, now moving on to the motor. Now, this is also going to be something that plays into how long or how often you're going to be riding your electric bike. If you only ride your electric bike, let's say once a week or once every month, your motor is going to last much longer. Now, there are so many different brands of motors out there and there are mid-drive motors, there are rear hub motors, there are front hub motors. If you keep your usage of your e-bike within the limits, and I say within the limits because there's going to be advertised use for your e-bike in terms of how you should use your e-bike, how you shouldn't use your e-bike, what is your e-bike good for? So if you're using it within the parameters of what it's meant for, your motor could last for three to five years if not longer.

I would say a good expectation is at least three years, and I would say much longer than that. If you're doing just normal flat ground riding, not putting much torque or much pressure on it, I think well over five years is definitely in the cards. Now, if you're a rider over 250 pounds and you're doing hills quite frequently and you're logging a lot of miles on your trips, then it's not impossible to think that you could get a shorter amount of time out of your motor. Now, the good news is that motors are replaceable on e-bikes as well. A front hub motor or a rear hub motor is going to be much easier to replace than a mid-drive motor just because in the case of a front hub or a rear hub, you simply can get a new wheel and plug it in, and all of a sudden you have a new motor.

But a mid-drive motor will be a little bit more complicated. Now you have things like the display and the controller as well. Controller is one of those things where I also believe it could last three to five years, but also much longer. The controller in this e-bike is contained right here in some frames, it's inside the frame as well, or it's inside the frame down here. That can be mounted back here as well. It depends on where it's located, but the controller, so long as you're not putting too much torque on that e-bike or pushing it to limits beyond what it's capable of, it's going to last a long time. Now, the scenario where controllers have issues is when you start to push it beyond what it's capable of and it puts more energy into the controller than I can handle, which would cause it to blow out.

But under normal riding conditions, your controllers should last for a very long time. I would say again, at least in that three to five-year range. So that's my take on how long an electric bike should last. If you have any other questions at all, please comment below email us at TheTeam@sixthreezero.com, or call us at (310) 982-2877. Also, this Simple Step-Thru e-bike is linked in the description below or in the corner of the video. If you're shopping for an e-bike but don't know what you need, take our proprietary bodyfit quiz on our website, answer a few questions about your body and your riding habits, and our algorithm will recommend the perfect e-bike for you. We also have a 30-day test ride, your e-bike policy. If you don't love your e-bike in the first 30 days, send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pocket.

In addition to that, we're going to warranty everything for a year on the e-bike. If anything goes wrong in the first year, we'll take care of parts in labor. Lastly, we have a Facebook Pedalers group with thousands of members. Go ahead and pop in there and ask existing riders how they like their e-bikes, and any questions you may have, so you can get comfortable purchasing. Then once you have your e-bike posted in the group, make friends and then download our app, which is available in both app stores to track your ride and compete on our leaderboard. So thanks for sticking around and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.