What Are All of the Controls for an Electric Bike? Understanding EBikes & How to Use Them

What is all the stuff on the handlebars of my e-bike? Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry. Today we're gonna answer the question, what is all that stuff on the handlebars of an e-bike? Now, or e-trike for that matter. All right, let's say you're thinking about getting an e-bike or you got an e-bike and you're looking at the handlebars and you're like, oh my gosh, what is going on up here? What is everything? Well, we're gonna shoot a closeup here and I'm gonna walk you through everything that's gonna be on the handlebars of your e-bike so you can understand what everything does and how you can get acquainted with it. Okay, so here's the handlebars of one of our e-trikes. Now, with this said, your e-bike may look a little bit different, but I'm gonna walk you through elements that you're gonna find on every electric bike, or in some way, shape, or form. Now, starting with these calipers right here, this may be basic to some of you, but for some of you who may be accustomed to a pedal-backward brake, these are your brakes. So you've got one here for the front brake, and on this hand, you've got one for the rear brake. So that's what these calipers are. Also, a lot of e-trikes, not necessarily e-bikes, have parking brakes. So in this case, on this one, there's a little button you press that can keep the lever engaged. That is the parking brake. Now, they could be something that clicks the brake up here as well. But that's what that is. All right, now moving over here, right here you have... I could probably just turn that a little bit, maybe see it better. This is your, what should I say, your up and down for your pedal assist and also the on and off button for your motor. So you've got the plus, the minus, the power button right here, and this is what's going to turn your e-bike on and off. It's also what's going to increase or decrease your pedal assist levels. Yours may look different to this. Sometimes they're a little more vertical looking. They can come in all different shapes and sizes. All e-bikes will have this in some way, shape, or form for adjusting your pedal assist levels. All right, now moving on here, you've got your screen, your display. Again, these displays can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. This is going to turn on when you power on. Well, we got to turn the battery on here. Turn that on quickly. All right. And then from there, you'll see your screen turn on. Now, your screen may be smaller, located here.

It may be in the middle. It's gonna tell your battery life, your miles per hour, your pedal assist level, and your odometer how far you've traveled. You're gonna find that on all e-bikes or e-trikes as well. Now, there are a couple of things I wanna point out. Now, most, not most, a lot of e-bikes, not all though, have throttles. And the throttles can come in two different ways. What's either a thumb throttle or what's called a twist throttle? So the thumb throttle, a lot of times will be located by the left hand. And it's a little button here that you press with your thumb. And that engages the motor without you pedaling. Now on this one, we do not have a thumb throttle. We have a twist throttle. So on this e-trike, you have a twist throttle. And what I'll do after we shoot this is I'll bring another bike in and we'll show you what a twist throttle looks like. Or sorry, a thumb throttle looks like. So the throttle is actually, let me go ahead and put this into zero so we don't, is right here. And you twist it and this will engage the motor without pedaling. Now when you do these, you don't want to just go like that, right, real quick. It's like a gas pedal on a car. You want to ease into it and hold it in a steady position to find the right speed to travel. Now this red button, which is not necessarily on all e-trikes or e-bikes as well, is a kill switch for the throttle. So if it's disengaged, the throttle will not work. That's just a nice safety feature. Now this is one that gets a lot of people tripped up. What is this mechanism right here? This is the gear shifter for the bicycle gears. So not all e-bikes, not all e-trikes have gears. In fact, there are a lot of e-trikes that are single-gear only. There are a lot of e-bikes that are single-gear. We like to put seven speeds on our e-bikes and e-trikes to give riders the ability to find different gear as they need it for hills and other types of riding. So, this functions pretty easily. You'd put your hand here. There's a plus button to shift the gears up and a minus button to shift the gears down. Now, when would you need gears?

Well, again, if you're going up hills, going down into a lower gear, which would make it easier to pedal, is a great option. As you go faster, putting it into a higher gear is a great option. So this has nothing to do with the electric functionality at all. These are the gears on the actual bicycle that can be used, whether the motor's on or off. Now, again, I'm talking about what some people may think to be basic stuff, but a lot of people who are new to e-bikes don't understand how all these things work together so you can use these gears without using the motor. This pedal assistance up and down is solely for the assistance that you get from the motor. So, they do different things, but they can work together in terms of when you have a certain level of assistance from the motor, you want to find the right gear so you match your pedaling nicely with the assistance that you're getting from the motor. All right, I'm going to bring in one more e-bike and show you what those handlebars look like. I want to show you how it could look a little bit different. All right, so this is the handlebars of one of our other e-bikes, our Simple Step-Thru. Now you can see we have a different display here. And this is what your thumb throttle looks like right here. So you would push it right here with your left thumb to go. Still have the same brakes. Now on the right hand here, again, looks a little different. These are the seven-speed gears that I talked about that are for the bicycle, but instead of it being a push shifter, it's a twist shifter. We switched it on these e-bikes because without having a twist throttle, it's a little bit easier. You just grip here and you can twist the gears nice and easy. Still seven speeds on this one, just a twist shifter. You may see that on different brands of e-bikes as well. Typically, if it has a, well not typically, if you have a twist throttle, you're not also gonna have a twist shifter for the gears, you'd have a push throttle. And if you have a thumb throttle, you may still have the push shifter for the gears, or you have the twist shifter, just depends on the choice of the brand. All right, so I hope that helps explain what's on the handlebars of an e-bike.

If you have any other questions at all, please reach out to us at theteam@sixthreezero.com, or call us at 310-982-2877. We offer a 30-day test ride on your e-bike or e-trike. If you don't love it in the first 30 days, send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pocket. In addition to that, we warranty everything for up to one year. If anything goes wrong in the first year, we take care of its parts and labor. Lastly, join our Facebook group. There are thousands of members in there called sixthreezero Pedalers. Join the group, and ask existing riders questions you have before you purchase to make sure you make the right choice. Then when you have yours, post in the group, make friends, and finally download our app to track your rides and compete on the leaderboard. It's a lot of fun. So thanks for sticking around and don't forget, it's your journey or experience. Enjoy the ride.