What is UL Testing for EBikes? How is UL Testing Making EBikes Safer?

What exactly is UL testing for an e-bike? Hey, everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry, and today we're going to answer the question, what exactly is the UL testing of an e-bike? All right, so let's say you are looking at getting an e-bike, and you are seeing the term UL testing floating around, and maybe you don't really know exactly what it is, but you're curious, and you wanna know more. Well, UL is an independent testing agency, and they create testing guidelines for certain electrical or other products in the United States and across the world. They have a certain standard that they set for products in order to get a stamp of approval. They create different tests for different products, depending on what it is. For e-bikes, you see the batteries, commonly the UL2271, and for the actual electrical components of the whole bike, the UL2849. Now, the benefit of having a UL-tested product is that you have their stamp of approval saying you've met their standards of testing, and they run them through a whole rigorous set of tests, and again, it's not a government-backed company. This is a private company that creates the stamp of approval, and there are other industry standards in Europe. They have other tests as well for their e-bikes. UL is not the only global company doing this type of testing, but recently in the US, it's become the number one accepted sort of stamp of approval in testing. If you notice on other electronics you get now, a lot of times on extension cords or light bulbs or light fixtures, you'll either see a UL stamp on there or a UL tag. Meaning, it's UL tested and approved. Now, a lot of companies are just UL testing the batteries, and this is because of the fire hazard that people are concerned with, they want to ensure they're UL tested. Like we've done at sixthreezero, we've UL tested our batteries.

Also, we've done the UL 2849 for a few of our bikes as well, which is one step further, which is to get all of the electrical components on the e-bike UL tested. Now, you're seeing that test less frequently. You're seeing the battery test more commonly now because many people are definitely concerned about the batteries. Now, with that said, there are e-bikes out there that don't have the UL test. It doesn't mean they're poor quality. It just means maybe they haven't gone through the testing. When the testing originally came out a few years ago, it was very, very expensive. Around sixty thousand dollars per SKU. And for many manufacturers that weren't doing big volume, this was just a sum of money that wouldn't make sense. Since then, the testing has come down in price as more people have started to utilize the testing. As a result, you're seeing more and more companies now that are doing the testing. Now, again, doesn't necessarily mean, you know, that the product is poor quality. If there's a $4,000 e-bike out there with great specs, Samsung sells, or LG sells, it's high quality but not UL tested, up to you to make that decision on whether you'll purchase or not, but I would feel okay and feel good about that. Now, if you're buying an e-bike that's $400, there's no UL testing. I might be a little bit leerier about that because, definitely, a big factor with a lot of the fires, e-bike fires are of poor quality, low-quality batteries, things like that. So, like I said, we've UL tested. You'll see on our website that we put a UL-tested logo on there. And again, we've done the 2849 for other ones as well. So it's become sort of the industry standard to tell customers that we've put this through testing and this outside testing agency has deemed this product safe. So I hope that's helpful.

If you have any other questions, reach out to us at theteam@sixthreezero.com or call us at 310-982-2877. We have a 30-day test ride on 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 one year. If anything goes wrong in the first year, we'll take care of it, including parts and labor. Lastly, be a part of our community. We have a Facebook group with thousands of members in it called Sixthreezero Pedalers. Join the group and talk to existing riders before you purchase to ensure you make the right choice. Then, when you have yours, post in the group and make friends. Lastly, 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.