The Trek FX+ 2 e-bike is a jack-of-all-trades

Review: Trek's hybrid FX+ 2 e-bike puts cycling front and center.

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[gr8bkset]

I've owned 2 eBikes and a couple handfuls of "manual bikes". My first eBike was a 2005 Trek FX+, purchased for $90 from an owner who left the battery run down over the Winter and couldn't get the eBike's 'smart charger' to bring the battery back to life. I was able to coax the battery back using 'dumb charger' and slowly ramp up the voltage until the 'smart charger' would function. The new FX+ cost $2500, so that was an expensive short-term toy for its original owner. I got about a hundred miles out of this eBike, before it malfunctioned (the battery shorted when the park sprinkler turned on). The components for the FX+ was Deore, equivalent to the 'manual' FX5.

My second eBike was a $500 first gen Swytch conversion kit grafted onto the FX+. Swytch's Indigogo campaign was 1.5 years late. The controller malfunctioned after 3 months and it was out of service for 2 months before I got a functioning controller back from Swytch. After 800 miles and 9 months, the controller had another malfunction. By the time I had time to work on it, the battery had also run down and could not be brought back to life. In the Indigogo campaign Swytch stated that they would replace batteries for $50, however, when I inquired, they said they had 'run out' of first gen batteries but offered me a 'coupon' which would 'lower' the price of a new battery down to $350. I felt like an owner of a broken down car wondering if I should continue with this money pit and refused the offer.

My eBikes were marvels while they functioned. Together, I got around 1000 miles out of the two 2 eBikes for around $600, but also a lot of headaches and disappointment. With a 'manual' bike, I can fix anything that goes wrong with little effort. With an eBike, things malfunction often, and even with an EE degree, the thing is a blackbox. I don't know if my experience is typical of eBike owners, but I have two sets of eBike parts in my garage. I've heard of many eBike owners with dead batteries from discharge over the Winter. There should be a standardized "Fairphone" model for eBike components where many eBikes use the same parts and users can trade in faulty parts to be repaired and reused.

 

[gr8bkset]

There are, at least on the DIY low end. It's all just 2 wire connectors to the battery, batteries themselves are just a gang of 18650s (hopefully) spot welded together, and most of the interfaces are swappable between motors and controllers.

Many of us have had the satisfaction of replacing one or two bad 18650 cells in our power tool battery. But with these soldered gang of 18650 in eBikes, it's almost impossible to replace a few bad ones, so people end up throwing the whole pack away. Maybe they can make 'D' sized batteries that'll fit in top tubes and down tubes like what we used to have on flashlights.