Looking Back at the 2023 E-bike Year

Standout Premium E-bikes

Every year brings its own crop of e-bikes that, despite their higher price tags, leave you admiring the design and just wanting to hop on for a ride. Here’s our pick of those premium priced e-bikes that caught our eye in the last 12 months.

As you might expect, premium e-mtbs remained hugely popular and one that really caught our eye for high-end spec, value for money and aggressive downhill style performance was the Canyon Torque:ON.

Over in Europe Yamaha launched the Booster series with their own PW-S2 mid-drive plus a removable 630Wh battery and 20” x 4” tyres. There are 15.5mph and 28mph versions available.

Cube are a major player in the European e-bike scene and their Trike Hybrid model finally made it into European shops after a lot of advance PR. It comes in both family and cargo models, was co-developed with BMW and also uses the Bosch Cargoline mid-drive system.

One of the most innovative e-fat bikes from 2023 was the Quietkat Lynx with its dual-speed rear hub motor.

It was also notable that kids’ versions of premium e-bikes made more of an appearance in 2023. Specialized’s Turbo Levo SL Kids is a hardtail e-mtb with 100mm of travel and parent configurable speed and assist settings. It features Specialized’s own SL 1.2 mid-drive that parents can tune through the Specialized Mission Control app.

Spanish e-mtb specialist Mondraker also aimed high quality rides at younger riders by introducing The Play and F-Play (the latter being the full-sus version) lines are aimed at older kids – 6- to 14-year-olds say Mondraker. Both lines are equipped with the Mahle Ebikemotion X35 rear-wheel drive.

2023 was the year premium e-bike manufacturers also got in on the throttle and hub motor market. Trek’s Electra brand launched the Ponto Go!, a moped-style machine with a bench seat and footpegs, turn indicators, 20mph capable throttle, rear hub motor and a 350lb carrying capacity.

Trek further expanded their hub-based offering with the highly capable looking Haul LT, a sequel to the ST short tail version. As with many of these premium manufacturers expanding into hub motor e-bikes, the Hail LT looks to occupy a mid-price point between the cheaper budget hub models and the premium mi-drive models – this bike features a powerful rear hub motor and a 772Wh battery for $3500.

Momentum is Giant’s lifestyle brand and late 2023 saw them launch the Cito E+ following the trend of premium brands occupying the middle priced ground with hub geared motors. The Cito Plus also featured a throttle – again unusual for a premium brand – and a large 780Wh battery.

The continued success of Upway is good news for those who want a premium quality e-bike at a good price. They began life as a French company offering overstock and used (refurbished) e-bikes at between 20 and 60 percent off retail. And now, according to Time Out, they are in the US. A quick scan around the Upway website reveals they only deal in e-bikes with a great reputation. Once the e-bikes have been received they are refurbed (if already used) and once sold will be given a pre-delivery inspection before being delivered to a customer in a matter of days, complete with a one year warranty.

Subsidy Success

Note subsidies are also deemed a success making e-bikes more affordable for many more than ever before. Introduced at the start of 2023, California’s generous subsidy program is generally regarded as one of the most successful along with Denver’s sell out scheme. There was a notable emphasis on simpler point of sale incentives rather than tax rebate schemes.

As Electrek noted, ‘There are over a hundred state and city-level incentives around the US, and that number is growing every week. Micromobility Industries has helpfully compiled the various e-bike incentive programs, even those from outside the US, to make it easier to find one in your area.’

Battery Fires and E-bike Bans

You couldn’t really fail to notice how ithium-ion battery fires (including e-bike battery fires) hit the headlines in 2023 – although it’s a concerning trend you shouldn’t be overly worried as education is the best form of defence.

Patrick Brady’s excellent article on EBR gives you plenty of tips that should pretty much guarantee that you stay safe as far as e-bike batteries are concerned. In short, looking for UL standards (or their equivalent), selecting an e-bike positively-reviewed by EBR (especially one from our best e-bikes article) and following safe maintenance and charging practices should see you right.

Clearly not everyone follows this advice and – as Patrick points out in his article – densely populated New York City has proved a hotbed for such fires whose root cause is cheaply produced or badly assembled / repaired electric micromobility devices. The situation clearly worsened in NYC in 2023 as this comparison for the same period in 2022 showed (figures from NYFD).

Given the way these figures are heading it’s not surprising that NYC Council legislated that e-bikes sold within its jurisdiction would need to meet UL 2849 or similar certification and batteries would have to meet UL 2271.Tis law has teeth as repeated failure to comply could mean fines up to $1,000 per violation.

Following this an emergency $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation aimed to enable NYC to set up outdoor e-mobility battery charging and storage stations at 53 city Housing Authority developments and New York’s City Council also approved a battery trade-in program for e-bikes and batteries that lack UL certification. 2023 Also saw moves in NYC to require third-party delivery app companies like DoorDash to provide workers access to certified e-bikes and batteries and another that would require workers taking an e-bike safety course developed by the Department of Transportation.

Gears and mid-drives combine – but Automatic Gears Stuttering?

One of the highlights of the year in terms of e-bike technology was undoubtedly the Pinion announcement of its MGU system – a combined motor and bike gear system. There are 9 and 12 gear options plus a ‘speed’ variant for speed pedelecs with relative gear ranges of 568% and 600%. It claims 600W of peak power (though they are legally rated as e-bike motors at 250W continuous output) and the speed pedelec variant has a peak power rating of 800W. E-bike manufacturers that have already taken up the system include Rotwild, Simplon and Tout Terrain.

SRAM’s Eagle Powertrain was an interesting development aimed at making derailleur gears change automatically in harmony with a Brose-based motor – it seemed like a bold attempt but one that met with some reservations during real world testing.

Nicolai are a high end German e-bike brand and 2023 saw them introduce ‘conventional’ hub gears – the Nine 3×3 gear hub with Gates belt drive – but aimed at the larger steps more suited to e-bikes. The gear ratio of the nine gears is 554% – about what a traditional high end mountain bike has. Thus, the manufacturer covers the complete mountain bike gear spectrum – ideal for the new breed of heavy duty do-it-all SUV style e-bikes that are now a big sector of the e-bike market.

Low Maintenance E-bikes Galore

Low maintenance e-bikes and in particular belt drives seemed to be everywhere in 2023. The start of the year saw Spanish manufacturer Desikinio announce the innovative looking X20, with a lightweight rear hub motor paired with fully enclosed Pinion bottom bracket gears.

We really liked the look of the Priority e-Classic Plus weighing in at just 49 lbs with a 250W front hub motor, Gates Carbon Drive Belt, Shimano Nexus 3 drivetrain.

Other low maintenance highlights of 2023 included the Tenways CGO600 Pro and the Surge Traveller.

Cargo Developments

January saw the release of The Cake Åik cargo e-bike apparently built for US e-bike regulations with a US Class 2 spec of 20mph and 750Wh battery as standard but there is the option to triple this capacity which gives a claimed 224 mile range. But the extra batteries can also be used on the Work edition to power a refrigerated food box on the bike or power tools – a very neat idea!

Rad Power Bikes’ popular RadWagon 4 cargo e-bike returned to Rad Power’s website following a voluntary recall effort in which Rad Power worked with the CPSC to replace faulty rim strips inside the wheels of the RadWagon 4, as well as tires whose ribbed inner surface could cause flats.

Retrofit Kits Developed Further

Hong Kong-based CYC have a track record of producing lightweight retrofit mid-drive kits. 2023 saw them release the Photon which weighs around 7lbs but claims a huge 110Nm of torque – higher than even the top performing Bosch mid-drives. Perhaps best of all it fits a very wide range of bottom bracket sizes, from standard 68mm up 120mm fat bike size. More technical detail is in the video below:

January 2022 saw the launch of the very lightweight but non-electric Brompton T-Line – a non-electric all titanium and carbon version of their legendary folding bike. February 2023 saw Cytronex announce a retrofit kit that produces a four-speed version of the T-Line weighing only 25.7lbs – which includes the 198Wh battery.

Other less costly lightweight kits included the Boost for Brompton kit and the new, even lower-priced Swytch Go – both from the UK. Boost for Brompton conversion kit is now available for pre-order. Unlike established Brompton conversion kits from the likes of Cytronex and Swytch which feature front wheel hub motors, the Boost approach is to replace the rear wheel – a very neat conversion with just a single cable run from the bespoke, non-removable, small capacity battery to the rear hub motor.

Popular kit producer Swytch announced their lowest price kit yet, the Swytch Go – a sub £500 setup with a small removable battery.