i bought an ezee torq last month off ebay. i did worry that the battery might be dreadful but as the guy said the battery was approx two years old (bike is from 2006) and has not seen a huge amount of use i took a pop at it. Yesterday I got 14 miles out of it (at reasonably low throttle) in fairly hilly conditions (talking cornwall here). In fact yesterday I got from truro to portreath in 45 minutes. I was stunned and felt bionic! quite good performance but i would like to be able to go both ways without recharging; although recharging in the pub whist reading tolkein wasn;t so bad!)£500 for a battery does make you think twice though doesn't isn't it - especially when looking to save on motoring costs (indeed, I do hope soaring motoring costs don't tempt them into nudging the price up even more as a relatively cheap alternative to the car !). Every few days another Ezee appears on ebay with a dud battery (or more often than not they just don't mention it but the cyclepoint sticker on the casing gives the true age away ! ).
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however i didn;t realise that new batteries were quite so expensive when i bought it and had a bit of a shock when i logged on to onbike to get a replacement. prices seem to have shot up since last year when i was first looking for ebikes. the double battery option is quite interesting but i'm not sure if it's a good idea to couple the rack battery with an ageing main battery? once that main battery is run down i would in essence be powering from the rack battery, which is a smaller battery i believe. any thoughts here would be appreciated.
it seems like my best option is to make the most of this battery first; i can get most places i need to (only one way though) and nearly all of these are within spitting distance to a train station anyway. and when i've well and truly pummeled it, then buy a new battery.
@dbcohen i think if you like the bike and feel comfortable riding it then i reckon that's a more important factor than a few hundred quid here and there as you'll get more use out of it in the long term. i tried out most of the bikes on the market and found that the ezee torq just felt like the right fit to me comfort-wise.
With all bikes, over time what with all all the wheel, gear replacements you will at some point think 'hang on why don;t i just buy a new bike?!'. however, you have to remember that the new bike will also run into exactly the same issues in a few years as components fail with wear and tear. And the battery will need replacing in a couple of years too; so you'll be in a similar position to now if battery prices remain this high.
And there are more issues than just economics. Old bikes are less likely to be nicked and there's also the environmental issues of disposal and new manufacture.