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>> Court: This is the Element Electric by Surface 604. It's a Canadian company that
has been making the Element without the electric drive system for a little while. It offers
seven speeds for regular pedaling down here with this Shimano Tourney, which is really
nice. It can help you climb, its even got that extra large gear up there. And, on the
front chain ring they've got a really solid aluminum bash guard as well as a plastic guide
just to keep the chain on track from falling off. Nice pedals here, they're a little bit
oversized. The rack itself is sort of a bolt-on design which means that over time if it's
rattling or something you can tighten it up. And then the shifting mechanism up here is
just a simple oversized thumb shifter. You can press there, clearly see which gear you're
in. So all in all it's a pretty nice fat bike, you know with the huge oversized spider tires
right there. And these really nice oversized disc brakes. If you're going through mud or
water or something those are going to be really nice and you know, not get wet. I also really
like the kickstand, you can see that right there. So, that's really the bike portion
of this. Let me just jump into the drive system. So what we've got here is a 350 watt geared
rear hub motor; that's nominal output. And they say its 750 watt peak output which is
quite a bit! You can see it's actually a little bit wider than some of the other hub motors
I've seen on similar bikes. And it felt pretty good, you know cruising along. I'm admittedly
not in the mountains or anything, I'm just cruising around Denver but it's a lot of fun.
And one of the things that I really like about the system is that its got this unique display
control console up here and it shows you how full the battery is as well as how fast you're
going and then what level of assist you're getting. Right, so it actually offers three
levels of assist and you can activate the twist throttle at any time. So, some of the
other electric fat style ebikes like this, they only offer a twist throttle. And so this
one, having seven gears to pedal with and using that pedelec cadence sensor pedal assist
you can really ride more naturally and kind of enjoy yourself using this as a bike, right.
And so these are designed to work well in the snow or on sandy beaches or just kind
of for fun. You know, and the big tires kind of soak up the bumps, a little bit spongy
feeling. All in all, a really fun bike and it comes in orange, blue and black. I love
that they've got the bottle cage right there. This system weighs about 60 pounds. The battery
pack is removable and it weighs 8 pounds, 8.1 pounds or something. It is sort of all,
a lot of the weight is positioned towards the rear of the bike. The battery is kind
of unique with this ridge, it almost seems like you could have had a bigger battery.
The size of this one is 36 volt, 12 amp hour. It uses Lithium-ion cells that are going to
get maybe like 1,000 charge cycles which is fairly standard. In general, this is a quality
battery pack and as I said before it's removable and its got this cool light. So, to remove
it you just unlock it, right there. And you don't have to have the key in when riding
it which is cool. And then you just kind of pull on it like that. You can see where it
plugs and then there's these tracks that it slides on. So, very intuitive [snapping sound]
Just plug it in like that. And when you're ready to ride, see that green switch right
there, just flick that on - the light flashes and you're ready to go. You will want to lock
it in place though so it doesn't fall off. The tubing on this rear rack is a little bit
larger than standard bicycle racks so I'm not sure how well this would work for actually
adding panniers. Maybe you could fasten a rear rack on top but you don't want your battery
to get too hot. That's sort of a question mark in my mind but I think frankly this bike
is more about getting off road and having some fun than commuting and hauling stuff.
There's also no fenders and I'm not sure if they even make fenders for this kind of thing
but the rear rack is going to provide some protection from water and mud. Now that we've
plugged the battery in we'll press the power button and you see it lights up. It tells
us we've got full battery, zero kilometers per hour, right because this is from Canada.
And we're in mode 1, its got a fun little bell [ringing sound]. I'm going to go ahead
and start pedaling in mode one and you can hear the motor. [soft motor sound] Really
smooth... So the cadence sensor on this bike has 12 magnets instead of 6 which some of
the older systems had and they felt a little bit jerkier. I'm pretty satisfied with the
smoothness. Some of that might be because we're in mode 1 and it's not real powerful,
it's not kicking in. I'm going to go ahead and change it to mode 3 [click, click] and
I'm going to use the twist throttle this time from standstill. [motor whirring] Not bad,
woo! Cool, cool... So, as with a lot of electric bikes its a 20 mile per hour top speed and
the cabling has been designed to be easy to replace. You can see the break away connectors
there. So if something goes wrong and you need to update your system you can do that.
I don't see a break away here for the motor and frankly, it's not quick release back here.
So this thing, you're going to need some tools to deal with it. And if you've got a car and
you're trying to transport it, you know it's a little bit unwieldily. It's a little bit
large, you might need a truck or something. That's the Element Electric from Surface 604
and a pretty cool bike. For the full written review with pictures and stuff, check out
ElectricBikeReview.com I'll see you there.