Ride1Up’s Cafe Cruiser Electric Bike Is Actually Too Powerful
Ride 1Up’s Cafe Cruiser offers a ton of features and power for its relatively low price, but it’s an e-bike with an identity crisis. The “Cafe Cruiser” name and the bike’s styling and geometry suggest a laid-back ride you could cruise around Venice Beach with, but the powerful Class 3 engine and sheer mass are anything but soft: there’s so much junk in the trunk. riding it can feel downright dangerous. But if you have some experience riding e-bikes and are looking for an inexpensive and powerful whip, this might be the ride for you.
Pros and cons of Cafe Cruiser from Ride1Up
pros
Low Price : $1,195 is a pretty good price for a bike with these features.
Power : 750W rear motor provides tons of space.
Comfort : The soft seat, front suspension and upright driving position enhance comfort.
Battery Life : Even with all the power, the Cafe Cruiser’s battery lasts a long time.
Minuses
Torque overload : A powerful pick-up can result in jerky driving.
Weight : All that power on a 65-pound bike can be alarming at high speeds.
Cutting corners : The savings have to come from somewhere.
Characteristics
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Classification: Class 3
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Motor: 750W, 5 gears
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Range: 30-50 miles per charge
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Weight: 65 lbs
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Weight limit: 350 lbs (up to 130 lbs on rear rack)
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Motor: Bafang gear motor, 48 V, 750 W.
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Assistant: 5 levels, cadence detection.
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Wheels: 26 inches, 3 inches wide.
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Brakes: Zoom 180mm hydraulic brakes with electric release.
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Battery: 48 V, 15 Ah Reention Rhino, 39 x 21700 Samsung cells.
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Display: KD21C Variable Speed Display
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Fork: Mozo hydraulic lockout, 80mm suspension travel.
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Tires: SandStorm 26 x 3 inches Chaoyang.
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Transmission: Shimano Acera M360, 8 speeds.
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Lights: LED front and rear lights.
First impressions: Powerful but unsettling ride
Wanting a less powerful e-bike is probably against the desires of most consumers, but that’s what I was thinking when I first rode the Cafe Cruiser. Backward sloping steering wheel; thick, soft saddle; wide tires; and the adjustable front fork and suspension suggest the e-bike is beginner-friendly, but the moment my thumb touched the throttle and the thing lurched forward, I thought, “So this is what it’s going to be?”
Whether you’re summoning power from the throttle or pounding the pedals, this bike wants to go fast and subtly. I’m not against speed, but high speeds on a bike that weighs 65 pounds and puts you in such an upright position can feel uncontrollable. Until you get used to it, the ride will likely be grueling and jerky.
On a lighter, more nimble bike, high speeds feel natural, but riding the Cafe Cruiser at top speed gives you a lot of momentum to deal with and a lot of “I hope I screwed everything tight enough when I put this together” thinking about. it doesn’t seem like a bad design or anything, but once I got up to the 20 mph top speed with the throttle and topped out at 28 mph while pedaling, I felt like I was going to break my neck . I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was sitting on the roof of a car speeding down the road, instead of in control of the car I was tuning into and controlling. I’m sure this feeling will be even stronger for lighter riders; This is definitely not a bike for a child to ride.
To stop all that momentum, the Cafe Cruiser offers hydraulic disc brakes that work great (thank God). There’s also a speed limiter that can be accessed from the controller, but it’s a pretty deep dive into menu world to get to more ‘advanced’ machine computer settings (more on that below), and 1Up’s own guide advises users to keep the factory settings.
Keep it comfortable
If you set the five-level pedal assist to a lower setting and keep an eye on the speedometer, the Cafe Cruiser will have a comfortable ride. The front fork suspension smooths out road imperfections, while the thick-bottomed saddle provides easy handling. All this, plus wide, low-pressure tires (maximum 35 psi), creates a cruiser-perfect, plush ride ideal for handling minor road imperfections. I wouldn’t take it off-road, but it won’t hold up in light gravel or compacted dirt. Whether you consider a soft ride “comfortable” or “dirty” depends on what you’re looking for in a bike – it’s not my favorite style, but I can see the fun in a soft e-bike that lets you hit the pavement. cracks and I hardly feel them.
The Cafe Cruiser’s geometry provides the driver with low stress levels. A backward-sloping handlebar means you sit upright, with your arms slightly bent, and most of your weight resting on the pedals and seat. However, all this comfort comes at the cost of maneuverability. This bike is a big boy and it’s not very good in tight corners at slow speeds.
Cruiser style hides large battery
The Cafe Cruiser’s low, powerful frame looks Californian cool, but the downtube hides a massive battery. Figuring out exactly how much power any e-bike battery will provide is close to guesswork, as it depends on how you ride it, how much you weigh, hills and other factors, but the manufacturer’s estimate of 30-50 miles per charge seems to be for I’m understated. This is a long-lasting battery: I’m a heavier guy, and I took my Cruiser on a 20-mile trip that included some pretty big hills, and the battery gauge measured just two bars away from a full charge.
Display: more than meets the eye
The Cruiser’s controls are, as you’d expect, located on the left side of the steering wheel and have the expected three buttons: an on/off switch and two buttons that cycle through the default five power levels. The black and gray LED display shows assistance level, speed and remaining battery power.
It’s ready to go right out of the box, but the controller has deeper, hidden layers where you can make more subtle changes to how the bike operates. This allows users to fine-tune pedal assist, including adding a slower launch setting or more power level, but simply achieving this is difficult given the ancient display; bouncing around with power levels and the like is probably beyond the interests of most riders, so I’m judging based on the setup the bike is equipped with. If you were new to riding an e-bike, you would have no idea that you could change these settings, nor would you know why you might need to.
However, the tweak I found necessary was resetting the settings to default. After about 10 miles on my Cafe Cruiser the bike stopped working completely, but I was able to bring it back to life with a system reset. The problem did not recur, but whether it will happen again in a week or a month is unknown.
Maintenance, repair and customer service
Ride 1Up is primarily an online store, so you won’t be able to return it to the store you bought it from if something goes wrong. Not that you’ll necessarily need to: I put about 70 miles on my Cafe Cruiser for this review, which isn’t enough to have any real knowledge of the bike’s long-term reliability, but it didn’t feel wobbly or wobbly. crap, and nothing went wrong other than the aforementioned computer reboot. The gears operated smoothly, as did the brakes and the rest of the bike’s mechanical parts.
As for routine maintenance, the bike parts are inexpensive but from reputable manufacturers (Shimano gears, Sandstorm tires), so your local bike shop can probably handle most non-electrical issues. For more serious problems you will have to deal with 1Up. Unlike some of the fly-by-night e-bike companies I’ve heard about, they have a helpful customer service department. My customer service experience was good: my bike arrived with a brake rotor that appeared to be bent in transit, and Ride1Up provided a new one free of charge two days later.
Fine details of the Cafe Cruiser
The Cafe Cruiser is definitely not a cheap e-bike, but when you get into the finer details, you start to see what corners have been cut to offer a powerful bike at a simply huge price. The display is very basic : higher-end bikes have full-color interfaces, more user-friendly computers , and even apps that make it easier to navigate and change settings. The LED lights front and rear seem quite cheap. Pedal assist is based on cadence rather than smoother torque control. None of this makes the Cafe Cruiser a bad bike, it’s just less refined. That’s the overall vibe of the Cafe Cruiser: it’s fun to drive, it’s fast, but it’s not a refined car.