Electric Tricycle No Nos! 3 Things You Never Want to Do When Riding an ETrike

Three things to never do when riding an electric trike.

Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry. And today I'm going to talk to you about three things to never do when riding an electric trike. Alright, right here I've got the sixthreezero EZ Transit foldable e-trike and also the EvryJourney 250-watt trike. Now, I see a lot of people getting into trike riding and electric trike riding, and there are a couple of things I've learned that you never want to do when riding an electric trike for your safety.

Okay, number one, you never want to jerk or turn the handlebars quickly. Now, seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's important on a tricycle. Now, on a bike, if you swerve quickly, you have only two wheels in line, it's going to move and be agile. If you jerk your handlebars and you're moving at pace on a trike, you are going to be apt to possibly lift one of the rear wheels. Now, that is going to be true on whatever trike brand you're riding out there. If you jerk the bars like this and you're moving, it's going to jostle and you may feel the wheel come up a little bit. So if you can avoid it, try to keep it at a casual pace. I know e-trikes can go faster, but be aware of what's ahead of you. Try to just be mindful of not jerking the handlebars and looking for obstacles that you may have to avoid. Again, trikes are not going to be as nimble as a two-wheel bike, and they're not going to respond the same way that a two-wheel bike would if you quickly turn the handlebars to avoid an obstacle. Okay, number two, you never want to accelerate into a turn on a trike. Now, on a two-wheel bicycle, when you're going into a turn, you do want to accelerate to some extent because you want to keep the bike upright on two wheels. So it's important to maintain your momentum into a turn on a two-wheel bike.

On an electric trike, you want to slow down into the turn and accelerate out of the turn. What's going to happen is if you come accelerating into a turn on a trike, you will feel one of the rear wheels lift off the ground. It's inevitable. So you want to make sure that you accelerate out of the turn, not into the turn. Very important to keep you safe. Now, this is also counterintuitive to riding a two-wheel bike, so you need to get used to that and understanding, and once you get a feel for it, you will start to realize, or you'll start to get the hang of exactly how to ride and how to go and how to move. Okay, and the third and last thing that you never want to do on an electric trike is push the throttle all the way straight out of the gates. Now I see this commonly on all e-bikes when I'm with a lot of first-time riders, whether they're on e-trikes or e-bikes. They get on and I say, oh, here's the throttle the first thing they do is they take their thumb and they just push it down, right? This is like a gas pedal on a car. You jump into your car, you don't just slam your foot straight to the ground and accelerate the car and the car just takes off, right? But for some reason, instinctually, a lot of people get in front of the e-bikes and they see the throttle and say they want to push it. They want to push it all the way, right? So, don't do that. And even when you get used to it, don't compress it all the way.

It's just like a gas pedal on a car. Gradual, right? Gradual. Just ease into it. Let the trike gain momentum. There are a couple of things that can happen. One, you can lose your balance and get discombobulated or you can fly off the bike if you just push it and accelerate. Two, you also could burn out the motor, right? These motors are not designed to go from zero to 60 in two seconds, right? It's not a Tesla kind of thing. So, if you push that throttle down and that motor tries to, you know, kick you fast, it's possible if, you know, based on how heavy the rider is, that you may just be trying to create too much watt output from the motor and all of a sudden you may burn out a wire or burn out a motor. Now, unlikely, but I have had that happen to me actually in situations where I've been on a hill before I was testing a sample and I just hit the throttle, and boom, the motor cut out because I tried to get it to work harder than it was capable of working. So for the maintenance of your electric trike, gradually on the throttle, let it get up to speed, and work it up to speed. Don't just slam it down on your thumb. We would never do that in our car. So don't do it on your e-trike.

Just remember these three things when riding an electric trike so you can stay safe out there. You can also reach out to us at theteam@sixthreezero.com or call us at 310-982-2877. In addition to that, we have a 30-day test ride strike policy. If you don't love it in the first 30 days, send it back. No questions asked, no money out of your pocket. In addition to that, we're going to warrant everything for one year. If anything goes wrong in the first year, we're going to take care of parts and labor to ensure you keep riding. And lastly, pop over to Facebook and join our sixthreezero Facebook Pedalers group. You're going to find over 7,000 members in there. You can post in the group, ask existing members questions about their bikes, and their e-trikes, and see how they like it. And when you have yours, post in the group, and make friends, it's tons of fun. So thanks for sticking around and don't forget, it's your journey or experience. Enjoy the ride.