Simplest Electric Trike Controls for Technology Hesitant Seniors

If you are somebody who is shopping for an electric trike or you already have one and you're nervous about getting onto an electric trike for the first time, and how to utilize it or how to use it, I'm going to walk you through step by step today how to operate an electric tricycle. Now, most electric tricycles are going to have five levels of pedal assist and also the ability to press a throttle to go. So, how does a pedal assist work? So I want to show you because I have a couple of different examples. So if you see right here on the handlebars, this is where you turn your electric on right here. These up and down arrows dictate the level of assistance that you have to increase the assistance and down. Now, I want to walk you over to this trike right here as well. This is another example of a display. You can see here that you have the up and the down and the power button; they're all contained on a smaller display here. So you may have the display in the middle with your controls for the pedal assist here, or you may have the controls all integrated into one, or you may have the display and the controls in the middle here as well. In terms of operation, they operate the same. Now, one thing I want to tell you is that some batteries have on-off switches as well. So to engage the battery, you have to make sure the power switch is in the on position. You have your five levels of assistance. For changing the level of assistance, you have the choice of either doing it while you're stopped or while you're riding. Totally up to you. Now, if you're not comfortable doing it while you're riding, then start at a lower assistance level. You could just cruise on that level. If you get used to it more, then as you're riding, the idea is that you can take your thumb over here and while you're riding, you can shift it.

Let's say you're going up a hill. You need more assistance. You can go up. And when you're done with the hill, you can bring it down. Your throttle can either be a twist throttle or a thumb throttle. This is a thumb throttle. I'll show you the twist throttle here in a second. To engage this throttle, you simply push, and you will find the e-trike starts to move. Now, if it's at level zero, nothing will happen. You need to be at least at the assistance level one for the throttle. To work. Now, let me show you over here. Again, this is a twist throttle, so a little bit different. On this one, you're just going to twist it, and then the throttle will engage. If you want to use the pedal assist, all you do is put it into the level you want here. You see, I just have it in one, and from there, you just start pedaling, and there are two types of sensors for the electric motor to start. There's something called a cadence sensor or a torque sensor. A cadence sensor has a sensor down here. When you turn the pedals, the pedals go in front of the sensor, which sends a message to the motor to engage and turn on. So as long as you're pedaling and passing that sensor, the motor will stay engaged. The other kind of sensor is called a torque sensor, which measures the torque of the pedals and how much torque you're putting on the pedals.

From there, it will send a signal to the motor to assist with how much torque you're putting on the pedals. I have it in level one. From there, there are two ways to start going. If you can't start the pedals yourself, you can simply twist the throttle here and then start pedaling. And then once you back off the throttle and you're pedaling, the motor will kick in. So let me demonstrate, I'm gonna twist and then the trike starts moving, and then from there I can start pedaling. And now that it senses me pedaling, it's assisting me. With a thumb throttle or a twist throttle, when you first start pressing it, initial contact is not going to give you power. This is what I've found on every e-trike throttle that exists out there. It's not sensitive to the point that when you touch it there's a little bit now you can watch I have it in one here so I have to I've even got it pushed in a little bit okay so now already with it if you can see how much I'm compressing that already you can see even to here nothing happens and then a little bit more it starts going the other thing is is don't do a quick jerk a lot of people like to do this and then they tell me oh it's too sensitive doesn't work well. You don't want to just go like that. You have to ease into it, right? And then find the point at which it starts moving, and when you feel it start moving, don't jerk your thumb back. Stay with it. Because you're going to get a real jerky sensation if you're just pushing like that. So let me jump on here because it's going to be a little easier for me.  I'm going to go ahead and just keep my thumb moving, okay? That's another key if you're trying to keep your thumb moving, and when you feel it, either keep going if you want to go faster or just stay in that position.

Now, once you find the point where the acceleration happens, like I said, you can either stay there and let it go at that speed or continue to move it forward slowly if you want to go faster. The other thing I will say is once you get to that point of movement, at that point, if you press the throttle down, you won't get a jerky feeling. And it actually will still be a smooth takeoff. So you really want to have this part be slow. And then you get to the point of... Oh, I have the brake. Then you get to the point of moving. Then you can pretty much press the throttle down. And it'll accelerate, but it won't be too... jerky like I said. And if you wanna use the reverse option on your trike, same thing, you wanna go nice and easy. There you go. The same concept here, okay? So we have the throttle right here, and just twist, the idea with these is you twist towards you to go. Now, the same thing is true with twist throttles, there's a little bit of play here. Okay. So let me make sure my brakes aren't on. Okay. So you can see here I can twist. Okay. So not as much, but right about there, I can still twist that, and it's not going. So again, if you get on an e-trike for the first time with a twist throttle, be prepared that you have to kind of ease, and then you're going to feel it go. Okay. The same is true. You don't want to do this jerky thing like this. A lot of people get on, and the first thing I do is just jerk it back, and they expect it's going to go. But you can't pull this forward, right? You've got to keep this at a consistent twist to get that speed like so. And my electric turns off, and now I'm ready to store it or charge my battery. They're simple to ride, and not that complicated if you can just take it one step at a time and not get super overwhelmed by the idea of being on an electric product.