Espin e-bikes

I was looking for a decent e-bike for my wife without spending a huge amount of money. She doesn't ride that much so I was looking for something around $1500 or less. I like the look of the higher end bikes with the battery in the frame also 48V battery and Bafang motor. 

 I stumbled across these guys:  https://www.espinbikes.com/    

I watched some reviews and talked to some bike people and it seemed like they had a pretty good bike for around $1500. I tried to convince my wife to get a "step-through" Flow model but for some reason, she liked the Espin Sport. 

This Youtube reviewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lU8dgo9OZg had a link to $150 off. Hopefully if you read this it's still good. It paid all my sales tax at the time, bringing the bike cost to just about $1400 even. Espin seems to be a pretty small place in the bay area of California. Like a lot of bike places during the pandemic, the bike was back ordered. As I recall it was about a 4 to 6 week wait. They hit their website advertised delivery estimate pretty close. The delivery driver left the box leaning on the house and I dragged it inside.

Obviously some assembly required. My wife and I are fairly particular when it comes to any sort of scratches or flaws. I have to say, this thing was packed well and didn't have a single mark or scuff on it!

 

The assembly is pretty much what you would expect. You have to put on the front wheel, pedals, handlebars. It's all pretty straight forward and they supply the allen wrenches.

 

It doesn't take that long, even if you're taking your time to take pictures!

 

The bike is built really solid like a tank but rides really nice and stable. That rear hub motor kicks in fast and you need to learn when and how to use your "power features". My wife isn't a cyclist but she learns how things work pretty fast and got the hang of riding it really quick.

 Loves the "throttle" maybe a little too much!. You do want to watch the assist and throttle 

when you're in a turn but I think that counts for all of the e-bikes. Overall, I don't 

have any regrets with this bike, it's a lot of fun and built well.

(I weighed it and it came in at 56Lbs!).

 Note on service: I did contact Espin with an issue with an intermittent headlight. 

It took a few e-mails back and forth to work out the sending me a spare. It was a bit frustrating

waiting a day between e-mails for a reply and then to finally get the replacement light. 

The process went on for a few weeks. I'm glad it wasn't something functional with the bike

because that customer service process seems really slow.