Guide & Tips For Buying Electric Bicycle, Scooter, Bike & Ebike

Current Australian Laws

For all of Australia's states and territories: A person may drive a power-assisted pedal cycle without a driver's license or learner's permit. A power-assisted pedal cycle may be ridden on public roads without registration or insurance. "Power-assisted pedal cycle" means a pedal cycle that has one or more auxillary propulsion motors with a combined power output not exceeding 200 watts.

Before You Buy

• Check with seller or carefully read the description and view the photos of the vehicle to make sure that the vehicle can fit the classification of "power-assisted pedal cycle". Meaning the vehicle has:
1. A working pedal mechanism. This can be an attachment or a permanent fixture of the vehicle. These pedals must be connected to the wheel through a direct chain or belt driven mechanism to provide propulsion. A non propelling system (or fake pedals) is illegal as it does not fit the purpose of a bicycle.
2. A motor (electric or combustion) with maximum output not exceeding the legal limit of 200 watts.
• Beware of sellers selling non pedal version and claim that the vehicle can be legally ridden on public roads without license and registration. These non pedal vehicle cannot be legally ridden and riders can be issued with court summons for using a vehicle without license and registration on public roads.
• Make sure the vehicle is fitted with a "brushless motor". These brushless motors are maintenance free and are more smooth, efficient & reliable than brushed motors. Some sellers wont state what type of motor they sell because they use the cheaper less reliable brushed motors on their vehicle. To see comparison between brushless & brushed motor go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor.
• Make sure the bike itself is fully assembled (or 99% assembled) in the box. Some bikes the user must assemble the entire front wheel & suspension assembly. This could be extremely dangerous for those with little or no mechanical experience. An incorrectly assembled bike can cause serious accidents which may result in serious injuries or worse. Check with the seller and ask exactly what needs to be assembled.
• Make sure the seller can supply you with all the spare parts of the vehicle for the future when needed.

Things To Be Aware Of

• Beware of sellers making false claims like "recharge while you ride". This is highly doubtful as a standard pedal bike light running off a generator on the rim can only produce 5-10 watts of light power let alone 200 watts needed for the motor. How fast must you pedal or go down hill to generate enough power for the 200 watts motor?
• Beware of sellers claiming "highest quality" product, yet they dont dare to offer any warranty.
• Beware of sellers advertising a rediculous RRP to mislead you on the actual savings you are getting.
• Beware of sellers of low feedback score. This could mean that they were previously suspended from Ebay and have registered a new ID. Reasons for suspension could be repeated shill bidding (seller bidding on his/hers own items) and non delivery of item sold.
• Beware of sellers hiding buyers ID. This is to conceal shill bidding activities from their other Ebay accounts.
• To prevent your bid been shilled by the seller, wait for the very last minute (even second) to place your bid. This would allow the seller no time to react to your bid and so cannot place their own bid to increase your purchase price.
• Check the previous/current items bid history for the folowing:
• if you see the same bidder placing many small increment bids on the item, then it is 99% likely that the seller is using other IDs to bid up the price. See example.
• look for users with status "Not a registered user", this means both they and seller were suspended by Ebay for shill bidding. See example.
• watch out for users who regularly retracts their own bids. This is because the seller uses another ID to shill bid, however they over bidded the highest bidder and do not want to win their own items so retracts their own bids. See example.
• Beware of sellers using multiple Ebay ID to sell their products (usually their item description and layout are identical or very similar).
• Beware of sellers charging high delivery cost. Do your own delivery research and see if you can organise your own delivery for cheaper.
• Check feedbacks of previous customers who bought the same type of electric bicycle from the seller by visiting http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/item-fb. Enter the sellers Ebay ID and the keyword of the item you want to search eg. "bicycle" or "scooter". This will allows you to read specifically the feedbacks the seller received from buyers who bought the "bicycle" or "scooter" that you are interested in buying.
• Search for all sellers negative feedbacks by visiting http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs and enter their Ebay ID. This will give you an idea of what the sellers bad trading habits are.