We’ve also put together a guide for new electric bike riders that details each step you should take before you ride. This guide is designed to make the decision to buy the best e-bike for riders of all types as simple and stress-free as possible. We know an e-bike is a big purchase, and we want you to be comfortable, happy, and stoked when you hop on your new purchase. We’re confident that in no time at all you’ll be zipping around town, pedaling on a path, or motoring down a trail in the quiet woods.
It’s a heavy city cruiser with a little bit of power bolted on, driven by a battery pack that makes no sense except as a way to gather press for a particular type of battery. The motor can draw over 200 watts at peak output, so the battery pack is good for less than half an hour of full assist before it’s stone dead. Fortunately, it doesn’t run at full assist all the time. On the right is the shifter for the Shimano Nexus 8 speed rear hub.
The motor driving this bike offers 180 watts nominal power and up to 250 watts peak. It’s a planetary geared design by Protanium and it offers good torque while keeping weight down. The motor is quiet during operation and blends in with the rest of the bike. One downside to a front mounted hub motor is that it increases the steering weight and changes the ride quality a little bit but the impact is minimized here due to the smaller size of the motor.
This versatility gives the IC4/C6 a leg up on the competition in this metric. By the mid-1970s, competition from lightweight and feature-rich imported bikes was making strong inroads in the budget-priced and beginners’ market. This feature, attractive to older riders, soon found its way to other Schwinn models, especially those intended for senior citizens. You might see the occasional “e-bike” (and we use the term loosely here) blowing through city traffic at speeds of 30 or 40 mph or more.
The fast charging capability makes it seem like it was focused on fleet use, perhaps for urban delivery. But it’s just not a good bike for this – it’s heavy and slow. It doesn’t make much sense to me for an electric bike – the focus on fast charging and a high power density chemistry on a bike that really doesn’t need much power is hard to understand. The only thing I can think is that they hoped it would become a delivery fleet bike or something – but a decent delivery rider would absolutely smoke this bike in any terrain. It makes sense, if schwinn beach cruiser you’re Toshiba and want to advertise this fancy battery chemistry you’re gearing up to produce, though. Feature rich, relatively affordable, light weight electric bike from ~2009 well suited for city use.
They really thought out the balance, accessories and drive modes to make it simple and practical to use. The price was great and the components were built to endure. I like that they included little things like water bottle mounting points that so many ebikes skip (in part due to midframe batteries).
Considering there is an aluminum alloy suspension fork on the front of this bike, I’m glad the motor isn’t too powerful or it miay negatively impact travel and perhaps even weaken this part. For that ride, just getting the feel of the bike, I headed for a local paved rail-trail. The bike offers a seven-speed gear range, with a derailleur and double-trigger shifter from Microshift. The rear hub motor offers assist levels of 0-5, with 0 being no assist and 5 being the maximum assist. On the mostly flat trail, the bike rolled easily enough that I could have pedaled its whole length without using any assist at all, just shifting the gears to accommodate the gentle rise and fall of the path.