Review: Phoenix's urban sprawl is no match for Lectric's new e-bike

As Tim DeClaire rolled a black e-bike up to my front door in July, he made a lofty guarantee.

“There’s something we in the industry call the e-bike smile,” DeClaire, the marketing director for the Phoenix-based e-bike company Lectric, said. “When people ride on an e-bike for the first time, they can’t help but smile.”

That charmingly cheesy piece of information echoed in my mind as I tested out the company’s new Xpress 750 e-bike. A souped-up version of the regular Xpress, the Xpress 750 packs twice as much battery power as its predecessor for up to 60 miles of powered cycling on a single charge. It costs $1,398 — nearly $400 more than the regular Xpress — though comparable e-bikes from Denago, Aventon and Himiway run anywhere from $1,700 to $2,500.

As DeClaire guided the bike to my front step, I wondered how much of a match it would be for Phoenix’s streets and heat. But as I sailed through my central Phoenix neighborhood on my initial ride, cautiously boosting the bike to its maximum pedal-assist speed of 28 mph, there it was.

The e-bike smile.

Having been raised on beach cruisers, I wondered whether the Xpress 750 could change my long-held view that e-bikes are an unnecessary but innocuous take on the classic, leg-powered bicycle. Taking advantage of our canals, looping park paths, growing bike lanes and spread-out roadways, I braved July's triple-digit weather to find out.

I'd mentally prepared for a daunting first ride, but the bike surprised me with its ease of use and smooth acceleration. The Xpress 750's motor was easy to handle and whisper-quiet. According to Letric, that’s owed to the new Stealth M24 motor, which makes the Xpress four times quieter than the company's previous models.

Each of the bike's five pedal-assist modes gently ushers you forward, allowing you to reach faster speeds quickly and gracefully. I started at P0, Lectric's zero-assist pedaling mode. Once I'd adjusted to the feel of the bike and the sensitivity of the hand brakes, I cautiously bumped it up to P1, the pedal-assist mode that maxes out at 9 mh. I waited until I reached a long stretch of road free of speed bumps and obstacles, then upped the bike to P5 — the legal maximum offering up to 28 mph of assistance.

It was a smooth transition thanks to the Xpress line's torque sensor, a feature that Lectric cofounder and CEO Levi Conlow said e-bike enthusiasts have been requesting for a while. Torque sensors are expensive to put on e-bikes and often require a rider to keep pedaling hard to maintain their speed. To deliver one that wouldn't exhaust customers (or drain their wallets), Lectric developed software that "feels" how fast you're traveling and maintains a steady speed that matches your active pedal-assist mode.

It certainly makes for a cycling experience that feels natural, whether you're picking through traffic on your way to happy hour or flying down a dedicated bike path. The Xpress 750 also comes with a classic thumb throttle for pedal-free get-up-and-go. Like most e-bike first-timers, I found the throttle particularly useful when I began to cross an intersection after a red light. Instead of awkwardly finding my balance and grinding the pedals into motion, I could gently push on the throttle and be on my way.

Like the rest of Lectric's e-bikes, the Xpress 750 features a display between the handlebars that shows you your speed, battery status and pedal-assist mode when the bike is turned on. Pressing the bike's power button also toggles between your trip time, odometer and voltage. Though fairly standard across the industry, it was one of my favorite parts of riding the Xpress 750 around Phoenix. Not only did my speed wow me again and again, but the built-in odometer precluded the need for a smartphone or watch app that would track my trip length for me.

"E-bikes make a fun weekend activity, but quickly you realize that there are all these micro-adventures available to you," Conlow told me. "Trips to the grocery store become a lot more fun."

First Phoenix, then the world

Lectric is a big name in e-bikes, selling about 20% of the 1 million e-bikes sold in the United States each year. It’s also a relatively new company, started in Conlow’s North Phoenix apartment in 2019.

That year, Conlow — a Minnesota transplant and Grand Canyon University graduate with a degree in entrepreneurial and small business operations — founded the company with lifelong friend and mechanical engineer Robby Deziel. Lectric was the duo's attempt to bridge the fun and practicality of e-bikes with affordability and versatility, neither of which Conlow and Deziel had seen in the market.

Conlow and Deziel showcased e-bikes at Maricopa County Home & Garden shows and advertised them on Craigslist, and Lectric quickly gained momentum. Then the duo unveiled the Lectric XP — as in “experience points," named for the founders’ mutual love of video games. The bike was an instant success, garnering more than $1 million in sales every month.

As Lectric grew from a humble garage operation to a full-fledged e-bike developer and retailer, Conlow and Deziel scrambled to hire friends from GCU to help with the business. Today, the company employs more than 130 people, most of whom work at the showroom on North Phoenix's aptly named Utopia Road.

"Our customers tend to be anything but the traditional cyclist," Conlow told me. "I call them bike-curious. They're curious about getting into cycling, but they might not want to go into an intimidating bike shop, or they don't feel confident in their ability to cycle for a long time. That's how they come across Lectric. They discover they can ride to the pharmacy, pick up their kid from school or commute to and from work without putting in the legwork that a traditional bicycle would require to get up to 20-plus miles per hour."

Though most of us might imagine e-bike riders zipping between skyscrapers and shopping malls, Conlow said many Lectric riders live outside the city. "Many of our customers are in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix — but we really kill it in rural America. You don't need a local bike shop to buy a Lectric bike, and all of our bikes take under a minute to assemble. You can just get riding."

Should you get an Xpress 750?

If you do live in the sprawling concrete metropolis of greater Phoenix, is the Xpress 750 the right thing for you? That depends.

For some, a bicycle is a means to an end. Cownlow claims those who don't want to put the (literal) legwork into a fully self-powered bike commute enjoy the assistance an e-bike offers. In warmer months, this also means cyclists are less likely to be drenched in sweat when they get to work. People whose bodies aren't quite up to regular cycling also tend to appreciate the boost provided by an e-bike's motor.

But in 2017, fewer than 1% of Phoenix commuters regularly rode a bike to work. While the city has added new bike lanes since then — barely squeezing Phoenix onto CoworkingCafe's top 20 bike-friendly cities list — our hot summers and urban sprawl make it challenging to commute on two wheels year-round.

Instead, many e-bike owners use their bikes to supplement rather than replace their car- or public transport-based commutes. Instead of taking the bus or driving to lunch with a friend, they'll take their e-bike. When point A and point B are just a few miles away from each other, the typical e-bike gets the job done. With a high-capacity battery, bikes such the Xpress 750 stretch that distance, allowing for dozens of miles of travel without recharging.

According to DeClaire, many of Lectric's customers are RV dwellers who use their e-bikes to explore the areas they visit. Strapped onto an RV's exterior or tucked into the living space, e-bikes provide road trippers with a way to travel around new spaces without the need for gas. They just have to check whether their desired trail is e-bike friendly.

Personally, I'm accustomed to those languorous beach cruiser rides that focus more on the sun on your face than on the sport of cycling or the destination at the end. With the Xpress 750's P0 and P1 modes, those meandering rides are still possible, but it's clear the bike's priority isn't cruising. Lectric's website says the Xpress 750's seat "adds comfort so you can ride longer," but it isn't quite what I'd call comfortable, and the suspension and city tires don't afford as much cushion as bikes that are leisure-focused.

With Lectric's Xpress 750, the destination and not the journey is the point. But if you don't mind dropping $1,400 to get there, you can have a little fun along the way.