5 reasons why e-bikes are suitable for kids

E-biking adults are now part of society&#;s grand tapestry &#; a common feature in picture-perfect mountain scenery as well as in our towns and cities. But the brilliance of e-bikes isn't exclusively reserved for grown-ups &#; kids can also get in on the action.
Do you have a bike-mad child? Perfect &#; that&#;s the first hurdle. But we appreciate it is not always the case; here&#;s where e-bikes work their magic. E-bikes unlock a new sort of leisure time for the whole family. Keep reading to find out what it is exactly that makes an e-bike such a good option for your child too.

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1.) A child-specific e-bike

Having a suitable e-bike is fundamental to a successful e-adventure with your child. An e-bike that's designed to meet a child&#;s needs and abilities will instill them with the necessary confidence and ability to keep the bike under their control. Alongside the e-bike's construction and components, there are other elements that need to be child-specific, including the motor. But what does a child-specific motor look like?

• Lightweight : the drive unit, consisting of the motor and battery, needs to be as compact and lightweight as possible so that your child is able to control the bike in every situation. For particularly small or young children, this is even more important.
  
• Sensitivity : children don&#;t have the same leg strength as adults. As a result, the motor needs to be tuned with finer sensitivity to respond to their pedal stroke.
  
• Easy does it : the power output from the motor needs to be moderate and balanced so it won&#;t overwhelm your child or catch them off-guard. For this reason, the motor on our woom UP has a delicate, well-considered 55 Newton meter torque, which is ideal for children.

When it comes to safety , two things are key:

• Firstly, the motor has to cut off above a certain speed.
  
• Secondly, efficient, powerful disc brakes are a must &#; your child will be going further and faster with an e-bike.

2.) Higher, further!

Imagine that you have got a family bike ride planned. You have all decided on where to go and the route is full of variety with a great destination. Nice! Except&#; it is not quite going as planned. You underestimate one of the climbs and its steep gradients make a huge dent in your child&#;s motivation. They wail: &#;I can&#;t do it! It&#;s too steep! It hurts!&#; In terms of difficulty, you realise it was a big ask for your child&#;s ability and fitness. Shame because the route was so perfect otherwise!
It is not easy to create a route that ticks all the boxes for a child-friendly tour &#; especially not in hilly or mountainous areas, where a certain amount of climbing cannot be avoided. However, e-bikes provide a solution and relegate this problem to the past!

Whether it&#;s a long bike ride, a biking holiday, or just for day-to-day use, e-bikes open up new perspectives and expand your whole family&#;s sphere of activity :

• Your child conquers mountain stages and climbs even become a source of fun! Kids with advanced skills can work up to riding uphill trails on their e-bike too. Once up high, the landscape changes, offering unforgettable views over the valleys, lakes and other peaks. Then, once you point the bikes back downhill, it&#;s all about having a good time. For beginners and pros alike, flow and fun take center-stage on the descents.
  
• Progress is faster , so you&#;ll be able to fit in more fun throughout the day. Imagine the exciting destinations that are now within riding distance on all-day weekend rides ?
  
• Bike holidays are all about exploring, all day, every day &#; aches and pains from exertion are yesterday&#;s news. Your child will get to explore new locations and landscapes, including awe-inspiring high Alpine environments.
  
• Whether in your town or countryside, e-bikes are a solution for everyday routes that are too far or too steep with a conventional bike. An alternative to car use, e-bikes are a significantly greener, healthier and cost-effective way to move around.

3.) Shared adventures

For parents that ride, nothing beats sharing the love for mountain biking with your kids. But when they&#;re on a conventional pedal bike, it&#;s fair to say that their physical capabilities may be a little limited &#; particularly if you are riding off-road. This is what makes e-bikes such a great leveler; e-bikes are able to equalize the different levels of fitness in the family, so that every adventure can be shared. Just imagine how tough it would be for a child on a standard bike to keep up with experienced parents on e-bikes!

And speaking of adventure, has your child fallen in love with shredding trails? If that's the case, it&#;s likely that you will have spent a lot of time queueing for gondolas at bike parks. Or perhaps you have had to tow your child up the mountain with their bike hitched to yours? Now imagine how this scenario would work with an e-bike &#; your adventure-hungry child will be in a position to tackle every uphill with their own knobbly tires before dropping into a cool, grin-inducing descent.

There's a Wired article circulating the internet, warning parents to not put their children on electric bikes. "Yes, they&#;re fun, fast, and convenient. But motorized vehicles are not for children," the author states, pointing to the tragic death of a 12-year-old girl who sustained fatal injuries after she and her 11-year-old friend crashed while riding a Rad Power Bike e-bike in . 

The author is not wrong to be alarmed, but there's more to the story. My son&#;s e-bike has brought a lot of joy and mobility to our family, and I believe that with the right setup there are a lot of great reasons for your kid and your family to enjoy an e-bike as well. 

It's worth mentioning that rules and regulations on age of rider will differ between country and state. For example, in the UK you can only ride an electric bike if you are aged 14 or over. This article was written and produced in the U.S. where rules differ not only per state but also based on the bike's max assist and whether or not it has a throttle. 

Why your child should have an e-bike

The number one reason to get your kid an e-bike is because they are fun. Riding bikes is already tons of fun and adding an electric motor only adds to that feeling of joy. This is often cited as the reason why adults should consider an e-bike, kids aren't different. A good e-bike still feels like riding a bike but now hills are easy and you can ride much farther than you might have otherwise gone. Don&#;t worry though, that doesn&#;t mean your kid won&#;t get exercise.

In fact, you should get your kid an e-bike because it's great exercise. This point is one that parents frequently worry about but the belief that e-bikes don't provide quality exercise is unsubstantiated. What studies show is that people who ride e-bikes tend to ride farther than they otherwise would have. The net effect is: &#;physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists." Again, kids aren't different. Give them an e-bike and they'll be out riding a bike. 

For that same reason, e-bikes are also confidence-building. Being a new cyclist, adult or child, is all about understanding what you are capable of. Everyone starts tentatively and takes only short trips. As those trips grow longer, it builds an understanding of, and confidence in, your own capability. E-bikes do the same but it's a faster process with fewer barriers to entry. Building confidence in kids is a great reason to consider putting your child on an e-bike.

If you want to learn more, please visit our website ChiSure.

I also have to be honest and say there are some very selfish, and personal, reasons that lead me to believe kids should have e-bikes. Simply said, I love spending time with my kid and I hope to share one of the greatest gifts of my life &#;cycling&#; with my son. My guess is that a lot of parents out there will share those same desires.

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The challenge e-bikes solve for parents

Unfortunately, as I'm sure parents will understand, my son doesn't exactly appreciate my reasons. He loves having fun on the bike but playing video games is a ton of fun also. Given that he has no particular appreciation for exercise, he is often just as happy to play video games as ride a bike. It's not something I generally mind but it doesn't help gift him my love of biking and he gets no exercise. I'd also like the opportunity to connect with him, at least sometimes, without a controller in hand. 

What an e-bike does is align parental motivations with children&#;s motivations. E-bikes lower the barrier of entry to riding a bike, generally resulting in more fun and less work. As a parent, this allows you to build the foundation of riding a bike through fun while also making sure your kid gets exercise. Add in the fact that you'll be riding farther and spending more time together, it's hard to find fault with the idea &#; as long as considerations are made.

A quality kids specific bike will have, among other things, brakes levers sized appropriately for small hands

(Image credit: Josh Ross)

The problem with kids on e-bikes

Not every e-bike is suitable for a child. In fact, most of them are not. You need a quality bike that is sized appropriately for a child.  If you want to know what that means, just look to well-known brands such as Islabikes or Woom. Brands like that sell bikes that consider the needs of a child in every detail, including handlebars with a small enough diameter to fit small hands and easy to reach brake levers. Just as important, the bike weight is appropriate for a small body. A good kid's electric bike has to start with a good kid's bike, which is a bike that a kid can comfortably handle. 

With that solid base, it's time to consider the electric part of the system. The simplest part of that consideration is that everything stays small. You don't want to start with a lightweight bike and then add overly heavy batteries and motors. Even more importantly though, you don't want your kids zooming around at 28 mph. A max assist of 12 mph is plenty. You are looking for a system that lets the bike continue to feel like a bike, only a little easier to pedal &#; like riding around with a tail wind. 

Bottom line, whatever system you end up with, make sure it's safe and appropriate for the age of your child. It should have quality components and be light enough a child can easily handle it. While there is a legitimate fear around e-bikes for kids, much of it stems from a lack of understanding about e-bikes. The category is vast and you need to know what to look for. Not every e-bike is right for kids but there are choices that can be fun, confidence building and safe.

Both the bike and electronics need to stay small and light so your child can handle riding safely

(Image credit: Josh Ross)

My own experience with a kids e-bike

In case it's not clear, my son is a happy e-bike user. The bike we chose is an urban cargo bike called the Woom Now. It's the perfect size for him and the design is upright. The front wheel is smaller than the rear and it tucks in close. Not only is the whole design perfectly sized to him but it's an inherently stable and easy to control system. The Woom Now is also not an e-bike from the factory.

Although Woom offers a complete e-bike for sale, it's not right for our family. The Woom Up is a mountain bike that dials in the perfect amount of assistance for a child but it's still a mountain bike. We don't typically drive to ride bikes and my son prefers to ride on paved surfaces anyway. It's also nice that the added stability from the design of the Now helps him feel more confident. 

To make it electric I paired it with an e-bike conversion kit. The system puts all the major pieces into a compact package and I mounted that on the Woom's front cargo rack. As with many e-bike conversion kits, the motor is in the front wheel so that's just a matter of getting the right size and swapping it out. The system won't work with a thru-axle so the fact that the Now has a quick release front axle again adds to the reason why it's a good bike for conversion.

Of course, adding a motor to a quick release fork that wasn't designed for it could be dangerous. It could also be dangerous, as discussed, to set up an 11-year old with a high-speed electric bike and no supervision. In this case, the two worries align. This is not a high-powered system. There's no throttle and the max speed is well under 20 mph. Even that's a little faster than ideal though and, to get around that, we've lowered the assistance level. The final product leaves the max assisted speed very similar to the 12 mph found on the Woom Up and torque is very low. When pedalling, there's assistance that slowly ramps up before tapering off. Going the conversation route means it's a little less slick than a complete system but it also means flexibility for our needs. 

Since we've had it working, it's been a great opportunity for us to bond. On previous rides I often found it hard to stay upright while moving at a speed that worked for him. He's certainly capable of going faster but he's not always motivated to do so. With that issue off the table, we have a lot more fun. I can slowly pedal, he can keep up, and we can chat. There's no more begging him to go just a bit farther so we can get to an arbitrary place. Instead of focusing on pedaling and distance, the focus is on enjoying time together. 

Of course, you'll likely notice my experience is still focused on a shared activity. That's where my kiddo still is but, when he's ready to head out the door on his own, I'm not worried. I mean, I have plenty to worry about but none of it involves his bike. Yes, he has an e-bike but it's nothing like the descriptions you read in other articles. The brakes are good quality, and it's not overly heavy, or fast. His bike still feels like a kids bike, it just takes him a bit farther than his legs might on their own. Right now we ride together and build the skills for the future. My hope is that his bike helps instil a lifelong association between bikes and both happiness and freedom. 

Contact us to discuss your requirements of kids electric motorbikes. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.