BODY POSITION: Sport
SUGGESTED USE: Neighborhood, Urban, MTB
TOTAL WEIGHT: 90 lbs
The Addmotor MOTAN Electric Bicycles Mountain Fat Tire 26 Inch 750W machine is an urban cruiser that will handle extreme conditions if asked.
Just remember that very cold conditions are bad for battery range!
For urban and neighbourhood riding you like a machine that looks – and does – the business.
The MOTAN fat tire electric bike does that in every way, with its 4” tires announcing your presence and the square-tubed frame shouting obnoxiousness.
The colour scheme of grey and bright orange shout to the world that this machine has attitude, and that’s why you’re riding it – to be the boss!
This bike has announced a change in direction for the electric fat bike as a genre – this could be a genuine disruptor that brings fat bikes from mud and snow onto the urban jungle.
How?
It has been designed from the ground up as an urban cruiser.
Rivals may have to rush to catch up but when they do we may see a lot of high quality urban cruiser fat tire electric bikes on the road in years to come.
Addmotor MOTAN Electric Bicycle – Review
Raw power!
For moving your gear around the fat ire electric bike has a beefy pannier rack.
Given most guys are at around the 200lb range this can carry a decent load and you still won’t hit the weight limit of 300lbs!
Its 750 Watt motor allows even a bigger person to get decent speeds and power out of the fat tire electric bike.
On throttle alone you can hit speeds of 23mph though using the Pedal Assist mode you can get higher speeds while still receiving a push from the Bafang rear hub motor.
Components make the beast
There are other elements of this machine that make it a good urban cruiser – the day/night control screen is good round the clock and it also has a mobile device charging port for keeping you in touch with the world as you boss around town!
The front and rear mudguards add to the attitude but will comfortably prevent a skunk-stripe of mud on your back and clothes should you be riding in the wet or mud.
The Boss doesn’t look like a skunk does he?!
A quality Shimano Acera drivetrain and Tektro disc brakes add in to what is a quality fat bike.
A final note, but by all means important is that this machine can be ridden on soft sand, mud and snow thanks to its soft, wide tires that are designed to handle the soft stuff.
Just one thing – batteries are far less efficient in very cold weather so in the big freeze after the snow, do be aware that the listed 55 mile range will be far lower.
Some reservations
Addmotor have made a great fat tire urban cruiser e-bike without doubt.
Fat bikes by virtue of the extra metal and extra power required to move that metal are necessarily heavier.
You won’t (hopefully) be throwing this over walls or fences (not recommended use!) and with the power of the motor you won’t notice this much.
That aside the worst problem is the reports of poor customer service from MOTAN for issues with their bikes.
Every manufacturer of whatever quality will make the odd dud.
It’s how they handle the customer when that customer has problems – if they deal with it well then they will be OK.
This is why rival companies have invested heavily in their customer service operations.
Addmotor need to do the same or they won’t punch at the weight they truly deserve with the quality of the machines like this one!
This is why we give it a rating of 4.5/5.
Specs
- BODY POSITION: Sport position
- SUGGESTED USE: Neighborhood, Urban, MTB
- ELECTRIC BIKE CLASS: 750W
- TOTAL WEIGHT: 90 lbs
- BATTERY WEIGHT: 17 lbs
- FRAME MATERIAL: Aluminum 6061
- GEOMETRY MEASUREMENTS: Example: 18″ Seat Tube Length, 20″ Reach, 16.5″ Stand Over Height, 30.5″ Minimum Saddle Height, 27″ Width, 67″ Length, 44″ Wheelbase, Minimum Seat Height from Pedal 25.25″ Maximum Seat Height from Pedal 36.5″
- GEARING DETAILS: Shimano Acera M360
- BRAKE DETAILS: Tektro MD-M300 180mm front/rear rotors
- WHEEL SIZES: 26@
- TIRE DETAILS: Kenda 26″ X 4.0″ 30 TPI Fat Tire
Pros and Cons
Every machine has its strengths and weaknesses – this MOTAN 750W fat tire electric bike’s worst is in the customer service.
Let’s firstly look at the pros:
Pros
- Fun to ride!
- High powered motor will get a decent payload almost anywhere you want
- 48V 11.6Ah in-tube Lithium Battery charges quickly and gives 40-55 miles per charge
- Looks and feels the business when ridden
- High quality components for going and stopping
- Relative low weight for a fat tire electric bike means it is quick and nimble
- Fat tires mean that there is no terrain too tough for this machine!
Cons
- Customer service difficult to get hold of when things go wrong
- Warranty difficult to find (if exists at all)
Buying Advice
Why buy this bike?
Addmotor MOTAN M-560 Electric Bicycle is fun to ride, and looks and feels very different to any other e-bike you will ever ride in the city or off-road.
The birth of the fat bike
For many years still, fat tire electric bikes were still seen as beasts of the backwoods, with their ability to tackle everything from plowed fields to deep snow.
Much as the SUV came about, even though these bikes are hideously inefficient on the road due to rolling resistance (the friction of the tires create resistance on the road) they have started to be beasts of the street as well.
An urban cruiser is born
The Addmotor MOTAN fat tire electric bike is one of the first midrange fat tire machines to be built for the urban jungle, in much the same way as modern Toyota RAV 4s have come to dominate the SUV market.
Built for the road and not the backwoods this bike is about attitude as much as the wilderness its forebears were designed for.
This fatty comes with mudguards to prevent the user getting covered in street or other muck as they ride, just like some of the Haibike Trekking series machines.
If you’re going to ride a boss machine then you won’t want people laughing at your skunk stripe wherever you go!
The strong panniers are another important aspect of a machine that has moved away from mud munching and onto the mean streets.
Good quality pannier bags, bought separately could make this MOTAN fat tire electric bike a car killer as it will have a reasonable payload even for a chunkier rider.
A big, comfortable saddle also takes this from being a wilderness cruiser to something you can sit on for hours on end as you move about the city streets, and don’t get a bruised backside for all the posing and cruising you do.
A final yet important component is the mobile device charging port on the controller. This allows the rider to plug their cellphone in while going about their business.
Competition
This fat tire electric bike is mid-priced as electric fat bikes go, and goes head to head with a number of established American and Chinese brands such as Pedego, Ancheer, and Derby Cycles.
Its stand-out looks and high quality components should help this become a major seller even so.
Its nearest rival for urban domination by Pedego is the Trail Tracker Gorilla Edition at almost double the price.
That sets the Addmotor MOTAN 750W Fat Tire electric bike into some fierce competition with an established American brand.
Even so the reviews on Amazon seem to say that where they receive a well made bike (in most cases) they have a machine that is half the price and is at least as well made as their US rivals.
That’s a big thing to say!
The Pedego Gorilla fat tire urban cruiser lacks many of the features that make the MOTAN machine stand out too.
It only has a 500W motor, lacks mudguards or a pannier rack – essential things for urban riding that help blow it out of the water when it comes to a machine designed to dominate the mean streets.
One major drawback
MOTAN have built a solid, stand-out machine but there are some drawbacks.
Unlike their established rivals they have not set up a very good customer service system for repairs or handling complaints.
This is the Achilles heel of the machine – every company that makes something occasionally makes a dud, which is widely seen as acceptable.
Where this is usually resolved is through customer relations. Addmotor have a poor reputation in this regard.
For the Addmotor MOTAN fat tire electric bike trashing its major US rivals in terms of design for street use the more expensive and less well equipped Pedego machine has the trump card when it comes to something going wrong.
European e-bike motor makers Bosch had major problems with the bearings on a recent model of their e-bike motors, with thousands failing within a few hundred miles of use.
The German company immediately repaired the problem as it arose on the machines that went wrong.
If Addmotor have similar issues you can imagine with its poor customer service that the company will get extremely poor reviews and perhaps not survive as a challenger to the big names in America’s midrange e-bike market.
Conclusions
SUVs have almost killed off the saloon car in the US.
Only electric saloons by Tesla are seeing growth while BMW, Mercedes and Ford gas powered saloons are quietly dying from the showrooms of America’s dealerships.
We say this as we do wonder whether the fat tire electric bike could kill off the urban MTB?
Though Pedego have simply taken an off-road beast and put cruiser handlebars on it, Addmotor have redrawn the playing field with their fat tire urban cruiser.
With its mid-range components and serious thought put into the things that the urban user wants in an electric bike, this machine poses the question to the buying public: Do you too want to ride a mid-priced electric bike that has as much presence for a bike has against road bikes as an SUV against a saloon car?
Judging by the quality of machine and the carefully thought design this could well be a game changer where it comes to urban e-bikes.
It is by no means cheap at close to $2000 but at almost half the price of established American brand equivalents we could well be seeing a disruptor in this machine.
Could the Addmotor MOTAN Electric Bicycles Mountain Fat Tire 26 Inch with 750W motor even challenge the car?
Piercing the traffic like a motorcycle at far higher speeds than cars do in rush hour, yet still capable of a decent payload of cargo you wouldn’t want to bet against it!
