But let's review what the top four are and I'll talk about why I chose them. So I'm gonna walk through why I chose each of these in a second. But let's just start out with the names of its of each. This is the Pedego stretch, this is a extended length cargo bike. It's pretty cool and we'll go over the basics of this. I have done a video on this in the past of what as well. And of course every uh, every vehicle, every bicycle that I've done here, uh, is one that I've tested this year. There are a few that I may not have tested that I'm really looking forward to test in 2023, so make sure you subscribe for that. Next one here is the Pedego Avenue. This one is super cool. We're gonna talk about that one first in a second. Next to it is the Pedego city commuter and then the pedego element.

So let's start here with the avenue in no particular order and we'll narrow it down to a winner. So if you're just considering your very first e-bike, I think the Pedego Avenue is probably something you'll probably want to start out considering. It may or may not be the bike you leave with. So what I like about this is it is very traditional in its look. Now the fenders here are optional and to be honest, I think the headlight is as well. I have to double check on that. But you have a really good base here. It's a fairly lightweight bike for an e-bike. And again, weight doesn't matter as much in an e-bike because you do have some extra power to help you. But again, if you're throwing on a bike rack or something like that, it's very, very good. You've got a single chain ring up front, which all of the bikes we're looking at today will have that. 

And you've got multiple gears up back. This one has seven gears here. Like I said, the fenders are optional but you can have them on here. I really like this kind of gray color, but you can have all kinds of colors. Some of these bikes actually have a plastic five spoke kind of rim that looks pretty cool. I prefer the traditional spoked rim as well. To me, I feel like the spokes are stronger, but I'm not sure if they are or not. You've got an adjustable um, fork here or a stem here which allows you to adjust it through an Allen key so you can get comfortable. But it has a sort of traditional bicycle seat. So very traditional bicycle in the look here, very traditional bicycle in the field. The difference is you have some power and you can get where you're going. Now let's take a little bit closer look at a couple of things that I like on this bike because you can add onto this bike as you need.
So take a look at the front of the bike, you can see the disc brake in the rear, that's a mechanical disc brake. Nice and simple. You also have these little sort of brans right here which allow you to attach various luggage pieces and other things. So you can take this like a regular bike and attack, attach a lot of luggage, which on an e-bike can matter. It gives you a little bit of extra capability because again, you're not pulling that weight with the electric assist. The battery is here in the down tube well hidden. It is removable so you can take that out if you don't want it there for um, you know, the winter or whatever it is. And you have good width to the tires. Here they are two inches wide and they are ooh, around 28 or so. Yeah, 28 inches around. 
So a large diameter tire but still plenty of width to ride on rail trails to ride on roads to ride on a little bit of gravel. The tread is certainly sort of on road paved roads, uh, rail trail kind of thing. But very good, very versatile bike. And you've got some pretty good speed out of this bike even without the power assist just because of the design of the bike. So very traditional looking bike, you can throw a rear rack on this, uh, very good bike. It's not my winner today though. So if you like the Pedego Avenue, you're probably gonna also like the city commuter. Now the city commuter is a step up in price and the one I have here is the platinum addition. It is the top of the line, but this is more in line with what an e-bike can be. 
We're so conditioned to regular bicycles that we think we want to have some speed, we want to have certain things and there's a certain style that goes with speed on a regular bike and usually that means that it's more and more uncomfortable the faster you get. If just think about traditional bicycles, well in an e-bike, they're all gonna be about the same speed and plenty fast enough to keep up with the spandex crew so you don't have to go with a traditional looking bike. You can bring in comfort and still be just as quick as the spandex crew on their regular bikes. And that's really what the city commuter does. And the city commuter kind of gives you that traditional look still, but really opens it up to what an e-bike can be. And I feel a little guilty pulling in the city commuter here because Pedego is full of bikes in this comfort class that actually make it um, you know, better than regular bikes and just as fast. So there's things like the boomerang, the interceptor, there's plenty of other bikes kind of in this general class, uh, that look a little less traditional but are very, very comfortable. Now let's just talk about this one

For a a second. There's a couple things you get here. First of all, this one has a suspension fork on it. You've got the lights as well. The other one had lights on it as well. This one you have a full chain cover instead of just the ring on the outside and or the outside and the inside there. You also have more gears. You have Dior gears now gears and high branded gears. Shaman Dior is a very higher end gear shift. Sometimes that matters to you as an e-bike but maybe less so on an E-bike than on a regular bike because to be honest, you're just shifting less. You're changing the power settings more than you are just shifting. But if you want the gears, you've got them on this bike as well. Really wide comfort seat here. So really wide seat compared to the uh, avenue and the handlebars kind of wrap around and come back again making it more comfortable.
So when you're sitting on this bike, I don't know if the seat's adjusted for me right now, but we'll uh, get it close enough. You're very upright and you're very comfortable, but again, you're very quick compared to a regular bicycle. You also step up to hydraulic brakes. You have disc brakes front and rear, but they're now hydraulic instead of uh, manual. So this is really what an e-bike can be. You need really good brakes and all the e-bikes in the pedicle lineup have that, but you can add comfort. And this rack here is standard. It comes as part of the bike. Instead of having your battery down here, your battery is back here, which is fine because you can take all kinds of luggage on here, you can get all kinds of pedicle accessories that fit this exactly. This one happens to be just set on there, but we can attach it properly as well. 
And the battery back here can be had in different sizes, which allows you more range if that's what you're looking for. So you're stepping up here from the avenue into a little bit less traditional looking bike. Still very traditional looking overall, but it does give you more. But again, it costs more. So it depends on what you want. Now I will tell you again that this one is also not our winner anything in this class, if that's what you want. There are so many options in comfort style bikes. You can get fatter tires, you can get a little bit different seating positions, you can get different style racks, different kind of things. The pedego lineup is a really great lineup of bikes if you want comfort and still the speed. So this one kind of represents many other bikes and it would be hard to choose this particular bike as a winner given that there are a lot sort of in this class of bike.
But I'm gonna tell you that this one does not win, which leaves us back to two bikes, the stretch and the element. Let's talk about those right now. So the pedego stretch is not for everyone and if you're about to skip ahead on the video because hey, this isn't for you, stay with me for a second because this is really a great example of what an e-bike can be. And if you're moving from bicycling to an e-bike, you should pay attention to some of the benefits that an e-bike brings you over just a regular bike. And this is kind of the benefits stretched out. Now again, this is an extra long stretch, uh, but it also kind of gives you so many features. So first of all, I didn't show you on the the city commuter. You have the higher level controller than you had on the avenue, which is the same as the city commuter I just showed you. 
You also have this little handlebar adjustment here which pops up and you can move this closer and farther out. That is standard on many of the um, pedego e-bikes. It's just a quick release so you can share this bike with lots of people. Now the reason I like to stretch is this bike, when you're pedaling it feels exactly like a regular bike. I used to own a cargo bike that was not electric assisted and it was great on level ground, it felt like a regular bike. It was very difficult to take hills on because the bike itself is heavy and I used to take my two kids on a bike like this and they were very heavy to pull up those hills. You don't have to worry about going up hills or extra weight on an e-bike because you've got good gearing. This one has seven gears, but you've got that electric assist.
So this is pretty cool because you can drop your kids in here, they sit freely in the bike but they can't really fall out. These, these are a little bit adjustable here and you can sit two kids here, they've got foot boards down there. You can accessorize this up like crazy. This little plastic cover is to keep their shoelaces and their pants and their legs and limbs out from the spoked wheel area. It also creates a nice little barrier to throw on bags, which we have here on this side here, which I'll show you in a second. The weight is centralized here with the battery down the center. You've still got the chain protector down here, which keeps your feet out. You've got fenders. You've also got a massive rack out here which is not tied to the steering. So you can put heavy items here with various accessories or just strapping it down and you can carry anything you want and it feels like a regular bike because the steering is still there. 
So you can really replace a car with something like this. There are hitch mounted bike racks that fit this. I own one. It's got all kinds of features and this is really what an e-bike is all about. To the extreme, this feels like riding a regular comfort bicycle. When I sit on here it's perfectly good. Now I could raise it up a little bit for me, but that's the thing with the steering, the seat height, everything else, you could share the spike with multiple people and use it as a vehicle to take a couple kids to school. And trust me, when you do that, you are the king of the school's drive-through line. This one has 24 inch tires and 10 instead of the typical mountain bike. 26 inch tires, which just lowers the center of gravity a little bit, makes it easier to carry. 
But again, an e-bike to me to be a winning e-bike shouldn't be something that matches a regular bicycle. They can do more. So taking advantage of that, a ability to do more makes a good e-bike. If an e-bike just copies a regular bike for a lot of people, you're really missing out on some of the benefits of replacing that car. And this is a great example. You can use it for fitness, you can use it to go long trips and do stuff. You can grab your groceries in it, you can take your kids around town in it. You can go up and down hills, no problem. You've got strong brakes, lots of seating, lighting, all kinds of stuff. So an E-bike, to me, a winning e-bike to me should offer you more than a regular bicycle and the stretch absolutely does. Is it the winner? 
Well let's look at the final contestant. This is a top two for sure and again, it may not be for you, but let's look at one that may be a little bit more for everyone. The final bike we're looking at today is the pedego elements. And when I first take a took a look at this, I never thought I'd be doing a video of it as the top four bikes that I tested this year. But this one has some surprises that really kind of make it pretty good, especially for an e-bike. So first of all, single chain ring. We've got a chain protector on the outside chain protector on the inside, no chain cover right over there. But this is a value priced e-bike and it is a very good buy. Similar to the avenue, you've got the same more basic controller, which I can show you a little bit later. 
It doesn't uh, do anything too, too fancy. But the key functions are there. Pedal assist function, which we're gonna show you in a second here. You've got a few less gears than some of the other bikes. But the thing with the smaller diameter tires, it looks like a child's bike sort of on the camera but it doesn't in person is the smaller diameter tires give you a mechanical advantage for your hub motor back here. So it's very, very good at climbing hills using the electric motor in addition to just your pedaling. So sometimes the bigger wheel, if you think about it, the gearing motion of that motor turning, turning that smaller wheel helps you up a hill. So it's very good at climbing hills and this compact size is still something that fits an adult. Now this seat is not perfectly adjusted for me. It's actually tilted back a little bit too far. 

You've got gearing here, which is throttle here, which is what you have on all the E-bikes. You've got thumb, two thumb shifters to go through your seven gears here. And like I said, the controller, or at least the display over here that works with the controller is over on the left side. We'll show you that in just a second. But this bike is pretty versatile. This one happens to have suspension as an option. It's a very inexpensive suspension option if you want it. Now on a bike with fatter tires, you may or may not need the suspension. And the other thing is for some of these comfort style bikes, because your hands aren't leaned over the handlebars as much, you don't need as much suspension, there's just less weight on your wrists, which means you can have less suspension. So for me, I don't know that I would put the suspension on, but you can decide if you want that on yourself. 
These fat tires are about four inches wide. They are amazing for going over from paved roads, paved rail trails to gravel rail trails to dirt to mud to grass. It just kind of all feels the same. You have good consistent, reliable traction on just about any surface. And as a regular bicycle this wouldn't be very good. Those smaller wheels mean you need a higher gearing to go fast, but you don't need that here. Uh, because you've got the electric assist with the gearing and smaller wheels that are fat, like these fat tires can also be inefficient on a regular bicycle. But they are very efficient here because you have that electric assist, which you're gonna run anyways. You could certainly run it without. And this bike travels just fine without

The pedal assist. But if you were to go faster and faster, you usually want the bigger wheels. Doesn't matter on e-bike. A couple little details I wanna show you on this bike up close and then we'll tell you who's the winner. So one of the things I love about the Pedego element is just some of the finer details. The battery, just like the avenue is built into the frame, gives you that nice kind of clean look. You've got the little uh, opening there, which you can charge the battery both on the bike or off the bike, which is pretty common for pedego stuff. And the cable routing is all neatly done out here and comes into the frame keeping it clear. Now, this is a point I wanna sort of harp on again, that cable routing, routing into the frame. As we move to the back wheel, let's take a look at the back wheel and I'll sort of finish up why that's important. 

Take a look at the back wheel here. This rack is optional for me. I would get it on an e-bike. Always have a rack because again you're gonna be riding it more. You can take stuff, you can uh, bring stuff with you. This little piece though is not optional. I don't know if you can see it really well. This is a little protective piece. They use this on something like the fold up bike as well. And what it is, is it protects your gearing. Now why is this important? Well, without the large diameter wheels and with the cable being routed through the frame, you're able to throw this bike in the back of a hatchback or small suv. So you don't necessarily need a bike rack. It's not a fold up bike. There is a fold up bike from Pedego, but this is something that you can throw in your car even if it's not a hatchback and it will fit often in the trunk with the seats folded down and you can take it anywhere.And this will keep the gearing protected from getting damaged if it sits on something. And same thing with the cable routing through there. So the design of this being compact also makes it very portable and able to take places whether you're riding there or whether you're taking it in a vehicle. So with the element being very competitively priced, you have the lower grade sort of control system here. This is actually just the display. The controller's not actually here, but I tend to call it the controller. So we can turn this on though and you can see that this kind of gives you everything you need even though this isn't the more advanced display. So you can see I've got the odometer set here on the bottom here. We'll cycle through. We've got the, oops, that's not the cycling through. There're cycling through, got the trip meter. 

Uh, I've got some time. We've got the maximum speed and back to the, excuse me, the odometer. So we haven't set to miles per hour. You can set it to kilometers per hour. We've got a little bit of a smudge up here, we'll clean that away later. But what you saw me do earlier with this plus and minus is really the key to all of these e-bikes. When you have it on zero assist, very simply, that's no assist. You're pedaling this like a regular bicycle. You can work your way up through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and six. Now level six is exactly the same as level zero except you're able to use the throttle. We're gonna explain the throttle a second. This is the same for all these e-bikes. Not every e-bike, like some of them like the uh, trike that is from Pedego and the um, the fold up bike, which, uh, the latch which slipped my na slipped my mind, the name slipped my mind for a, a second. 
The latch is the folded bike. Some of 'em have less, uh, levels of pedal assist, but this one here has six. So zero and six is no pedal assist, which means you're spinning your pedals and it is not assisting you when you're doing that. But you can in assist number six here, use a throttle system to power you through. We'll talk about that really quickly in a second level. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All of those, as you're pedaling your pedals, it will give you varying levels of assist. Level one sort of takes the weight of the bike away. Level two, you start feeling some more assist, 3, 4, 5. By the time you're in level five, you're just spinning your pedals casually and this is doing pretty much all of the work for you. Um, so it's a pretty cool system. Lemme just show you the, uh, throttle for a second cuz throttle I think matters on an e-bike. 
So all of the bikes I showed you today have a throttle. Now some of them have a little light here to indicate, uh, red, if the throttle is off in level zero, blue, if it is, uh, on, in uh, level six and then green everywhere else. If you're in anywhere from one through six, the throttle is active and you can spin the throttle and it will accelerate for you. So you can use just the throttle or you can leave it in let's say pedals two, which is perfectly fine for level ground. And then all of a sudden you hit a little hill, you give a little extra throttle and then you back it off. Basically it turns up the throttle short term for you instead of hitting the plus and minus button on the other side, which will turn up the throttle sort of a as a, in more ways a longer term throttle will turn up.

You've also got your gear shifts over here. Various, uh, types of, uh, bikes have different style of gear shift. But the throttle is a real key because for most people it allows you to stay in a higher gear when you're stopped, use the throttle to get going and then you just leave the gear shift where it is. You don't have to switch gears or anything. So an e-bike is actually easier to drive, especially with a throttle than a regular bike. So the element with its value pricing, slightly simpler controller with a couple less options in there. And the availability of accessories is my favorite e-bike or the best e-bike I've tested this year. And I think it comes down to a couple things. The value pricing in this matters because a lot of the time with an e-bike, you're going to want to accessorize it up a little bit. 
This one has the suspension, has the fenders in the rack. If you have a rack, you're gonna want various carrying things and Peddgo has all kinds of things from baskets to bags to pet carriers, to all kinds of things that you can't even imagine. They're prepped for it because you're going to use this not just for a leisure ride, but to use it to run your errands and do your things. So the pedego element with those fat tires allows you to go anywhere with these short compact frame, allows you to throw it inside a vehicle and take it with you anywhere. Or you can use a bike rack. It has all the speed of a larger tired bike, even in the larger tires of the e-bikes. It just balances everything out and it's a really comfortable position. The seat is kind of an in between from like the avenue to uh, some of the comfort

Seats, but of course you could always swap that out at your uh, Pedego dealer, which of course Jim Gilbert's PowerSports is what Pedego dealer. And this one really impressed me, the speed of acceleration, the ability to go uphills and go absolutely anywhere, which means, like I said, you can take this bike and it doesn't matter if there's biking on rail trails, on gravel, on dirt, on regular, just hiking trails. This bike can go over those and you can have fun riding anywhere. And because of the power cyst, hills don't bother you, steady wind doesn't bother you and you can go a long, long way. So great value, it was very hard to choose the best e-bike, but this is what I've come up with this year and you can tell me I'm wrong. Tell me what Pedego e-bike you like the best. Uh, which one matters to you? 
And I'm gonna continue doing reviews in the future. 2023 is coming up. Pedego doesn't really list their bikes the same way car manufacturers and motorcycle manufacturers do as 20, 22 and 2023 models. But there are new Pedego models coming out and I'm really looking forward to reviewing them in detail, which I will be doing on this channel. So make sure you subscribe and if you're anywhere near Jim Gilbert's Power Sports swing into the dealer because there are bikes everywhere. E-bikes everywhere you can see them, you can try them out, you can just sit on them. If that's all you wanna do and there's no pressure to buy one, it's the middle of the winter. You can decide what you want to do. Uh, but if you want to get one now, you can take one away in the winter. You can have 'em ready for spring. There's so many here and it's the kind of thing where once you see them, you start to figure out how you could use it and then you can help yourself figure out which one is best for you. So I hope that helped a little bit. I hope you can subscribe to our channel. We'll continue talking more about e-bikes and uh, wanna thank Jim Gilbert's PowerSports for allowing me access to the complete lineup this past year and into the next year and beyond. Thanks everybody for watching.