Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After riding this bike for a few days and about 10 miles, I am disappointed with the motor controller not supporting pedal assist which makes the extra money for the 7 speed gear set useless. The EB7's motor controller is very different than a pedal assist controller: it is designed to simply propel the bike to a certain speed when it detects a pedaling motion. It does not help a rider pedal at a cadence of their choosing, instead when the controller detects any pedaling motion, it simply propels the bike to an assigned speed. This behavior ruins the ability to use the gear set and prevents the rider from controlling the bike's speed while pedaling. This is a critical flaw of the controller, Swagtron should have programmed it differently rather than re-using this speed-based controller which they use on their other EB7 models. The controller has modes 0-3 where 0 disables the motor, 1 sets the motor's target speed to 12 mph, and 2 and 3 set a higher target speed. When in 7th gear (the highest), a comfortable pedaling cadence results in about 8 mph. If you set the mode to 1, no matter how slowly you pedal, the motor controller will not respect your cadence and simply propel the bike to 12 mph. So you can pedal at 8 mph but the slowest motor speed is 12 mph. Let that sink in...this makes the gear set useless. If you go up a hill the motor may not be able to achieve its assigned 12 mph, so in this case you can use the pedals to help propel the bike. But other than hills or running out of battery power, the pedals cannot be used. Because of this, pedaling in modes 1, 2, and 3 doesn't make sense. And because of this, paying extra for a 7 speed gear set doesn't make sense. So I would highly recommend you save yourself the money and get a non-geared version of the EB7. Here is a real world example of how the EB7 Plus does not support pedal assistance: imagine you're on a boardwalk that follows a beach. You're riding a different ebike with pedal assist so you are able to choose your speed based on how quickly you pedal, and you range in speed between 3-8 mph so that you can safely go around the many walkers and runners while you enjoy the waves and all the beach activity along your path. This is something you cannot do with the EB7 Plus. The moment you begin to pedal, BAM, you're going 12 mph! You're darting in and around everyone on the boardwalk and almost ran over a child a moment ago! In order to slow down you change the speed controller from mode 1 (12mph) to mode 0 (off) to stop being a menace to society. You could also keep the controller in mode 1 and use the proportional throttle near the hand grip but then you ask yourself: why on earth did I pay for a full gearset when I could have saved money on a single gear ebike? I want to pedal and have gears, but I can't use them! Now that I think about it, there's only 2 situations where I can actually pedal: when going uphill and when the battery is dead. Rats! I made a poor buying decision and wish a reviewer would have told me.