Accent Bicycles

In my six months of riding my e-​bike around town, I’ve had some great experiences. It’s a great way to get around a city the size of Indianapolis (provided that you keep it charged and keep careful track of how many miles you’ve ridden! Running out of juice halfway home isn’t fun). I’ve filled growlers at Indy’s many microbreweries and trucked them home in panniers; I’ve bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of groceries at Trader Joe’s and trundled them home. I’ve had plenty of interesting rides along Indianapolis’s many bike lanes and trails.
E-​biking is a great way to travel. You still do get exercise from pedaling along, but you get to go further on the same amount of effort, you don’t have to struggle going up hills, and you don’t stop moving if you take a break from pedaling for a while. Of course, the down side is that the bike is pretty heavy to get upstairs or to pedal along if you lose power. After riding the Juiced Rider for a while, my old Trek feels like it’s made of cobwebs and dandelion fluff!
Since I bought my Juiced Rider e-​bike at Accent, I’ve ridden it pretty hard. I managed to break both fenders, the chain shield, and finally an accident cut the wires to the engine so I couldn’t ride it at all! But I got it up to Accent and they took care of me.
Everything I said in my first review still holds true: they’ve got a great selection of electric and folding bikes, and while the e-​bikes may be a little expensive, that just means they’re not cheap trash that will fall apart the first time you ride it rough. And if you do ride it rough, like I do, they’ve got a great bike mechanic who will get you back into working order. They took mine apart and put it back together, and now it rides even better than it did before.
Of course, the one down side is that it can be a little inconvenient to get that far out of town, depending on where you live and what modes of transportation you have available. And since it’s run out of a home, you have to make sure somebody will be around before you bring it up. But the nice thing about a lot of e-​bikes is that, save for the motor, battery, and controls, they’re effectively based on the same parts as a regular bike. So if you need your brakes adjusted, or lose some spokes from your wheels, or need other minor maintenance done, you can generally have your local bike shop take care of that if it’s more convenient.
If you’re going to get an e-​bike, you shouldn’t just order it from Amazon. Who knows what you’ll get? You should talk to someone who knows about them, and can show you what they’re like and give you a test ride. Accent is pretty much the only e-​bike dealer I know of in the Indianapolis area. Just be sure and call ahead before you go out there.