Our experience was, other than some growing pains associated with speed sensors which in particular seemed to crop up on hardtails for whatever reason, Bosch was the best of them. It's amazing to hear that you have customers with 20,000 Kms on them. The point isn't that they're not good enough to be on a bike like this (with a very long expected lifespan), but that if a particular customer on this $10,000 USD utility machine has bad luck and gets a motor that conks out after 30 months or so, it doesn't sit right with me for that customer to be left holding the bag. Maybe it's a double standard and doesn't reflect the actual wear and tear people put through these*, but a two year warranty on a recreation machine sits so much better than a two year warranty on this.
If people are getting tens of thousands of kilometers of use out of these things relatively trouble free, then let's have a warranty that backs that up and helps justify the asking price on a unit like this. Automotive manufacturers have been doing mixed milage/year warranties for decades now, maybe this is an appropriate place for that. 5 years/20,000 km seems much more reasonable than a blanket two year, for example.
I didn't mean to bag on LTP specifically except they were our point of contact. For a shop, pulling the unit, putting it in a box, and sending it off wasn't a bad way of dealing with things, but as a consumer, I'd have to think the preference would be that outside of the equivalent of catastrophic engine failure, small parts and in house service would be the way to go. As the market matures and proliferates, maybe this is the way of the future.
*now that I'm thinking about it, a bosch motor on a Trek Rail ridden recreationally probably has a better life than on a cargo bike like this in the lower mainland.
Nov. 25, 2024, 10:50 a.m. - Jotegir
Our experience was, other than some growing pains associated with speed sensors which in particular seemed to crop up on hardtails for whatever reason, Bosch was the best of them. It's amazing to hear that you have customers with 20,000 Kms on them. The point isn't that they're not good enough to be on a bike like this (with a very long expected lifespan), but that if a particular customer on this $10,000 USD utility machine has bad luck and gets a motor that conks out after 30 months or so, it doesn't sit right with me for that customer to be left holding the bag. Maybe it's a double standard and doesn't reflect the actual wear and tear people put through these*, but a two year warranty on a recreation machine sits so much better than a two year warranty on this. If people are getting tens of thousands of kilometers of use out of these things relatively trouble free, then let's have a warranty that backs that up and helps justify the asking price on a unit like this. Automotive manufacturers have been doing mixed milage/year warranties for decades now, maybe this is an appropriate place for that. 5 years/20,000 km seems much more reasonable than a blanket two year, for example. I didn't mean to bag on LTP specifically except they were our point of contact. For a shop, pulling the unit, putting it in a box, and sending it off wasn't a bad way of dealing with things, but as a consumer, I'd have to think the preference would be that outside of the equivalent of catastrophic engine failure, small parts and in house service would be the way to go. As the market matures and proliferates, maybe this is the way of the future. *now that I'm thinking about it, a bosch motor on a Trek Rail ridden recreationally probably has a better life than on a cargo bike like this in the lower mainland.