I’m in the second season of riding my e-bike and really enjoy the experience. It is even better than I had posted earlier. However, I’ve encountered design issues related to my bike rack that I hadn’t considered when buying our bikes.
If buying a carrier for your e-bike, you should be aware of these two design issues.
E-bike carrier safety
When buying our bikes in early 2021 from Northstar Bicycles, it was difficult to find a bike rack in stock. I was quoted six months or longer to get one. As we have two e-bikes and a smaller SUV, trying to carry them in the vehicle was not an option.
At the time, we thought ourselves fortunate the bike shop had a few Thule T2 Pro XT carriers available. While they fit a 1.25 inch hitch, we converted them to fit our 2 inch hitch.
An unforeseen problem with this solution is the carrier scrapes the curb when we back out onto the road. Even with our SUV, it sits too low for many major speed bumps or curbs with the bikes loaded on the carrier.
Not great but manageable.
But the real issue I have with this bike rack is the poor safety design of the carrier.
E-bike rack design fault
As shown in the photo of our bike on the Thule T2 rack, the bike is held by a strap on the rear wheel and a support arm that is pushed onto the front wheel. To secure the tire, a lot of pressure is applied to hold it in place.
Great if nothing goes wrong. However, if the tire blows like it did on my wife’s bike, the arm may loosen and slide down to release the front tire.
In our case, the front of the bike fell off the rack and was dragged a short distance. Ouch!
We were lucky the damage was minimal and the bike is back in service.
My concern is the lack of safety redundancy built into the design of the rack. Rather than designing it for what could happen, this rack is designed for what should happen.
A very simple fix would be to incorporate a locking mechanism to secure the front tire. Thule offers a locking mechanism on their bike bars used to hold step through bikes onto regular racks. A similar mechanism should be added to safely secure bikes on the rack.
It also makes sense to have the arm on a ratchet system to lock into place even if the tire blows.
Take our experience as a warning not to assume your bike rack will protect your bike while travelling. It is prudent to add a secondary way to secure your bike.
Work around for Thule owners
For current Thule T2 Pro owners, a suggested backup method to secure your bike is to use the cable locks on the rack. While the cable locks have limited value as security locks, they do provide a secondary way to secure your bike..
Many E-bike racks are illegal
Every few months, local news reports and social media posts share stories of bike owners being stopped and ticketed by police.
The reason? Most bike carriers are poorly designed as they break common traffic laws in almost every Canadian province and US state.
Design Issue
Most hitch mounted bike racks block the rear licence plate even when bikes aren’t loaded. Yet, in most jurisdictions, blocking any or part of the licence plate is a traffic offence that carries a hefty fine.
But the problem is compounded when you actually carry your bike(s). Most e-bike racks will block the view of your rear licence plate, except for roof racks. If stopped, you may receive a warning or an actual fine for blocking your plate, based on the discretion of the police officer.
I don’t understand how manufacturers and retailers can sell an illegal product which creates this issue for the consumer. At minimum, they should be working with law enforcement to develop a common sense solution to this problem.
Bike Rack Licence Solution
One possible solution is very simple and straightforward as demonstrated by how the state of South Australia handles the problem. Simply allow bike owners to get a duplicate plate or a dedicated bike licence that is associated with the registration of the vehicle. This plate is attached to back of the carrier, eliminating the issue of obscuring the plate. In Alberta, this simple solution is used to register travel trailers and seems to work just fine.
It is time manufacturers and authorities address this on-going and confusing situation with a common sense solution.
In this post, I have stayed away from recommending individual bike racks. I’m not qualified to recommend one over another even though I’ve heard anecdotally from others what they like about their rack, .
There are several online reviews of the major brands you review. But as with all things related to the purchase of your e-bike, it best to be do your homework before buying.
If you can recommend a brand and model that you have used, pop into the comment section.
I am also planning to buy a good e-bike and it’s good at your with advice. They are all important and necessary factors that we need to know when considering buying an e-bike. I was quite surprised by the element “E-bike rack design error”, I think most will not be careful and ignore this factor. This will remind me to be more careful when going to the store and to take a closer look at the bike. Thanks for the useful information.
Thule advised the manual indicated bikes with fenders shouldn’t be used with the T2 rack. Very difficult to tell from the tiny graphic so I really think they need to make it clearer what bikes can be used on this rack. Regardless, I still believe the design should be improved to provide some redundancy if the tire support fails.
I was fortunate that the bike shop where we bought our bikes – Northstar Bicycle in Calgary – came to the rescue. I now have the Thule Easy Fold rack. Haven’t yet used it but hope for better results.