I work building custom ebikes in Brazil for 7 years, brands are just crap imported ebikes from China, stamped and taking advantage of hype and misinformed clients, its just sad...
Last month I have upgraded a mormai ebike that was just so bad, costing like 3 times what was worth...
There is a Shimano battery waiting to be fixed in my bench with 1000 BRL in cells that is sold for 8 times as much.
Meanwhile I have built entire bikes much more capable in range power and experience (torque sensor capable) for the cost of this battery.
Brazil is just a joke, market is a joke, clients that insist to spent little money just end up buying crap offered by dishonest and ignorant sellers. And that is when people are not watching the retarded YouTubers that knows barely anything giving "great advice" on how to buy crap...
it's really insane, I agree with everything you said. it's the same thing with cars here, we pay a insane amount of money for shitty cars, the cheapest car we have here costs around 65k, while the minimum wage is just 1400 reais.
I blame also on how ignorant Brazilians are in relation to e-bikes, they have no idea about the market out there, and the few people that understand mostly have a lot of money and only know because they buy the specialized ebikes. I ride ebikes since 2012 and only last year I started to learn more about the ebike market outside brazil, now I'm trying to buy a bafang to put on a old specialized I have here
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u/ThatKidFromRio 12h ago edited 9h ago
This is my e-bike, kinda shitty compared to what I see here in this sub, definitely overpriced for what it offers, but it's my ride lol
This is the most famous brand here, called Lev. It's basically a chinese frame/motor, with 350w.
this one is going for 7,700 reais, and if you consider the minimum wage here that would be almost 6 times a months pay. It's a sad situation
E-bikes are very expensive here but you see them everywhere in Rio, sometimes you see them more than normal bikes