Super73 S2 E-Bike

Description

The Super73 S2 is a Class 3 ebike. You can use the hand throttle to take it up to 20 miles per hour without pedaling and receive assistance from the electric motor up to 28 miles per hour while pedaling. That’s because the rear hub motor runs at 750-watt continuous power and 1,200-W peak power. That’s three times the power of a lot of cheaper ebikes.

But change the settings to Unlimited mode and the motor unlocks to 1,200-W continuous power and 2,000-W peak power. That’ll carry you past 28 miles per hour, which could be a problem. In a lot of states, it’s not legal to ride an ebike at those speeds in public places.

There’s a cadence sensor at the pedals to detect when to turn the electric motor assist on and off, but it’s not very nuanced. Pedal slightly and the bike rockets off. There are four levels of electric assist, and in the top two levels, I get the feeling that I’m not really pedaling the S2 (similar to my colleague’s experience with the Lectric XP). I never broke a sweat.

It’s a weighty, single-speed bike without any extra mechanical gears to select, so it relies heavily on the electric motor. That means it can eat up battery life fast if you’re not economical and you use the throttle all the time. I ran out of juice on an early test ride, and pedaling this heavy thing home was as tiring and tedious as the rowing scene from Ben Hur. So I gave up and walked. It’s not a bike you’ll ever want to pedal with the electric assist off. (You can buy a $235 10-speed kit from Super73, but it wasn’t on my test bike.)