Aussie-owned electric bike / ebike companies (& escooters)

I spent the last day trawling through the web looking for Aussie-owned electric bike companies. I'm trying to support more local companies these days (or countries that are at least allies), and also because I work in security I need to be careful where my geo-spatial data ends up. It doesn't need them to be made locally (let's face it, that's impossible in this day and age), but I want the company to be locally owned.

Anyway after probably 5 solid hours of research and reading I've found the following, I hope this might be of some use to some of you:

eBIKES:

Reid: probably the biggest name of the lot, very high quality stuff by the looks of it: Reid Cycles | Australia’s Best Value Bikes | Bikes Online & In-store. I think if they offered exactly what I wanted, this is what I'd be going with, however...

Leitner: this is what I'll be getting, I'm planning on picking up two from their ebike range, very impressed with what I've seen so far: Leitner Electric Bikes and Folding Electric Bikes Australia from what I can see it has brilliant customer support and the quality is top notch.

Vamos: tiny range, but a bunch of locals run it, can't go wrong: Vamos Bikes - Quality Affordable Electric Bicycles Online Store Australia

There's one more major Aussie brand called Reef, who claim that they do all their own custom design work, but when you look into it...it appears they're all rebadged OEM products (and poor quality ones at that). Avoid.

eSCOOTERS:

This was harder. Reid do their own, and it looks ok. The best appears to be Apollo: a Canadian company with good local distribution and support: USA's #1 Electric Scooter Store | Apollo Scooters They seem to rate very highly: Apollo Air Review: Super Stable 15 MPH Scooter Is Great for Beginners

You need to dig around to find out who the real owners of these companies are. For example I was very keen on a brand called Inokim at first, but when you dig deeper you'll find out who their owners really are...

There are a few other brands that are owned by European, US or Taiwanese companies, but it takes a lot of work to go down the rabbits hole to figure out who the true owner is, so I haven't bothered. I've focused mainly on Aussie-owned. I guess this is a project for another day.

Hope this might be of some use to someone, it took me a ton of research to get to this point!

If I've missed any please feel free to contribute. I was already surprised to see we had two strong players in the ebike market...I assumed there was zero. I was so proud to see it. Go Aussie!

 

I think it's like j-walking though, where it's a rule they probably don't bother enforcing 99% of the time.

That being said yes, we're extremely behind the curve in this area.

This is mainly why I'm leaning towards an ebike rather than an escooter.

 

I’d avoid Reid.. their pedal power bikes are mass produced entry level junk.. anyone half serious about cycling wouldn’t be caught dead on them. I can’t imagine their ebikes are any better.
If in Brisbane I’d check out
Blind Freddy eBikes | Electric Bikes Brisbane | Electric Tricycles
locally owned

 

Brilliant thanks for the info.

 

Another thing to consider is insurance / public liability.
I shudder to think what the consequences are if you have a collision with a pedestrian while riding one of these.

 

If it's one of the illegal ones in NSW on public roads and footpaths - they're uninsurable so you'd have a hard time suing.

On the otherhand, most of the cycling organisations arrange public liability insurance for their members.

Insurance

 

was true until manchild and delivery pees become norm,

also part of revenue raising, i drive to cbd to work everyday until covid hits, even back then i've seen allot of people getting fined for escooters/bikes infringements

 

What does the OP think of Dragon as a brand?

 

Just make sure you can get repairs and/or after sales service, especially if buying off the internet.