E-Bike Review -- Gazelle Arroyo C8 & The Importance Of Your E-Bike Dealer (The New Wheel)

Photo of the Gazelle Arroyo C8

I’ve been an e-bike user since 2008.  I am a 60+ urban bike commuter and use my e-bike upwards of 5-6 days per week on average.  Starting in 2015 I started buying my e-bikes from The New Wheel, a San Francisco e-bike dealer specializing in electric bicycles.  In addition to reviewing the Gazelle this blog piece also discusses the importance of the e-bike dealer and, in particular, its role as advocate for its customers.  As you will read, The New Wheel has been an absolute champ in advocating my interests.

I’ve written about e-bikes and my experience as a bicycle commuter previously in this blog.  Unfortunately the e-bike I was then using became inoperative shortly after the warranty expired and the company went radio silent on me.  Here’s a link to that review (The Fine Art of Urban Bicycle Commuting (And More)).  That is one of the reasons that I started doing business with The New Wheel.

My original purchase from the New Wheel was the Kalkhoff Aggattu B8 (2018 version described here).  Here is a picture:

Kalkhoff Aggattu B8

I purchased the Kalkhoff back in January 2015.  The Kalkhoff was definitely a step up for me.  Much more powerful; much better gears; much better brakes; much better handling.  So was the price – in 2015 I paid $3299 for a floor model (list price was in the $3400 range).  But I got much better value and much of that came from high quality components (many of the midlevel and high-end e-bikes are, to an extent, an assembly of third party components).  In the case of the Kalkhoff the Bosch Performance Line motor is both industry standard and state of the art – it’s excellent and placing the motor mid-line distributes the weight in a way that maximizes performance.  The Shimano Nexus 7-speed gears are particularly good for an urban commuter like me – you can shift even if you are at a full stop.  The Magura hydraulic brakes are not necessarily the best in class – but they work well, are easy to adjust and are economical.

I had some reservations about the Kalkhoff.  In particular I found that the gears went out of alignment quickly and were hard to adjust.  But then the motor quit on me and I had to take it into the New Wheel for service.  Karen, one of the co-owners of The New Wheel contacted Kalkhoff and was able to get for me, at no charge, a replacement motor, which the New Wheel installed at no charge to me.  Apparently there had been a problem with Kalkhoff motors and San Francisco’s steep (and many) hills that was too much for the then current iteration of the motor.  The replacement motor addressed that and I happily rode the Kalkhoff until last year.  I had not really thought about the role of The New Wheel and Karen as customer advocates until my next problem with the Kalkhoff.

The bike started riding “wobbly” and I could not figure out why.  I scheduled a service appointment with The New Wheel (I bought their service plan, also worth discussing) and brought the bike in.  I have a “step through” version of the Kalkhoff.  The tech who looked at the bike told me that servicing would not be particularly useful – it turned out that the steel frame of the bike had broken at the bottom point of the “V” of the step through – making the bike not only inoperable but dangerous.  Not surprisingly, I took a Lyft home.

Both Kalkhoff and The New Wheel offer a 10-year warranty on the frame.  In this day and age a 10-year warranty is basically a signal that the product warranted is trouble free and should not ever have a problem.  So what happened to me was the proverbial one in a million situation.  Nevertheless it happened.  I had no idea what Kalkhoff or the New Wheel would or could do for me.  

The result should gladden the heart of any customer.  Karen again intervened.  The distributor of Kalkhoff bikes also distributes the Gazelle – a venerable Dutch-based company with a long history of manufacturing high quality bikes.  Karen was able to get the distributor to agree to replace my Kalkhoff with a brand new Gazelle C8 Arroyo at no charge to me.  In other words, my defective 2015 Kalkhoff was replaced by a brand new 2018 Gazelle and I did not pay a dime.  This all took place within a six day time frame during which I experimented with renting JUMP e-bikes (a likely subject of another blog piece).  

I gratefully took delivery of the Gazelle and discuss it below.  But before I do, I really need to emphasize the extraordinary quality of service I have received from The New Wheel and the importance of the dealer both with respect to e-bikes generally and customer service in particular.

I maintained my bikes (pre e-bike) through college and law school.  I did so principally as a matter of money.  But e-bikes are more complicated – no one can be expected to tinker with the innards of an e-bike motor other than a professional and the relationship between the e-bike-specific components and the rest of the bike makes it complicated to deal with other issues as well (for example taking the rear wheel off an e-bike is quite an exercise).  There also comes a point where getting your fingers greasy is just not fun any more (nor necessary for economic reasons).  I therefore signed up for The New Wheel’s service plan and I have definitely received value for my money.  Here is a link that describes the service plan.

But what I did not take into account was the extent of The New Wheel’s advocacy for its customers.  

As a lawyer I’m an advocate by profession – people pay me good money to vindicate their rights and, in this day and age, it is not always enough to be in the right – you can still get pushback from vendors even when your rights are clear.  Having Karen on my side and getting both the motor, and, ultimately, the Kalkhoff bike itself, replaced with a brand new Gazelle, with no investment of time or money on my part, is pretty amazing.  One reason to buy from a dealer, and in particular from The New Wheel, is this beyond-the-call-of-duty customer advocacy.  I cannot say what other dealers would do – I can tell you what the New Wheel and Karen did.

Now to discuss the Gazelle.

The bike is a little heavier than the Kalkhoff and heavier still when you accessorize it the way I have (front basket, horn (take a look at loudbicycle.com – pretty amazing product) lock, panniers, toolkit, raingear, etc.).  So it’s maybe a little less nimble than the Kalkhoff and a bit heavier to push up a ramp or some stairs.  (One way of addressing this is to shift weight from the rear to the front – it really makes a difference when you have to push the bike uphill/upstairs.  There is also a setting that enables you to engage the motor at 1 mph to help but it’s a bit complicated.)

The motor is, again, Bosch midline, but it seems quite robust and I’ve had no problems on San Francisco’s hills (I traverse three sets between home and office).  Range is a little less than the Kalkhoff (70 miles at maximum power setting vs. 90) but in a city that is 7x7 miles that hardly matters.  (Just in case I bought a portable charger and also carry that on the bike.)  Gears are again Shimano but they seem to work a bit better than the gears on the Kalkhoff.  On the latter I would tend to skip gears as the gradations weren’t very pronounced – on the Gazelle I actually start from first gear and move through the sequence – maybe because the bike is a little heavier it seems better to start from first gear on the Gazelle (as opposed to second gear on the Kalkhoff).  Brakes are again hydraulic – I seem to be wearing through them pretty quickly but I suspect that is just a combination of how I ride and San Francisco’s terrain.  (It’s also likely the case that e-bike riders wear down brakes a bit more quickly as they crank up pretty quickly and often need to slow down quickly.)

My accessories transferred over just fine (and, again to The New Wheel’s credit they transferred them from the Kalkhoff to the Gazelle at no charge).

I like the way the Gazelle rides and it has been largely trouble free.  The design is elegant and it handles well.  I did have an issue with some air getting into the brake lines but a quick service trip to the New Wheel fixed that.  Gears can also go, slightly, out of alignment but much less so than the Kalkhoff.  Acceleration is more than adequate and it is handling San Francisco’s hills just fine.  I am very happy with my current ride.

The Kalkhoff, despite my experience, can still make sense as an e-bike, particularly for riders who live in less hilly places than San Francisco.  It’s now a bit cheaper than the Gazelle and I was perfectly happy with it once the motor was replaced and before the break in the frame.  I doubt that the latter is typical and may well have been exacerbated by San Francisco’s notorious inattention to street maintenance (you bounce around quite a bit these days).  So I wouldn’t ignore it as a choice.  But for me, the Gazelle Arroyo C8 is simply marvelous.  And so is The New Wheel.