In the braking department, we use the test (explained above) to gather 3 braking distance results and then pull the average of the three runs to get a solid idea of how the brakes perform.
The Sixthreezero EVRYjourney 250W Electric Tricycle comes with an unbranded front cable v-brake and in the rear, a drum brake. Since we don’t see rear drum brakes (or v-brakes for that matter) often, we were interested in how this setup would score in our brake test.
Once the bike reached 15 mph, Griffin, our brake tester, applied the brakes over 3 runs and the EVRYjourney 250W E-trike scored an average stopping distance of 21’ 7” (or 259 inches). Now, at first glance, that’s a really good score as our average across all the bikes we have tested is right around 21 feet. Well, if you filter that data to account for only e-trikes, the average stopping distance is 13’ 5”.
For context, the max speed of the e-trikes we have tested is around 14-16 mph as opposed to the other classes we test where nearly all others are tested at 20 mph. So, when you look at the filtered data, the result of the EVRYjourney 250W E-trike falls really short for its performance in this e-trike class.
With that said, in my testing this week, I did notice the front v-brake only offered minimal stopping power, even at a full pull of the brake levers all the way back to the grip. The rear drum brake felt better, but only brought us to a rolling stop, without any immediate stopping power as you would want to see in a scenario where you had to make an unexpected stop.
When I dig more into how this could be fixed, I took a look at other bikes in the trike class. I found that nearly all of them offered disc brakes, including Sixthreezeros own Easy Folder trike, which at only $300 more in price came equipped with front and rear disc brakes.
Overall, it was an underwhelming result and not something we were pleased with. While we commend Sixthreezero for keeping a safety-first approach by limiting the bikes speed to 16 mph, we believe the bike would benefit from at least one disc brake, placing it more in-line with the E-trike class average of 13’ 5”.
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