Seniors Test Six sixthreezero E-Bikes for the First Time — and Both Choose the Same Favorite

When people ask me whether an electric bike is still in the cards for them at 65, 70, or beyond, I don't hand them a spec sheet. I hand them a bike. So I invited two riders in their late sixties and seventies — Dennis and Virginia — to spend an afternoon with six of our e-bikes and tell me, plainly, what worked and what didn't.

What followed was part product test and part masterclass in what actually matters as we get older: how far you have to lift your leg to get on, whether your feet reach the ground, how much the motor gives you versus how much you give it, and whether you can still get the leg extension your knees need without perching up high and feeling unsteady.

They rode everything from a compact folding fat-tire model to a long, low semi-recumbent. They disagreed, they laughed, they changed their minds — and in the end they both landed on the exact same favorite. Here's how the afternoon went, and what it can teach you about choosing the right e-bike for your own body.

Why I Put Two Riders in Their Late Sixties and Seventies on Six E-Bikes

I've spent close to twenty years in the bike and e-bike world, and there's one question I hear more than any other. It usually sounds like this: “I'm getting older, I haven't ridden in years, and I'm honestly not sure I can do it anymore — is an e-bike really for someone like me?” My answer is almost always yes. But I don't expect anybody to take my word for it, and I don't think they should. So I did what I always do when I want the truth: I handed the bikes to real riders and got out of the way.

Meet Dennis and Virginia. Dennis is sixty-nine and stands five foot nine. Virginia is seventy-two and five foot six. Neither of them is a lifelong cyclist chasing personal records. Virginia had been on an e-bike exactly once, about a year before this, and she didn't get back on a bicycle at all until roughly five years ago. Dennis was even greener — he'd just climbed off one of our electric trikes for the very first time that morning and was still finding his feet. In other words, they're the people I actually design around, not a couple of pros pretending to be beginners.

Both of them had started the day on three wheels, which matters for how the rest of this went. A trike carries you. You sit down, you steer, and the machine handles the balance. Moving from that to a two-wheeler is a real transition, especially if it's been a while, and I wanted to see how they'd feel making the jump. If you or someone you love is weighing that same step, our electric bikes built with older riders in mind are designed to make it as gentle as possible — but the only way to know what fits you is to try a few.

The plan was simple. Six e-bikes lined up, one of every style we build, from the shortest folding frame all the way to a long, low semi-recumbent. Ride them all. Tell me what you feel, not what you think I want to hear. Then pick a favorite. No script, no right answer, and every honest reaction — the good, the wobbly, and the “nope, not for me” — on the table.

Why e-bikes and older riders go together

Here's the thing people miss about electric bikes and seniors. The motor isn't there to make you lazy. It's there to remove the two things that stop most older riders from cycling at all: the fear of not being able to make it home, and the strain of hills and headwinds on joints that have earned their aches. Take those off the table and something clicks. You ride farther. You ride more often. You stop planning routes around your limits. That's the whole point.

The other quiet advantage is fit. A good e-bike is adjustable in ways that matter for real bodies — seat height, handlebar height, how much assistance the motor delivers. Over the course of the afternoon, that adjustability came up again and again, because the difference between “I feel unsteady” and “I've got this” was very often three inches of seat post and a small turn of a wrench. Keep that in mind as we go. Almost every problem Dennis and Virginia ran into had a fix, and the fix was rarely the bike itself. It was the setup.

Let me walk you through what was on the ground, because the lineup was chosen to cover the whole spread of how a person can sit on a bike. You can see the full range in our electric bike collection, but here's the short version of the six we rode, smallest frame to longest.

First, a compact folding model on twenty-inch wheels with three-inch-wide fat tires and a 750-watt motor — the zippiest, most powerful bike of the group. Next to it, a low step-through on twenty-inch wheels with a 500-watt motor, built so you barely have to lift your leg to get on. Then a classic beach-cruiser-style bike, again 500 watts, the kind of upright, relaxed ride a lot of us picture from decades ago. After that, a forward-pedaling hybrid that sits you a little lower while still letting your legs stretch out. Then a taller step-through on full-size twenty-six-inch wheels. And finally a long, low semi-recumbent with the most laid-back, legs-out-front riding position of the bunch.

That's a lot of variety, and it's deliberate. The frame you sit in changes everything about how a bike feels, and there is no single “best” for every body. What I wanted Dennis and Virginia to discover for themselves is that the right e-bike is the one that matches how your hips, knees, and sense of balance want to work. Everything we tested came down to three questions.

Wheel size and tire width

You've probably noticed twenty-inch fat-tire e-bikes everywhere lately — a lot of kids ride them. They look tough and they're fun on the throttle. But there's a catch that matters a great deal for older riders: a twenty-inch wheel wrapped in a three-inch tire is not built for pedaling. If you're leaning on the motor all the time, fine. The moment you actually want to turn the cranks, you feel every bit of that squishy, high-drag rubber fighting you. A twenty-six-inch wheel with a slimmer tire rolls easier and pedals far more naturally. Most of the bikes we make use that traditional, full-size tire on purpose, because the riders I work with — especially over fifty — still want to pedal. Virginia felt this instantly. On the smaller wheels she said she felt “over the wheels,” a little perched and unsettled; on the full-size frames she relaxed right away.

Fit: seat height, bars, and feet on the ground

This is the one I'd tattoo on every new rider's hand. When you're sitting on the saddle, stopped, you should be able to get your feet to the ground — at minimum your tiptoes, ideally the balls of both feet. Virginia had her seat cranked up high early on and immediately felt shaky, because up high you can't dab a foot down to catch yourself. The instant we dropped the saddle so she could reach the ground, the wobble disappeared and she was cruising. There's a real tension here, though, and it defined the whole day: a higher seat gives you better leg extension and a stronger pedal stroke, but it also makes you less stable and harder to mount and dismount. Finding your personal balance between those two is most of the fitting battle. The good news is that our frames adjust generously for shorter and taller folks alike — Virginia at five-six and Dennis at five-nine set up the very same bikes completely differently.

Power, and how you deliver it

Every bike here offers the same basic menu: pedal it like a regular bicycle, add pedal-assist so the motor amplifies your effort, or use the throttle for power on demand. The controls are simple — a twist or thumb throttle, and plus/minus buttons to set your assist level. What surprised both riders was how much the assist level changes the character of a bike. Virginia hopped on one machine still set in a high gear, found it hard, dropped it down, and a few seconds later hollered back that a lower gear “really goes.” Same bike, totally different ride, and it's the first thing I teach a new rider: if a bike feels too hard, you're usually in the wrong gear or the wrong assist level, not on the wrong bike.

One more thing worth knowing about the way we build most of these bikes. Because they roll on a traditional, full-size tire instead of a fat, draggy one, you can switch the motor off completely and ride them like an ordinary bicycle. That's not a small detail — it means the electric assist is a choice you make when you want it, not a crutch you're stuck leaning on, and it's a big part of why the pedal-friendly frames kept winning these two riders over as the afternoon wore on. If gentle three-wheel confidence is more your speed, by the way, our tricycles for seniors run on the same simple controls, so nothing you learn here goes to waste.

We started at the small end of the lineup with our folding fat-tire model, and it made an impression right away. This is the 750-watt bike of the bunch, riding on twenty-inch wheels and three-inch-wide tires, and it is genuinely zippy — the kind of bike where you want to respect the throttle before you twist it, because it wants to go. I warned both riders about that the moment they swung a leg over: give it a gentle input first and let the bike tell you how eager it is.

The strengths here are real, and they're the reason these bikes are everywhere. It folds down for storage or for tossing in the trunk of a car, the fat tires soak up rough ground and give you a planted, cushioned feel, and that bigger motor climbs hills and shrugs off headwinds without asking much of your legs at all. If your day involves stashing the bike in an apartment, an RV, or a garage that's already full, that folding trick is genuinely useful. And the power here is not subtle — twist the throttle and it takes off. Whether you need that much is the real question, and it's a personal one: for a lighter rider on flat ground, probably not, but if you live somewhere steep, the headroom is nice to have in your back pocket. For a rider whose priority is compact storage and effortless power, it's a compelling package, and you can dig into the details in our folding e-bike collection.

But I'll give you the same straight talk I gave Dennis and Virginia. Those small, wide wheels that make it so punchy on the throttle are exactly what make it harder to pedal under your own steam. If your dream is to spin the cranks and get a real ride in, this isn't the frame that flatters that goal. It's a throttle-forward machine, and there's nothing wrong with that — it just needs to match how you actually want to ride. For these two, who both discovered over the afternoon that they wanted to pedal, the compact folder was a fun first taste rather than a finalist.

If there's one design I'd point a nervous first-timer toward, it's this one. The whole idea behind our Simple Step-Through e-bikes is a frame so low you don't have to lift your leg over anything — you step through the middle and sit down. For anyone worried about that vulnerable half-second of swinging a leg up and over, that low step-through height takes the fear out of getting started. We brought it in two flavors: a compact twenty-inch version and a full-size twenty-six-inch version, both running a 500-watt motor.

Virginia took to the full-size twenty-six-inch version and lit up. “Easier to get on and off — I do like that, I have to admit,” she told me, and then added that it was a good size, really easy to operate, and just a great bike. She also loved the blue. I'll be honest, color mattered to her more than she let on, and there's nothing wrong with riding a bike you think is beautiful — you'll ride it more.

Dennis had a different experience, and it's an instructive one. On the taller step-through he ran into a problem that has nothing to do with the bike being bad and everything to do with his body: when he tried to bring his leg up and over, his knee didn't want to cooperate, and getting the seat high enough for a comfortable pedal stroke left him feeling a little too far off the ground. This is the exact push-and-pull I mentioned earlier — leg extension versus stability versus ease of mounting — and for a rider with a cranky knee, a mid-height step-through can land in an awkward middle. He liked it. It just wasn't going to be the one for him, and that told me a lot about where his afternoon was heading.

I'll say this about Dennis, because it matters for anyone reading who's tempted to count themselves out: the man is athletic. He goes to the gym, he's determined to keep swinging his leg over a higher frame for as long as his body will let him, and I respect that completely. A step-through frame isn't an admission of defeat — it's a tool. Plenty of strong, active riders choose one simply because it takes the drama out of mounting and dismounting, which is the single most common place older riders lose their balance. If that low, confidence-first step-through is what gets you out riding again, that's a win, full stop.

Next came our beach-cruiser-style bike, a 500-watt machine with a rear hub motor and the upright, relaxed posture a lot of people picture when they think “bicycle.” It's reminiscent of the cruisers many of us grew up on in the sixties and seventies, and that familiarity is the whole appeal. You can browse the style in our electric cruiser collection, and there's a reason it's a perennial favorite — it just feels like home.

Virginia's first pass on it got tripped up by a rookie moment that happens to everyone: the brake was engaged, so when she twisted the throttle nothing happened and she assumed the bike had no power. Once we sorted that out, it came alive. This particular model uses a thumb throttle, a small detail that some riders prefer to a twist grip, and it's worth knowing which you like before you buy.

Here's where I want to be candid about reading a rider. When Virginia rolled back on the cruiser, I got the sense it wasn't quite her favorite, and she was gracious about it — “I'm fine with that,” she said, and we moved on. That's exactly how a test ride is supposed to work. Not every good bike is your bike, and a beautiful, comfortable cruiser that a lot of riders adore can still come in second for one particular person on one particular afternoon. The cruiser stayed in her conversation right to the end, though, so don't count it out.

What keeps this style timeless is the posture. You sit upright and relaxed, hands falling naturally to swept-back bars, weight settled comfortably rather than hunched forward. For a lot of riders that upright position is easier on the back and shoulders, and it puts your eyes up where you can actually enjoy the scenery instead of staring at the pavement. Pair that with a smooth 500-watt motor that's there whenever a hill or a headwind shows up, and you've got a bike that's just plain pleasant to be on. Comfort and familiarity are underrated. A bike that feels instantly like something you already know is a bike you'll actually ride, and the one you ride is always better than the one that looks impressive in the garage.

Then we got to the EVRYjourney, and this is where Virginia's face changed. The EVRYjourney has a gently forward-pedaling design — the pedals sit a touch ahead of you rather than straight down, which lets the seat ride a little lower to the ground while your legs still get a good, full extension. It's a middle path: not the extreme laid-back position of a recumbent, just a smart tweak that keeps you closer to the ground and more confident without robbing your pedal stroke.

It's a 500-watt bike, but Virginia was sure it was more. “I like the way this one performs — this is a 700, right?” she asked. Nope, five hundred. “Really? It feels like a 700.” I think a lot of that comes down to the thinner, full-size tires, which roll so much easier that the whole bike feels livelier and quicker than the fat-tire machines even with the same power on tap. She called it fun, plain and simple, and said she loved the color and the size. When I asked if it might be her favorite, she wrestled with it out loud — “God, it's so hard” — and admitted that if she had to choose right then, this would be the one.

That's the EVRYjourney's whole trick. It doesn't overwhelm you, it doesn't demand much, and it rewards pedaling instead of punishing it. For a rider coming back to two wheels who wants something that feels like a normal bike but easier, it's one of the most reassuring bikes we make.

The forward-pedaling geometry is the quiet hero. By nudging the pedals slightly ahead of the seat, we let you drop the saddle closer to the ground — so you can plant your feet at a stop and feel secure — while your legs still stretch out to a full, efficient pedal stroke. You normally have to give up one of those to get the other. Here you don't, and that's why so many riders who haven't been on a bike in years find their confidence on this frame faster than they expect. Virginia had ridden a bit before, so she read as the more experienced of the two that day, but even she kept coming back to how fun this one was. Fun is not a small thing. Fun is what gets you back out tomorrow.

The last bike we rode was the longest and lowest of the group, and it turned out to be the one that mattered most. The Relaxed Body is what I'd call a semi-recumbent — you're not lying down, but you are pedaling out in front of your body rather than beneath it. That single design choice reshapes everything. The seat can sit lower to the ground while your legs still reach a full, powerful extension, you get a lower center of gravity that feels planted and stable, and the longer frame with its more raked-out front end rides with a calm, settled character once you're used to it.

For Dennis, it was a revelation, and the reason is worth understanding because it may be your reason too. On the more upright bikes, his knee wouldn't let him lift his leg high enough to pedal comfortably, so he ended up riding on the throttle alone. He didn't like that. “When you're just throttling, you don't have a feel for the bike,” he told me. “When you're pedaling, you actually have a feel.” On the forward-pedaling frame, with the seat nudged up just a touch, he could finally pedal — because the position gave him leg extension without forcing his knee through a range it didn't want. “Much better,” he said, rolling back in. “I'm able to pedal.” That was the moment. This was his winner, no hesitation.

Virginia felt the pull too. She liked being able to choose when to use the motor and when to work a little — “it's more like a regular bike, which I like,” she said — and she pointed out, correctly, that because it doesn't over-assist you, it actually gives you a better workout when you want one. The lower, laid-back posture also sidesteps the stability problem that comes with perching up high, which is a genuine gift for anyone who feels unsteady the higher they sit.

A couple of things about this frame throw people off at first, and they're worth naming so you're ready for them. The frame is longer than a normal bike, and the front fork is raked out a little further ahead of you, so the steering feels different for the first few minutes — calmer, more deliberate. The handlebars come back to sit right in front of your chest rather than out over a stem, which is a different hand position than a cruiser. None of that is a flaw; it's just new, and it settles in fast. And because this bike uses a full-size tire like the rest of our pedal-friendly frames, you can turn the motor off entirely and still ride it as a plain bicycle, which is exactly the “best of both worlds” Dennis was after — pedal when you want the workout and the feel, throttle when your legs are done. If a bike you can pedal comfortably, sit low on, and still feel powerful under sounds like what your body has been asking for, this is the frame I'd steer you toward first. It's the clearest example in our senior-friendly e-bike range of a design that adapts to the rider instead of asking the rider to adapt to it.

So who won? Both of them chose the Relaxed Body. Dennis was decisive about it the moment he could pedal without fighting his knee. Virginia's road there was more of a tug-of-war — she genuinely loved the two blue bikes, and her heart kept circling back to the forward-pedaling EVRYjourney and the easy-on, easy-off Simple Step-Through she'd praised earlier. Her runner-up race was close enough that I'll admit the color swayed her as much as the ride did. But when she weighed comfort, control, and that satisfying “choose your own effort” feel, the semi-recumbent got there too.

There's a pattern in that result that I see constantly, and it's the single most useful thing you can take from this whole afternoon. Both of these riders wanted to pedal. For the fifty-and-up crowd, that's almost universal — the motor is there for backup, for hills, for the last stretch home when the legs are tired, but the joy is still in turning the cranks and feeling the bike respond. The younger generation often leans the other way; a lot of them would rather just twist the throttle and zip. Neither is wrong. But it explains why my older riders so often gravitate to full-size tires and forward-pedaling frames, and away from the small-wheeled, throttle-happy machines. If you want to feel the bike, you want a frame and a wheel that reward pedaling. It's really that simple.

Notice, too, what didn't decide the day. It wasn't horsepower. For Virginia's body weight — she's a little over a hundred and thirty pounds — a 500-watt motor is plenty; she'd only want the bigger 750 if she really wanted to fly or lived somewhere steep. It wasn't the flashiest bike either. What decided it was fit: leg extension without instability, feet that reach the ground, a mounting height a real knee can handle, and the freedom to pedal or not on your own terms. If you get those four things right, almost any of our bikes will make you happy.

It's worth remembering what an e-bike actually buys a rider at this stage of life, because it's more than exercise. Virginia lights up talking about riding the hills of La Habra Heights with her girlfriend — quiet roads, not much traffic, miles of beautiful country, the two of them adjusting the seats on shared bikes and just going. Sometimes they'll ride down to a restaurant, have a bite, split a single margarita — never two, because you don't ride impaired any more than you'd drive that way — and roll home. That's the real product. Not watts and wheel sizes, but afternoons like that. Independence, a little adventure, and the freedom to get somewhere under your own power with a motor to lean on when you need it. That is what I'm actually selling, and it's why I care so much about getting the fit right.

That's also the case for keeping an open mind about three wheels. Both of these riders came to us off electric trikes and left comfortable on two, but the reverse is just as valid — if balance is your main worry, a trike removes it entirely. The best choice is the one your body agrees with, and you won't know which that is until you sit on a few.

If there's a single lesson in Dennis and Virginia's afternoon, it's that specs on a page will never tell you what your own hips and knees already know. The bike that looked wrong for one of them fit the other perfectly, and the winner only revealed itself once they'd felt the difference in their legs. That's why I keep saying the same thing: try before you buy.

We make that easy. Every bike in our electric bike lineup is backed by a test-ride guarantee — if it isn't right for you within the trial period, send it back — plus a warranty covering parts and labor. The exact terms get better from time to time, so check the current test-ride window and warranty details on our site before you order. And if you're anywhere near our Southern California showroom in San Clemente, come roll through the whole range of e-bikes for older riders in person the way these two did.

One more thing that makes a real difference for first-timers: our community. We run a Facebook group called sixthreezero Pedalers with thousands of members, and I'd tell anyone on the fence to join before they buy and talk to riders who've already made the leap. Once you've got your bike, there's an app to track your rides and even compete on a leaderboard if a little friendly competition keeps you rolling.

Getting older doesn't mean getting off the bike. For a lot of riders, it means finding the right one — and then rediscovering how good it feels to be out there. Dennis and Virginia did it in an afternoon. Your journey's waiting whenever you're ready. Enjoy the ride.