Electric Cruiser Bike
Electric Bike Perfection
Updated by Stephan Aarstol
At Tower, we've done the homework for you - we never stop. We've examined all of the true pros and cons of eBike product features. We analyzed the eBike market extensively to separate the marketing fluff from the really important concerns. Then we took a SoCal design mindset to design what we consider is the perfect eBike balancing performance, power, convenience, durability, and style. That was our original Beach Bum. Now we've improved it with our Beach Bum 2. And because we only sell direct to consumer, we can offer you this very premium product at an almost unbelievable price. You'll save about 40% off a comparable eBike in retail.
Can you find a cheaper eBike? Of course, there's a lot of crappy eBikes out there and there's a wide spectrum of components, power, and quality out there. If you are not careful, you may not only buy an inferior product, but you may get a disposable one that you'll really regret purchasing later. We're different. Tower is all about giving consumers direct to consumer value on a premium quality electric bike. If you want that, you've come to the right place.
Upgrades on the Beach Bum 2
Mind you, these are improvements to our original Beach Bum, which was an award winning eBike already!
Major Functional Improvements
- Upgraded to hydraulic brakes – to enjoy the convenience of self-adjusting brakes
- Geared up – to enable pedaling power even while at higher speeds
- Upgraded to pre-filling tires with tire slime – to further eliminate flat tires
- Upgraded to an adjustable handlebar stem – to accommodate a wider array of rider height
- Upgraded frame strength & mount points – to accommodate rack, seat, and fender add-ons
Major Quality Improvements
- Upgraded to a sealed cassette system – to improve durability and rust resistance
- Upgraded to a 1 1/8” threadless headset – for increased durability and ease of adjustment
- Upgraded derailleur – to improve chain tension and shifting performance
- Upgraded painting process – to improve scratch resistance
- Upgraded rust resistance – to improve rust resistance across the board
- Upgraded the seat lever – to minimize seat slippage
- Upgraded boxing – to better ensure Tower eBikes arrive undamaged
Major Safety Improvements
- Front light comes at start up – for better visibility all around
- More reliable brakes – for the peace of mind that you’ll always have brakes
E-Bike High Performance, High Capacity Samsung Battery
Battery quality and capacity is the most important component of an electric bike. It's also the most expensive element. A lot of cheaper eBikes try to cut costs on the battery part (with small capacity batteries, or generic cells), but that's very short sighted thinking, as you'll sacrifice both motor power and range from the get go, and long term you're battery performance will quickly diminish. At Tower, we use only the highest quality Samsung 48V / 14Ah lithium ion batteries. The Tower Electric Beach Cruiser will easily carry you 30-60 miles per charge. This isn't an exaggeration like you'll find in marketing fluff elsewhere. That's 30 miles with throttle only for an adult male.
There's also a handy USB charging port on the side of the battery, so you can charge your phone in a pinch or bring along a portable speaker. There is a key locking the battery to your bike, and when it's time for a charge you can either charge it on the bike, or remove the battery and bring it with you to charge wherever.
High-Torque Electric Motor for Hill Climbing Power
The power of your motor is the next most important component of an eBike. Don't believe the hype that power is all about watts (i.e. a 750w motor is not necessarily more powerful than 500w, or even a 350w motor) or volts (although, all else equal, a 48v system is more powerful than a 36v system... but things aren't always "all else equal"). A lot more goes into it the power equation. The biggest factor, which is rarely discussed, is torque (NM, or Newton meters). Is it hub drive, mid-drive, or front drive motor? Is the motor geared for speed or torque. What most people really want in power is hill climbing ability, and you need to compare bikes side by side on that to get to the truth of that power question.
At Tower, we use a specifically designed high-torque 500w/48v brushless geared rear hub motor. We sacrifice a little high-end speed for exceptional hill climbing high torque. The torque measurement of our motor is an outstanding 65NM (Newton meter). Our eBike will still go 20 mph, which is plenty fast, trust us, but you'll really appreciate the ability to climb any hill you face. In fact, 20 mph is actually a little too fast and we factory set our speed limiter to 18 mph because that's all most people will want to use. You can unlock the full speed if you like, but most won't need or want that.
Only the Finest Electronic Bike Components
This is a high-end bike, not just a high-end eBike. We did make the world's finest beach cruiser bike prior to coming out with our eBike, after all. We use premium components throughout. We really don't care too much about cutting manufacturing costs as with our direct to consumer model, we only need to mark things up once. This allows us to make product and component decisions focused 100% on quality and performance, not some retail price point we need to target. With our Beach Bum 2, we upgraded over 20 individual specs and in doing so actually added about 20% to our production costs. We did it because it made sense for a cost benefit prospective - you're going to get a much higher quality electric bike that you'll cherish for years!
You get Velo premium saddle and grips for that luxurious tactile feel. You get Schwalbe Fat Frank balloon tires for the most comfortable, and quiet ride. Instead of changing flat tires on the regular, our Tower bike comes with the industry's finest K-Guard Schwalbe Fat Frank Tires pre-filled with flat-resistant slime, and we add an extra tire liner on top of that. Nobody does this. The dirty little secret in the eBike world is that flat tires are a HUGE problem with low quality electric bikes as they try to save a few bucks by giving you crappy tires. This is a problem for all bikes, but a far more serious problem on eBikes as they are heavier, and you tend to venture much farther from home. Flat tires are the #1 complaint on eBikes.
Inflate our balloon tires to our recommended 30 PSI, and you've also got built in shock absorbers without any additional weight. The fact is you don't really need or want shocks for a beach cruiser.
With our 7-speed cassette gear and premium derailleur system, you can climb hills in low gear and speed along in high gear. With pedal assist and our low 1st gear anyone can bike up any hill. With our many upgrades to the Beach Bum 2, we really nailed the new gearing ratios for an eBike. You'll be amazed where you can go.
Lastly, we don't just give you disc brakes so we can say it's got "disc brakes", we give you some of the finest Tektro hydraulic disc brakes, which you'll appreciate as you fly down a hill and need that reliable, consistent stopping power. More importantly, you have the peace of mind of having self-adjusting and relatively maintenance free hydraulic brakes, versus mechanical disc brakes that need to be constantly adjusted.
Our original Beach Bum was highly rust resistant, but the Beach Bum 2 has taken eBike rust proofing to another level. We upgraded our coated steel spokes on the original Beach Bum to coated stainless steel spokes at almost five times the production cost. Our rear spokes are now 12 gauge stainless steel and our front spokes are 13 gauge stainless steel. We upgraded from zinc plated steel spoke nipples to chrome plated copper spoke nipples. We chrome plated our new cassette for the rear gear cluster. We upgraded the pedal spindle by applying an electrophoresis deposition process. And all removable screws everywhere on the eBike were upgraded to stainless steel.
With a beefy rear frame triangle, and added attachment points, our Beach Bum 2 is designed to add on fenders, a rear rack, and a rear rack seat if you like.
Lightweight eBike with Aluminum Frame
Our frame is high-grade, lightweight aluminum, so even when you're not using pedal assist you can ride this bike just fine. This is another problem that's swept under the carpet with cheap eBikes, which tend to be heavy. There are eBikes out there approaching 70 lbs, even folding bikes (which is a hernia waiting to happen). A 70 lb bike is not something you want to pedal back home after your cheap eBike battery dies, and certainly you'll never want to just use it as a bike for exercise.
Our Tower bike is designed to really be two bikes in one. Even with the motor on it, it's still only 52 lbs and you can pedal it just like a regular, non-electric beach cruiser. Remove the battery and even with a motor still on the back hub, at only 41 lbs, this eBike is pretty close to the standard beach cruiser weight. Riding it "power free" is on par with riding your garden variety beach cruiser, just one with far superior components. Also remember, that aluminum frame is highly rust resistant.
Style Is An E-Bike That Looks Like A Regular Bike
If you've never ridden an eBike, one thing might surprise you. There's a fair bit of animosity out there in the purist biking world against eBikes. You'll even get some snide comments from people on two feet sharing your chosen bike path. If you ride past someone on an interurban bike trail or the boardwalk on something that looks more like a motorcycle than a bicycle with its awkwardly tacked on battery pack, a huge mid-drive motor, or heaven forbid noisy fat tires, you'll get some comments. More importantly, you'll just sort of feel like a bit of an idiot. I literally can't even ride one of those fat tire mini-bike looking things in my neighborhood because I just feel like I'm offending everyone, which I kind of am.
At Tower, we wanted to bring cool back to eBikes, so our foundational priority was to make an eBike that just looked like a regular, stylish bike. We wanted no one to even notice. To achieve this, and also have an eBike on the high-end of the eBike power spectrum (because that's critical too), we opted for a low-profile rear hub motor. Most people can hardly even tell the bike has a motor. Then we stylistically positioned the battery pack behind the seat post, and integrated the controller within the battery pack. The result is that most people just casually looking at it won't even notice it's an eBike. That's what we were going for. We literally have to write "eBike" prominently in our advertising, or people think we're just showing them a regular bike. But let me tell you, this is exactly what you want when you're out and about amongst the hard core bikers and strolling down a crowded boardwalk. All you're going to hear is, "Hey, that's a beautiful bike!" when they see the iconic matte black design artfully accented with rich brown grips, saddle, and brown and whitewall tires.
Electric Cruiser Bike LCD Display and Control Settings
The Tower electric bike includes: regular bike mode, pedal assist mode, and throttle only mode. The pedal assist system (PAS system) includes a 0-5 setting, and defaults to 0 when the eBike is turned on. At a pedal assist level of 0, there is no pedal assist. You are in regular bike mode. The throttle does work, however, so you can cruise on throttle only as you like. Pedal assist levels 1-5 give you an increasing level of pedal assist power.
The LCD controller main screen shows you your current battery charge level, your current pedal assist level, and you're speedometer. There is a whole host of features and settings within the LCD display functionality, which you can read about more in the instruction manual, but it includes an odometer, the ability to switch between mph and kph, and the ability to set a speed limiter. For letting others ride the bike but only at a lower top speed, the speed limiter can be set and password protected so no one but you can change it.
Well Boxed & Delivered Undamaged (Guaranteed)
Knowing what we know from over a decade in the direct to consumer business, we've learned how to over engineer our boxes so your order arrives in perfect condition. This isn't the case with most eBikes you get online. We have a fork plate that secures the front fork directly to the box in the same way the wheel is attached to the front fork. We've reinforced the box corners with perfectly molded Styrofoam corner pieces. We use an extraordinarily strong box shell. We have six reinforced hand holds to make carrying our boxes easier. We have big, wide boxes with a healthy cushion on each side of our eBikes to protect against side impacts. And lastly we completely stuffed every box with loose fill to eliminate voids, improve crush resistance, and act as a shock absorber from one part to another inside in the event of external shocks. This is an extraordinarily expensive packaging solution, but it’s one you will appreciate when you eBike arrives undamaged.
Discover A New World with an Electric Cruiser Bike
The beauty you'll discover of having an electric bike is that they make the previously inaccessible, accessible. You can venture not just a few miles from your origination, but 10-20 miles so you can really explore all areas of your surrounding area. Because you can now climb pretty much any hill with pedal assist, you'll find yourself venturing into areas you would have never considered going on a bike before. And because you always have a free ride home, you'll find yourself more open to grabbing the bike and heading out for some exercise. You quickly find that eBikes are not just like regular bikes, they're a whole new level of freedom that didn't exist before.
Best Electric Bike + Direct To Consumer Value
Because we sell direct, we are able to spend money on the highest quality production and components, while still giving you incredible value and a very low price. At Tower, we frequently have to re-educate our factories on the level of quality we want and are willing to pay for. When they tell us, "No one does that because it's too expensive", we argue maybe everyone is doing it wrong, or they are dissuaded by their very expensive middleman-laden distribution channel. We view everything through the value we can deliver with our efficient direct to consumer business model. We analyze if it really adds value and if we can bring that to consumers in a manner that justifies the incremental cost. When it does, we often have an opportunity to introduce better features than what consumers can even find in retail. As evidenced in with our upgrades to the Beach Bum 2, we upgraded over 20 individual specs and increased our production costs by over 20% to bring you a better bike at what we believe to be the absolute best value in the industry. Our business model translates into value for consumers, not profits for a bunch of layers of unnecessary middlemen.
Your Tower Beach Bum eBike Includes:
- Aluminum frame & forks
- 36H stainless steel rims with 12 gauge stainless steel spokes
- 26" x 2.35" Schwalbe Fat Frank brown and whitewall tires with K-Guard
- Slime filled tubes out of the factory with added tire liners
- 7 speed chrome plated 11-34T cassette gears
- Premium derailleur
- eBike specific Tektro hydraulic disc brakes
- 1 1/8" threadless headset
- Adjustable handlebar stem
- Velo premium saddle
- Barefoot pedals
- Heavy duty kickstand
- Velo contoured grips
- Samsung 48v/14A lithium-ion battery pack with integrated controller
- 48v battery charger
- Tower's 48v/500w brushless geared rear hub motor (65NM torque)
- Front headlight, and rear light
- LCD display system (with speedometer, odometer, battery level reading, etc.)
- All cabling for pedal assist, half throttle, and lighting
eBike Parts & Accessories