Shimano Shifter

This is the same Shimano seven speed shifter seen on our electric bikes. It is considered a “top bar” bike shifter. This is the only shifter that we found that will actually allow us to have our ebike throttle and a shifter on the same side of the handlebar. Lucky for us, it's one of the best bike shifters on the market.

This Shimano shifter is a seven speed, meaning it has 7 different shifting levels. On the surface, you have one large lever that you push with your thumb to shift up into low gear, and then there's a button that you can push that'll index through all seven gears to the highest gear. This Shimano shifter comes with an extra long cable and housing to fit on our longer frame bikes. It can be customized to fit on any length bike.

Do most e-bikes have bike gears? Do they use Shimano shifters?

The cheapest electric bikes will only have a single speed gearing system, meaning no shifter at all. In order to cut costs a lot of electric bikes below the $1,500 price point tend to only have 1 gear. In our eyes it's fundamental for a bike to still have multiple gears. Gears help aid in hill climbing and also offers more range and support of pedaling.

There are a lot of seven speed, eight speed, and nine speed shifters on the market in both the electric bike and regular bike markets. Seven speed is considered a standard.

What role does a shifter play in an electric bike? How does having a shifter help an electric bike?

If you have a hub motor electric bike, meaning the motor is located inside the wheel, the pedal ratios aren't super critical, but they certainly will enhance your ride. The shifter mainly just allows you to catch up to the motor and have some sort of feedback during pedal assist. Many ebikes will be single speed which can be tough to catch up with your pedal assist level, leaving you pedaling for pretty much no reason other than to operate the assist. A Shimano shifter lets the rider get a bit of exercise, rotating the legs and get closer to feeling the output of the assisted power. On a hub motor system the ratio is fixed inside the hub and the wheel will spin whether you're pedaling or not. What gear you're in wont make too much of a difference difference because the ratio built into the hub is a single ratio.

If you have a mid-drive motor, and you have speeds to shift through, then it works much like a transmission where you have the motor powering the chain ring or the sprocket. So, if you have seven speed with a mid-drive, that's like a transmission in a car and you get multiple ratios versus the one ratio at a hub motor.