Fat Tire E-Bikes

What a fat tire e-bike is

Wide Tires for Loose Ground

A fat tire e-bike uses tires roughly twice the width of a mountain bike tire, run at low pressure. The large contact patch spreads the bike's weight, so it rolls over sand, snow and washboard gravel and soaks up bumps without suspension.

The fat bike began in Alaska and the US Southwest in the 1980s and 1990s for snow and desert riding. Adding a motor overcame the extra rolling drag of the wide tires, and the electric fat bike became one of the best-selling US e-bike styles through direct-to-consumer brands.

Rad Power Bikes, Himiway, Lectric eBikes and Aventon sell most of them, and most are designed in the US and built in China. The same wide tires appear on hunting, folding and moped-style e-bikes.

Variants

Four Kinds of Fat Tire E-Bike

Drive and equipment

High-Power Hub Motors and Large Batteries

Wide tires add rolling resistance, so fat tire e-bikes carry more power and energy than city bikes. The usual setup is a 750 W geared rear hub motor, a throttle and a battery of 700 Wh or more mounted in or on the down tube.

Front suspension forks and hydraulic disc brakes are standard on most current models. Tire pressure is the main tuning tool: lower pressure for sand and snow, higher for pavement. See Drive Systems and Batteries & Safety.

Rules and standards

Class 2 in the US, Over the Limit in the EU

In the US a fat tire e-bike under 750 W is a Class 1, 2 or 3 e-bike. Beach and trail access is set locally: many beaches ban motorized vehicles, and federal land rules differ by agency. See federal land rules.

In the EU a pedelec is limited to 250 W and 25 km/h under EN 15194. A 750 W fat tire bike with a throttle is an L-category vehicle there and needs type approval, so US models are rarely sold in Europe in the same form. See e-bike laws by state.

Representative brands

Four Fat Tire E-Bike Makers

One representative model per brand. The hero chart shows each brand's lineup figure from the EbikesX brand dataset; brands with no recorded figure are left off the chart.

Core brands with fat-tire models

Archive brands still selling fat-tire models, with specs from 2020: GoPowerBike, Haibike, Joulvert, Juiced Bikes, KHS, Kona, Luna Cycle, Magnum, Mate, Maxfoot Bike, MOD Bikes, Recon Power Bikes, Ruff Cycles, SONDORS Ebikes, SSR Motorsports, Swagtron, X-treme.

Every brand on file is in the brand directory.