“Dude. Is that an ebike?” The call came from a man on the sidewalk with a pierced septum and a tattoo of a bike chain. He wasn’t the only one who asked. The Ride1Up Roadster V3 doesn’t look like an ebike, which is precisely why it drew notice from former bike shop repairmen and fitness-obsessed schoolteachers.
Ride1Up’s city commuter Roadster, released a year ago and popular enough it went in and out of stock through much of 2025, is at the vanguard of a new generation of smartly integrated ebikes that look and feel like a bike without motor assist. Like the Aventon Soltera 3 we rated this year as WIRED’s favorite commuter bike, the Roadster V3 is a lightweight ebike excellent for tooling around the city, weighing about 40 pounds depending on the precise model. Its proportional torque assist can make it feel a lot like an extra-peppy classic bike—albeit one whose 500-watt motor can crank up to 28 miles an hour when set to operate as a Class 3 ebike.
This is an ebike geared toward how I usually want to use an ebike: as a fast and versatile city bike for kicking around my city of Portland, Oregon. I have spent months, and hundreds of miles, riding the nine-speed model of the Roadster V3 to grocery stores and friends’ houses—up steep ridges and across rivers, or just down the street—and lifting it one-handed up my stairs and into my house. The Roadster rides like a bicycle that’s easier to pedal. This is how I want it to feel.
At $1,395, Ride1Up’s roadster is also affordable for a high-performance ebike with premium parts and a throttle to help launch up difficult hills. The 20- to 40-mile range is limiting for long-distance touring but more than sufficient for most daily commutes. A dearth of affiliated repair shops is a worry for service, a common problem with direct-to-consumer ebikes, because most regular bike shops refuse to even fix a flat if they don’t sell a particular brand. But the Ride1Up also punches well above its price class in power, features, and versatility.
Belts and Chains
San Diego-based Ride1Up is a newer ebike company, less than a decade old. The company is building its reputation mostly by offering a lot of specialized and utility bikes at accessible prices. But as someone who often favors classic road bikes, I’ll admit some of their other models have struck me as a bit chunky or over-engineered, geared to trail riders and the sort of person who wants to cart a surfboard to the beach.
Not so the Roadster. The Roadster V3 is fun and light and is easy to mistake for a classic bicycle even when you’re riding it. The cables run through the hollow of the frame. The battery, while removable, is also integrated almost imperceptibly into the chassis.
At its price, it offers a surprising amount of customization. Three frame sizes make the bike accessible to riders from 5’2″ to 6’4″. At above 6 feet and 200 pounds myself, I opted for the largest frame, which still weighs only 40 pounds.
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