Himiway Cruiser Fat Tire EBike -Test and Review

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Updated April 9th, 2024

Manufacturer and Model: Himiway Cruiser
List Price: $1599

Summary

The Himiway Cruiser is an electric fatbike that comes with a very long range 48 volt 17.5ah battery and 750 watt geared rear hub motor. It has enough battery to go 30-50 miles in real world riding and a top speed of 22mph with factory settings. You adjust the top speed up to 25mph. The 750 watt motor has aggressive acceleration from a stop. The bike has a cushy comfortable ride with a relaxed seating positon and 26×4.0 fatbike wheels. The controls are easy to use with pedal assist and throttle. The Himiway Cruiser is a great value for a long range e-bike or bike for heavier riders and is available for well under $2000.

Himiway Cruiser Review and Test

We picked up a Himiway Cruiser to review after seeing a lot of favorable mentions for its range and power. We took the Cruiser out riding in January in Michigan to find out how it rides. The temperature range was 30-40F during range testing days. The test rider weighs around 250 lbs. This is far from an ideal case for range, speed, or hill climbing ability for any electric bike.

1 – 750 watt geared rear hub motor

The cruiser uses a 750 watt brushless geared rear hub motor for power. It is big and beefy looking. It has around 1000 watts of peak output power going by the 48 volt battery voltage and 22 amp controller limit. 48 volt * 22amp = 1056 watts.

2 – 48 volt 17.5 ah removable battery

The 48volt 17.5 amp hour battery can be easily removed with a key and can be charged on and off the frame. If you need more range you can get a second battery from Himiway and carry with you. The battery weighs about 9 lbs. The battery uses Samsung or LG cells. It doesn’t have as clean a look as bikes with a more frame integrated battery. It allows for bigger cells and easier swapping.

3 – Power (9.5/10)

The Himiway Cruiser has a motor with an aggressive setup for acceleration. It won’t leave you with any question at all about whether the motor is active or not. It takes a little time to get used to the power, but once you get a feel for it, the Cruiser becomes extremely fun to ride.

Top Speed

The published top speed for the Himiway Cruiser is 22mph. It can be set up to 25mph in the settings menu. The instructions in the manual don’t work for changing the top speed. There are instructions for setting the top speed on Himiway’s website.

We measured the top speed in both pedal assist and throttle only mode using a Garmin GPS. The speedometer on the bike read up to 23mph. According to the GPS, we were able to get up to 21.3mph with throttle only and 22.0mph exactly while pedaling.

We set the top speed to the maximum setting in the menu and tested it again with the GPS. The speedometer read up to 26mph. The GPS measured 24.1mph for throttle only and 24.2mph for pedal assist.

The pedal gearing range on the bike is good up to about 20mph. Above 20mph I have to pedal very fast to not freewheel. At 24mph I am just freewheeling the pedals to keep the motor going. The bike could use 1 to 2 more high gears for 22-25mph pedal assist speeds.

Acceleration

The Cruiser has very strong acceleration and can accelerate heavy riders up to 22mph on throttle only very quickly. It has a very sporty, strong feel to it any time you hit the throttle coming off a corner or from a standstill.

Hill climbing

We took the Himiway Cruiser to our standard hill climbing test hill. This is a 0.5 mile test hill with a 100 feet of elevation gain. It has 2 sections where the max grade is 10%. We use a 250 lb rider. It’s a tiring hill to ride up on a standard bike. We do the hill climb twice with every bike. Once with throttle only and once using the max pedal assist setting. We got the following results with the Himiway Cruiser.

• Throttle only – 1 minute and 48 seconds with an average speed of 17.62 mph.
• Pedal assist – 1 minute and 44 seconds with an average speed of 18.2 mph.

The Cruiser is very fast going up this hill. It barely slows below 20mph anywhere on the hill. For reference, some of the slower bikes we have tested can take over 4 minutes to go up the hill. Anything under 2 minutes is close to a sustained 20mph the whole way up the hill.

The Cruiser has a cadence sensor so it will try to go 20mph on max pedal assist as long as you keep the pedals moving. The Cruiser has a ton of power. We aren’t surprised to see that our pedaling didn’t cut much time off.

4 – Range (10/10)

We did 2 days of riding to find out what the maximum range we could get with the Himiway Cruiser was. We rode mostly on bike paths and rails to trail paths that had a decent number of stops and hill climbs. We want to know what kind of range the Cruiser can provide in real world conditions rather than lapping a long straight flat path over and over.

Pedal assist

In pedal assist mode we were able to get 48.75 miles. This was with 1043 feet of climbing along the way. We did the test using level 3 with a max speed of 15mph. The bike maintained good power levels until the last 2 miles when the power level drops off quickly. The battery bar never shows below 1 bar. You will have good power with one bar left for several miles until you don’t. There is no flashing last bar or other indicator when it’s getting close to empty.

Throttle Only

We were able to get 30.26 miles out of the Cruiser using throttle only. There was 584 feet of climbing during the ride with a couple extended climbs in the middle of the ride. I rode between 15-20mph for most of the ride. The bike was able to maintain speeds up to 15mph until the last 2 miles when the speed dropped. The bike was only able to maintain 5-8mph on flat ground for the last mile. The battery bar in the display never showed less than 1 bar.

I also recorded the distance from the LCD display on this test. It gave 32.9 miles at the end of the test vs 30.3 miles from the GPS. It’s off by less than 10% which is good for a wheel speed based distance.

5 – Ride and Handling (9/10)

Comfort

The bike has an upright riding position with handlebars with a little sweep. They are more curved than traditional mountain bike bars but not by much. I have taken the bike for several multiple hour rides now. It is quite comfortable to ride. The only soreness I get is from the seat but that is more from me not being used to sitting on a bike seat that long. The wide fat bike tires do a good job of smoothing out the road. The fork adds a little more cush as well.

Cornering

This bike is more of a straight line cruiser than a nimble cornering machine. Think of it more as a large Chevy Tahoe SUV bike rather than a Volkswagon GTI sports car bike. It is a smooth bike and corners well on normal turns. It is heavy and big and doesn’t like very tight terrain such mountain bike singletrack with very tight corners. It loves flowy smooth corners.

6 – Braking (8.5)

The cable pull 180mm rotor disc brakes do a good job of stopping the bike. It’s a heavy bike with a heavy rider on it. You need to give the levers some squeeze effort to stop quickly. Riding it leaves me wishing for a set of hydraulic disc brakes that need much less finger effort.

7 – Controls (8.5/10)

LCD Display

The LCD display shows you the following information:

• Speed
• Pedal Assist level
• Battery level
• Motor assist level
• A bottom display that can show trip distance, max speed, and average speed

Control buttons

There is a button cluster on the left handlebar that has a +,-,info,power, and light button. All the buttons are labeled well and are easy to hit while riding even while wearing winter gloves. It’s nice having a dedicated button for the headlights that doesn’t require holding down a button or hitting a combination of buttons.

Menus and settings

You can access the menu by pushing the + and – buttons at the same time. This will let you reset the trip meter and change from mph to kph. You have to press the – and info button for 2 seconds twice to get into the menu that lets you alter the top speed. You can find instructions here for that menu.

Pedal Assist and Throttle

The throttle is operated with a twist throttle on the right handlebar. I find the spring tension a bit high when riding with throttle only for a long time. The pedal assist has 5 speed levels that can be switched using the + and – buttons while riding. The 5 pedal assist levels are:

• Level 1 – 8 mph
• Level 2 – 10mph
• Level 3 – 15mph
• Level 4 – 20mph
• Level 5 – 25mph (can be set up to 25mph)

7 speed pedal driveline

The bike has a 7 Speed Shimano driveline with an Altus derailleur. It works reliably when you need to pedal. The shifter is easy to use with a gear number display on the shifter.

8 – Assembly Ease (8/10)

Assembly Time – 2.5 hours

It took me about 2.5 hour to assemble the bike and have it ready to ride. That was from opening the box to all adjustments completed and ready to go riding. The actual assembly time was about an hour and a half with 30 minutes to open the box and remove the packaging and 30 minutes for adjustments.

The manual does a good job of explaining the assembly process. There is no instructions for attaching the front fender. You can find them on Hemiway’s website.

Extra tools required

We try to assemble everything we get with only the tools provided until we can’t. A nice multitool is included that is going to get a permanent home in my biking bag. There are several assembly steps that need to use 2 tools to complete.

The headlight installation needs to use a hex wrench and socket at the same time. You can finger hold the socket. I don’t trust my finger gripping power to torque down the bolt tight enough to hold the headlight so it won’t loosen while riding.

The pedals are very difficult to tighten using the pedal wrench on the multitool. You are working against the folding mechanism of the tool. A small adjustable wrench will work great. Applying a little grease to the pedals will make it much easier if you ever need to remove them later on.

The fenders have a small nut and hex bolt that you need to tighten together so you need 2 tools.

Attaching the rear light

The rear light attaches to the rear rack. It’s much easier to attach it to the rack before you mount the rack on the bike. Then you need to clean up the wire installations with some zip ties. No zip ties are provided. See the below images for how I bundled up the extra wiring.

Adjustments needed

The only adjustment I needed to make was with the rear derailleur. Mine was not able to shift through all 7 gears as delivered. Rear derailleurs are very easy to adjust if you follow good instructions. You can find a good guide to adjusting rear derailleurs at Park Tool. You can watch the below video from Park Tool too.

9 – Accessories

Lights

The bike has a built in headlight and tail light. Most e-bikes in this price range only have a rear reflector. An actual light is a nice addition. The lights are bright enough to ride at night. I do prefer adding a helmet mounted light so I can always have light in the direction I’m looking. The head light on the bike is bright enough and lights up enough area for riding on streets or bike paths.

Fenders

Our Cruiser came with front and rear fenders. The rear fender was already installed. You have to put the front fender on yourself. They are made with heavy feeling plastic with metal attachments. They are holding up well so far with all the riding we have done. They do a good job of keeping you dry when riding on wet surfaces or through puddles.

Rack

The Cruiser has a rear rack that you have to install. The rear tail light is mounted to it. The rack surface is wood which gives the bike a nice classic look. The rack frame is heavy duty enough to carry a decent amount of weight.

10 – Size and Fit

The Himiway Cruiser is available with a regular or Step Thru Frame. The regular frame will work okay for riders down to about 5’6″ before they can’t clear the top tube. The Step-Thru frame is good for anyone smaller. I’m 6′ and the frame is a very good fit for me.

Recommendation – Buy or No Buy?

We have had a lot of fun riding the Himiway Cruiser. It has a lot of power. It can go the distance in hilly terrain with a heavier rider. It isn’t as stylish as bikes with integrated batteries in the frame but that is a tradeoff for bigger cells and more range. It lacks nothing in performance and has a very long range. If you want a good reliable e-bike that is comfortable to ride, works well on or off road, and has a lot of power and range, then the Himiway Cruiser is a great value.

Other bikes to consider

The most popular bikes available that are similar to the Himiway Cruiser are the Aventon Aventure, Juiced Ripcurrent, and Hiboy P6. All of them have 26 x 4.0 inch fatbike tires along with 750 watt rear hub motors. The Himiway Cruiser has the highest battery capacity of the group at 840 watts. The next closest bike is the Juiced Rip Current at 780 watts.

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