LANKELEISI MG740PLUS Dual Motor EBike – Test and Review

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Updated April 9th, 2024

Manufacturer and Model: LANKELEISI MG740PLUS
List Price: $1899

LANKELEISI MG740PLUS Review and Test

LANKELEISI is a Chinese electric bike company with warehouses in the US, UK, and Europe. They have been around at least 10 years. Their bikes are CE certified. They make some interesting ebikes such as the dual motor MG740Plus and the dual motor folding X3000 Max. We got our hands on a LANKELEISI MG740PLUS that was shipped from the US warehouse to try out. It is a very high powered ebike with dual 1000 water hub motors and can go over 30mph on throttle.

The MG740Plus comes delivered with the units set to kph and the top speed set to 25kph (16mph). I suspect this is a European spec bike because the brakes are also on opposite handlebars from what is normal in the US.

The top speed comes set at 16mph but can be set up to 62mph or 100kph in the menu. The bike can’t actually go that fast. It tops out around 34mph.

When you turn on the MG740Plus it defaults to rear motor only mode. This lets it be in compliance with European regulations. The single motor mode is limited to 250 watts output in PAS1. You have to hold the + button down for 2 seconds to get it into dual motor mode to unleash the full 2000 watts of power.

1 – Dual 1000 watt front and rear hub motors

The MG740Plus claims 2 1000 watt brushless hub motors. They look similar in size to the 750 watt motors found on other bikes. These motors have a nominal output of 750 watts and can peak at 1000 watts or a little more. This bike has a lot of kick when in dual motor mode.

2 – 48 volt 20 ah removable battery

This dual motor Samsung battery electric bike comes with a 48 volt 20 ah battery made with Samsung cells. The battery slides on and off the frame and has a key lock. The battery mounts on top of the frame down tube which gives it a taller top tube than a similar sized bike with a battery mounted in the frame.

3 – 4 inch wide fat tires and front suspension

The bike comes with 26 inch by 4 inch fat bike wheels and tires. These give it a good amount of cushion and also make it stable and easy to ride. The bike has a generic coil spring front fork that adds a little more cushion. The fork has a preload adjustment and also a lockout.

4 – Cadence Sensor

The MG740Plus uses a cadence sensor for pedal assist motor activation. It needs more than a half turn of the pedals before the motor activates. Better cadence sensors can activate with 15-30 degrees of pedal rotation. This makes the bike difficult to ride in tight spaces because of the amount of distance the bike has to travel before the motor activates. You get a nice forward surge when the motor turns on before it turns off if you stop pedaling right away.

5 – Power (10.0/10)

Power is the standout feature of this bike. If you want more than just 750 watts or 1000 watts peak than the MG740Plus could be the bike for you. In dual motor mode, it is very easy to spin the rear tire when starting with the throttle. This bike goes into beast mode when climbing hills using PAS 5 or throttle.

Top Speed

This bike is delivered with a 16mph top speed. The menu is easy to use to bump that up. The menu lets you set the speed up to 62mph. This bike still only has a 48 volt battery which limits how fast it can go. It will do more than a Class 3 28mph but not a lot more. A 52 volt battery would have turned this bike into a rocket.

We measured the top speed it would go with a GPS using PAS and throttle. The results are below.

• Throttle – Max Speed GPS – 32.81 mph
• Throttle – Max speed shown on display – 33.4 mph

• Pedal Assist – Max Speed GPS – 29.73 mph
• Pedal Assist – Max speed shown on display – 30.0 mph

Hill climbing

I took the MG740Plus to my standard hill climbing test hill. This is a 1/2 mile hill with several 10% grades. I use a 250 lb rider for the test. Normally I test bikes on this hill with factory settings. Given that the MG740PLUS comes set with a 16mph top speed I decided that it would not be a true show of the bikes performance.

For the the throttle only hill climb test I set the max speed to 20mph. Most of the other bikes we test all have a 20mph throttle max speed. For pedal assist, I set the top speed to 28mph. This gives it a good comparison to other popular fat tire ebikes such as the Aventon Aventure, Himiway Zebra and Gotrax Tundra.

I measured the below times for climbing the hill with the MG740Plus.

• Throttle Only – 1 min and 43 seconds. Average speed 18.3 mph
• Pedal Assist – 1 min and 24 seconds. Average speed 22.4 mph

The fastest 750 watt fat tire electric bike we tested was the Gotrax Tundra. The MG740Plus beat the Tundra by 11 seconds with throttle only and 8 seconds with pedal assist. The dual 1000 watt motors have some serious grunt for getting up hills.

Acceleration

Acceleration is very quick in dual motor mode and throttle or PAS5. I found that when starting the bike, I almost always got some tire spin before the bike starts moving. It takes a lot of power to break the traction on these tires and overcome their momentum.

6 – Range (10.0/10)

I take every ebike on a standard loop for testing range. This involves going out to a park about 12 miles away, riding 8 miles around a lake, and then riding back. For 20ah battery bikes I do 2 laps around the lake. The route has some steep and long climbs along the way. I do the ride as close to 15mph as I can. I use a 250 lb rider. I do the test twice. Once with pedal assist and once with throttle only.

Because this bike is dual motor and if you are buying it, you are buying it for the 2 motor power. We did the range test in dual motor mode. Most people are unlikely to ride it in the 250 watt power limit single motor mode. The bike will go a lot farther if you do.

Pedal assist

The MG740Plus goes 13mph in level 2 and 19mph in level 3. We did the whole ride in Level 3 which is faster than we test other bikes. For cadence sensor bikes we have to choose a range test speed based on what speed the bike wants to go. 19mph it was.

The MG740Plus went 49.65 miles with 1450 feet of climbing along the way. This was a few miles less than the other 20 ah battery bikes we have tested. None of those have dual motors. Almost 50 miles is still a really long range bike. LANKELEISI publishes a range of up to 93 miles for this bike with pedal assist. You might be able to get to 92 miles in single motor mode on PAS 1 going 10mph with a light rider.

Throttle Only

I rode the same route again using only throttle. I rode closer to our normal 15mph test speed. This time the bike went 39.86 miles with 953 feet of climbing. This was not too far below the 43 mile published range for motor only. This is more of a bike that you assist a little by pedaling. It’s not bike where the rider does most of the work.

7 – Ride and Handling (7.0/10)

The bike is stable and feels good going up to 30mph. It’s got enough slack angle in the frame to be stable riding at high speeds. The tires work well on pavement riding fast.

We had an issue while riding the bike. The adjustable stem came loose twice during our test rides. If it gets loose enough to drop to its lowest position the bike becomes very difficult to control. Trying to pull the handlebar back up can easily twist the throttle on when you really want to stop. I tightened it very tight after the first time this happened. I paid close attention to it after that and caught it when it loosened up the second time before the bars dropped down.

Comfort

The bike is comfortable to ride for long periods. The seat has enough cushion to it to be okay for longer rides. The adjustable height stem does let you fine tune riding position from a more upright cruiser position to a lower more performance oriented position.

Cornering

I felt the bike handled well up to 30mph. 30mph is really fast on a fat tire bike. Do not expect this bike to corner like a sportscar. It’s more like a Jeep Wrangler in a bike. It will go really fast. High speed cornering is not its specialty.

8 – Braking (9.0/10)

The MG740Plus has hydraulic disc brakes that give it good stopping power. I have never seen this brand of disc brakes before on any bike. They have a heavy duty looking red metal caliper. The brakes did develop some squeal by the time we were done with our range test. Noisy disc brakes have been normal on almost every fat tire ebike we have tested.

9 – Offroading with the MG740PLUS

I took this Dual Motor Off-Road Electric Bike to some dirt roads and wider Jeep trail kind of terrain. I did not take it to any mountain bike single track. The bike has beast amounts of power for climbing long straight hills. It doesn’t quite have the control you would want for tight technical climbing because of the amount of pedal stroke you need for the cadence sensor to activate the motor.

I found in places with a lot of curves that it was much easier to ride in lower PAS settings that toned down the acceleration a lot.

I found one steep dirt hill that I tried climbing with throttle only with single and dual motors. In single motor mode, the bike struggled hard and was barely moving forward by the top of the climb. In dual motor mode, the bike powered up without any hesitation. The bike has a lot of tuning potential for different terrain by using single or dual motor and different pedal assist levels. The downside is the cadence sensor that needs a 1/2 turn of the crank to get the motor going so you need some open space when starting out.

10 – Controls (6.0/10)

The MG740Plus has a 5 button controller on the handlebar plus a horn button underneath. It has a +, -, power, info, and light button. The controls are easy to use. You can enter the setup menu by pressing the + and – buttons and holding for a few seconds.

LCD Display

The bike has a 2 color LCD display that shows most of the information in white that is easy to read. The battery capacity and a few other items on the display are in dark blue. The dark blue color is next to impossible to see in bright daylight. Just about any other color should have been used to make this display.

Control buttons

The bike uses a 5 button controller on the left handlebar. There is also a horn button below the 5 control buttons. Everything is easy to operate. The instruction manual is clear with how to enter the settings menu to change the bike settings. You turn dual motor mode on by holding the + button. You can access the settings menu by pressing the + and – buttons for a couple of seconds.

Pedal Assist and Throttle

This bike has throttle settings for each PAS level along with different power levels. PAS 1 is limited to a slower speed. Acceleration is also reduced a lot. Acceleration goes up along with top speed for each PAS lever. The bike is mild in PAS 1 and goes beast in PAS 5. Below are the speeds the bike operates at in pedal assist. The bike will go faster in throttle only operation then it will go in PAS 5.

• Level 1 – 13 mph
• Level 2 – 19 mph
• Level 3 – 23 mph
• Level 4 – 28 mph
• Level 5 – 30 mph

7 speed pedal driveline

The bike has a basic Shimano 7 speed pedal driveline. There is a Tourney shifter and Altus derailleur. I’m not a fan of any Tourney components on bikes that cost over $500. They are common on under $2000 ebikes. They work and that is about as much as you can say about them.

11 – Assembly Ease (5.0/10)

The MG740Plus comes with enough tools to complete assembly. A Phillips head screwdriver is needed for adjusting the derailleur that was not included. At first glance, it doesn’t look like there is that much to do other than attach the front wheel. We found a few more hiccups along the way.

Assembly Time – 2.0 hours

It took me about 2 hours to go from box to ready to ride including adjustments.

Adjustments needed

The rear derailleur was only shifting through 6 out of 7 gears as delivered. The cable tension was tightened enough that it wasn’t able to get into gear 7. The small gear end point was far off from where it needed to be. I took the cable completely off, loosened the cable tensioner back to neutral, and just started over with the rear derailleur setup. Follow the Parktool video or link below to see how to set up a rear derailleur. It’s not that hard.

Parktool has a great tutorial for adjusting rear derailleurs.

When I went to ride the bike the first time I noticed that the brake levers were crossed. The front wheel brake lever was on the right handlebar instead of the left handlebar. The brake levers are held on with 2 hex bolts each. You can swap them easily in about 10 minutes.

The bike has an adjustable height stem. This has come loose on me twice while riding. I tightened it very hard after the first time. I would apply Locktite to this bolt once you decide what position you like it in. This is also why it’s a good reason to carry a multitool with you while riding in case you need to tighten something that comes loose.

12 – Accessories

The MG740 Plus comes with a front light along with front and rear fenders. They also included a cable lock and a small tire pump.

I do not trust any cable lock for securing an expensive ebike. They are just too easy to cut. I’m really not sure what the point of the small hand air-pump is. I think you could pump yourself silly for hours and never get these tires anywhere close to fully inflated.

Lights

The bike has a front light mounted to the handlebar that can be turned on with the control button. It’s got enough light for low speed riding at night. If you want to ride fast after dark I recommend getting a higher powered light and a helmet light to supplement it.

Fenders

The bike comes with front and rear fenders. They are plastic and mounted with thin metal brackets to the frame. They don’t feel that stiff or heavy duty. They work okay while riding but the wobble a lot.

One word of caution for the rear fender. If you put the bike onto a hitch rack for transport, the rear fender hangs and flaps out in the wind. We took the bike 2 exits down the highway. The rear fender starts to flap at any speed over 25mph. See the below image for how it looked when we arrived 10 miles from where we started. It looked like this again on the way home. I don’t expect the metal bracket on this fender will survive any kind of long road trip without braking. I would remove the rear fender when putting the bike on a rack for transport.

13 – Size and Fit

The upper frame tube arches up making it unsuitable for shorter riders. I do not recommend this bike for anyone under 6 feet tall. I am about 5 feet 11inches. When I stand over the bike my crotch is resting on the top tube when my feet are flat on the ground. This would be a problem for anyone shorter who dismounted too quick.

Summary

The LANKELEISI MG740PLUS is a dual motor fat tire electric bike. It has dual 1000 watt hub motors giving it much more power than a Class 1-3 750 watt electric fat tire bike like an Aventon Aventure or RadPowerBikes RadRover. It is capable of higher speeds over 30mph with throttle. It is ready to rip around on dirt roads or in the city. It is not a Class 1, 2 or 3 ebike with this much power and available speed.

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