This post serves as a review of eTrikes (electric tricycle) in general and our experience with the Perraro Panda eTrike specifically, as this is the model we ultimately chose.

One of my earliest memories as a child is riding my red tricycle down the sidewalk in front of our house. The tricycle is an iconic and cherished piece of childhood memorabilia for many of us in the Western world. For children, riding on three wheels is a stable and relatively safe way to gain a sense of independence, allowing them to ride further and faster than their caretakers or friends can walk. It provides a small taste of freedom that eventually transfers to bicycles and, later, to that first car.

Now, as I navigate the opposite end of the life spectrum and face the stability issues that come with aging, remaining active and independent has become increasingly important. Throughout my life, I have owned several bicycles. However, as concerns about balance, strength, and stability arose, I began to consider alternatives. While some people transition to walking and stop riding altogether, I wasn’t ready to take that step just yet. Instead, I decided to explore a three-wheel option: the adult tricycle.

I started looking into tricycles (or trikes) a few years ago when I was experiencing persistent vertigo issues. My search quickly shifted from traditional adult tricycles to the exciting world of eTrikes (and eBikes), and there was no turning back. Now, I had two considerations to work through: the prospect of returning to something potentially more stable than a traditional bicycle and the pedal-assist feature that would enable me to tackle hills without getting exhausted.

The Electric Trike

This is where my eTrike story takes a turn. In this section, I will discuss the different considerations I had regarding eTrikes, the specific model I chose to purchase, and why it ultimately wasn’t the right fit for me.

First, let me share our purchase (and return) experience with the eTrike company we ultimately selected. We considered several popular brands, including Addmotor, Rad Bikes, Perraro Electric Bikes, Lectric, and HJM Bike. Initially, we ordered two backordered trikes from HJM but became concerned about the cost, the uncertain backorder timeframe, and the classification of those trikes as Class 3 eBikes. We decided to cancel that order, which the company processed, refunding our full amount within about 24 hours.

The eBike business is booming, with many brands to sift through, but we aimed to choose a brand that had been established for a few years and would likely remain in business for a while longer. Thus, we opted for more popular brands that offered some form of customer service, although figuring out this aspect proved to be a significant challenge.

Since all these eTrike companies are “online only” (or “eBike only”), and most are based on the West Coast, it can be challenging to sort through the details of what each one offers in terms of specifications, price, value, and customer support. In reality, a lot of these eBike only companies are drop-shippers; making a bike in China and shipping it directly from there to the customer while they have a small business office process payments and paperwork.

Ultimately, in a very confusing landscape of companies, we narrowed our choices down and made our final decision based on the trike’s appearance, battery capacity, and price. We chose the Perraro Panda in black with orange wheels.

When it arrived, the assembly was not terribly complicated, though there was a lot to it, and it did take us all of an entire day to assemble, but it went smoothly. The assembly included attaching the handlebars, baskets, seat, and wheels. The instructions were adequately detailed, but, the build took a long time to do, longer than we expected (and we aren’t complete novices at putting things together, we built an entire motor home from a bus among other things).

Test Ride on the Trike

Once assembled, we took the trike outside for a test ride. It was immediately clear that riding it was a completely different experience than riding any kind of bicycle. On a bicycle, you stay upright because you naturally adjust to changes in the terrain. A trike, especially a very heavy eTrike, leans from side to side based on the angle of the ground. While the speed from the electric assist was exciting, it only added to the overwhelming feeling of instability.

This trike came with both pedal assist and a throttle (meaning you could push a button to go without pedaling at all), a powerful 750-watt motor, and a massive 48v 21Ah battery—necessary to move all that weight. These features made it a Class 2 eBike, which, as we later found out, isn’t allowed on many public-use trails in our town due to the throttle. However, I really enjoyed the pedal assist, and after experiencing it, I knew there was no going back to a standard bicycle for me.

Over the next few days, we both tested the trike just outside our home. We quickly realized that the trike itself was the issue, not the eBike concept, so we decided to return it and purchase a standard eBike instead. I’ll explain the reasons for this decision below.

There are many adult tricycles on the market today, heavily marketed as a stable alternative for older adults (over 50). The internet is flooded with photos and videos of seniors enjoying life on their battery-powered three-wheelers. Unfortunately, based on my firsthand experience, this marketing is highly deceptive and potentially dangerous. Adult tricycles are NOT as stable as their smaller counterparts for children. Here are a few reasons why.

Center of Gravity

On a child’s tricycle, the seat is very low to the ground and the trike is relatively stable. There are still times, if you think about it, that a child can easily turn the front wheel of the trike too sharply and a fall occurs. If you multiply this effect to the size of an adult tricycle, you have a heavier body, much higher off the ground, which causes the adult tricycle to be highly unstable through turns.

If you look at eTrikes, consider one with the seat located further back between the two rear wheels. My seat was too far in front of the back wheels and too high which made it extremely top heavy and prone to tipping.

Riding on Level Ground

When you’re seated on a bicycle and riding on slanted pavement, you keep the bike vertical—not perpendicular to the ground, but vertical in relation to maintaining your balance so you don’t tip to one side or the other.

A tricycle, however, cannot stay vertical on a slanted surface. When you’re riding, the trike always leans toward the downward slope. This makes it easy to tip over, as it’s difficult to keep the top-heavy weight of the trike upright. Since perfectly level surfaces are rare, this becomes a constant issue.

Weight of an eTrike

eTrikes are heavy—very heavy. The Perraro Panda Trike, for example, weighs over 100 pounds! This brings up all kinds of practical issues you may not initially consider, such as: how are you going to transport it to a place to ride? How do you lift it into a truck? What kind of carrier will you need? Not only was I riding a vehicle with an extra wheel, but it also had a motor, an extremely heavy battery, fat tires (which add even more weight), and a massive frame. You might think the extra weight would help keep the trike stable, but in reality, it only added to the danger when the trike tipped over on a slant.

Speed of an eTrike

Yes, eTrikes and eBikes are amazing, and for this reason, I did end up purchasing an eBike after returning the trike. However, the speed on an eTrike can be deceiving. While it may reach 20+ mph, you would never want to go that fast on anything other than flat, straight, paved trails. Many eTrikes and eBikes can reach speeds of 20 mph (or more when coasting downhill). While this is impressive, it can also be incredibly dangerous, especially on an unstable, heavy eTrike.

Marketing Trikes to Seniors

This is what made me the most angry and sad. eBikes (and eTrikes) are still relatively new to the market, and as a result, drop-ship, internet-only “companies” are popping up everywhere. These companies create slick websites filled with photos and videos of super happy people riding their products, leading consumers—especially seniors—to believe that these vehicles are the solution to all their mobility and exercise needs.

Having purchased and returned (at a significant additional cost) one of these eTrikes, I can say that this kind of marketing to seniors is extremely deceptive and even dangerous—not to mention shameful.

The misleading marketing doesn’t stop with websites; it extends into YouTube, where new eTrike owners are bombarded with an endless supply of videos on how to “learn” to ride an eTrike. We almost never found a YouTuber who described the riding experience as we had experienced it. There are a few videos documenting the instability of eTrikes, but they are far outnumbered by those insisting that you simply need to “learn” how to ride because it’s “different.”

The truth is, this isn’t a skill you can simply learn. An eTrike will always lean in the direction of the pavement’s slant—it’s just gravity and the way the trike is designed. Eventually, on a steep enough slope, it will tip over. For those of us at an age where broken hips and bones are a real concern, marketing these vehicles to us in this way is unacceptable.

The Return Process

After trying out the new eTrike for about two days, it became clear that the eTrike concept wasn’t for either of us, so we decided to return it. This brings me to an important point: always check the fine print about returns before purchasing. We’re usually diligent about this with most of our online purchases, but in this case, we were so excited to have found what seemed like the most fun option out there that we somehow skipped this step, and they did not make it easy to find or understand in the slightest.

Our return experience with Perraro Electric Bikes was, without exaggeration, was one of the worst experiences we have ever had online—and we’ve been shopping online for decades. If the details below are TLDR, here’s the summary: there was no communication, the process took forever, and we ended up losing $1,000 on the order.

Returning a Trike is Complicated

In the world of Amazon returns (I know it’s not the same as returning an electric trike), the process should at least be easy to understand, and communication with the customer should be streamlined. My main complaint with this return process was the near total lack of communication.

This particular company has two different “return policies” listed if you can actually find it (one of their website, and a completely different one on their Shopify store). The Shopify one says 30 days, but their website itself has blank pages where the policy is supposed to be, and duplicate links that go nowhere (this should have been a clue for me), so just finding the policy was impossible. There is reference to a “return page” on the “pre-purchase page,” but it links to the blank screenshot I’ve referenced above.

We contacted the company within 48 hours of receiving the bike via FedEx to request a return and arrange the proper method of doing so. About a day later, they responded, asking me to try the bike out for a longer period. I immediately replied, reiterating that I was returning it. After that, I received no response at all. I continued to email and message them repeatedly until they finally confirmed, days later, that the address I intended to send it back to was correct. That was the only communication I received about the return process.

On a side note, we had ordered two extra batteries for $782.40, which didn’t ship with the main order. In fact, they never shipped at all. The company hadn’t mentioned this upfront, so I called to inquire. They explained that the batteries ship from a different location because they can’t be shipped with the bike (despite the fact that a battery did ship with the order). They provided a UPS tracking number, but after almost a week, the batteries hadn’t shipped and never did. In the end, this worked out since I didn’t want to have to return the batteries too, but it took multiple days and emails just to get them to cancel that shipment. My main issue here was that they claimed the batteries had shipped, when in reality, they hadn’t.

We meticulously repackaged the trike exactly as we received it—if not better—and took it to our local UPS store. Unfortunately, the return shipping cost was on us, and we had to eat $600 in shipping expenses. I can’t help but feel that these eBike-only companies use high return shipping costs as a deterrent. For most people, it would be hard to justify spending $600 just to return an order, especially if they’re on the fence.

Return Received

The company received our returned box within a few days, but I heard nothing—again. After 4-5 days with no communication, I contacted them, which began an endless back-and-forth to get a refund. When we reached the end of our patience, we resorted to sending emails along the lines of, “We need to resolve this, or we will file a chargeback on the order.” Only then did we see some progress. We received an email stating a refund had been issued—though in reality, it hadn’t. After waiting several days for the refund to appear, they claimed it had been sent to the wrong person, which, if you’re familiar with how Shopify stores work, is a ridiculous claim. When we finally received the refund, it came from a different account, and they manually keyed in my credit card number. We could tell from the way the refund was processed that it didn’t come off the initial charge.

Restocking Fees

A “restocking fee” of over $400 was deducted from our refund. This fee was never clearly explained as a specific percentage or dollar amount, but by that point, we were so ready to be done with the company that we just moved on. That should say something. How frustrated do you have to be to just toss $400 in a completely unknown scam-like fee to just say forget it.

In the end, it cost us $1,000 to order and return the eTrike, despite repackaging it meticulously, following the exact video and photo evidence we had taken when unpacking it. It was packaged exactly as we received it. Live and learn, and we certainly have.

Perraro Electric Bike Company never took control of the return process. I had to badger them for weeks. We placed the order on September 1st, kept the eTrike for 48 hours, and (mostly) received the refund in the first week of October. They never provided instructions for the return, and once they received it, they didn’t contact us. They made the entire process as difficult as possible for the customer.

The whole experience felt disorganized, and we considered ourselves lucky to get any refund at all. I was just a day or two away from filing a chargeback with my credit card company when the ordeal finally ended. This experience pushed us to explore both local bike shops and other online options for our final eBike purchases.

The Local Bike Shop

After doing more research, we decided to visit our local bike shop (LBS) and test-ride a few eBikes before making our final decision. This turned out to be a great idea. Being able to try different eBikes that fit our individual frame sizes was invaluable. In the end, we chose two TREK eBikes: Scott got an Allant+ 8S, and I got a Verve+ 2. Both have been outstanding bikes. We’ll introduce and review them in upcoming posts, but I can already say that we are much happier with these bikes than we ever could have been with any eTrike on the market.

Scott does thorough research, especially on larger purchases. His advice: if you’re in the market for an eBike or eTrike, do your homework and be prepared for potential losses if you exchange or return. Some online eBike companies are riding the wave of eBike popularity, and their practices can feel scammy, sleazy, or even deceptive—particularly towards seniors. That said, this is a broad generalization. Not all companies are like that. For instance, we had excellent customer service from Lectric when we ordered a pet trailer. As with any purchase, though, your experience may vary.

Visiting a local bike shop offers a completely different experience. You can speak to someone in person, ask questions, and get advice on different components or models. Plus, they actually support the purchase you make. A bike will need maintenance, and having the support of a local bike shop can be invaluable.