E-bikes simply aren’t niche anymore. The US has awoken to the fact that electric bikes can replace cars for many around-the-town trips and even on longer commutes. But what if you need to take multiple kids to school or want to drive your family around the neighborhood without using a car? That’s where an electric rickshaw can come in handy, and the SixThreeZero EVRYjourney Electric Tricycle Rickshaw is one heck of a great way to do it.
Sure, it’s a mouthful of a name, but it works so well that I will look past that long moniker. Plus, I’m probably just going to call it a rickshaw, for short.
A rickshaw like this is an incredibly useful tool for neighborhood runs with multiple people, pets, or just a pile of cargo.
It may seem like an obvious choice for throwing a couple of kiddos back there on that padded bench, but I actually tested it with two adults in the rear as well, and it worked great! And then I added even more kids into the mix, too! At some point, I’m sure I even exceeded the 500 lb (228 kg) weight rating, but the dang thing just wants to keep on going!
To see what I mean, check out my video review below. Then, keep reading for my full review of this fun and full-utility three-wheeler.
SixThreeZero Electric Rickshaw Video Review
SixThreeZero Electric Rickshaw tech specs
Motor: 750W geared Bafang front hub motor
Top speed: 32 km/h (20 mph)
Range: Up to 80 km (50 mi)
Battery: 48V 21Ah (1,008 Wh)
Weight: 71.6 kg (158 lb)
Max load: 227 kg (500 lb)
Brakes: Mechanical disc brake calipers with parking brake on right lever
Extras: Large LCD display with speedometer, wattmeter, battery meter, PAS level indicator, odometer and tripmeter, triple wheel braking, front and rear LED lights, 5 pedal assist speed settings, right-side thumb throttle, removable and lockable battery, included fenders, rear bench with seatbelt and storage compartment underneath, and more!
This isn’t just a fun little electric trike for cruising around by yourself. This beast of a trike is built for the entire family!
With a 500 lb weight rating, you can easily fit three adults on the bike. Or you can do like I did and throw a couple more kids in their laps, then slap another kid or two hanging off the back. At one point I think I had 6 or 7 souls on board, though that’s definitely not recommended. There’s probably a warning somewhere that says to limit the number of passengers to some reasonable level, but my job as a reviewer is to push things further, and now I can confidently say that the rickshaw can support a lot more weight than you’ll probably throw at it.
However, I did notice that at a certain point you can get so much weight behind the rear axle (with kids hanging off the back) that you should be careful not to have the driver hop off first, lest you send the front wheel catapulting, but that’s pretty far outside the use case of the trike. The point is, it can handle a LOT of weight from MANY riders! See my video above, if you don’t believe me.
The real magic here, of course, is that rear bench. More than purely functional, it looks good too! It comes with a nice faux leather upholstery complete with a sturdy seat belt. Technically speaking, I’m not sure seat belts are a great idea for bikes since you don’t want to be strapped down to any vehicle that doesn’t have a roll cage (that’s why motorcycles don’t have seat belts), but I understand that some kids might need a little help staying in their seats when the parents aren’t watching, so I get the idea. I ended up removing the seatbelt partway through testing since we often just sat on top of it, but it’s nice to have it there for the kind of kids who need to be restrained.
The diamond plate floor panel in back helps rear passengers feel more stable with a wide foot deck. And with around 26″ (66 cm) of space on the rear bench, fitting two good-sized adults on back is a peace of cake. Three children can fit side-by-side as long as they are well behaved, though my nieces and nephews started to get a bit handsy with each other on longer rides. It’s rare that you get the chance to shout “Settle down back there or I will PULL THIS TRIKE OVER!”
For the most part though, the rickshaw is definitely designed for some serious hauling with plenty of passengers. The front 750W motor only began to show some slight protest once we had six people on the bike, and even then it was really just in the beginning when it was pulling peak torque. For the most part, it definitely feels like it has more power than you’d ever need for a normal three-passenger setup.
The big 48V 21Ah battery is key to making this work, since there’s a lot more resistance in a three-wheeler designed for several passengers. The 1 kWh battery seems like the minimum I’d want on a bike that will often carry three riders, so I’m glad to see they didn’t skimp on a big battery.
It’s great to see that the battery is UL2271 certified and the entire bike has UL2849 certification, which are the main US standards now recommended for e-bike safety.
For comfort, the wide saddle has some nice spring to it with a suspension post, matching the front suspension for more rider comfort.
There’s no suspension in the rear for the passengers, but as long as you aren’t going too fast when you hit a bump, the cushioned bench and fat tires should help absorb normal road vibration and small imperfections in the asphalt.
The fat tires also mean you can make off-road excursions, such as rolling across the grass in a park or hitting the sand at the beach, though it really only works on harder-packed sand like you’ll find closer to the water line.
Speaking of speed and riding quickly, the rickshaw can go surprisingly fast. Most electric trikes seem to top out at 14 or 15 mph (25 km/h), likely out of an abundance of caution. But SixThreeZero either has more chill lawyers or just trusts us with more responsibility, since the bike can hit a top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h).
I’ve ridden it at full speed a lot by now, and it actually feels quite stable while riding fast. Some trikes can get unwieldy, but it feels perfectly solid when riding relatively straight, even at full speed. You’ll just want to make sure you slow down for the turns since you’ll be lifting the outside wheel in the air if you try to take a sharp turn at more than 10 mph or so (16 km/h). Fortunately there’s an easy-to-read LCD display right in your face so you can check your speed before going into a turn. Though once you ride a trike long enough, you just get a feel for how fast you can hit each turn without lifting rubber off the road.
The LCD display isn’t very fancy but it gets the job done just fine with basic readouts for battery capacity, speed, distance, time, battery voltage, assistance level, etc. There’s even a USB-A port to help charge up your phone or other device.
One last really cool feature is the included storage compartment. It’s a great place to store the kids’ backpacks, water bottles, sporting equipment for a trip to the park, or anything else you want to bring along.
It has a closure clasp but it does not lock, so don’t leave anything valuable in there. But it does give some much-needed storage for those situations where the entire family is heading out for the afternoon and wants to bring a bit more than would fit in the passengers’ laps.
One other storage option would be to add a couple of hooks to the back of the rear bench to hang some canvas shopping bags or even clip-on the kids’ school bags, though you’d have to fashion a slightly DIY for that solution.
The few downsides
As much fun as the SixThreeZero electric rickshaw is, there are still a couple of disadvantages to the design.
The first is that it takes a while to assemble. It shows up in the biggest bike box you’ve probably ever seen, and is something like 80% assembled already. You’ve got several steps though, including mounting the front wheel, handlebars, bench, fenders, seat, lights, etc.
None of the steps are very difficult – if you can put together IKEA furniture, then you can put together the rickshaw. It’s just that because of the size and bulkiness, each step takes longer than on a normal bike. It took me a little over an hour to get it all set up, including fussing with my cameras to film it.
The next issue is that the rickshaw is simply really heavy. It’s just over 150 lbs, and I filmed in a few locations that were a fair distance apart, meaning I had to lift it into the bed of a pickup truck multiple times. I was able to do it by myself, but just barely. I found that a good method was lifting just the front wheel up, then getting behind it and lifting the rear up. I also tied the bars so they stayed straight during the lift. It’s not pretty, but with the right amount of proper posture and swearing, it’s possible.
For most people though, I’d definitely recommend a team lift to avoid risking hurting yourself.
The last area I wish could be improved would be to swap the mechanical disc brakes for hydraulic disc brakes. I never felt like it was underbraked, but I also wasn’t going very fast with a full load. Out of an abundance of caution, I usually stayed below 10 mph with several people onboard. I only rode at the rickshaw’s top speed of 20 mph when I was by myself. In both cases, the brakes felt adequate. But I worry that with fast speeds and multiple passengers, or even hard braking while going downhill by yourself, those mechanical brakes might not always be strong enough – especially on long braking descents. I’d rather see hydraulic disc brakes to give me more power with less hand fatigue.
Sum it all up!
All told though, the SixThreeZero electric rickshaw is an incredible machine. Sure, it’s heavy and could use fancier brakes, but ultimately I could lift it into a truck by myself and I never felt like it was actually underbraked. Everything else was pretty darn awesome.
I love being able to ride with other people, and being able to put them on a comfortable bench seat instead of a stuffy child seat or an awkward tandem bike seat (for adults) makes the experience a lot more relaxing and ultimately a lot more fun.
At $2,999, this definitely isn’t a cheap way to ride with your family. But you’re also getting a capability that you just don’t find with many other e-bikes – or perhaps any other e-bike!
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Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch.
For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June.
Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now.
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Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal.
That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data.
Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin.
However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report:
Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can launch the pilot service for customers.
For comparison, before launching its paid ride service in Austin, Waymo tested its vehicles with safety drivers in the area for 6 months and then without safety drivers for another 6 months.
Waymo has now taken over a significant market share of ride-hailing rides in the Texas capital, but it still has limitations; for example, it doesn’t drive on the interstate.
The report also mentions that Tesla has been working with local emergency services in Austin to develop intervention plans in order to avoid causing issues if its autonomous vehicles fail.
Electrek’s Take
This is the biggest softball goal. It’s a fraction of what was promised, it’s something that others have achieved before. It’s a punt created for Tesla to finally get a “win” in self-driving.
If they can’t even make it, it would be disastrous, but at least, I hope that it will finally open the eyes of many Tesla shareholders to the reality that Tesla is actually behind in autonomous driving and that Musk’s latest claims that Tesla will have “millions of robotaxi on the road” in 2026 are just the same as when he claimed it would happen in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019: corporate puffery.
My main concern now is for public safety. I have little hope of US regulators being able to stop Tesla considering Trump is firing anyone who got in Musk’s way after he gave him over $250 million.
If Tesla brings its cowboy approach to this, it could get bad quickly.
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The development of Rivian’s R2 validation builds continues to progress. We know so because the American automaker’s founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, continues to pepper us with welcome updates with plenty of fantastic images. The latest post features the inner workings of Rivian’s Maximus drive unit, which will propel the upcoming R2 EVs when they hit the market next year.
Another day, another exciting social media update from RJ Scaringe. Nine days ago, the Rivian CEO shared a peek at the company’s new Maximus drive unit, designed to be more compact and efficiently built to help reduce cost-per-unit production.
Our only look was from outside the drive unit’s casing at the time, but it was exciting news nonetheless. As an encore, Scaringe posted photos of the R2 validation builds on a pilot line at the automaker’s facility in Normal, Illinois.
This evening, Scaringe took to Instagram and X once again to share a better look at the inner workings of the Rivian Maximus drive unit. Check it out:
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Source: @RJScaringe/X
RJ shares more images of Rivian’s Maximus development
Rivian’s CEO posted the three images above, which showcase some interesting perspectives of the developing drive unit. As previously shared by Rivian, Maximus uses a new continuous winding technique that reduces the total welds per stator and thus the total overall cost of building each one.
For comparison, Rivian’s current Enduro drive unit requires 264 stator welds, while Maximus only needs 24. You can see the stator windings in the image above to the left. Scaringe shared excitement in the progress of the Rivian team’s Maximus drive unit as well as some insight in his post:
I love the packaging on Maximus — the drive unit for R2. It has a side mounted inverter that utilizes flat area at the end of the motor to minimize the length of bus bars, keeping them light and efficient. The large planar shape also allows all processing and power electronics to exist on a single printed circuit board.
The inverter chassis closes out the oil cooled motor cavity and seamlessly routes coolant from the power modules to the drive unit’s heat exchanger with no extra parts.
Overall, the inverter part count is reduced by 41% relative to Enduro and structural inverter lid saves more parts and fasteners by also serving as the drive unit mount. I love this design efficiency. (heart emoji)
Looks fantastic, RJ. We can’t wait to see the visual progress of the R2 you share next!
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On today’s thrilling episode of Quick Charge, we’ve a huge spike in global EV sales and a huge dip in Tesla deliveries. Plus a whole bunch of news from Toyota, including an updated bZ that’s just a bit better than before … but is a bit better going to make a big difference?
We’re also on track for more than 1 in 4 new cars sold this year to be electric, with a whole lot more hybrids coming in to make up the difference and drive fuel demand down to a new yearly low. All this, plus the top 5 cheapest EVs to insure when you hit the play button.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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Got news? Let us know! Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.
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