Not quite superman "Thinking Outside the Four-Wheeled Box"
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Renaissance Bicycle Co.

Welcome to the online storefront for the Renaissance Bicycle Company. We have the following list of items stocked in Vancouver, Canada, for sale to Personal Electric Vehicle enthusiasts around the world. Our goal is to maintain a large and unique selection of rechargeable batteries, hub motors, controllers, and electronic accessories for ebikes and other PEVs.

Our physical shop space is located on Main St. between 29th and 30th Ave. in Vancouver, Canada. We are busy at work most of the time but have set aside hours on Tues-Thurs where the store will be open for walk-in customers and pick-ups. Contact Us

Purchasing

There are several ways to go about purchasing your order:

  1. Use the online shopping cart to select your items (categories above). After selecting all the parts that you want, choose the 'email checkout' option and include your shipping address and any questions you may have in the comments. We will get back to you with a formal sales quote and answer any questions, and can then work out the payment details once the final order is confirmed.
  2. If you know exactly what you want, have a paypal account, and don't have any questions, then use the online cart as above and then after selecting your shipping method choose the 'Paypal Checkout' option. This will redirect you to a paypal site and allow you to pay immediately. Please note that in this case, we will ship to the address included in your paypal account unless there are very explicit instructions otherwise.
  3. Email us at sales@ebikes.ca with the items you want to purchase.
  4. Call during the day. We can now easily process credit cards over the phone. Please note, though, that the phone line is frequently busy and when this is the case you will go to the voicemail after 4 rings. Please leave a message if you like, though email is usually responded to much quicker and is more efficient.  
  5. Come by our shop at 4570 Main St. during store open hours.

Notice that all orders in Canada are billed in Canadian dollars and are subject to 5% GST. Click the flag icon on the top of the price column to switch to Canadian currency. All orders outside of Canada are charged in US funds based on our US pricing.

Understand what you are Getting Into

Note that there are no printed instructions, manuals, or documentation with any of the Crystalyte components, batteries, and other parts that are ordered as parts from our store site. Please be aware of this if you are not comfortable ordering components and figuring out how to make them work together in a complete vehicle. We have made a considerable effort to make everything as simple as possible to put together, but we are not pretending that this is like buying ready to assemble furniture from IKEA. You are buying parts for a project, your project, and not a consumer product.

We will be increasing the number of products sold as complete 'conversion kits' as time goes on, and these will come with installation guides and similar instruction. If you are unsure about picking and choosing controller, motor, and battery parts to build a system, then these kits will usually be the best option. Note though that even the kits are do-it-yourself projects. You are modifying a bicycle to include a motorized drive system, something that the bicycle was not explicitly designed for, and fitting/compatibility/strength issues are common. For most people who are doing a first conversion we would almost always recommend the eZee kit, which has the best overall bicycle compatibility and for which we have written an installation guide.

Shipping

We will gladly welcome orders from pretty much anywhere in the world. The map below shows where some of our 2007 customers ordered from; all over the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia/NZ, and even South Africa and Korea. Interest in ebikes is poised to be a global phenomenon but hasn't caught on in many places, and if you can't find a local source for your parts yet we'll be glad to help you out.

Shipping_World (43K)

Canada

For shipments within Canada we send items using Canada Post, either regular parcel service for non-rush orders or Xpresspost for those that are more pressing. Within the western provinces, regular parcel usually only takes 1-3 days, but to the east it is over a week. Shipping a hub motor kit to Western Canada is on the order of $20, and on the order of $30 to Eastern Canada.

USA

For shipping to the United States, we also use Canada Post which gets handed over by USPS for the final delivery. There are again two options, with the Expedited Parcel service taking 7-11 business days, while Express Post is 3-5 days, depending on the state. Both services offer delivery confirmation and insurance, but only the Express Post is trackable on a day-by-day basis. For smaller packages, we ship items using small packet airmail. This usually arrives in less than a week, but there is no tracking or confirmation number. Shipping a hub motor box is on the order of $30 for Western states, $40 for central, and $50 for Eastern states. Small air mail orders ship for $15 or less.

Rest of the World

For large shipments going everywhere else, we use either Fedex or TNT. Both can offer 2-7 day delivery to just about any destination on the planet, at a rate that is substantially less than parcel mail with the post. Small shipments under 2 kg are sent using regular air-mail; for example, shipping a Cycle Analyst worldwide is $15 US by air mail (no tracking number).

Duties, Brokerage, and Taxes

All shipments within Canada will have 5% GST applied to the total. Luckily, for customers in BC the regulations regarding provincial sales tax have finally changed to make electric bicycles PST exempt, in the same way that regular bikes and hybrid cars had already been exempted.

For shipments to the USA, there is no tax and no brokerage or import fees either. We no longer use couriers such as Fedex, UPS, TNT, DHL, etc. who would would sometimes apply unexpected charges to the receiver. We only ship to the United States using Canada Post / USPS where such fees have never been applied. Large orders may be broken into several smaller boxes to reduce the value per parcel as necessary.

For all other countries, the duty and brokerage situation is largely out of our control. Shipments going via TNT or Fedex will usually have the required import paperwork handled by a 3rd party and billed to the receiver at a later date. Air mail shipments are handled differently from country to country depending on the national postal service.

Purchase In Person

Customers in the Vancouver area are welcome to come by and pick up their order directly during our store hours (outside of store hours, email or call us about possibly scheduling a time). Store Location

Last Updated: Nov 8th 2009. Added new battery options for eZee and NC kits, new NC kit photographs, changes to controller and hub motor pages to make more current.