Here is something that has bothered me for a really long time. Why is it that when your ebike gets stolen it’s such an incredible pain in the ass dealing with the police to get it back. If your car gets stolen, even if it’s a $500 junker, it’s treated as a major crime, yet ebikes are often worth 10 to 20 times as much and it’s often treated as a joke by the authorities when your bike gets jacked. The burden of ownership proof ends up on the shoulders of the owner, and many police departments won’t even process a theft report unless you can prove you owned the bike and what the serial number was. This article is about how to keep your bike from getting stolen, how to prepare for dealing with the police in case your bike gets stolen and how to deal with the police when your bike is stolen (it happens).
How bikes shaped who I am
When I was young I was obsessed with bikes. My earliest memory was when I was about 3 or 4 and my parents got me a bigger tricycle. I remember running back to my tiny tricycle and hugging it and saying I never wanted to give it up. This was an early example of what would later become a lifelong obsession with bikes. I still remember the day I first rode without training wheels on my banana seat bicycle and the thrill of that day. My sister ran behind me holding up the seat of my bike and then she let go and I thought she was still holding on and then, suddenly, I looked back and realized I was actually doing it, I was flying. That feeling and that thrill never abated even through 3 bad accidents that ended up putting me in the hospital over 45 years on bicycles.
I lived about 10 miles from my school and the bus took over an hour and there were some pretty intimidating bullies on the bus. When I got to be about 11 or 12 I started riding my oldest sisters steel Schwinn Varsity 10 speed to work every day. It took less time than riding the bus, it was incredibly scenic and it gave me a sense of freedom. I would bicycle commute to work once I turned 14 at the Rose Inn as a groundskeeper and often I would commute 20 miles each way into Ithaca just to sit on the commons and watch people. I loved that bike, took it everywhere for about 10 years and it never got stolen even though all I had to lock it with was a cheap $5 chain lock with a padlock. I was devastated when that bike finally got stolen.
My sister’s Schwinn was taken from a garage of an apt when I was living in Ithaca. The bike was not locked up, but the overhead door of the garage was closed (but not locked). Someone went into the garage and took my bike, but that was not the last I saw it. About one year later I saw a young kid who used to shoplift toys at a store I worked at walking down the street with my bicycle. I went to the police station to tell them what had happened. They said I needed some kind of proof that the bike was mine (I had none). When I asked what kind of proof I needed, they said the original receipt for the sale with the serial number on it. When I asked them for any other way to record ownership he relented that a picture of the serial number would work as well. I begged the officer to come with me to just talk to the guy who stole my bike, but they wouldn’t do it unless I had proof of ownership and filled out a stolen bike report.
If it had been a car that was stolen I doubt they would have been so cavalier about the whole thing, and most of my cars I pay a tiny fraction of what I pay for ebikes, so there is some serious irony here. I have to admit that emotionally I was totally distraught, not feeling comfortable confronting the bike thief and feeling completely unsupported by the people who were supposed to protect me was devastating. As the Dali Lama says, attachment is the root to all suffering. This kid who had my bike I’m sure didn’t care about it at all, but for me, it was thousands of good miles, some heinous accidents and 10 years of freedom.
You must document your ownership
Whenever you buy an ebike, even a used ebike, make sure to get a receipt for the bike with the serial number written on it. Take a picture of the serial number (usually under the bottom bracket) and then scan them into the cloud (Dropbox or Gdrive) and keep them on your computer so you don’t have to keep track of them. You will need both of these things to get the police to help you find it. When I buy an ebike I also print out the original invoice and then write the serial number on the sheet and store it in a folder with my car titles.
Make sure you’re protected before calamity strikes
If you have a homeowner’s policy make sure the full retail value of your ebike is covered in the policy. Although about 1/2 of all stolen bikes are recovered, only about 5% make them back to their owners. As soon as your ebike is stolen, make sure that you fill out a police report and then scan Craigslist and Facebook marketplace on the ebikes for sale areas. Tell your local bike & ebike shops that your bike got stolen and to be on the lookout for someone coming in looking for an ebike charger. Tell them if someone does come in to try to get their contact information and/or name by filling out a ‘service request’ so that you can track them down with the police and get your bike back.
Get a decent lock that can’t be destroyed without serious power tools
Don’t ever use the small cheap cable locks unless you want your bike to get stolen. I highly recommend a U lock that locks on both sides and has a cable you can run through the wheels. I have had good luck with the Kryptonite Kryptolok which runs about $55 street price. A bike thief will see a bike locked with one of those and will just pass it on by knowing he has to cut through both sides of the lock with their angle grinder instead of just one side. If the lock costs less than $50 then it’s probably not worth buying.
There are new bike locks on the market that are designed to make a bunch of noise if they are tampered with. I have no experience with these kinds of locks so I can’t say how well they work, but you can get them for about $35 on Amazon here. If you know of any other lock that you’ve had luck with, please post about it in the comments.
Get it off the streets
The best way to keep your bike from getting stolen is to bring it inside your home or place of work and keep it there. The chances of having your bike getting stolen inside your office or home are pretty slim compared to having it outside. If you have to have it locked outside, try to keep it somewhere where you can keep an eye on it.
Take your battery with you
When I take my ebike into town I take an empty backpack and then I remove the battery and carry it with me in the backpack. That immediately gets rid of the most valuable part of the ebike and makes it far less desirable. Who is going to steal an ebike if they know they need to invest $500-1000 just to make it work or be sale-able. Any ebike they steal they know they will have to purchase a charger in order to sell it, which is already a pretty big detraction. When riding in the woods I take my battery and ride with it in the backpack to keep weight off the bike, but with commutes of more than about 45 minutes the extra weight of the battery on your back will cause fatigue so I find with commuters it’s better to keep the battery mounted on the bike.
It seems like bike locks are incredibly popular on crowdfunding sites. There have been many people claiming to have the latest and greatest lock design that is theft-proof. My experience is that no lock is theft-proof if you have a motivated bike thief. You only need to make your ebike look less appealing to steal than all the other bikes out there.
Lock your ebike the right way
The best way to lock your ebike is to remove the front wheel and put the U lock through the front wheel, the back wheel and the chainstay. If you don’t want to remove the wheels (or can’t because your ebike has a front hub motor) then just put the cable through the frame and around the front wheel and then back to the lock. Securing your seat is often more trouble than it’s worth. Put on a crappy seat with duct-tape on it and make sure you don’t use a quick-release on the seat tube.
You should also lock your bike even if it’s inside. I learned my lesson and when I have ebikes in a shed I often lock them up. You can take two 6″ Timberlock screw with a spider head and drill it into the shed studs the long way and get a thick steel mounting plate with two holes to clamp down on the loop of the cable that comes with the U lock. Then you just lock the U lock to the cable which is bolted to the shed or garage. The Timberloks have a really strange head that I’ve only seen when I buy Timberlok screws and they are super tough. The nice thing about the Timberloks is you can remove them and they only leave a tiny hole that your landlord (probably) won’t care about.
Make your ebike look like it’s really not worth stealing
This is my favorite part. Any brand new nice looking bike can be turned into garbage with a $1 can of flat black spray paint and a roll of duct tape. There are also lots of videos on youtube about how to make ‘fake rust’ with spray paint. Make sure to apply the duct tape liberally to the seat (even if it does not have holes in it). On some of my bikes, I have rusted out parts I intentionally mount on the bike and on one bike I wrote “FUCK YOU BIKE THIEF”. Ironically that bike was stolen at Burning Man and then returned later by the thief who then asked if we had another bike we could have as a reward for returning my bike (true story). On all my kiteboarding equipment I paint NO RESALE VALUE in big bright letters (as a theft deterrent since I often leave it on the beach unsupervised). I also suggest you put your name, email address and phone number and REWARD IF FOUND. If you put that on your ebike with a paint pen, not only does it totally devalue your property, you never know, maybe it will make it’s way back to you if it gets stolen.
That carbon fiber ebike with all those carbon parts is a total bike thief magnet. You can fix the attractiveness of carbon fiber (and preserve the weight savings) with flat black spray paint. I know it seems like heresy, but remember that a good bike thief can make $10,000 a week or more in places like NYC. Don’t make their jobs easy.
Program an anti-theft code on your display
A lot of ebikes allow you to program a code you have to put in to ride the bike. This might deter ebike theft, but probably not so much. It will make life a lot more difficult for the bike thief, but it will also make it much more annoying for you if you have to put in a code every time you turn on your ebike. Keep in mind most of the time if you buy a new display then you will lose the anti-theft code. With Bafang displays I know the DPC-14 and DPC-18 both allow for 4 digit passwords.
Get a fake vinyl GPS tracking sticker
There is a glutton of GPS trackers on the market right now, but most of them require a SIM card or a subscription-based service. I haven’t tested any of them, and I’m too cheap to sign up. All over my house on every door I have ADT Security stickers. I’m way too cheap to pay for someone to sit at a desk and watch my house, but the 16 cameras I’ve setup store many months of footage and the vinyl stickers were less than $2 each on ebay. If you do a search on ebay for “bike track gps sticker” there is a bunch of stickers that are $2-3 shipped. Using a $2 sticker is a lot smarter than paying $25-30 a month for a GPS tracking service.
Get an ebike that looks like a normal bicycle
There are more and more ebikes on the market that look just like normal bicycles. They have hidden batteries in the downtube and extremely discrete motors built into the bottom bracket. To the casual observer, they won’t look like ebikes and for bike thieves, they might just pass it over and get something that looks fancier or more expensive. The bike that comes to mind is the Luna Fixed (available here for $1650) but there are many others out there.
Don’t buy stolen ebikes
You want good karma, don’t buy ebikes that you know are stolen. If something seems fishy like the price is way too low, or they ‘lost’ the charger then just say thanks, but no thanks. If you buy a stolen ebike knowing that it’s stolen then you are committing a crime. If you buy a stolen ebike and someone sees their ebike in your possession (and can prove it because they read this article) then the best-case scenario is that you just lose the bike, worse case you get criminally charged. Just don’t be that guy. If a deal seems too good to be true, you’re getting scammed.
Stealing bikes is low risk and high reward and ebikes doubly so. $50 million worth of bikes are stolen every year. Most people don’t have the proper documentation to file a police report, so only 5% of recovered bikes ever make it back to their owner. Don’t be one of the 95% that never gets to see their stolen bike again, or better yet don’t get your bike stolen in the first place. If you do what is listed in this article it’s no guarantee that your bike won’t get stolen, but it will probably help.
Helping you stay on the saddle is what I’m all about.
Ride On.
