OHM Electric Bikes

OHM Electric Bikes has been designing electric bikes in North Vancouver since 2005, which makes it Canada's original e-bike brand and puts its design work on the same coast and the same hills our stores sit in. That proximity is the whole story. The people specifying these bikes ride where you ride: painted lines on a bridge deck in November, the grit that washes onto a shoulder after a wet week, the climb that starts the moment you turn away from the water, whether that water is Burrard Inlet or the Gorge.

Designing for those conditions leads somewhere specific. Every OHM we stock runs a mid-drive motor at the cranks rather than a hub motor in the wheel — a choice that favours climbing over flat-road speed — and on its everyday models OHM treats fenders, lights, and a rack as part of the bike rather than a later purchase. Riders in Vancouver and on the North Shore are out in the rain year-round, and two decades of refinement on BC hills, bridges, and seawalls is what these bikes are built out of.

We carry OHM across all six of our BC stores, and every one of them services what it sells — full repair and maintenance in-house, on the brands we stock. Stock moves quickly out of OHM's North Vancouver warehouse, so what you see on this page changes through the season. Canadian-designed, built for the terrain it was designed on, and supported by the same people who sold you the bike: that is why OHM sits at the front of our lineup.

Every OHM on this page is a mid-drive e-bike, and on BC terrain that single decision does more work than anything else on the spec sheet. A mid-drive sits at the cranks and delivers its power through the bike's gears, so as a climb steepens you can shift and keep the motor in the range where it works most efficiently. A hub motor drives the wheel directly, which is simpler and quieter and suits flatter routes well; what it cannot do is change ratio with you, and that is why we point riders facing sustained climbs toward a mid-drive. Working through the gears is also why a mid-drive tends not to draw down the battery as quickly on hilly ground, though real range still depends on battery size, assist level, terrain, and rider weight — ask us and we will estimate yours. A mid-drive also meters its assistance to how hard you are actually pedalling, which is what you want on a wet uphill start at a light.

The current OHM is the Discover, and it runs Bosch. Discover and Discover Lite both use the Bosch Active Line Plus on Bosch's Smart System, 50Nm, with the Bosch LED Remote at the bar and a Bosch PowerPack that starts at 400Wh and can go to 545Wh or 800Wh if you want the range. Fifty newton-metres is plenty of motor for commuting, errands and the everyday climbs of a BC city; the Smart System side of it means the bike updates, connects and diagnoses in ways an older drive simply cannot. Alongside the Discover you will still find run-out stock of the outgoing Journey line on Shimano STEPS — worth asking about if the spec and the price line up for you, though it is not where OHM is heading.

Two drive platforms on the floor is a service question as much as a spec one, and it is one we can answer: our technicians are trained on Bosch and Shimano alike, so a motor diagnostic is something we run in-house rather than send away. If your model's battery lifts out, carry it indoors through a BC winter — lithium-ion batteries perform best between 10 and 20 degrees Celsius, and an unheated garage in January is well below that. On the everyday and touring builds, fenders, lights and a rear carrier are part of the bike rather than an accessory problem to solve later — the Discover Lite lists Infini STVZO lights, double-wall aluminium fenders and an integrated rear carrier rated to 27kg as stock equipment, not as options. Battery capacity and frame style still vary by build, so check the individual product page for what a given bike actually ships with — or ask us which one suits the hill you ride home up.