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Planning my 40th birthday holiday which will be whistler area for the third time and my best mate and boyfriend, if he comes, are both 100% ebikers now due to knackered knees. We obviously have other ideas such as buying batteries there and then flogging before we leave, and either trying to find places to hire batteries while we’re there but has anybody or any company actually come up with a way of reliably transporting the batteries over as I can soon have them shipped to people out there.
Are eBikes allowed on the trails there?
DHL can ship eBike batteries with in Europe, by land not air, not sure if they can do worldwide but it'll be slooooow if they can.
Rent ebikes out there? Not your own bikes but I reckon that’s as close as you’ll get. Think of it as demos for your next one…
You can ship batteries, but it’s not cheap and you generally need to use a specialist freight company. There’s a bunch of documents you need and there are strict rules on packaging and labelling them. Last time I did it you were limited when you could ship too, and it was theoretically possible a pilot might refuse the load so it’d need to wait.
I can’t remember the exact details, it was for work a few years back. Was similar capacities though, 8 batteries or so at 250Wh each. I do know unless you really have something specialist it was cheaper/more straightforward to just buy in the destination country. I don’t think an e-bike battery would be specialist/expensive enough to tip in favour of shipping.
There’s a company affiliated to the EWS now who ship all their ebikes around. I’d give them a try.
They are called Ship to Cycle.
Worth checking with WORCA whether they have weird rules like the US if you’re planning on riding out of the bike park.
I have just received a battery I bought from Ciclimattio, it came in a box marked dangerous cargo and could not be carried on passenger aircraft. It also cost me £115 in import tax
Thanks all, last time we went there were areas where they weren’t allowed but we demod one in the north shore and it was fine there, I’d sort of assumed that it would be even more okay by 2023 but yeah worth an ask. Definitely sounds like it’s going to make more sense and be easier to get something sorted out there.
To airfreight them you you look up IATA Dangerous Goods shipping regulations for Lithium Batteries. I used to be a certified IATA DG shipper and batteries that big were a huge PITA. It may have changed since I last did a refresher though.
It will need to be packed and shipped by a DG certified individual, it's not something you can chuck in a box and nip down the post office with.