The Engwe LE20 is a mid motor long tail cargo bike that’s very good value and has prodigious range. The motor’s decent and the build quality is nice too. The gears are a bit basic and the actual carrying options need some work, but overall this is a great bike for the money - especially if you’re happy with the luggage options that exist or you’re happy to hack your own.

Engwe makes a huge range of bikes and you can buy quite a few of them in the UK. We’ve tested four of them on the site in the past and it’s probably fair to say it’s a mixed bag: the P275 ST and E26 ST commuter bikes and the C20 Pro folder did pretty well. The folding fat bike Engine X… well, not so much. Enter the more carrying-oriented LE20.

2025 Engwe LE20, by Oli Pendrey

The LE20 is a pretty classic long tail cargo design, with 20in wheels and a low step frame. You can fit two kids on the back, or drag your weekly shop home from Lidl, or whatever. It’s the kind of bike that can replace a second car for many people, and a first car if you live somewhere urban that’s well-served by public transport.

And because of the small wheels it’s no bigger than a normal city bike, really. It’ll fit in a shed or a garage pretty easily, and even in your hallway at a pinch. It’s built around a solid-looking alloy frame, with a suspension fork at the front. The rear rack is an integral part of the frame rather than a bolt on. There are beefy hydraulic disc brakes, a 7-speed Shimano transmission and a motor system built around Engwe’s own mid motor with twin batteries and bar remote and colour display.

Now, longtails aren’t new. Their popularity really started with the Tern GSD, which we first saw back in 2017. Tern had the market to itself for a bit but these days there’s plenty of choice if you want a longtail.

I’ve been riding a second-generation GSD S10 for a number of years now and I love it. It is without a doubt the most useful bike i’ve ever owned. It’s not cheap though: the equivalent bike bought new now is going to set you back about five grand. But the LE20, in this build I’ve been testing, will currently cost you not much more than a third of that. This dual battery bike is currently £1,599 and full price is two grand. The single battery version is normally what this dual-battery one costs, but currently it’s discounted to less than fifteen hundred quid.

I’ve mentioned that the LE20 has two batteries, and they’re big batteries. This LE20 has the largest battery capacity of any bike I’ve ever tested. It has two 922Wh batteries: one in the down tube of the frame and one behind the seatpost, giving a total capacity of 1,844Wh. Batteries are getting bigger – we’ve just reviewed the Giant Explore E+ Pro 1 GTS which gets an 800Wh battery, and Bosch batteries now go that high too, but to get two batteries even bigger than that on one bike is new to me.

Engwe states a range of ‘up to 350km’ which is, in the usual style of these things, a bit fanciful. Maybe, on the flat in the lowest mode on a warm week with a nice light rider, but not slogging up a big hill with a week’s worth of shopping. Even so, going up my test hill (1.5km at 5% with a 12% maximum) used less than 10 per cent of one of the batteries on full motor power, meaning 20+ laps before I’d have to worry. For reference, my Tern GSD with a 400Wh battery will do four.

I’ll be honest and say I’ve no idea what the range really is. Even if you were grinding out a full day of takeaway deliveries you’d not get near the limit. Block out a day when you do eventually need to plug it in though: it ain’t quick. There is a fast charger available which is probably a good investment if you’re planning heavy use.

Turn on the bike and you get a nice granular readout, with a percentage for each battery on the display. Range anxiety hasn’t really been a thing with this bike but it’s great to have that level of information at this price.

The display itself is nicely designed, and in colour, and shows you your power mode from zero to 5, how much the motor’s doing, your speed, and a bunch of other stats you can scroll through. You control the system with a nicely-designed bar remote which again, is good.

The mid motor is Engwe’s own unit and Engwe says it puts out 100Nm of torque. That makes it more powerful on paper than the 85Nm Bosch Cargo Line motor, which it objectively is not in real life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad motor. But in terms of power it’s more in the Bosch Active Line Plus ballpark, a motor that’s rated at 50Nm - so I guess temper your expectations accordingly on that front and things will be fine.

It’s a torque-sensing unit, and when you’re riding it’s pretty responsive and not especially noisy, but there’s much more of a lag when you’re setting off than with most mid motor units which can make it hard to get going if you have a heavy load. It’s best to remember to shift down to a low gear when you stop.

While we’re on the subject of shifting, the gears are okay but a bit agricultural. You get a big clunk when you’re shifting under power and it doesn’t feel like that’d be good for the cheap-looking galvanised chain. I popped a link during testing and had to add a quick link to fix it back together.

The gear range is well-chosen, though. Above the assistance limit of 25km/h you run out of gears quite quickly, but it’s not a bike you ever want to try and ride without power anyway. At the other end, the bottom gear is nice and low and even the steep stuff around here has been fine on this bike, even with a full pannier of shopping on the back. It’s not as punchy as the GSD up the hills, but it’s not really hard work either - and Bath is a pretty lumpy place. If you live somewhere flatter, it’ll be plenty powerful.

Motor lag aside, this is a nice bike to ride. The position is upright. The extendable steerer makes the front end pretty high even at its lowest position, and I'm not sure it’s really the correct unit for the bike, given that I’m 1.89m and the lowest position was plenty high enough for me. The steering is predictable and not too twitchy, so it feels stable around town.

The hydraulic brakes, for the money, are excellent: quiet with loads of power. You get lights as part of the package and they're decent: the front one has a German-style beam, shaped to avoid dazzling other road users, and is just about enough light for unlit lanes. The rear one has indicators built in, which aren’t bright enough and don’t auto-cancel. If you’re anything like me, you’ll accidentally press the little remote and leave them on for most of your ride.

It feels heavy because, well, it’s really heavy - but it’s not an unpleasant experience for the shortish journeys you’re likely to be doing on it. The front suspension is lockable, and on cheaper bikes the fork is often dreadful, but the LE20’s is okay. Forks for 20” wheels just don’t flex as much and actually it’s pretty good at taking the sting out the potholes, as are the big tyres.

I’ve touched on weight, and as a fully-fit 100kg male adult, I can barely lift this thing. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who has any kind of strength issue or any kind of complicated access arrangement at home. The single battery version – which for basically everyone will be plenty – will save you a good few kilos but it’s not going to turn this bike into a lightweight. Okay, that’s not a primary concern with a cargo bike, but this Engwe is notably heavy, so take note.

On to the cargo-ness of the Engwe. You might have to be creative with the actual carrying of stuff because Engwe doesn’t offer the big range of accessories you get with other brands like Tern.

The standard build review bike is neither fish nor fowl really. It’s got rear seats but you don’t get any footrests, so they’re a bit redundant. There’s a passenger build too which has a safety rail for older kids, and the footrests too - so if you were wanting to give bigger folks a lift you could get that one and take the rail off. Or you can add the footrests as a cost option.

Then there’s a ‘versatile canvas’ build, which turns the aforementioned safety rail into a kind of big soft box on the back to lob stuff in, and there’s a ‘cargo’ build too where you get a flatbed rack on the front and the back, into which you can put crates or bags. For just carrying shopping and stuff, I don't think any of these builds are ideal. You’re a bit limited in what you can carry and all the extra weight is high up, which on a bike already this heavy is a bad thing.

It does have a dual kickstand, but it’s not a very wide one and if this bike goes over, you’re not stopping it. A wider kickstand would be a better option.

Engwe does offer a standard sized dual pannier but this bike is crying out for proper big bucket panniers on each side, designed to work with the bike. At the moment there are no bags like that, and also no way to fit other manufacturers’ bags without a lot of faffing. I managed to make a Tern one work, sort of, by taking off the side skirt and using the velcro straps on the bag around the frame. But I’d love to see Engwe do some work on making the bike easier to load up for normal use.

Overall then, what to say about the Engwe LE20? Is it as good as the market-leading Tern GSD? Well, no, and for a third of the price you couldn’t really expect it to be. But it puts in a pretty solid performance. You’re getting a well-built, mid motor longtail with a huge battery capacity and a decent ride.  With bikes like the Ecobike Cargo, Estarli Cargo and Tern Quick Haul Long coming in significantly more expensive, and bikes like the Tern GSD dearer still, It does look like a bit of a bargain.

Okay the transmission is a bit clunky and the range of accessories could do with padding out a bit, but overall you’re getting a lot of bike for the money and it’s hard to argue with the value. If you’ve been looking at a cargo bike for your daily duties and you’ve been put off by the cost, this is certainly one for the shortlist. If you’re happy to do some hacking at the back to get the carrying capacity you want, even more so.

engwe-bikes.uk.com