I'm probably gonna buy an e-bike soon, mostly as a way to shield myself from fuel shortages in the near future and ensure a certain degree of mobility, probably will use it for occasional sport too. Also there's juicy subsidies right now so it's the perfect moment (for context I live in Spain).
Unfortunately, capitalism will capitalism and most e-bikes come with the integrated battery in the chasis, of which I'm 90% certain there's no standard among manufacturers, and even many of the pedal-type motors run with proprietary wiring and even protocols that only allow certain batteries to be installed.
Given this, I'd like to shield myself from this (and also increase repairability) by purchasing a bike with a normal battery outside the chassis, something like the Zazawork CF29:
These e-bikes feature the non-proprietary generic batteries and hub motors that increase repairability and don't keep you forced to an ecosystem that you're not sure will have replacements in 5 years.
However, these batteries are also much easier to steal, and they're not cheap to replace. I can mitigate this to a degree installing an alarm on the battery, but idk if that's enough. My use case isn't the bike sleeping on the street overnight, but rather being able to leave the bike worry-free for some hours during the day if I go to, say, the cinema, or something akin of duration.
What do y'all think?
Putting rare earth magnets in any driver slots like for hex bolts will provide some extra deterrence(You can remove when needed with another REM, and they aren't normally part of a bike thieves' kit, but it's becoming more well-known so not foolproof)
Like with anything it can eventually be stolen by a motivated thief with the right equipment and enough time. A GPS tracker that you hide somewhere like inside the frame(Do research because a metal frame can act as a Faraday cage, suppressing the signal) if your configuration grants you access is a very good investment for pretty much any bike imo
The rare Earth magnet trick sounds cool, I'll keep that in mind! I won't go as far as GPS because if someone wants to steal the whole ass bike they're likely a professional and I'm doomed, I'm mostly worried about the battery being easy to extract, hence the alarm so that they get scared if they attempt it in public.
yeah it's pretty hard to lock down a bike in public. the best you can do is make it inconvenient and not be the easiest one to steal.
if you do have the gps and the bike is stolen and the gps works, if you want the cops to show up (and you might if you're worried about the thieves pulling a gun on you) then the cheatcode to actually get them to show up is to tell them you know where the stolen bike is and you're on your way to confront the thief.
this will not help you if they throw the bike on the back of a truck and drive it to another country. i've heard from UK folks who had bikes stolen with trackers and they ended up in eastern europe.