Save Money and Find Great Deals on China’s Shopping Holiday!

November 11th may just be another day to most of the world, but 11.11 is Singles Day in China, an online shopping holiday that positively dwarfs Cyber Monday, the US’s own online shopping holiday. There is debate as to the origin of the holiday, but the four 1’s in the date supposedly represent single people and the day is seen as both a chance to celebrate being single and to shop.

Regardless of the origin, one thing is for certain: it’s the single best day of the year to buy electric bicycle components, and pretty much anything else from China for that matter. I’ve only been participating for a couple years, but after finding sites like Aliexpress and Gearbest (and realizing they have the same stuff I buy locally, but direct from factory) I’ve been scoring an ever increasing hall of goodies each Novemeber. This Singles Day I’ve already created my shopping list in advance, and I thought I’d share with you guys some of the great ebike parts I’ve found that will be going on sale. Note: some of the links below are affiliate links. What that means is that if you shop via these links, EbikeSchool.com will receive a small percentage of the proceeds. This has no effect on you (the prices are the same low prices) but it is a huge help to keep this site up and running, and most importantly free!

BBS01, BBS02 and BBSHD

Mid-drives are becoming king of the road on electric bicycles due in large part to their increasing ease of installation, stealthy design and low weight. The Bafang 8fun BBS01 (250W-350W), BBS02 (500W-750W) and BBSHD (1,000W) mid-drive kits are probably the best well known. If you’re in the USA, Luna Cycle usually has the best price on the two larger versions of the kits, but on Singles Day even Luna can’t beat the holiday prices.

The largest Bafang mid-drive shop on Aliexpress is having some amazing sales, including the BBSHD for $561, the BBS02 for $365 and the BBS01 for only $297! And all of those prices include free shipping! I’ve used this vendor before and been more than satisfied – good parts, good communication and great prices. In fact, I’d recommend checking out their online store, where pretty much everything is on sale for Singles Day. They’ve got tons of parts and accessories for Bafang 8fun kits, including replacement displays for as low as $30.

The same vendor also has battery packs for great prices, including a Hailong (shark) 48V 10.4AH pack for just $305 or another Hailong 48V 14AH pack for $424 which uses the high quality Sanyo GA cells. Any other day and their prices wouldn’t be much better than Luna Cycle’s, at which point I’d recommend buying from Luna, but on Singles Day, you can’t beat these prices.

Now, even though they have good reviews, I don’t have much experience using the batteries from this vendor so I can’t personally vouch for them. But I can personally vouch for the next vendor from whom I’ve bought at least a dozen batteries.

High quality and inexpensive electric bicycle batteries

Generally speaking I recommend being wary of buying an ebike battery from overseas. If you don’t know the vendor or the quality of their work, it can really be a toss of the dice. But this particular vendor has proven themselves to be a high quality source for great batteries with genuine, top of the line battery cells and fantastic battery pack production. I’d still love if you supported my own battery project now on Kickstarter, but if you want your battery already assembled, look no further than my favorite AliExpress battery vendor.

Here is just a sampling of the deals they are having for Singles Day. You can get the same Hailong (shark pack) battery from above, but at 48V 11.6AH for just $305!  And that pack is using Samsung cells (which I assume means 29E cells), not some cheap knock-off cell.

And check out this deal: a 52V 20AH triangle pack using genuine Panasonic 18650pf cells with bag and charger for just $545. This pack costs around $700 including charger and shipping at Luna. Any other day of the year, it would only be about $50 cheaper to get it from this vendor on Aliexpress, at which point it’s probably worth it to go with Luna for their good warranty and support, but today you can save over $150 by getting it from Aliexpress. For me, that’s definitely worth it, but you’ll have to make that call yourself.

Want to upgrade your Sondors ebike? They’ve got a Sondors-ready 48V 20AH triangle battery for just $355. You can get the same 48V 20AH battery in a rectangle instead of a triangle for just $333. These two appear to use generic cells, but hey, it’s for a Sondors ebike, so… yea…

Anyways, they’ve got tons of good ebike battery and charger deals for Singles Day, check out the rest of their sales here.

Spot Welders

If you’ve been considering getting a spot welder to build your own batteries (especially if you read my article on battery building) then you’ve got some good spot welder sales coming. The 787A spot welder will be down to $120 while the 709A spot welder with hand probes will be down to $203. Prices fluctuate a lot on these welders but both are pretty good deals.

Electric bicycle accessories

Some of my favorite accessories are also on sale for Singles Day. I absolutely love this slim little bicycle multitool for just $7.

It’s also a great time to stock up on connectors like XT-60’s for about 50 cents per pair, or 45A Anderson PowerPole’s for just over $1 per pair.

Do you have an emergency roadside pump? It’d be a shame to be stuck pushing your bike home when you could have stashed a $3 pump somewhere on your bike.

And what about lights? This insanely small but bright 960 lumen headlight with over 500 positive reviews is normally $80 but on sale for $23 this Singles Day!

If you’d prefer something a little more ‘normal’ powered, this 12V-80V head light has a built in DC-DC converter so it can run straight off your battery. And 18W is pretty powerful for just $7.

And while you’re add it, consider adding some flexible waterproof light strips to your bike. These are just $0.70 each for 1 meter long strips. I added white lights to the front of my bike and red lights to the rear for a really well lit night riding setup. You can read my how-to article on adding these types of 12V lights to your bike without a DC-DC converter here.

Depending on how obnoxious you want your bike to look, you can pick up one of these multi-colored wheel light designs for less than $5.

Alright, this seat is ridiculous, but part of me really wants to try it. I don’t know if I’m going to pull the trigger on this or not, but for some reason I still have it sitting in my cart. It just looks like it could be super comfy, especially with the extra springiness of the frame. Or it could be terrible. Though that weird hook in the back would make a great handle for lifting my ebike or for wrapping a chain lock around. If anyone has this seat, please let me know before the end of the day if you like it!

Cheap electric bicycles conversion kit

Alright, we’ve all got that friend, coworker or family member that heard about how we built our own ebike and has been bugging us to make one for them too. Most people balk at the price of ebike conversion kits, but if all they need is a simple, low power kit then this may be good for them. It’s a 36V 350W kit with your standard inexpensive 8.8AH battery, but it’s only $384! And that’s for everything: the motor, battery, controller, controller case, brake levers, throttle, display, wiring, PAS unit, headlight… everything! This is not a powerful or top of the line kit, but if you’ve got a bike that you want electrified for less than $400, this is the way to do it.

Even complete electric bicycles?!

Hilariously, you can even get complete ebikes on sale for Singles Day. This 36V 350W fat bike is on sale for $1,160 with free shipping straight to your door. The spec’s aren’t killer, but it’s still a better price than you’d ever find locally for an aluminum frame electric fat bike. Don’t expect to be climbing any mountains on it, but messing around on the beach or in snow should still be pretty fun. Plus it’s already better than a Sondors.

The same vendor also has a cute little 20″ folding 48V ebike for $945. Most of us could build our own version of this ebike for a little bit less, but that internal battery is a pretty nice feature that is difficult to recreate yourself. And for someone that doesn’t feel comfortable going the DIY route, this is a relatively inexpensive way to get yourself a peppy little folding ebike, considering that comparably spec’d ebikes in the USA retail for about twice as much.

Non-ebike related things

I usually get a pile of ebike parts on Singles Day, but there are some other amazing deals out there too. Last year I got my wife an iLife robotic vacuum cleaner – basically a Roomba knock-off but at about 80% off the price of a Roomba. With a fur-factory of a dog at home, nothing has taught me the truth of “happy wife, happy life” more than this single purchase.

Last year we got my wife a Microsoft Surface tablet and I’ve been “borrowing” it more and more so I decided to finally get myself a tablet. After a bunch of research, I’ve settled on the Chuwi 10.1″ tablet. It’s got basically the same functionality but is only $139 on Singles Day. With 64Gb of storage, 4Gb of RAM and a quad core intel processor, plus Windows 10 and Android operating systems, it’s more than I need for my casual use (let’s be honest, browsing Facebook and Endless-Sphere or writing Ebikeschool.com articles).

There are also tons of great deals on similar tablets and smartphones, so if you’ve been on the fence about some new electronics and don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars for a brand name, consider a Chinese version like Chuwi or Huawei.

So that’s the list of the main things I’m looking at this Singles Day. But there are literally hundreds of thousands of items on sale, with way more ebike related things than I could list here. I recommend checking out this page on Aliexpress which lists all the sale items by category, and jumping into the cycling category under sports and outdoors. Or check anything you’d like. There are crazy deals on everything from hiking back packs to blenders… seriously.

Good luck and even if you aren’t single, Happy Singles Day!