Front Basket, E-Assist, Just Add Kiddo: Urban Arrow Family Cargo Line Bike Review

While Urban Arrow electric cargo bikes have been around for well over a decade now, this latest one with Bosch’s Smart System is the most refined yet. The Urban Arrow Family Smart System Cargo Line e-bike was announced on September 19, but I got my hands on it early for a few months of testing over the summer.

I mostly used this e-cargo bike to take my kid back and forth to preschool. A 2-plus-mile route each way with a steep hill in the middle. Living in Portland, Ore., a little more than half the route was on a designated bike route, and well over half the route consisted of horrible beat-up roads littered with potholes and speed humps.

I feel like this bike went through proper real-world testing over about 150 miles that my wife and I rode it in the few months we had it.

In short: If you are looking for around-town transportation and need to carry a small child or two and/or sizable cargo, the Urban Arrow Family Smart System Cargo Line e-bike is a great option. While not the fastest or most comfortable option out there, it gets the job done in style and should offer durability to travel many miles for many years. However, this impressive package does come at a steep price.

Urban Arrow Family Cargo Line With Smart System Review

In many places in Europe, you’ll find Urban Arrow cargo bikes all over the city streets. They are a well-proven design that offers a ton of utility in a durable package. While you’ll see them around North American cities, they aren’t as prevalent, but neither is the idea of using a bike as transportation. My testing grounds, Portland, Ore., is a bike city, so I see a number of these e-cargo bikes running around the streets regularly.

The bike design offers a very upright riding position and a large front basket to transport cargo and people. The load limit on the cargo basket is an impressive 275 pounds. The floor of the cargo area is perforated aluminum, while the box is made of an EPP foam. The frame of the cargo area and bike are aluminum.

However, it is not a light bike, tipping the scale at 112.4 pounds. This made maneuvering it from a standstill, especially when not on the bike, a bit of a handful.

A headlight, taillight, and reflectors enable this stealth black — can be purchased in white — transport machine to be used safely even after the sun has set.

Bosch Smart System

The Family Cargo Line with Bosch Smart System is Urban Arrow’s most advanced and robust e-cargo bike yet. It offers 85 Nm of pedal assist and 545 Wh of battery. With that combo, this Level 1 e-bike can cruise at 20 mph — the assist is speed limited to 20 mph — and travel quite a long distance with a powerful e-assist.

That Bosch battery and motor are combined with a Gates carbon belt dive and an internally geared rear hub to create a very robust driveline that requires little maintenance.

You control the system’s function from a button pod on the left side of the handlebar.

Monitoring the Bosch Smart System and your riding is done through the Kiox 300 full-color digital display on the center of your handlebars or through the Bosch Flow app.

The app can also be used as a key via Bluetooth for added security, as it locks the motor. It also allows you to adjust the parameters of the individual riding modes, display turn-by-turn directions on the Kiox screen, provide maintenance reminders, and link with apps like Strava and Apple Health to track your activities.

For additional security, Urban Arrow decided to include the anti-theft Bosch ConnectModule with each Smart System bike. This accessory is dealer-installed under the bike’s motor cover and offers GPS tracking and motion sensor security features.

Along with this accessory, Urban Arrow includes a free 1-year subscription — normally $35 per year — to the Bosch Flow+ app, the premium version of the e-bike app, which allows for full functionality of the ConnectModule.

A Lot to Like

After a few months with this bike, I’ll start off by saying that I want one, my wife wants one, and my kid for sure wants one. This machine made my daycare drop-off and pick-up commute each weekday convenient and fun.

And, it costs way less money — instead of feeding gas to my SUV or lots of electrons to my EV car. Surprisingly, it was also within a minute, from door to door, of the same time as it would take in a car.

This bike was not only great at kid transport but was also super-utilitarian for grabbing groceries, heading out on a picnic across town, or even transporting another adult in a pinch.

The bike was super durable and held up really well. It just got a small scratch in the foam utility box from where my kid was playing with it one time, but otherwise, it looked brand new when I handed it in after 150 miles of travel. It felt solid in all ways and is definitely a top-quality product.

Climbing onto the bike, I first noticed how balanced it was, even when standing. However, it did take a little bit to get used to the handling of the long wheelbase and interesting steering system.

The flat grips on this bike were so nice, and I don’t generally prefer them. The upright seating position and those flat grips created a super-ergonomic riding position and helped with ease of control. 

On the right side of the handlebar is a twist shifter, which was pretty effective. The little graphic on the screen was pretty funny for the up-and-downhill gearing, but it did its job. Just like shifting gears on any bicycle, you do have to let off the pedal pressure a little bit in order to twist the shifter and change gears.

My kid also loved the old-school metal bell.

The saddle and pedals were perfect for this bike. However, I’d probably add a suspension seat post to help mellow the ride a bit (more on that below).

The center stand was very easy to use, especially with the handle under the rear seat to assist. A little technique versus trying to muscle it up went a long way here, something my wife quickly figured out once I showed her the easy way to do it.

The Good, Not Great

This is a Class 1 e-bike, which means its electric-assist speed is limited to just 20 mph — it goes faster downhill. While this is likely plenty for this machine, it would be really nice for it to go at least 25 mph in order to stay with traffic on some city streets. As it is, it is pretty much relegated to bike lanes and city streets with good shoulders.

The Urban Arrow was narrow enough to fit in bike lanes and easily to park on the sidewalk. But, it was wide enough that I had to pay attention to my surroundings, especially when turning because of the long wheelbase.

The brakes were very effective but also very needed with all the weight. I did find that the front brake, in particular, got a little soft and was not confidence-inspiring when going down steep hills at speed on a regular basis. Since I had a big hill on my normal route, I found this out more than once, as there is a stop sign halfway down the steep hill. But the brakes never let me down.

Compared to transporting a kid on the back of a bike, I found this front cargo box style pretty awesome. It allowed me to converse with, keep an eye on, and interact with my kid more.

The downside to the front box is that when you come to an intersection, you have to push your kid into traffic first. This felt dangerous at times on blind corners and intersections with limited visibility.

While not as easy as a traditional bicycle — because of the weight, long wheelbase, and riding position — I could lighten the front end with a bunny-hop-like maneuver or wheelie-like maneuver to get over obstacles. I did this many times to smooth out the transition onto speed humps in the road and to lessen the impact of unavoidable road obstacles — potholes, cracks, etc. The technique was the key, with downward pressure on the front wheel to initiate things being critical to success.

Besides the included rear wheel lock, it wasn’t super easy to lock this bike up on a normal bike rack. Most good locks are too short to reach the frame from the bike rack. You’ll likely want to carry a long burly chain to protect this pricy machine. Sadly, that adds even more weight to this heavy bike.

What I’m Not Impressed By

It takes quite a bit to get going on this bike. You have to manually unlock the rear wheel lock, push the power button, push it off the center stand, turn off the distracted riding warning message on the screen, scroll to the ride mode you want, throw a leg over, and start pedaling. A bunch of those steps were really annoying.

Every time I turned the bike on, a distracted riding warning message appeared on the screen. To use the screen, I had to hit the “OK” button to remove the warning message. There is no way to prevent this warning message from appearing every time you turn on the bike.

When you turn the power on, the bike always starts in the “off” setting. You then need to scroll to the ride mode in which you want to activate the e-pedal assist. This was an annoying step, as every time you use this bike, you’ll want it in ride mode, as it was very heavy to pedal without the electric motor assist.

Pro tip: Use the app and set up the Eco ride mode to be the custom settings you want. I set it up with the most assistance across the board. This way, you only have to hit the scroll button once the bike starts up from the off position. It saves you button pushes — and time.

Speaking of weight, this bike weighs in at over 112 pounds when empty of cargo, kids, and pets. That weight was a bit much to manage sometimes, especially when getting the bike moving from a standstill.

You’ll likely want the off-the-line e-assist feature turned all the way up. But I still preferred a little more juice to get going, especially when I was carrying a kid and/or cargo. With the pedals not in the dead flat position, it was sometimes hard to get the bike going quickly. This was a problem when I was pulling away from a stop sign or across a busy road from a stop.

My biggest gripe with this bike was the ride quality over rough terrain. Both the rider and passenger got their teeth rattled out as the bike bounced all over the place. “Suspension is a long-requested feature, and it will come in future generations,” said Tina Butler, Marketing Manager, Urban Arrow North America.

Having to unlock and remove the battery from the bike to charge it seemed kind of ridiculous. It’d be much more convenient if it had a charge port on it, and you could just plug in the bike to charge.

The final drawback of the Urban Arrow Family Cargo CX Black BES3 is its price. This is not an inexpensive machine!

Urban Arrow Family Cargo CX Black BES3 Review Wrap-Up

This latest Urban Arrow Family e-bike with Bosch Smart System is at dealers around the world now. U.S. pricing starts at $6,999, with the model reviewed here starting at $7,999.

There are loads of accessories available from Urban Arrow for this e-cargo bike. For rainy Portland, I would for sure get the Poncho ($200) for me and the Family Rain Cover Plus ($379) for my kiddo. You can also add another bench, get a child seat attachment, suncover, box cover, floormat, and more.

A big thanks to the local Portland, Ore., Urban Arrow dealer Clever Cycles for getting my review bike sorted out and answering my many questions.