Review: Tern GSD S10 Electric Cargo Bike (3rd Gen)

In true Pacific Northwestern summer fashion, I have been riding around with multiple cubic feet of wood and soil in the panniers of the test Tern GSD S10. This is the most popular electric cargo bike in my neighborhood, and I personally contributed to its popularity. It's the model of electric cargo bike that I bought to take my kids to school and to carry pallets around the city. Every day, I see parents carting their kids around in Tern Storm Boxes. There are so many that I no longer do an impromptu wave when I see someone riding one that matches mine.

This year’s update of the GSD makes it more reliable and car-replacement-like than ever. It now has ABS brakes so that you don’t have to worry about stopping on hills, even with a heavy load or in the rain—a very welcome development here in Portland, Oregon. The new Bosch Smart System connects to your phone and has GPS tracking and an ebike lock and alarm. It has a new reinforced frame and meets the most stringent safety standards. Oh, and this particular model costs over $7,000. You get what you pay for.

Price of Admission

Photograph: Adrienne So

Tern is known for wonderfully compact bikes that take up very little space and are easy to ride and store but carry a ridiculous amount of stuff. They’re the perfect parent city bike. As always, the bike has several price points with slightly varying components.

The P10 has a Shimano Deore 1x10 transmission with an earlier Bosch eBike system and starts at $4,999, and the P00 has an Enviolo internally geared hub with Gates belt drive and the earlier Bosch eBike System and starts at $5,899. The highest-priced tier, which is the one I’m testing, is the S10 and it has the Shimano Deore 1x10 transmission, the new Bosch smart system with customizable modes and a Connect module, and ABS braking and starts at $6,699.

Let’s start with ABS brakes. This is the first bike I’ve tested with it and I’ve seen on Reddit that people have doubts. It’s just one more proprietary Bosch component that you’ll have to take into the shop to fix. If you’re an experienced cyclist, you might think it’s overkill. I’ve been riding for years without it. If you’re a fair-weather biker, it’s probably not worth it. In dry, sunny conditions, it sounds squeakier, feels weirder, and takes me longer to stop than my old Tern GSD. There’s just a lot more cables flapping around. I can see why it might seem vaguely annoying.

Photograph: Adrienne So

With all that said, my family and I are year-round riders and live in Portland, Oregon. I live in terror that something will happen to my kids on my bike and there have been multiple times on rainy winters on hills when I have forced my much spouse to switch bikes and ride with the kids because he’s much bigger than I am and I was scared. If this is you, then you need ABS brakes. This would’ve allayed my fears quite a bit.

If safety is also one of your primary concerns, the S10 also meets the DIN 79010, the German safety standard that's the only cargo bike standard that exists. The newly reinforced frame was tested under the DIN 79010 and verified to be safe carrying up to 463 pounds. Other components, like the rear rack, kickstand, and braking system are all tested under the DIN 79010, which is important because you don’t want the kickstand to collapse or fall while you’re strapping your baby into her Thule seat.

My kids are now 7 and 10 and ride their very own nice mountain bikes, but I did load up the panniers with mulch and wood chips and ride up and down the steepest hill in my neighborhood with about a 10 to 15 percent grade, and I felt pretty secure about its stopping power. If my kids were still pretty small, paying for ABS brakes would be a good way to extend the use of the bike through the rain.

Long-Lived

Photograph: Adrienne So

With the smart system, you’re also paying for GPS tracking if it's stolen, locks, the Bosch eBike Flow app that connects to your phone, and customizable drive settings, so you can tweak the power settings for Eco, Tour, Sport, and Turbo.

This is important, because I have had a double battery mounted on my old Tern for so long that I forgot that the range on this is quite small. A 12-mile ride at over 20 mph depleted the battery to 50 percent in less than an hour, and I am a relatively small person (115 pounds). I would immediately put a double battery on this if you are considering it as a commuter. The Tern has a Kiox 300 Bosch display, which is easy to scroll through, but with the Flow app I would also probably just pop it off (you can pop it off!) and put my phone on a bike mount.

This may be a little hard to swallow: The bike costs $7,000, and that’s just the starting point. You will need another battery, and I guarantee you are going to want accessories, especially if you have a kid. Tern’s accessories are unmatched, especially if you have kids. I have a Storm Box, which protects my kids while riding in the rain. You can also put on a Sun Shield to protect your kids from the sun or an integrated TowBar so you can easily add a trailer.

Photograph: Adrienne So

It is small and maneuverable, and you can use it anywhere. There is never a situation where you think, “Oh, the cargo bike is too big, I will just ride my regular bike.” It takes the same amount of space as my analog bike, but it also has a long tail and giant panniers that fit just about everything. It's a bike that you can bike to the hardware store and lock up in the regular bike racks, load up with giant bags of mulch, and ride away with no one the wiser.

I biked four kids to a birthday party last weekend and filled the panniers with presents, snacks, water bottles, Frisbees, and soccer balls. I used the included front-wheel lock and attached cable locks to lock the other tiny bikes to it, so we could just bike to the park and not worry about fitting everything on a nearby rack. All my stuff fit in the Tern panniers, and the motor gave me the juice I needed to keep up on a cargo bike when the two 10-year-olds immediately jetted off on their light mountain bikes. It's just a low-stress bike that can do everything.

If you don't frequently put your electric cargo bike through long rides or weird, stressful situations, however, I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if I didn’t point out that there are a ton of other, more affordable options—most notably the Lectric XPedition 2.0 ($1,699) which has very similar specs and is also certified for safety by a third-party organization (in this case, UL certification). Still, as a dedicated cyclist I love the Tern GSD. Riding it feels like coming home, even when there are a lot of other electric bikes out there.