Pedego Victoria owner, Cal Whiting, returns to Victoria after a 35-year hiatus abroad with a dream to make cycling more accessible. He recently opened a new flagship store for Pedego Electric Bikes, on the corner of Douglas Street and Belleville Street in downtown Victoria, adjacent to the Royal BC Museum & Spaghetti Factory.
Whiting left the Island in the late 1980s to pursue his photography career and eventually settled in Alberta, where he rekindled his love of biking, which was nurtured on Vancouver Island.
This passion paved the way to founding his own bicycle courier and shipping companies in Calgary (1995) and ultimately opening his first Pedego store (Pedego Calgary) in 2018. Founding Pedego Nanaimo followed in 2019 and was Whiting’s first foray back to Island life.
With the opening of Pedego Victoria in late 2022, Whiting is happy to call Victoria home again.
“First and foremost, electric bikes are fun,” Whiting says. “You get on and it gives you that assurance that if you can’t make it up a hill or you don’t want to spend half an hour grinding up a hill, you can get to the top a little quicker and easier. That allows you to ride a little further, for a little longer, and more often.”
A pioneer of ebikes in California, Pedego is North America’s number one electric bike retailer, boasting more than 240 brick and mortar outlets with an industry-leading five-year warranty on both their electric motor and battery as well as a lifetime warranty on their frame.
“People don’t really know what electric bikes are all about until they try one,” Whiting says. “It’s like saying you don’t like coffee before you’ve ever tried a cup. When you physically try it, you have this ‘Aha!’ moment. It’s an experiential product. Then the light bulb goes off and people really want to get one.”
Pedego has more than 20 cool styles of electric bikes in an assortment of colours and sizes available for sale, as well as cruiser and city bikes that are ideal for commuting or riding on the Galloping Goose or E&N trails; folding bikes for boats and RV’s; FAT bikes and MTBs for off-road riding; and even an electric tandem and trike.
Service is where Pedego really shines as they service what they sell, which is lacking for most bikes bought online or at big-box stores. Pedego has their own factory-trained mechanics in store that only service Pedego bikes – their customers are not just their top priority, but their only priority.
“If you buy a bike from us, you’ve got a place to come back to if anything goes wrong with it,” Whiting says. “We also carry parts for everything we sell, including older bikes after the five-year warranty has expired. All new batteries are backwards compatible, and we only use top name brand cells in our batteries from companies such as LG, Panasonic, and Samsung.”
Rentals round out the service offering. Full day, half-day and two-hour rentals are all available at Pedego Victoria and may be booked online or in-store. Rates range from $50 for two hours to $100 for the full day. Maps, helmets and locks are all free.
Whether it’s Sales, Service or Rentals, Pedego has you covered.
Visit either Pedego Electric Bike location on Vancouver Island for a free test ride, or a full-day rental. Visit the Pedego Electric Bikes Victoria website, or the Pedego Electric Bikes Nanaimo website to learn more.
