The OEM Part Is Sold Out: What Actually Fits a Rad (2026)

Why the OEM part is sold out, in one honest paragraph

This is the context missing from every forum thread, and it explains the stockouts better than any "supply chain" hand-wave.

Rad Power Bikes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 15 December 2025, listing $32 million in assets against $72 million in liabilities. Its assets were auctioned, and Life Electric Vehicles Holdings won with a bid of $13.3 million on 22 January 2026. That acquisition completed on 5 March 2026, and the business now operates under new ownership.

Two consequences land directly on you as an owner.

Warranty. The new owner has stated it will not honor warranties on products purchased before 15 December 2025, and will honor them for purchases after that date. For most existing Rad owners, that means the warranty is gone.

Parts. Rad-specific parts, meaning controllers, displays and proprietary connectors, are still being produced under the new ownership, but supply has been inconsistent and the new owner has acknowledged that parts availability and service turnaround have not caught back up to pre-bankruptcy levels.

So the sold-out passenger pad, the backordered display and the missing headlight are not a temporary blip in an otherwise healthy pipeline. They are what a parts supply looks like on the far side of an asset sale. That is the actual reason to learn what fits, rather than waiting for restock emails.

The rule that decides what you can substitute

There is a clean line through this whole problem, and it is about what the part is connected to.

Parts that carry loads or light: substitute freely. Lights, baskets, racks, seats, grips, mirrors, pedals, tyres. These are mechanical or low-power electrical parts. Worst case for a bad choice is that it does not fit or it breaks, and you are out the cost of the part.

Parts that manage the pack: do not substitute. The controller, the battery and the charger. These three decide how much current moves and when it stops. A mismatch here does not fail politely.

That is not an abstract caution. In an r/RadPowerBikes thread this month, one owner described exactly this failure mode after pairing an aftermarket controller with the original pack. In their words: "I reused the battery from my Rad Power Bike on a new 54V controller from AliExpress, and a few months ago it randomly caught fire less a few seconds after parking." (r/RadPowerBikes)

That is one owner's account of one bike, and it is their description of the cause, not our finding. We publish it because it is the exact substitution people are currently being tempted into by a backordered controller, and because the failure is not recoverable.

EbikeTested's standing policy on this: we only ever link packs and chargers certified to UL 2271 or UL 2849, or EN 15194. There are no battery or charger links anywhere on this page, and that is deliberate.

Lights: the Julet 2-pin connector is the whole answer

This is the part people overthink, and it has a one-word answer: the connector.

Rad runs its headlight off the main battery through the controller, using a Julet 2-pin connector, which is a common e-bike standard rather than a Rad invention. That is why a third-party aftermarket exists at all, and why the aftermarket sells the same light as compatible across RadMini, RadRover, RadExpand and RadRunner: those bikes share the connector, not a Rad-specific part number.

So the buying check is: does the light terminate in a Julet 2-pin plug, and is it rated for your pack voltage. If yes, it is plug and play, and the install is unplugging one light and plugging in the other.

One owner in the current thread wanted a different mount rather than a different light, which is worth separating out. Mount standard and electrical standard are different problems. The connector determines whether it works. The mount determines whether it points where you want. Check both, and be aware that a light sold for a fork-crown mount will not necessarily suit a bar mount.

Worth noting on brightness: the common aftermarket units draw around 8W, which is in the same territory as the stock light. A dramatically brighter light drawing much more current off the controller's light circuit is a different proposition, and not one we would recommend without knowing that circuit's limit.

Seats and passenger pads: the sold-out part with the biggest aftermarket

The sold-out passenger pad is the thread that started this piece, and it is the easiest problem on the list, because none of it is electrical.

There are three routes, in increasing order of cost.

A strap-on rear rack cushion. Universal pads strap to the rack platform with no tools and no fitment question worth worrying about. This is the cheap answer and, for occasional passenger duty, it is usually the right one.

A longer seat. For RadRunner 1 and 2 specifically, extended seats are made that give a passenger somewhere to sit on the same saddle rather than on the rack. These are made to order rather than mass produced, so expect a lead time.

A replacement saddle and post. If the goal is comfort rather than carrying somebody, this is a standard bike upgrade. Rad uses a conventional 27.2mm seatpost, so you are shopping in the general bicycle aftermarket, not a Rad-specific one.

The genuine safety point here has nothing to do with parts sourcing: a rear rack has a rated load, a passenger needs footpegs to keep their feet out of the wheel, and a pad on a rack is not by itself a passenger seat. If you are carrying a person regularly, the rack rating and the pegs matter more than the cushion does.

Baskets: keep the rack, change the basket

The medium front basket is a recurring stockout, and the useful reframe is that a Rad front basket is two things bolted together: Rad's front rack, which mounts to the bike, and a basket, which bolts to the rack.

The rack is the part with the Rad-specific mounting. The basket is a generic bolt-on. So if your rack is on the bike and only the basket is unavailable, you are shopping for any basket whose base bolt pattern lines up, which opens up the entire cruiser and commuter basket market.

This is also the one part on this page where we will not hand you a verified cross-fit. Owners have reported general-market quick-release baskets lining up with the Rad front rack's holes, but those are individual reports about individual baskets, and basket bases are not standardized the way seatposts and light connectors are.

So do this instead, and it takes two minutes: measure the hole spacing on your front rack platform, centre to centre, in both directions. Measure the flat base of any basket you are considering, and check its published mounting hole spacing. If a basket's holes do not line up, a flat steel strap or a base plate with slots solves it for a few dollars, which is a perfectly normal bike-shop fix and not a bodge.

Displays: the one part Amazon does not solve

The display is the hardest item on the list, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

A display talks to the controller over a specific protocol, so unlike a light, it is not a connector-shape question. Generic e-bike displays exist in volume, but matching one to a Rad controller is a compatibility question that the generic listings do not answer, and getting it wrong ranges from a display that shows nothing to one that shows the wrong numbers.

The alternative owners keep naming is EggRider, a Bluetooth display sold direct by its maker rather than through Amazon. Owners in the current thread balked at the price relative to an OEM part, which is a fair objection. We are linking it plainly because it is the answer people are actually reaching for: eggrider.com. That is not an affiliate link and we earn nothing from it. We would rather point you at the right part than route you to a wrong one we get paid for.

Before you buy any display, the cheap diagnostic is worth running: a dead display is often a connector, a cable or a controller, not the display. A bike that shows no life at all is a different fault from one whose screen is blank while the motor still runs. Chasing the connector first has saved a lot of people a display's worth of money.

Where this page sits

EbikeTested buys its own gear and publishes failures, and our labs are still spinning up. Nothing on this page is an instrumented result: it is compatibility documentation, a regulator's published warning, court and trade reporting on the bankruptcy, and owner accounts, all labelled as what they are. Our standards are set out in how we test.

If the reason you are replacing parts is that the bike was stolen or nearly was, our e-bike lock buying guide and how e-bikes actually get stolen cover that side. If the part you actually need is a charger or a pack, read the replacement charger and battery guide first, because that is the purchase where certification is the entire decision.