How to Transport an Electric Trike

The first time is always in a car park, and there is always somebody waiting.

You have got the trike as far as the back of the car. You have got one hand under the frame, you have found that there is nowhere good to hold it, and you have discovered that the thing does not so much resist being lifted as decline the request entirely.

It is not a strength problem and it is not something you are doing wrong. It is a machine that weighs about as much as three bicycles with the handling points of none of them, and the reason this is hard is that you are trying to lift it at all.

Everything below is about not doing that.

What this covers

Getting an upright adult electric trike — roughly 65 to 71 in long, 27.6 to 30.7 in wide, about 99 lb — from your house to somewhere else, using a car. Trailers with their own registration are out of scope, and so is shipping.

Machine figures are the makers’ published specifications. The arithmetic on the ramp is ours and it is derived on the page rather than asserted.

Why the bike rack aisle has nothing for you

Start with why the obvious answer fails, because it fails on three separate numbers and any one of them would be enough.

The weight. Hitch and boot racks publish a per-bike capacity, and that capacity is set around bicycles. Three times a heavy bicycle is not a marginal case for one, it is outside what the product is for.

The width. A trike is 27.6 to 30.7 in across the rear axle. A bicycle at a rack is essentially a plane — you can stand two of them a hand’s width apart. There is no rack tray in an ordinary bicycle rack that a trike’s rear axle will sit in, because the tray was never designed to be straddled by two wheels.

The mounting point. Nearly every rack grips either a top tube or the wheels in line. A step-through trike has no top tube by definition — that is the whole point of the frame — and its wheels are not in line. So even a rack strong enough and wide enough has nothing to hold.

That is not one problem with three symptoms. It is three independent disqualifications, and it is why the answer is not “a stronger bike rack”.

Folding does not rescue this either

The next instinct is the folding model and a large boot. It is worth knowing exactly what folding buys before you plan around it.

Folding takes the footprint from about 13.3 sq ft to about 7.9 sq ft. It changes the shape. It does not change the mass. A folded trike is still a 99 lb object, and now it is a 99 lb object that has to be lifted over a boot lip at about knee height, in one piece, by two people who are both leaning forward.

If a fold is part of your plan, the question to ask before buying is not whether it folds but how far and how fast — and one thing in the published data is worth knowing here: the model sold as the folding one and a model not sold on folding at all publish identical folded dimensions. We go through that in where to store an electric trike.

Roll it instead, and the only variable is ramp length

Here is the useful part, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.

Rolling something up a slope takes its weight multiplied by the height you are lifting it, divided by the length of the ramp. Nothing else in that sentence is adjustable. The trike weighs what it weighs and your tailgate is the height it is — so ramp length is the only variable you control, and it is a strong one.

A six-foot ramp — the length most people already own — asks for about 41 lb of push. That is a genuine effort, at an angle, with a machine that will run back at you if you stop.

A ten-foot ramp asks for about 25 lb. That is a shopping bag. Same trike, same vehicle, same person: the difference between an unpleasant two-person job and a routine one-person job is four feet of aluminium.

Two things the drawing does not show and you should know anyway. Rolling resistance adds to every figure, especially on fat tyres at low pressure. And a ramp has to be secured at the top, because the failure mode here is not the push — it is the ramp shifting halfway up.

The verdict

If the trike goes in a vehicle more than once or twice a year, the equipment to buy is a carrier made for the machine rather than a bicycle product asked to cope.

The only purpose-built answer we can verify

MoonCool Tricycle Carrier Rack

For

Carrying a trike on a car

Fitment

Check on the listing

What we like

• +Made for a trike, so the width across the rear axle is designed in rather than worked around
• +Removes the lift entirely, which is the actual problem — no bicycle rack in the category does this
• +From the maker of the machines, so the frame geometry it grips is the geometry it was built for
• +In stock at our check on 29 August 2026

What we don't

• −Fitment is not published: which tow bars, which hitch classes, which vehicles. Check on the listing before you buy
• −Its rated carrying capacity is not published either, and we will not estimate one
• −A carrier is a substantial fraction of a cheap trike, which is a real argument for the ramp instead
• −It does not solve getting the machine from the garage to the car if that route has a step

See the trike carrier rack→

The field

Product	What it does about the lift	Best for	Buy
MoonCool Tricycle Carrier RackOur top pick	Removes it	Transporting regularly, if the fitment checks out on the listing	Check price →
MoonCool TK2 Folding Electric Trike	Changes shape only	A large estate or van, with two people and a boot lip you can live with	Check price →
MoonCool TK2 Pro Electric Trike	Narrowest at 27.6 in	Fitting through gates and past car doors on the way to the vehicle	Check price →
MoonCool FT1 Fat Tire Electric Trike	Widest at 30.7 in	Staying at home, where transport is not the problem to solve	Check price →
MoonCool POP Folding Electric Bike	330 lb payload, two wheels	Anyone who travels with it often and does not need three wheels	Check price →

It goes in the vehicle regularly

Buy the carrier and check the fitment on the listing before you order, because none of it is published in the catalogue data and we are not going to guess at a hitch class on your behalf.

See the trike carrier rack→ See the folding trike→

It goes in twice a year, and you own a van or a pickup

Then a long ramp is the cheaper and better answer, and the length is the whole specification. Ten feet turns a 41 lb shove into a 25 lb walk. Secure the top end, keep both hands on the machine, and do not stop halfway.

See the folding trike→ See the narrowest trike→

You are leaving it on the car while you stop somewhere

A trike on a carrier at a motel is a four-figure machine on public display, and the frame sits well inboard of the rear wheels, so a short U-lock frequently cannot reach from the frame to the car. Length beats security rating here — a four-foot chain will reach around a frame tube and back to the hitch, and a compact folding lock usually will not.

Take the battery inside as well. It is the expensive removable part and it is the one somebody can walk away with in one movement.

See the four-foot chain lock→ See the trike carrier rack→

The trip is the reason you are buying at all

If most of the riding happens somewhere you have to drive to, be honest about the whole chain: loading, driving, unloading, then doing it again tired at the end of the day. That is the case where two wheels genuinely wins, because a bicycle goes on an ordinary rack that any shop sells.

See the folding electric bike→ See the folding trike instead→

What goes wrong, and where

The route to the car, not the car. People plan the loading and forget the twenty yards before it. One step, one gravel strip, one gate narrower than 30 in, and the plan fails before the ramp comes out.

The ramp moving. Secure the top end to the vehicle. This is the failure that hurts people, and it happens at the moment the machine is heaviest on the ramp.

Tyre pressure, afterwards. Straps compress a tyre and load transit is hard on pressure. Check it before the first ride at the other end — a soft tyre squirms under exactly the cornering load that the tipping arithmetic is about.

The battery, in a hot car. Lithium cells do not like sustained heat. Take it into the building rather than leaving it in a boot in July.

Before you buy anything

1. Weigh the route, not the trike. Walk from where it is stored to where the car parks, and count steps, kerbs and gates.
2. Measure your load height — tailgate, boot lip, van floor — because that number sets the push.
3. Measure the ramp you already own. Most people own six feet and think it is enough.
4. Check your tow bar’s class and capacity before looking at any carrier.
5. Try lifting the front wheel alone, with the machine still on the ground. If that is hard, the whole lift plan is finished and a ramp is the answer.
6. Decide who the second person is, honestly, and whether they will be available on a wet Tuesday.

Questions people ask

Can you put an electric trike on a normal bike rack? No. It fails on weight, on width across the rear axle, and on having no top tube or in-line wheels for a rack to grip.

How much does an electric trike weigh? About 99 lb, published as 45 kg, for every full-size machine in this range.

Can one person load an electric trike? With a long enough ramp, yes. At ten feet the push is around 25 lb. With a six-foot ramp it is around 41 lb and it becomes a two-person job for most people.

Does folding make it easier to transport? It makes it smaller, not lighter. The lift over a boot lip is the same 99 lb.

Can I put it in a car boot? Only in a van or a large estate, folded, with two people. The constraint is the lift over the lip rather than the space inside.

Should I take the battery off for transport? Yes, on balance. It is the most valuable removable part, it dislikes a hot car, and removing it takes a few pounds off the lift.

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Sourcing. The 45 kg / 99 lb net weight, widths of 27.6 to 30.7 in, lengths of 65 to 70.9 in and the folded dimensions are MoonCool’s published specifications, read from their product pages on 29 August 2026. The carrier rack was in stock at that check; its fitment, hitch class and rated capacity are not published in the catalogue data and we have not estimated any of them. The ramp figures are our arithmetic — weight times load height divided by ramp length — using a 30 in load height that is our assumption, and they ignore rolling resistance, so the real push is somewhat higher. The typical bicycle weights in the weight chart are our estimate.

We have not loaded one of these into a vehicle. If you have, and the numbers feel wrong, tell us — that is exactly the correction that improves this page. More on how we research, and the rest of the cluster is in electric trikes.