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I bought an e-bike in November 2020, it was life-changing, and now I have 4 (pedal-assist, not throttle). I'm documenting my reflections about the e-bike space here, in the hope it will help others. |
- Background: bike-sharer → bike-owner → e-bike maniac
- My e-bikes
- Overview/Specs: weights between 35-60lbs, ranges from 25-130mi, prices from $1900-$7000 ($2500-$8000 incl. gear)
- VanMoof X3: great all-around / starter / city e-bike
- Brompton Electric: smallest fold, most portable, great all around
- Tern Vektron Q9: large cargo capacity, folds up for easy storage
- Specialized Creo Comp Carbon: light, fast, long-range
- Reflections
- Speed ⟹ Safety: higher top speed – and acceleration – make a big difference in traffic
- Speed ⟹ Inclusion: a lot more people can get around quickly+comfortably on ebikes
- Speed ⟹ Convenience: ebikes are as fast as cars in urban environments; can solve congestion and parking issues
- Space: high mobility per unit space; combine with other modes (trains, buses, ferries)
- Bike vs. Car Storage: parking takes too much space in cities, and is heavily subsidized; bike parking is 5-10x more efficient
- Cost: the average car cost could fund e-bikes for 10 families
- Cargo:
- Groceries, Bulk Items: basically any grocery run, and a surprising number of bulk item moves, can be done via e-bike
- Kids: easy to carry 1 or 2 kids by e-bike
- PoV: Grocery Runs: I get groceries by e-bike and it's great
- PoV: Moving House: I moved across town – with 2wks of stuff – by ebike
- Health
- Fun
- Car sewers: cars make streets miserable for everyone not in a car; doing this to 100% of streets is extreme, and terrible policy.
- Getting Started
- Bike Shares: easy way to get used to city biking/scooting (if unfamiliar)
- Renting: rent a few types of bikes before buying one
- Safety
- Stats
- Speed
- Fear
- Riding on Sidewalks
- Stopping at Stop Signs / Red Lights
- Braking: Sheldon Brown on front brakes
- Helmets: can't hurt, but often used to blame/criminalize cyclists for infrastructure/engineering problems
- Lights: the more the better
- Hi-Viz Clothing: similar to helmets; good practice, but often discussed unfairly
- Route Planning: Street View, Ride with GPS, Strava all useful
- Traveling with E-bikes: flying generally not possible (might work with e-brompton); trains/boats generally easy/possible
- Starter Packs
- VanMoof X3 + Gear: $83/mo (incl. maintenance/theft/insurance coverage), $3k outright
- RadPower: popular under $2k
- Reading
- Gear: 10-20% a bike's cost in add-ons can make it 10x more useful
- Helmets: I use a Lumos "Kickstart" helmet with lights built in
- Racks, Baskets: starting point for carrying bags' worth of stuff on rides
- Bags: get weight off of you and onto the bike, where it rolls
- Panniers: bags that hang from sides of back rack; can be quite large, very useful
- Cockpit Bags: smaller bags up around your handlebars for essentials
- Frame Bags: small/medium bags attached to the frame
- Back-Rack / Seat Bags: medium bags on top of back rack or behind+underneath seat
- Phone Mounts: phone mounted up front (e.g. w/ turn-by-turn directions) is surprisingly useful; I use Quad Lock.
- Lights: front, rear, party, Vont 'Pyro' (set), KNOG (set)
- Locks: Kryptonite U-lock + cable (medium weight, decent security), OnGuard U-Lock (lighter / more clearance but weaker), OTTO cable lock (compact+light extra security layer)
- Misc. Accessories: bell, rear-view mirrors (1 2), kickstand, hand pump
- Gloves: padded gloves, light but warm winter gloves
- Rain Gear: Clever Hoods are popular + good
- Winter Cycling: easier+better than you think, $200 of gear solves cold down to ≈25ºF
- Action Cameras: I use a GoPro Hero 9 Black and GoPro Hero 8 Black, in a chest harness and seat-rail mount, to film rides
- Padded Shorts: good all-around active shorts w/ pockets
- Documenting Rides
- Ride-tracking apps:
- Strava: robust recording app (resumes after phone crashes), good small-circle social network, good open data posture
- RideWithGPS: similar to Strava, emphasis on route planning/sharing, UX is clunkier
- wandrer.earth: cool app on top of Strava, providing stats/viz about places you've been and places you might still like to explore
- Post-Processing Videos: dealing with videos afterward is its own adventure
- GoPros are pretty hard to deal with; telemetry data is often not recorded correctly, and the GoPro software ecosystem is a mess
- External SSDs: 1TB/2TB Samsungs, palm-sized
- 512GB micro-SD: never worry about SD-card capacity in-camera (there's enough to worry about when the data comes off the camera)
- Wasabi Cloud Storage: cheap+easy cloud storage; good option for archival video storage
- VFX Suites: unfortunately necessary to do anything with action-camera videos
- YouTube: I've posted some ride videos to Neighbor Ryan on YouTube
- Ride-tracking apps: