e-Bikes are crazy nowadays. Their original concept of “you get a little motor in your pedals to help you climb hills” has been killed by an arms race of “hey, our motors are the strongest! Our bikes are the fastest!”
My parents recently bought new ebikes with the “best” specs and they’re awful. You basically can’t touch the pedals without being catapulted forward, even at the lowest setting. And they drive them set to the highest speed all the time because more speed === better ???
I get that when you’re driving to work or something you want to be fast, but they’re only using those bikes for leisure… so like who cares whether the bike goes 25 km/h or 15 km/h? God forbid your morbidly obese ass gets some actual exercise
Which is why the eBike I bought recently is a 2010 Raleigh Pedelec. The supporting motor is super gentle (people in 2010 would have been freaked out by today’s ebikes) and it doesn’t really go over 20-25 km/h. It belonged to a 80 year old woman originally. That’s exactly the kinda vibe I’m going for haha
My brother was building ebikes back in college back when companies were just starting to sell them, so this was somewhere around 2010(I’m not so good with numbers). When he built his it was more of a moped. It had a throttle and a hub motor and could go pretty darn fast, though technically counted as an experimental vehicle.
I believe back then there were still laws about how fast a bike could go before it was considered a motorcycle, at least in New York. But I think going fast was part of the appeal of early ebikes.
There was a very hacky feel to the community then. I remember visiting my brother and seeing a guy ride an ebike with a trailer that carried all his batteries.
e-Bikes are crazy nowadays. Their original concept of “you get a little motor in your pedals to help you climb hills” has been killed by an arms race of “hey, our motors are the strongest! Our bikes are the fastest!”
My parents recently bought new ebikes with the “best” specs and they’re awful. You basically can’t touch the pedals without being catapulted forward, even at the lowest setting. And they drive them set to the highest speed all the time because more speed === better ???
I get that when you’re driving to work or something you want to be fast, but they’re only using those bikes for leisure… so like who cares whether the bike goes 25 km/h or 15 km/h?
God forbid your morbidly obese ass gets some actual exerciseWhich is why the eBike I bought recently is a 2010 Raleigh Pedelec. The supporting motor is super gentle (people in 2010 would have been freaked out by today’s ebikes) and it doesn’t really go over 20-25 km/h. It belonged to a 80 year old woman originally. That’s exactly the kinda vibe I’m going for haha
My brother was building ebikes back in college back when companies were just starting to sell them, so this was somewhere around 2010(I’m not so good with numbers). When he built his it was more of a moped. It had a throttle and a hub motor and could go pretty darn fast, though technically counted as an experimental vehicle.
I believe back then there were still laws about how fast a bike could go before it was considered a motorcycle, at least in New York. But I think going fast was part of the appeal of early ebikes.
There was a very hacky feel to the community then. I remember visiting my brother and seeing a guy ride an ebike with a trailer that carried all his batteries.