Quote:
Originally posted by Hard8s
I work in Santa Cruz, CA. The weather here is good about 9 months out of the year. I am really looking for electric bikes. As for the Easyracer. The factory is actually in town. I do not want a scooter, or vespa. I do have some place to charge it and to keep it. I work in a Power Plant.
I was thinking more along the lines of this
type of electric bike. And I was really hoping for a recommendation from someone who uses one, to see if they will make the distance.
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Hey dude, fellow Cruzado here. And it's true, e-bikes are very popular here. What the other TFPers don't know is that the weather's great around here most of the time, so bike commuting throughout the year isn't as much a problem as it would be elsewhere.
A couple of years back there was an e-bike expo over at Cabrillo College and I rode several different models. You have basically two types: power-assisted pedalling, where the motor actually moves the crank for you/with you, and the type where the motor applies power directly to the front or rear wheel with a roller, not through the crank.
Frankly, the problem with e-bikes is that, when you _don't_ have the power on, it's like riding the biggest, clunkiest cast-iron old Schwin you can imagine. The bikes weigh over 50 pounds. So they're not a joy to ride _as unpowered bikes._ But if you have a great many hills to climb or distance to travel, so that the ride wouldn't be practical otherwise for you without a power assist, I'd say go ahead. The bikes that apply power directly to the wheels let you set the amount of power assist you want, so you can do half or more of the work and let the battery do the rest, thus giving you a reasonable workout and also stretching the battery. I found that type of e-bike easier to use than the powered crank models, which were even bulkier and heavier.
I'm attending UC Santa Cruz these days, and I do bike up there sometimes on my unpowered bike; it's a huge climb from downtown, and I'm treated almost every weekday to the sight of several faculty members on e-bikes zipping blithely past me up the bike trail as I sweat bullets. So there's definitely something to be said for e-bikes!