I wouldn’t dream of trading in my old Romic bicycle.
It’s 44 years old now, but it still rides like it’s 1981. Two shifters on the downtube, derailleurs front-and-rear, two gears in front and seven in back. We’ve had incredible adventures. I’ve probably done 50,000 miles on it, but who’s counting.
An e-bike, on the other hand, is not a bicycle. I put over 4,000 miles on my white Edison over two years. But E-Transport, unlike cycling, is evolving rapidly. It’s technology. Over the last two years I’ve written about dozens of different products that can get you around, at about 15 mph, recharging off household current in a few hours.
Here are just a few I found after clicking a few Facebook ads this morning. These devices don’t look, feel, or ride like a bike. The Scootassist attaches to your wheelchair and turns it into a scooter, moving at a bike’s speed. The Veemo is a covered e-trike that looks like a one-person car. The Rideon looks like a kid’s trike, with a basket in the front. What’s the Quadra, an upright scooter with 19 inch tires designed for tearing up wilderness trails. There are also exoskeletons like the Hypershell and Dnsys that strap to your legs and make you the e-bike’s motor, then let you run up the stairs to your office.
All these devices could show up on the Atlanta Beltline next year. They’re all legitimate alternatives to an e-bike. If it goes at the same speed as a bike, you treat it like a bike, whatever it looks like. A speed limit, on a crowded trail, of 10-15 mph (depending on crowds) is the way to regulate them. That and finding somewhere to park the things.
The Christmas Conundrum
The problem is that most e-bikes being sold this Christmas won’t be e-bikes at all.
They started out by calling themselves “Class 3 e-bikes,” but they don’t look like bikes and even the cheapest can travel at 28 mph without pedaling. With motorcycle style seats and motorcycle suspensions, they’re what I saw all the kids riding when I was in the Netherlands. They’re now super-cheap because they’ve been supplanted by faster models.
The Ride Revolt is an e-motorcycle. It has a top speed of 32 mph. It can handle city streets. It should be treated for what it is and only go where it belongs. Your middle school student shouldn’t be riding it. But in a lot of families this Christmas, he will. Or maybe he’ll prefer the Graffiti, which travels at 33 mph and can seat two.
The same is true for the Happy Run G70, which bills itself as a cargo bike. It has a 2,000-watt motor, and can travel at 36 mph. It comes with a spare battery that delivers a range of 85 miles.
Some manufacturers are starting to admit to what they’re selling, calling their wares “cruiser bikes.” The Walke Titan 1-A is a cruiser bike. It sports a 3,800-watt motor and a top speed of 40 mph. Even though it looks like a bike it doesn’t ride like one. A lot of cops are going to let this slide, while stopping the Graffiti, even though the Walke is faster. Victrip simply claims their e-motorcycle is for “off-road.” It won’t stay there.
My Choice
Standard e-bikes have changed, too, as Edison owner Ryan Hersh explained to me recently. His latest model is still a Class 2 e-bike, but with a full throttle if you want to stop pedaling for a while. It has the same 7 manual gears, the same 5 speeds, and the same motor pulling 500 watts as my older model.
The differences are subtle, but real. There are fewer wires between the controller and the motor. The battery compartment separates the wires from the battery. The chain ring is bigger, so you can keep pedaling over the train tracks that knocked my old chain off. Also, it’s a step through design, so the old man doesn’t have to get his legs around the seat.
Would I like a trade-in, he added? Hell to the yes. Giving up my Romic would be like giving up one of my kids. Trading in the Edison was like trading in a car.
The display on my new Grey Ghost is smaller, and while that means more handlebar “real estate” for things like mirrors, I see less information as I ride. The motor and gearing are the same. There’s still no chain covering, like on Dutch bikes, so pants can still get oily. I’m wondering about the battery life, because it seems to be draining faster, although I may be wrong.
2026
I may be wrong about a lot of things.
I’m a reporter, and a consumer. I’m not an engineer. But what I’m seeing with E-Transport today is what your great grandfather saw with cars in the first decade of the 20th century. There are a lot of makers, a lot of different ways of doing things, and a ton of competition. E-Transport is racing through the mass market, because it gets you where you’re going five times faster than walking, and can skip past car traffic.
But there will be blood. Cars resent what even an e-bike like mine can do. During my first ride on the Grey Ghost some idiot in a white car nearly ran me off the road, passing within inches. I did what any red-blooded American would do. I gave him a middle finger salute. The dude saw me in his rear view, turned at the next corner, waited for me to go by and made to blow by me again. I turned onto another road, and he then stopped his car, got out of it, and started yelling at me as if I had assaulted him rather than the other way around.
That’s the other side of the E-Transport Revolution.
