I can barely explain this e-bike with a throttle, but it could change bike commutes
I'm a reporter who writes for a living, but I've met my match with the Vintage Electric Roadster.
Here's my attempt to explain this electric vehicle: It's an electric bicycle, but you don't have to actually pedal to move forward. Instead there's a throttle button that can push you up to 36 mph (though that's only on private property technically, on city streets you're capped at 20 mph).
Like a lightweight motorcycle or moped, you keep your feet in place and zoom forward. But you look and still feel like you're on a bicycle, and ride alongside fellow pedal-assist bicyclists, pedal-powered bikers, and road bikers in the bike lane. It's somewhat confusing, but so fun. It's classified as a Class 2 e-bike, meaning it's throttle-assisted with a top speed of 20 mph.
Different levels (1 to 5, with 5 being the fastest) determine how much work you'll have to contribute to riding. Set the Roadster to 1 and you'll have to pedal to keep up with traffic since the throttle only adds a small amount of zip to your ride. Heading near-vertically uphill in my San Francisco neighborhood, I set the bike to level 5 and still pedaled to keep a fast pace on the incline.
The bike is heavy: 86 pounds with the non-removable battery sitting in the middle of the frame between your legs. It's 48 volts or 1,123 watts, so nothing compared to the 350 voltage and 50,000 watts of a Tesla Model 3 battery, but it's a lot for a bicycle.
There's also the 750-watt motor. The electric system powers your ride up to 75 miles, if you use the battery judiciously. But going downhill or squeezing the right hand brake regenerates energy, so you can constantly give some juice back as you deplete it. The joy of electric vehicles. A wall charger adds juice to the device back to full in about 4.5 hours.
Here's my friend zooming along without moving her legs:
Using the e-bike as a bicycle, I felt like a spoiled brat. I could zip past cars blocking the bike lane, quickly maneuver my way past slow-moving tourists, or cruise up a slight uphill without breaking a sweat. I didn't have to work very hard to cross town. One moment easily passing a pack of traditional bicyclists and then continuing up a hill at the same speed as on the flats, I realized I would never be able to do this on any other type of device.
Those same biking privileges I experienced aren't entirely shameful. Those are the very reasons certain people and communities gravitate and rely on e-bikes to get around. Praise for e-bikes (mostly pedal-assist versions that kick on the battery in when enough force is sensed on the pedals) keep flooding in, like a recent BBC article, "An e-bike changed my life" filled with personal anecdotes about the more affordable and accessible devices.
In a recent phone conversation with Dr. Steve Murray, a VP at Bay Area-based engineering consulting firm Exponent, he noted how more commuters can use e-bikes as a transportation method —mainly because of the battery and electric motor. As a regular bicycle rider you can't haul as much weight, stick your kids in a cargo unit attached to the back, or easily ride up steep terrain. Humans biking uphill need to exert a lot more effort than with a battery boosting the ride.
The 2020 Roadster that came out this summer is not your average pedal-assist bicycle, and not just because of its retro sports car look. Typical e-bikes have increasingly lower price tags as battery tech improves and costs go down. The Roadster retails for just under $7,000. But that's nothing compared to the cheapest Tesla.
If only the bike had a trunk.
Topics Electric Vehicles
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
