http://www.wired.com/2015/09/pickup-truck-electric-bikes-may-better-car/ THE PICKUP TRUCK OF ELECTRIC BIKES MAY BE BETTER THAN A CAR DAVID PIERCE. DAVID PIERCE 09.15.15
[images http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/10E_small_freight__77944.1428017663.920.600.jpg http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/10E_small_freight__77944.1428017663.920.600-150x150-e1442272282518.jpg http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F09%2F10E_small_freight__77944.1428017663.920.600-929x550.jpg ] NEW TO SAN Francisco, I discovered quickly that having a car is terrible, but not as terrible as relying on the city’s horrific public transportation or spending the few dollars I have left after rent on surge-priced Ubers. For me, and for an increasing number of people in cities all over the world, the answer is a bicycle. 60 percent more people commute to work on a bike now than a decade ago, and cycling infrastructure has grown as cities have become too congested to handle more cars. Bikes rule, cars drool. For a couple of weeks this summer, I sat in the seat of a bike called the Xtracycle Edgerunner 10e. This is no ordinary bike. This $5,750 beast is a longtail, one in a burgeoning breed of giant, high-tech cargo bikes. The 10e is capable of carrying up to 400 pounds’ worth of people, groceries, and whatever else you can think to throw in its many compartments. It comes with an electric motor, too, which makes it far easier to carry that huge load. This is the Ford F150 of bicycles, sold on its towing capacity—or maybe the Subaru Outback, the family-friendly car you can count on. Whatever it is, it’s huge. 85 inches long and more than 50 pounds even before you load in the groceries, the Edgerunner 10e is not comfortably hoisted upon your shoulder as you traipse up the stairs to your front door. (Luckily, it did—barely—fit in the WIRED office elevator.) It’s made of a super-strong steel alloy called chromoly steel, which is popular in bike-building but also used in making everything from firearms to car roll cages. The bike is sturdy and strong, right down to the double-barrelled kickstand. But it’s a little like carrying your bike, plus another bike attached to it. It’s meant to be made even heavier, too. Riding the Edgerunner without carrying anything on its racks or in its bags is like buying that F150 and driving it only to church on Sundays. There’s a long seat and two bars on the bike’s long rear, above the back tire; another rack sits on each side. The cargo setup is ridiculously versatile: Xtracycle began by selling add-ons to existing bikes that made them more carrying-capable, and still offers a huge line of accessories for carrying stuff. Even with the default setup, you can dump your wetsuit and knick-knacks things into the sealable bags, use the straps to secure your surfboard, and secure your surfing partner in the center seat. (It’s actually reasonably comfortable, according to the two WIRED fellows I toured around San Francisco’s South Park.) On the front, the 10e has another flat rack for the smaller stuff. The rack stays in place even as you turn the handlebars, which takes a little getting used to—not seeing the whole front turn is disconcerting at first. Despite all that, though, it rides remarkably like a regular bike. I’m no expert, certainly, but I was comfortable riding the Edgerunner 10e in about 30 seconds. The smaller, enclosed 20-inch wheel on the back sits low enough to steady your load, and the whole bike is designed with its size in mind. It takes an extra push or two to get all that weight in motion, but once you’re going it’s dead easy. Of course, that’s because you get a little extra help too. The Edgerunner 10e has a Bosch Performance electric motor helping you spin the tires. Its battery, rated to last anywhere from 20 to 100 miles depending on how hard you make it work, sits where your water bottle might otherwise go. It’s a high-end, top-of-the-line setup, but it doesn’t do all the work for you. It just…helps. There are four different motor modes in addition to the bike’s 10 speeds, which add somewhere between 50 and 275 percent more power to every one of your pedal strokes. You keep a steady pace, pedaling fast but not furiously, and ratchet the assistance up and down depending on how much help you need. The motor’s theoretically capable of going along at 20 miles per hour, but if you get a decent downhill that number looks a lot more like 30. I never rode without at least a little assistance—the lower mode, called Eco, makes riding alone feel like you’re heading downhill with the wind at your back. But with two passengers on board, I locked into the highest mode, Turbo, and still had to huff and puff a little when I hit a hill. But when I finally put the bike through its paces and loaded a keg (filled with water, because I’m not a beer-wasting monster) into the its rear compartment, no amount of motor help could save me. The video above shows it much better, but let’s just say the war between keg and bike ends with you buying a car. But if you’re part of a growing class of people—you live in a city, your commute is short, your public transportation is decent, Uber’s there if you really need it—the Xtracycle kind of feels like it could replace your car. For the price, you’d hope so, but when you’re doing quick errands or just getting around town, this bike does the work. It does most of it for you, in fact. 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