Review: E-bikes on Hills
I recently moved near Seattle[1], where traffic is terrible but there are surprisingly many bike lanes. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of hills. For a while, I would occasionally bike to work, but the hills were intimidating and I had to re-motivate myself every morning. Around a year ago, I finally gave up and just got an e-bike.
At a high level, getting an e-bike caused me to bike a lot more. I almost always bike to work now unless the weather is bad or I need my car for something. Having the option to put very little effort in does mean that I work less hard, and for the first six months or so I was taking it too easy (although still not as easy as sitting in a car!).
Overall, I highly recommend e-bikes, especially if you have trouble motivating yourself to bike or live somewhere with a lot of hills[2].
My Bike
I got the Ride1Up Cafe Cruiser, since it had good reviews and was extremely cheap. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of the features on this bike, but I recommend looking up current e-bike reviews if you want to buy one. My bike has been discontinued and newer bikes will have better electrical safety certifications.
Good
Assist level 3⁄5 is sufficient to make going up and down huge hills feel about as easy as biking on a flat surface, and causes wind to keep me cool. I never drive to work because I’m tired, since worst-case I can make the bike do almost all of the work, and it’s significantly more pleasant than driving.
If I’m in a really big hurry, I can set my bike to assist 5 and get to work about as fast as I can drive (since I can bike more directly and park closer).
My bike has a throttle, which lets me very quickly get up-to-speed from a stop, or increase power when going up a hill. This is particularly useful if I need to bike in traffic since I can hit 25 mph very quickly.
I got a bike with fat tires. This increases the weight, but with an e-bike, who cares? Fat tires mean gravel and other weird surfaces aren’t a problem, and it also means I’ve only needed to replace one inner-tube[3].
My bike also has a really large and sturdy basket on the back (again, who cares about weight?), which means I can store my backpack there and not worry about it on my back.
My bike’s range is listed as 30-60 miles. I think I can get 40+ on assist level 3 and probably at least 60 on assist level 2. This is enough for me to bike 5 miles to work and back every day for a week, so it’s actually kind of excessive.
Bad
My bike only detects cadence, not torque; a torque-sensitive e-bike might be better for effort.
E-bikes are heavy in general, and mine is on the heavy end. This isn’t a problem for biking effort, since the pedal assist more than compensates, but it does mean the bike has a lot of momentum and is harder to turn.
Since the range on my bike is excessive, if I bought a new one I might pick one with a smaller battery to reduce the weight.
It’s easy to go really fast. 15 mph is fast on a normal bike, but this bike can easily hit 25 mph. After a while, this starts to feel safe, but be aware that this is very fast. I always make sure to slow down a lot (15 mph max, sometimes slower) when I’m on a shared bike path. This is also fast enough that you’ll probably want goggles or glasses of some sort.
The brake pads wear out really fast. I assume this is a combination of going 25 mph and also needing to brake on hills relatively often. I’ve replaced them once already and really need to replace them again.
Exercise
At first, I was using a relatively high assist level (3/5) and used the throttle whenever I hit a hill. A few months ago, I realized I wasn’t really working out when I biked to work (although spinning the pedals and balancing on a bike is still a better workout than driving).
I’ve started only using the throttle when I’m starting from a complete stop (to avoid having to shift constantly or hurt my knees), and I usually use assist level 2 now unless I’m in a hurry. I sometimes use assist level 1 when I’m in the mood for a workout. The hills around Seattle are no joke so I never use this heavy bike with the assist turned all the way off.
Battery Safety
One gotcha with these bikes is that the batteries are flammable, and no one will trust a bike manufacturer to have made them safe unless they’ve proven it and got UL certification. My bike is not UL certified, and because of that:
My bike shop won’t store it overnight (their insurance doesn’t allow it).
I can’t charge my bike at work (although I am allowed to park it).
UL ratings have become more common[4], so you should definitely find an e-bike that doesn’t have this problem. Specifically, you want UL 2849 (certifies that the entire electrical system of the bike is safe), not just UL 2271 (certifies that the battery alone is safe).
My Recommendation
Do you want to bike more but struggle with motivation? Do you have a lot of annoying hills around?
E-bikes are great and I like them. I do recommend pre-committing not overuse the throttle though, since it’s easy to barely get a workout.
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Across Lake Washington, on the Eastside.
Note that whether you want to bike at all might depend on where you live. Kirkland and Redmond have a lot of bike paths and a decent amount of bike lanes (see this map of separated bike paths, including the dark grey lines), or this excessively-detailed map.
Bellevue is suicidal to bike through except east/west on the 520 trail.
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I used to bike a lot on the plains of Colorado and I’m not sure if I’d bother with an e-bike out there since normal bikes are so much lighter and more fun.
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Fat bike tires are both physically larger (larger surface area so weight is spread out) and inflated to lower pressure (can deform around sharp objects), which makes them much more resistant to road hazards.
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The same company that sold my bike has UL 2849 on all of their current bikes.
I am in love with my ebike. I may get less exercise total, but I get a lot more joy from a lot more time outdoors. I feel a stronger connection to place and culture, because the bike allows going slow and looking around. When there’s traffic or you’re going fast, your attention will and should be mostly on that, but you can stop or go slow as much as you want to lok around. Rubbernecking in a car can feel rude or dangerous; on a bike it’s easy and fun.
Having a big convenient cargo carrier and places to secure collapsible bags for extra space means you can do most errands by bike instead of car.
Increased time on a bike sounds risky, but here’s a weird study: there were more closed head injuries recorded per mile travelled in a car vs. a bike. I didn’t catch the ref and I realize this is absolutely astounding. The ones on bikes are probably more severe, but I think it’s not fully appreciated how much even minor car accidents mess your brain up.
I do recommend biking as though no car will ever notice you by default, but realize that’s not really an option in dense cities with a lot of traffic. For smaller towns with less traffic and more side streets and bike lanes (Boulder is an extreme but I’m also biking in Traverse City, a smaller and much less bike-friendly town) there’s no comparison in levels of joy and fun to driving.
Do you primarily bike to work or to other places as well?
Personally, like other “Interested but concerned” riders, I only feel comfortable using relatively safe infrastructure like greenways, protected bike lanes, and off-road paths. Looking at this bike map of Seattle, that infrastructure isn’t available east of Lake Washington. In the downtown and university areas it looks like there is some of that infrastructure available but that it is disconnected enough to make it difficult to get to many destinations by bike.
This all makes me think that Seattle is a difficult place to get around by bike for even an “Enthused and confident” rider and that you’d need to be “Strong and fearless”, but I’m not sure.
I only really bike to work and occasionally to Woodinville.
The Eastrail page has a decent map of full-separated bike trails (not just separate lanes), although it’s annoying that some of the trails are “highlighted” in grey.
The green trail north/south through Kirkland, and all of the grey trails following 520 and then north up to Woodinville are bike paths (not bike lanes, totally separated). They occasionally cross roads but it’s infrequent. My house is (intentionally) along the 520 path so I can bike to work entirely on small neighborhood streets + the bike path.
I guess my post is targeted to people who already know they want to bike but don’t know if they want an e-bike. I should mention that not everyone is going to be happy biking here though. Kirkland is pretty good for biking if bike lanes are good enough for you, and Redmond is weird but mostly fine. Bellevue is mostly suicidal to try to bike through (except along 520).
I also updated the title since I mostly don’t talk about Seattle.
Is that you in the photo? Why is your left hand a claw?
It’s actor Shia Labeouf; the specific frame is elusive but likely looks odd due to being screencapped from a video.