Electric bicycles

Way too close for comfort. I love that bike and it would have been heartbreaking.
I also added to Kryptonite's profit margin today.

Just rolled over 500 miles on my Trek Commuter 7+, it will 3 months old in 4 days.

Thoughts;

• As a work commuter, I am very happy. Little less than 9 miles round trip, 30-35 minutes per day. Not much longer than driving. 48 days so far riding to work. My goal is to ride it to work 130 days during the first year.
• This bike is very well built with good components, designed from the ground up as a e-bike.
• This bike takes far more of a pounding than any bike I've owned before just because of the speed. 15-18 mph of city riding is rough on a bike.
• I don't ride it very much on the weekends, or on errands.
• Never had dual platform pedals before. Somewhat of a pain with stop and go city riding. As I am not using my cleats hardly at all, I should have just switched my pedals out if I feel I need to use cleats. My Keen cleats do work well with this bike.

Do you feel the need for a faster 20+ mph commuter?
or maybe front suspension or dual suspension to compensate for the extra speed?
Does commute traffic allow for faster speed?

Apologies beforehand if this has been answered 205 times (I can't figure out how to search just "Electrical bikes" instead of all of "Shiny Things"):

What is a good front light to see with in the evening?

The light that my Haibike came with is enough to be seen, but not to see enough with in the dark.

Ive used Niterider lights, have 750 that works very well on the bars or helmet, they now have a 1200. Best set up is a bar mounted and a helmet mount if your riding single track, street you can just do a bar mount.

I typically search thru modernbike.com. Tons of choices.

I have Niteriders on both of my bikes. The Haibike should have a microUSB terminal on the controller. I bought a short USB to USB cable so I can charge the light as I ride.

Just hitting 500 miles on my RadRover. My similar observations:

• It's not build from the ground up as an e-bike. It's a $500 fat bike with $1,000 of electrics bolted to it. Everything needs adjusted so if you don't have a good LBS or some idea of how to do it yourself, don't buy it. That said, once you adjust things, it has worked very well for me.
• Probably 60% of my riding has been as a work commuter and it has done very well for that. My commute has a pretty big elevation gain and this allows me to ride to work without being a sweaty mess when I get there.
• I love the fat tires, even for city streets. This is particularly true of my city, which has pretty shitty streets. The tires soak up all the harsh potholes and nasty seams in the pavement.
• I use it a lot as an errand runner. I added the Topeak rack/bag combo. It will haul a lot of groceries, six packs of beer, laptop, etc. with ease. For big loads I got a trailer. This thing has been perfect in my little 'burg of 4500 people.
• I generally ride with PAS 2, bumping to 3 or 4 or goosing the throttle for tougher hills. Ridden in this manner, the range has been really good for me. Longest ride so far was about 26 miles and I had about 3.5/5 bars left.
• The factory headlight (2018 model) is actually very good.
• The weight is a factor in a couple of situations: It's a chore to lift it onto my truck bike carrier and puts a bit of a strain on my bike work stand. On the work stand it's also tricky to find a good spot that puts it moderately balanced on the stand.

Now I'm just waiting on my tube and tire liner to arrive as I got a flat that the Slime couldn't handle. Until now, Slime has handled the thorns pretty well. On one leisure ride on the river bottom, I got a flat and had to use my tiny hand pump three times to get home, but the tire sealed up on the last leg.

Weather's been super nice, daytime super dry high around 35C (95F) and evenings are just outstanding in the low 20's (low 70's)

Last night I was riding around and came across this:



Some drunk drove his jeep into the canal

Then I rode a few blocks into he neighborhood and the helicopter has the driver and passenger lit up

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-s...shes-car-into-mesa-canal-near-palo-verde-park

Riding RadRovers at Oceano Dunes today. The big fat tire E-bikes performed well in the sand. Yesterday we rode up to Port St. Luis and out on the pier for fish and chips at Merseas.

I can't speak for Dirtfarmer, but, will say, at least for the roads around me, full suspension, or front suspension with a suspension post would be required. That said, I'm 51 with some chronic lower back problems, along with fused L5-S1 vertebrae. Higher speeds definitely make the bumps worse. Having a motor makes the additional weight and energy use of the suspension not matter. I've built up my e-bike with a 52V TSDZ2 mid-drive on a full suspension 2003 Santa-Cruz with smooth commuter tires on it as my road bike, and haven't so much as looked a my skinny-tire drop-bar road bike ever since.

As for the "need for a 20+ MPH commuter", my situation is different. I live in a rural area, and have a 16 mile commute over roads with speed limits that are mostly 45-55 MPH, so, faster is better, as it reduces the speed differential with the cars. My commute takes 25-35 min. in the car on or a motorcycle. I can do it in 45 minutes on my E-bike, so, the travel time penalty is small. I mostly don't bother to commute on the e-bike because of the additional time to change clothes, and possibly shower (I still work up a sweat, as my bike is set up as assist only). Winter is soon upon us, so, no more thoughts of e-bike commuting this year, but, I really should put some sort of pannier rack on the bike to make carrying my laptop and change of clothes to work easier (I have riding with a backpack), then maybe I'd consider the E-bike for commuting more.

Personally, I don't feel that much above 20-25 is needed. While it may help you keep up with traffic, depending on the area, I think that it could actually contribute to risk as most cagers aren't expecting a bicycle to be traveling faster than that. They'll be more likely to misjudge your approach if your going much faster.

Suspension is a must for me anymore, on thinner tired bikes. On my Rover, I don't really feel a huge benefit from the suspension since the 4" tires suck up a lot of the road bumps. My non-e bike has 1" tires and front suspension and I don't care to remember my previous non-suspension bike.

Good point, I have experienced cars pulling out in front of me in situations where that may have been a contributing factor.

I found that pulsating headlight and taillight mitigates that to a degree.

I do use them.

My weekday commute is 12-14 miles, within NYC metro area, takes about 45-75 min. driving or motorcycling, depending on traffic. Ebike cuts commute time to about 35-45 min.
Speed above 20 mph actually put myself in more danger, between the potholes, manhole covers, car mirrors, pedicabs, delivery on ebikes, pedestrians on cell phones, I'm happy just survive the commute.

Yes to a headlight of reasonable brightness - but the strobe lights, esp. the extra bright ones are annoying. I also think that they make it harder to judge the size, speed and distance of an approaching object wearing one.

I bought a eskateboard, considered a one wheel but this seems like a better deal since I used to skateboard, its pretty fun. Its helping my balance and getting me out of house to fuck around a bit. I will probably buy a ebike in a while.

It's better than drivers not seeing the approaching object at all.

Maybe the best is a flashing light to get attention, and two solid ones mounted out at the handlebar ends (thinking straight-bars mountain-bike type bike here) to provide a sense of approach speed as those two solid lights get further apart in the field of view as the bike approaches.

The magic triangle of light that works on motorcycles should work on a bicycle too, no?