Yes, we can all have e-bikes! (EVs are another story)
A 7-pound conversion kit that could change our lives
I’m (gift) sharing this article from the Washington Post because it so astonished me. And made me feel stupid, too, for not having wondered if we could just turn regular bikes into e-bikes. Read “How to turn any bike into an electric vehicle.”
The Berkshire Hills, where I live, are not easy cycling territory. There are the very keen cyclists, of course, and admirable they are! But I’ve been a city cyclist, in relatively flat London and very flat Manhattan. Just leaving my house means going uphill or steeply downhill. The gym at Simon’s Rock College is only 2 miles away, but it is on the other side of a fairly steep hill.
This means that I suffer from cyclist’s guilt, and I wonder how many other people who own bikes are like me, wannabes daunted by one thing or another? (Yes, call me a wimp.) Yet when people have said, “You should buy an e-bike,” I’ve always responded that (1) they are expensive and (2) I already own 2 bikes.
One bike is so precious that I would never convert it, but the other is a Cannondale basic model that’ll be perfect. During the pandemic I used it inside with a Kickr stand as my in-house gym, and now it can become an e-bike.
Cars are another story. It’s all too common for environmentalists to boast about their electric cars, but cars are a problem in myriad ways - not just when they have internal combustion engines.
For now, what a great idea to focus on getting on our e-bikes. Here’s a bit from Michael Coren’s article:
I’ve been riding my “new” e-bike around ever since. It devours hills, makes flats effortless, and handles more or less like the Volpe I know and love — just with more oomph on demand. Since the battery pops off in seconds, and the hub motor is virtually indistinguishable from a standard bike, I found it easy to lock up outside without worrying about theft. Switching back to a conventional bike was seamless since the extra weight (less than seven pounds) was modest. Of course, I would also have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over a new e-bike…..
In the end, it doesn’t matter what you ride. It matters that you feel free to move around without always having to be behind a steering wheel. As the Dutch learned in the 1970s, a period when the country was suffering traffic congestion and road deaths comparable to the United States, only a massive effort by parents, city planners and politicians made the streets safe and free for everyone again.
But it worked. Today, 64 percent of the Netherlands’ population cycles at least once a week, while the number of children killed by cars has fallen more than 95 percent since 1970. The country’s transformation from a car culture to a bike culture happened in just a few decades.
Could it happen in the United States? Almost every American already knows how to ride a bike. They just need to get back on. Every bicycle is just an e-bike waiting to happen.
It's worth noting that you charge an e-bike using a charging unit that plugs into a wall socket. People who are only familiar with EV's that require the use of charging stations might not know or assume this.