description	I bought an e-bike in November 2020, it was life-changing, and now I have 4 (pedal-assist, not throttle). I'm documenting my reflections about the e-bike space here, in the hope it will help others.

E-bikes are a Transportation Revolution

Index

• Background: bike-sharer → bike-owner → e-bike maniac
• My e-bikes
  • Overview/Specs: weights between 35-60lbs, ranges from 25-130mi, prices from $1900-$7000 ($2500-$8000 incl. gear)
  • VanMoof X3: great all-around / starter / city e-bike
  • Brompton Electric: smallest fold, most portable, great all around
  • Tern Vektron Q9: large cargo capacity, folds up for easy storage
  • Specialized Creo Comp Carbon: light, fast, long-range
• Reflections
  • Speed ⟹ Safety: higher top speed – and acceleration – make a big difference in traffic
  • Speed ⟹ Inclusion: a lot more people can get around quickly+comfortably on ebikes
  • Speed ⟹ Convenience: ebikes are as fast as cars in urban environments; can solve congestion and parking issues
  • Space: high mobility per unit space; combine with other modes (trains, buses, ferries)
    • Bike vs. Car Storage: parking takes too much space in cities, and is heavily subsidized; bike parking is 5-10x more efficient
  • Cost: the average car cost could fund e-bikes for 10 families
  • Cargo:
    • Groceries, Bulk Items: basically any grocery run, and a surprising number of bulk item moves, can be done via e-bike
    • Kids: easy to carry 1 or 2 kids by e-bike
    • PoV: Grocery Runs: I get groceries by e-bike and it's great
    • PoV: Moving House: I moved across town – with 2wks of stuff – by ebike
  • Health
  • Fun
  • Car sewers: cars make streets miserable for everyone not in a car; doing this to 100% of streets is extreme, and terrible policy.
• Getting Started
  • Bike Shares: easy way to get used to city biking/scooting (if unfamiliar)
  • Renting: rent a few types of bikes before buying one
  • Safety
    • Stats
    • Speed
    • Fear
    • Riding on Sidewalks
    • Stopping at Stop Signs / Red Lights
    • Braking: Sheldon Brown on front brakes
    • Helmets: can't hurt, but often used to blame/criminalize cyclists for infrastructure/engineering problems
    • Lights: the more the better
    • Hi-Viz Clothing: similar to helmets; good practice, but often discussed unfairly
  • Route Planning: Street View, Ride with GPS, Strava all useful
  • Traveling with E-bikes: flying generally not possible (might work with e-brompton); trains/boats generally easy/possible
  • Starter Packs
    • VanMoof X3 + Gear: $83/mo (incl. maintenance/theft/insurance coverage), $3k outright
    • RadPower: popular under $2k
  • Reading
    • ElectricBikeReview.com
    • r/ebikes
• Gear: 10-20% a bike's cost in add-ons can make it 10x more useful
  • Helmets: I use a Lumos "Kickstart" helmet with lights built in
  • Racks, Baskets: starting point for carrying bags' worth of stuff on rides
  • Bags: get weight off of you and onto the bike, where it rolls
    • Panniers: bags that hang from sides of back rack; can be quite large, very useful
    • Cockpit Bags: smaller bags up around your handlebars for essentials
    • Frame Bags: small/medium bags attached to the frame
    • Back-Rack / Seat Bags: medium bags on top of back rack or behind+underneath seat
  • Phone Mounts: phone mounted up front (e.g. w/ turn-by-turn directions) is surprisingly useful; I use Quad Lock.
  • Lights: front, rear, party, Vont 'Pyro' (set), KNOG (set)
  • Locks: Kryptonite U-lock + cable (medium weight, decent security), OnGuard U-Lock (lighter / more clearance but weaker), OTTO cable lock (compact+light extra security layer)
  • Misc. Accessories: bell, rear-view mirrors (1 2), kickstand, hand pump
  • Gloves: padded gloves, light but warm winter gloves
  • Rain Gear: Clever Hoods are popular + good
  • Winter Cycling: easier+better than you think, $200 of gear solves cold down to ≈25ºF
    • Heated Gloves: my main pair, another good pair, and one that actually makes a women's size
    • Heated Vests
    • Pogies
    • Heated Socks
    • Hand Warmers
  • Action Cameras: I use a GoPro Hero 9 Black and GoPro Hero 8 Black, in a chest harness and seat-rail mount, to film rides
  • Padded Shorts: good all-around active shorts w/ pockets
• Documenting Rides
  • Ride-tracking apps:
    • Strava: robust recording app (resumes after phone crashes), good small-circle social network, good open data posture
    • RideWithGPS: similar to Strava, emphasis on route planning/sharing, UX is clunkier
    • wandrer.earth: cool app on top of Strava, providing stats/viz about places you've been and places you might still like to explore
  • Post-Processing Videos: dealing with videos afterward is its own adventure
    • GoPros are pretty hard to deal with; telemetry data is often not recorded correctly, and the GoPro software ecosystem is a mess
    • External SSDs: 1TB/2TB Samsungs, palm-sized
    • 512GB micro-SD: never worry about SD-card capacity in-camera (there's enough to worry about when the data comes off the camera)
    • Wasabi Cloud Storage: cheap+easy cloud storage; good option for archival video storage
    • VFX Suites: unfortunately necessary to do anything with action-camera videos
    • YouTube: I've posted some ride videos to Neighbor Ryan on YouTube