I recently discovered these, even though they have been around for years apparently. I live in an area with a lot of hills, so i have stayed away from bikes because, who wants to walk their bike up every hill? Im 47 and not interested in blowing out my legs, or even conditioning them to a point to where i can pedal like a tour de france rider. Fuck that.
Electric bikes fix that issue. You can pedal as much or as little as you want. The bike i bought is a Rad Rover 5. It not only has pedal assist, it also has a throttle so you dont ever have to pedal if you dont want to. On just throttle alone, this bike will do 20+ miles on a single charge, or 45+ if you assist with pedaling. It'll do between 20-25 mph on throttle alone, and even faster if you assist by pedaling.
Pedal assist is the shit! The bike puts out something like 5 times the amount of energy that you put in, so its like you have the pedaling strength of Captain America. You can casually pedal up steep hills without breaking a sweat (or just use throttle alone if youre super lazy).
Class 2 E-bikes are allowed (legally) anywhere bicycles are allowed, including sidewalks. You can take these electric fat tire bikes offroad too. Check out this short video. These things are friggin quick!
/——-/ 47???? I’m 69 years old and ride a 10 speed up hills with none of the issues you’re worried about.
Can you do that for 40 miles? The benefit to an electric bike is the range and speed that you get. You are rewarded with more speed with every pedal rotation, than you are on a normal bike. Again, its like you have the pedaling strength of Captain America (on the bikes highest setting). You can also dial it back to where its barely helping you, or not helping you at all. When you get tired, all you have to do is turn the throttle, or turn up the pedal assist.
I got one that doesn't have a throttle. My buddy has one with a throttle and he hardly peddles. We went out this weekend with 2 full batteries each. I went 37 miles before I had to change batteries and I believe he went 2 more miles than I did. So if we would have conserved more earlier or not went to a metropark that is all up and down hills (wasted a lot of battery there), then we probably could have gone over 40. Keep in mind he hardly peddled and still got more battery life than me. I bought from a local shop a starter bike and he bought the Mark Cuban bike you may have seen on Sharktank. Tower Electric