Going Electric
The ins and outs of the e-bike fad
Flying down the street on my son’s electric bicycle, the exhilaration I felt was tempered by a long-ago disaster.
I was eight. My cousin Bobby, who was in high school, had decided it was time I learned to ride the massive Columbia bicycle I’d gotten the previous Christmas. The seconds before I hit a concrete street marker in the shape of the Washington monument I was yelling over my shoulder, “Brakes! How do you put on the brakes?”
That memory loomed large as the bicycle’s electric motor boosted my pedaling to fifteen miles an hour, then eighteen, then twenty. It occurred to me that, maybe, bicycles shouldn’t go this fast. I had another thought: I don’t need an electric bicycle, but I want one.
E-bikes make good sense on Tacoma and Seattle’s roller-coaster hills, where I was first introduced to motor-assisted cycling. When I was staying in Tacoma, there was a bicycle shop near the bed and breakfast. I wandered in and spent the next hour learning about these electric bicycles from a young owner, a disciple of the boosted bike movement.
The Benefits of an E-Bike
The ease of pedaling assisted by an electric motor appeals to folks who haven’t ridden a bicycle in a long time, or generally people who want to get more ground for their output. If you have old knees, ride a lot, and grocery shop or run errands on a bicycle, an e-bike is something you might consider. If you live in Baton Rouge and have the confidence to ride a bicycle over the Perkins Road Overpass or, better, the North Boulevard or Valley Street overpasses—both of which have bicycle lanes—you will appreciate the help an e-bike affords.
[Read Ed Cullen's story on Baton Rouge's Geaux Ride programs here.]
Baton Rouge resident Donna Mitchell first test rode a Pedego e-bike at a bicycle festival one weekend, then bought the very same bicycle a few days later, her husband Ray following soon after “to keep up with me,” she said.
“I’d gotten to where I couldn’t ride a bicycle anymore because of my knees,” she said.
Ray, a mountain biker, still rides a traditional bicycle off-road, but uses his e-bike to grocery shop near the Perkins Road Overpass or pickup prescriptions at a drugstore on Government Street.
“Older riders are riding longer distances with e-bikes,” said Chris Carson, owner of eBike Baton Rouge and eBike NOLA. “You decide how much assisted pedaling you want. E-bikes make it easier for husbands and wives to ride together. I ride faster when I ride by myself, but my wife and I ride e-bikes together and do 15 mph,” he said.
In the right environment, e-bikes can even replace a traditional vehicle. When one of Amanda and Nick Lanata’s cars started needing repairs, they decided to sell it and buy an e-bike.
“I challenged myself,” said Nick, who works from his Zachary home, “to see if I could make an investment in an e-bike instead of a second car.” In the end, Zachary’s lack of bicycle infrastructure hindered those plans, but Nick still rides for exercise in his neighborhood.
“You decide how much assisted pedaling you want. E-bikes make it easier for husbands and wives to ride together. I ride faster when I ride by myself, but my wife and I ride e-bikes together and do 15 mph," —Chris Carson, owner of eBike Baton Rouge and eBike NOLA
E-Bikes in Baton Rouge
E-bikes are fun to ride. They are easy to maintain assuming you buy from a local shop that services what it sells. Buying locally usually means getting a warranty through the manufacturer.
Baton Rouge’s traditional bicycle shops, like Capital Cyclery on Essen Lane, will order an e-bike for a customer from dealers like Specialized, Cannondale, Electra, and Haro, with prices starting around $1,700.
But in recent years, the city’s gained two e-bike-only retailers: Pedego on Jefferson Highway and eBike Baton Rouge on Perkins Road. Pedego has been around nationally since 2008 with two hundred locally-owned stores in the U.S. Owner Steve Harvin opened the Baton Rouge location in 2021. Pedego bikes go for between $1,500 and $5,500. Add-ons can push the price much higher. The store’s website says the average price tag is $2,000 to $2,500.
Chris and Jeanelle Carson opened eBike Baton Rouge last September. Their New Orleans shop, eBike Nola, is almost eight years old. They sell Aventon and Qualisports e-bikes (which are folding bicycles), with prices ranging from $1,000 to a little over $2,000.
“At least sixty percent of our customers are over fifty,” Chris said. “E-bikes are used more for transportation in New Orleans than Baton Rouge. A lot of our customers buy e-bikes to carry on their RVs or to ride at second homes.”
Safety Concerns
It turns out that my initial trepidation about the danger of going so fast on a bicycle was not totally unfounded. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission findings show a higher risk of serious injury among electric scooter and e-bike riders.
Injury, though, comes down to speed, braking, and obeying the rules of the road. To paraphrase the gun lobby, electric bicycles don’t injure people, people on electric bicycles injure people—themselves and hapless pedestrians walking dogs on leashes, pushing strollers, walking or running on our crowded hike/bike paths.
Know Before You Go
Before you shop for e-bikes, do some research to better understand the salesman’s spiel about size of motor, volts, amperes, gears vs. no gears, throttle advance, battery life, charging time, top speed, and cruising range.
Classes of e-bikes include options of pedal-assisted only and options in which you could get somewhere without pedaling at all (pedaling increases cruising range and speed), each of these going up to 20 mph. The highest class of e-bikes goes 20 mph on full electric and up to 28 mph pedal-assisted. For someone with bad knees who wants to exercise on a bicycle, an assisted speed of 15 miles an hour is plenty fast. If you have hills or overpasses to negotiate, then more power makes sense. Keep in mind that narrow, crumbling, pothole-laced bike paths crowded with walkers and runners is not where you want to be doing 25 mph on a bicycle.