ebikes

New York City lawmakers are preparing this week to consider a sweeping new package of micromobility legislation, with more than 20 bills aimed at e-bikes, electric scooters, mopeds, delivery apps, and enforcement.

Being a one-car family works great right up until the moment two people need to be in two different places. Maybe your spouse took the car to work, but you need to grab groceries. Maybe you’ve got to pick up a kid from daycare. Perhaps you’re meeting a friend for coffee, heading to the gym, or just running some mundane errand that happens to require going a few miles across town.

Those are the moments when a second car starts sounding awfully convenient.

Honda is best known for motorcycles, cars, generators, lawnmowers, robots, jets… basically anything with a motor attached to it. But now the Japanese giant appears ready to add another two-wheeler to that list: an electric mountain bike.

South Park has finally come for e-bikes. And perhaps surprisingly, underneath all the explosions, biker gangs, racist caricatures, and general South Park-ness of it all, the show actually managed to make some pretty insightful observations about the current state of e-bikes in America.

Rivian spin-off ALSO is finally getting its futuristic TM-B electric bikes out across the United States.

Unfortunately for the customers who ordered them nearly a year ago, those bikes aren’t headed to their garages. They’re headed on tour.

Segway is giving its compact MUXI utility e-bike a fairly significant upgrade, adding everything from automatic electronic shifting to front suspension and a higher Class 3 top speed.

ENGWE has just launched its latest all-terrain electric bike, the E26 3.0, and the company is going big on power this time around. The new model combines dual hub motors, full suspension, and chunky fat tires into a bike that looks designed to handle just about anything you can throw at it.

I’ve been working in the electric bike industry for nearly two decades, and publicly reviewing e-bikes for around half of that. I used to say I’ve touched hundreds of e-bikes, but now that I’ve lost count, I wouldn’t be surprised to find I need to add a digit to that. With so many saddles that I have to sit on, I get to ride a lot of e-bikes for a few weeks, but I rarely get to spend months on any one bike. So when I finished my one-month review of the Xtracycle Hopper electric cargo bike and had a unique opportunity for a longer-term project, I jumped on it.

My best friend and his wife have a couple of kids and are a bike-friendly family, so I made him an offer: take this bike and ride it as much as you guys can. Now, having just hit 1,000 km (620 miles) on the thing, he’s back to share his experiences with me. And by extension, with you all.

Just when it looked like we were about to find out what Storm Sondors has been cooking up for his return to the e-bike world, the story has taken another strange turn.

There’s a fairly wide spectrum of moped-style electric bikes these days. Some are essentially conventional e-bikes wearing motorcycle-inspired designs, while others lean so heavily into the mini-moto experience that the pedals start to feel like little more than a legal technicality.

The Macfox X1S definitely falls closer to that second group.

Rivian spin-off ALSO is pushing back the delivery timeline for its highly anticipated TM-B electric bike yet again, with reservation holders for the flagship Launch Edition now being told to expect their bikes to arrive by early November at the latest.

E-bike theft is one of those problems where a good lock is only half the battle. Since no physical lock can ever give you a 100% guarantee of safety, if a thief actually gets away with your bike, knowing where it went can suddenly become a lot more important.

Now connected e-bike specialist Comodule has unveiled its latest solution, known as Astra, and one of its most interesting tricks is the ability to keep tracking an e-bike for up to 12 months – even when the bike is sitting in storage.

Illinois just signed a sweeping new electric bicycle law that, among many other changes, finally answers a question that has been hanging over the rapidly growing market for high-powered electric bikes: What exactly are we supposed to do with all of these 35 and 40 mph “e-bikes” that don’t fit into the normal three-class electric bicycle system?

Just when you thought the SONDORS story was over, Storm Sondors appears to be mounting another comeback.

The entrepreneur behind one of the most influential – and eventually most controversial – electric bike companies in the US has resurfaced with a mysterious new two-wheeler being teased on the SONDORS website.

London police have apparently decided that if you can’t beat them, join them – or at least get yourself the same electric bike.

Bafang has never exactly been known for building timid e-bike motors, but its latest pair of high-performance e-MTB drives takes things to a whole new level. We’re talking up to 1,700 watts of peak power, 150 Nm of torque, and 800% pedal assistance.

At that point, “pedal assist” is starting to do some pretty heavy lifting as a phrase.

One of the most common questions I get from readers isn’t just about speed or range anymore. Increasingly, I’m hearing more questions about battery safety.

People see the occasional viral video of an e-bike battery fire and wonder if they should be worried about charging their battery in the garage, apartment, or workshop. The reality is that quality lithium-ion batteries from reputable manufacturers are remarkably safe, but when failures do occur, they can be dramatic enough that many riders want an extra layer of protection.

That’s where products like Yolin’s lithium-ion battery charging cabinet come in. I recently spent some time testing the cabinet, and while I admittedly wasn’t sure what to expect going in, I came away more impressed than I anticipated.  

British folding e-bike maker FLIT has just unveiled its latest lightweight folding e-bike, the FLIT M2i. And at just 13.3 kg (29.3 lb), this thing is getting impressively light for a fully equipped electric bike.

Ride1Up’s Portola has been one of those e-bikes that make a lot of sense on paper: a compact folding design, useful cargo capability, and the kind of pricing that helped Ride1Up build its reputation for high-value e-bikes in the first place.

For the last few years, it has felt like the electric bike industry has been engaged in a constant arms race.

Every new launch seems to promise more speed, more power, bigger batteries, and increasingly motorcycle-like styling. And every time a new model pushes the envelope, the comments inevitably fill with some people asking the same question: “Why not just make it faster?”

I think that’s the wrong question.

When New Jersey passed one of the country’s most restrictive e-bike laws earlier this year, plenty of riders, advocates, and bike shops warned that it would have consequences. Now, just a few weeks after the law officially took effect, those predictions appear to have come true.