Nathan Davies: I rode a $12,500 e-bike and here’s what I learned
E-bikes are the future, they say. Nathan Davies wasn’t convinced so he bludged one with a price tag that would fit a decent car and put it to work. Here’s what happened.
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I used to think that electric bikes were cheating. I still do, but now I also think they’re incredibly fun, extremely practical and possibly the future of commuting.
I first became aware of just how popular e-bikes were becoming when I started regularly commuting to work last year.
I had purchased a nice middle-of-the-road (no pun intended) Cannondale road bike to get to and from work a few days a week.
The first week or two was hard work, but as my bike fitness improved I found myself whizzing in at around 21km/h, hitting 30km/h on a few easy bits (also known as the downhill).
Not fast by any means, but quick enough to get me from home to work in about the same time as it takes me to drive. Good result.
There was only one problem – people were passing me. Not fit people in lycra, I was expecting to get passed by them. No, the people who were passing me were big people. And small people. People in suits. Once I got passed by a girl with a basket on the front of her bike.
The only common denominator among all the people who were passing me on the bike tracks was a small, barely perceptible whirring sound as they rode by.
Then it dawned on me. Just like Bob Dylan in 1965, these folks as gone electric. Their bikes had (cue dramatic music) batteries. My initial thought was “those dirty rats, how dare they get a motorised ride into work when I’m here pedalling my butt off”.
With more thought though the benefits started to dawn on me. The parking was still free, you still got that wonderfully meditative feeling of cycling in the fresh air, and while you might be burning a tiny bit of fossil fuel to charge the bike, it was a minuscule amount compared to even the smallest car.
And you could wear your work clothes and not arrive at the office a sweaty mess. I had to know more. I approached recreational cycling body BikeSA to see if they could hook me up with a demo e-bike to commute on for a few days so I could compare the difference.
They contacted Adelaide retailer Bike Society, and before I knew it they’d hooked me up with an e-bike. More specifically, a Specialized Creo SL – retailing at a cool $12,500.
Given that I’ve never even spent that much on a car I was understandably nervous.
I needn’t have been – the bike handled like a dream. A very expensive dream.
I should point out though that this is the very high end of electric bikes. You can get a serviceable e-bike in the $1500 range and plenty of people are happily riding these to work.
My first ride home from work – a 7.8km journey that generally takes around 23 minutes with an average speed of around 21km/h – takes 20 minutes with an average speed of about 23km/h.
Not a massive time saving, although I was riding into a very strong headwind so it’s hard to really gauge how much difference the electric motor made, compared to a standard ride.
Later that night, however, I go for another ride and things really fall into place.
There’s a sweet spot where your pedalling cadence and the motor come together in perfect harmony.
Find this spot and it feels like you’re riding with a permanent tailwind, or with a hand in your back pushing you down the road.
You can maintain a speed in the high twenties with very little effort. The motor itself only goes up to 25km/h due to Australian legal restrictions on the speed, something many e-bike enthusiasts would like to see changed, claiming higher speeds would lead to more people using e-bikes for commuting.
The next morning I take advantage of this sweet spot, relax a little, and shave four minutes off my commute and, despite it being a humid 32 degree day, arrive at work fresh as a daisy.
I pass a number of cyclists and feel slightly guilty, but shake it off. They’ll get over it.
Over the next couple of days I find myself looking for opportunities to ride. It’s on the hills that the e-bike really comes into its own, gently assisting you up the inclines and getting you to the top with plenty of energy still left in the legs.
I was genuinely sad to give the Creo back. I wanted to try it out on some steep hills. I hadn’t even had a chance to delve into the mission control app that connects the bike to your smart phone and opens up such hi-tech features, such as a heart-rate monitor that decides exactly when you need the motor to cut in to keep your BPM in your chosen zone.
For the sake of fairness, I took one of Uber’s Jump electric bikes for a spin around the city, thinking I’d be disappointed after spending three days on the Creo. I wasn’t.
Sure, they’re not a high-end road bike, but they’re still an absolute blast to ride.
I went for a quick five k’s in my lunch break, averaging 21.3km/h and hitting 35km/h in some spots with very little effort. They leave the scooters for dead.
Bike SA chief executive Christian Haag said the e-bike craze was changing cycling around the globe.
“The wave spread west from China to Europe, and it’s well and truly hit the United States, but it’s only just starting here,” Mr Haag said.
“It’s going crazy in Europe, both due to policy setting by governments as well as the experience these bikes provide.”
Mr Haag said European governments were looking at ways of getting commuters out of cars and onto more climate-friendly technology, and e-bikes ticked all the boxes.
“They’re investing significantly in e-bikes,” he said.
“In Sweden, they’re providing a $1500 rebate for people to buy their own e-bike. These are clearly replacing vehicles for some people.”
Mr Haag said improving technologies meant that the weight and the cost of e-bikes were falling. He said this opened up possibilities, particularly for older cyclists.
“As people get into their 50s and 60s and the knees start to go, this can extend the riding lifespan for people,” he said.
For cycling couple Nathan and Leanne Simpson, switching to e-bikes was an easy decision.
“We jumped to e-mountain bikes about four years ago,” Nathan, 50, said. “We live in the Adelaide Hills, so every time we went for a ride we had to ride back up the hill to get home. E-bikes felt like a natural progression.”
Nathan and Leanne tried out the Specialized Creo e-bikes at the Tour Down Under and were instantly hooked.
He said while there was some slight resistance to e-bikes within his riding group at first, it was largely gone now.
“People just think they’re too much fun to ignore,” Nathan said. “And anything that gets more people off the couch and outside riding has to be a good thing.”