At what point will you get to the eBike?

Hold your horses; I'm getting to it.

So all during the summer my routine was metro to work and bike home using the Capital Bike Share bikes and all was good: I'm getting exercise and I'm saving some money. So my next though was "can I cut out the metro altogether?" There were a couple of issues though.

1. The home commute is, on aggregate, downhill. From Bethesda to K Street the elevation drop is roughly 250 to 300 feet. Its no so great that you can coast, but its noticeably harder going to Bethesda than from.
2. There are no showers at our office.

My fear was, even if I could make the trip from home to the office in a reasonable amount of time (lets assume it would take 10 minutes longer due to the elevation change) I'd still arrive a sweaty mess. During my rides home I would basically soak through whatever t-shirt/shirt combination I was wearing, and that was going the easy way. One could only imagine what I'd look like after biking 7 miles uphill.

So this is what got me thinking about the eBike. The theory went "use the motor to assist on the way to work to keep effort, thus sweat, to a minimum on my way to work, ride the bike home normally on the way home." eBikes aren't cheap though and I didn't want to plunk down a lot of coin on something that may not work out. However, if I could rent an eBike for a test run....

This is how I discovered Hybrid Pedals. When searching for "ebike rentals Washington DC" they popped up. So I gave them a ring. It turns out that they used to have a service where they rented Pedego bikes to tourists, but they had recently shuttered that business. "I'm looking to maybe purchase an eBike, but I'd like to test it for a week. Could I possibly rent one of their stock?"

"Absolutely!"

So I headed down to their store, tried out a couple of bikes and ended up renting the Currie Tech iZip E3 Path + for $250 (which could be applied to the purchase price if I wanted to buy it).

That's a mouthful of a name.

For a week I used the Path + to get to and from work and, on the whole, validated the concept. I could get to work in about the same amount of time it takes me to walk/metro, so my morning routine wasn't really affected in any way, and when I arrived at work I wasn't a sweaty mess. As for the bike itself...

Likes:

• I know this is going to sound like a "no-duh" but it felt and handled like a bike. Other than the additional weight of the battery / hub motor it felt no different than riding a normal bike, including when I used to pedal assist at all.
• Speaking of pedal assist: it had it. For those who don't know what that is, the bike senses when you pedal and applies force to assist. There are a number of levels of assist from "helping you just a little when you're starting from a full stop and going up hills" to "the bike's doing 90% of the work." The lower the assist, the farther you can go on a single charge.
• Speaking of range: it was great. According to Currie Tech you should be able to go 25 miles on flatish ground on the highest level of pedal assist or full throttle. Since the ride to work is 11 miles and I never ran that at full throttle the entire way I never came close to exhausting the battery.
• Cruise control. Yes, this sucker had cruise control. If you're running throttle only, once you hit the speed you want you can kick in cruise control and the bike will continue to maintain that speed until you apply the breaks. Holding the throttle open for a long time can start to strain your hand, so this was really appreciated.

Dislikes:

• Weight. Since the motor is in the back wheel and the battery sits directly above it this sucker is back heavy. As I mentioned above it wasn't noticeable when riding, even with the motor turned off, but picking up the bike (which I had to do to go up and down the stairs to my townhouse) was kind of unwieldy.
• Size: this isn't a real complaint of the bike, but of storing the bike in my house. I have no garage, and live in a townhouse with a wife and three kids. Space is at a premium. For the week I had the bike it took up a lot of room in the dining room.
• Price: $2,400. This was a really nice bike, but $2,400 was too rich for my blood.

So as much as I would have loved to have continued using the bike I regretfully returned it and continued with my hybrid metro/rental bike commute.