Re-New Bikes

Read a personal blog below from one of our volunteers,
Euan Robertson, about their experience of trailing an e-bike:

My neighbourhood is not the best place to own a bike. Assuming it doesn't get promptly stolen, most of the area is built on top of a huge hill, with a very steep incline up one side and an obscenely steep incline up all the others. Statistically few of us can afford to own a car, and the singular bus – not one bus service, one bus - that runs through the area only does so every hour, frequently arrives 20 minutes late, or doesn't show up at all.  

I am Euan Robertson, and I am the most frugal citizen of Stirling alive. So frugal, in fact, that I made the decision to not purchase an ebike. I was definitely intrigued by the idea of a bicycle that can manageably ascend the route to my house, but being new to the market, they were prohibitively expensive for many years. But through a connection from my volunteering at the Reuse Hub, I caught wind of a scheme run by local bike repair charity Recyke-a-Bike to hand the things out completely free for a one-month loan.  

Some nerves were warranted, as the last time I had ridden a bike was when my exchange semester landlord let me use his own dust-gathering bicycle (after removing the salt crystals that encased the brake mechanisms during the Canadian winter). But going straight to the turbocharged option was remarkably smooth, if a bit rugged; the model in question was a RadRunner 2, an army-green utilitarian cargo ebike that looked like something the Allies would weld together from spare metal parts they found in occupied France. It had four unnervingly powerful pedal assist settings, as well as an honest-to-god boost throttle, and since it was designed with enough power to haul heavy loads, my slight frame was quickly rocketing around Stirling. I actually caught a heckle from a drunkard while effortlessly ascending the old town hill towards the castle, despite it not even being on a high assist mode and my own strength still being quite necessary. Because an ebike doesn't drive itself – it multiplies the rider's pedalling power as much as is needed to help them along. If it runs out of battery, it just turns into a bicycle, if a rather bulky 30-kilogram bicycle. 

I was hooked long before the trial ran out. It wholly replaced public transport, and very nearly replaced walking. A proper vehicle in its own right, it liberated me from my home district to set out on errands and commutes whenever I wanted, and the highest power settings were just enough to tackle the monstrous ascent back up the hill as no bicycle had before. Because riding on pavements is legal in Scotland, I could take obscure backroutes through areas a car could not reach, and commute to the Reuse Hub practically as the crow flies. When the loan ran out, I was completely reliant on an ebike. So a replacement was promptly ordered. 

During the 2023 cycle festivals when all the online bikes were on discount, I spent just under £2,000 on a high-ish-end 2022-model Raleigh Motus Tour. It was even cheaper than others of the same make, due to the titanic 57cm frame size that they were desperate to get out the door, because nobody under my 6'5 stature can ride it. It turns out that when you buy bikes online, they just ship it to you in a giant bike-shaped box fully assembled, and all you need to do is spend an hour removing packaging and bend the handlebars round the right way. I rode straight to my afternoon shift at the Hub to test it out. 

The Motus Tour's motor is an upmarket Bosch model which is both whisper-quiet and synced to the pedaling pressure; unlike the RadRunner's, which just provided a flat boost like a second pair of feet, the Motus smoothly alters its power output based on the speed, the force the pedals are turned with, and what incline the bike is trying to climb. Being a commuter bike rather than a cargo vehicle, it had slightly less power overall, but it can still supply more than enough to make incline obstacles easier to tackle on the low settings, and cease to exist on the higher ones.  

It is, by UK law, capped at accelerating the bike to 15.5mph, at which point your legs and gravitational potential are the only things allowed to push it faster, so I mostly limit myself to 20 zones to avoid inconveniencing drivers (any more). The information console shows speed, the motor power output, remaining battery, whether the ungodly bright lights are on, and an info panel of the rider's choosing, from trip length to average speed. I just keep mine on the clock to see if I need to up the assist to make it to work on time.  

The bike runs off a 400 watt-hour lithium-ion battery (the same kind as a smartphone) mounted directly into the frame body. As people who have forgotten what petrol does will breathlessly point out, the battery is explosive – smashing it into the ground too hard may cause it to go up in flames, in a similar manner to every other powered vehicle ever created.  

Despite how comically large it is, 400Wh is not that much – it plugs straight into the mains, is charged in about four hours, and can get about two weeks of sporadic use before I have to do it again. The bike has fallen over many times without detonating, so as long as you don't jam screwdrivers into it or ride onto the set of a Transformers movie, you're good. 

Unfortunately, it is a very pretty and expensive-looking bicycle, so the first thing I did when it was out for delivery was buy the biggest, hardiest, most threatening-looking chain lock I could find to keep the thing secure. Raleigh, noting the opportunity to humiliate me, shipped the bike with a built-in frame lock – a small, key-operated metal thing that goes between the spokes of the rear wheel and immobilises it. But they didn't stop there, because it turns out the model of frame lock they provided is "key-retaining": the key cannot be removed while the lock is open, which means it must be used, or anyone passing by can steal both the bike and the key and assume ownership of the vehicle.  

The frame lock, combined with removing the detachable control screen (and by extension the on button), denies access to both the analogue and digital components of the bike, so I usually just take the key and the screen and put it on the kickstand to go do things. If it's in a vulnerable position for an extended period, I put the monster chain lock on as a third line of defence. The fourth line of defence, of course, is that the bike is too big for anyone but myself to ride it, but I can't count on there being no seven-foot bike thieves prowling the central belt. 

By happenstance, the discounted model I went for is hub-geared, which means instead of the traditional pushy thing that shoves the chain onto the next or previous gear, the chain assembly is enclosed and functions via eldritch magic beyond the comprehension of mortal life. One quirk of this otherworldly device is that you can only change gears while not pedaling instead of the other way around, making them behave more like a manual car's gearbox. They also require virtually no maintenance, because they're shielded from the elements in a plastic shell to prevent the imprisoned souls from escaping. Seriously, look up a diagram of how a hub gear works and try to make sense of it. 

As I'm the household's designated bread runner, one of my christmas presents was a set of pannier bags to go over the rear wheel to protect any fragile foodstuffs that kept getting squashed in my rucksack. Prior to the bags, the pannier rack's only fastening device was a bungee cord to fix large objects to it, and the only thing I ever used it for prior to the upgrade was a large chunk of concrete stolen from the side of the road (don't ask). I now store the chain lock in the bags, and any other shopping if I'm buying a fair number of things.  

While we're on the topic of the rear wheel, I would greatly caution you to observe proper bike pressure and avoid sudden bumps on an ebike. The wheel has a lot of electrical gadgetry plugged into it that is difficult to remove, so if you get a flat, you must either repair the puncture without removing the wheel, or take it to a repair shop to painstakingly decouple all the components and replace the inner tube. 20 minutes of faff into a 5-minute job, the advice the repair staff gave me was "for the love of god, don't get another puncture". 

It's winter now, and I have to gear up in full subzero kit to keep warm on the bike. I'm not throwing more money away on cyclist garb, though I wear the hat underneath a bike helmet, because I'm not dying for fashion. But my point is: I'm still riding it in the dead of winter. I am not a devotee of cycling culture. I hadn't ridden one for four years beforehand. I'm not even particularly hardline in my environmental conscience. But I get on that bike in the freezing rain, and the highest cold, and winds that could throw me off the hill, because it is simply the best mode of transport I have available.  

It doesn't require the stamina of a normal bike; its electrical demand costs pennies; it is easy to store, maintain and repair; and unlike that deplorable singular bus, it is at my beck and call at all times. And it accomplished all this in half a year. Draw what disparaging verdicts you wish from my testimony, but one thing is set in stone: ascending a 30-degree incline on a bicycle without strife or effort is an intoxicating power, and it costs £500 and some shed space. 

Made with thanks to FEL’s E-bike library and
funding from Paths for All to deliver our Renew Bikes project.