eBike == vroom

For my exercise today, I decided to go for a walk, before the weather gets colder and rainier again. As I was strolling, I noticed that the BlueBikes stand had a few of their new eBikes.

I hadn't actually tried any of the newer e-things yet -- this area has fairly strict rules against the various "just dump them all over the sidewalk" services like Lime, so there's less opportunity to just impulse-download an app and go. But BlueBikes (which apparently got bought by Lyft a while ago) has decided to start moving into eBikes a few months ago, and I've been curious. So I decided to try riding one along the Community Path for a ways.

Summary: uh, yeah -- vroom.

The primary thing that startled me about the experience is just how aggressive this thing is. I was expecting to be bicycling as normal, with a bit of assist on hills.

That's not at all what it's like, though: from the moment I began to push on the pedal, it practically jumped away from me. Indeed, the aggressive assist is most pronounced when starting from a cold stop -- it launches you to a few MPH before you turn the pedal one full rotation.

In general, the sensation is less that it is helping you pedal, and more that it is allowing you to pedal if you really want. On straightaways, it almost feels like going normally in low gear if you want to pedal relatively quickly. But that felt kind of extraneous: I think I could have pedaled half as fast, and the bike would have been moving the same speed.

The result is that, as exercise, it actually isn't great, because it's too easy. Even when I got to real hills on the path, it was almost zero effort. This is basically my only complaint about the thing -- I'd be happier if the app allowed you to dial down the aggressiveness of the motor, to actually put at least a little more work into it.

Overall, it looks to be useful to have around -- once they have enough critical mass of them to be able to somewhat count on one in the morning, it'll make it easier for me to go into the office in Cambridge. (Which isn't a hard ride, but there are a few hills that leave me seriously puffing.)

But I'm going to have to treat these as very different from the normal bikes. Among other things, a helmet is not optional here. I'm sometimes a little casual about it when I'm just grabbing a bike to go into Davis Square: if I'm just going to bike slowly on the Path, it's not terribly dangerous. But this thing really wants to rev quickly up to something like 12 MPH or so, and at that speed a helmet is a requirement. (I felt a tad unsafe not having one on the Path today.)

And it's worth noting (for those considering it with BlueBikes): it doesn't come free with the service. Members get a decent price, but it's still $.10 per minute, which adds up. So I'm still going to favor the normal bikes most of the time.