I mean the contraption that contains a motor and a battery and most often another box. This all together will help the rider in pedaling the bike ahead, while not limiting the bicyclist’s efforts.

Electric assists for bicycles have been around for a long time, but so far it has not been well known in the USA. I believe this is partially because of how we view bicycling. When it is almost exclusively a sport (racing or mountain biking), people consider using the help of an external power source cheating, or way too heavy an attachment when the idea is to shave every gram off bicycles. Elsewhere, where bikes are a well accepted, and used, tools of transportation, they can make life a whole lot easier.

Plus, to be honest, they can be good for the budget. While there is an up-front cost, once it is in use, a full charge that takes the bike, rider and cargo at least 15-20 miles would cost 7 cents. A lunch for a non-electric assist biker to power the workout? A hundred times this amount.

Some lingo here for the categorizing of the different kits or electric bikes:

1) The battery can be sealed lead-acid (heavy, old technology, cheap), Lithium-ion (newer technology and more expensive due to the rare-earth elements it contains). The LiFePO4 that is quite popular today is related to #2. Either way, the battery is the heaviest part of the kit by far.

2) Motor: Brushless (less maintenance, but once it has a problem it can’t usually be fixed) and with brush (older, but much simpler technology). In addition to that a motor can be on the side powering the wheel through the spinner touching the tire, or built right into one of the wheel hubs. Don’t get confused by their small sizes: a motor can be a very potent tool to convert electricity to circular motion.

3) Power and gearing ratio: most kits and built-in units are stronger than the energy a rider can put into riding. However some is geared for speed some others won’t help you go fast, but give a lot of support for pedaling uphill going slow. The Yuba company sells one of these as part of their Elmundo bicycle.

Where to acquire them?

• There are cheap department-store quality bicycles that come with an electric kit installed on them. They may be priced below $500 and they do work (at least for a while) for generic purposes in a one-size-fits-all way (they likely come with an external motor, and lead-acid battery).
• A lighter system can be ordered from rare-earth rich China for about the same price – minus the bike. Hub motor built into the front wheel is part of the kit. The LiFePO4 battery can be ordered separately. The picture on tops shows such a kit integrated into an old bike along with an XtraCycle attachment.



• There are higher-end bicycles where the whole kit is integrated into the body of the bike. In this case they can support the same ends the bike is already geared toward: light-weight system for light assist, speed (subject to local regulations), and some cargo bikes come with a system, that especially designed to help you take off and keep moving. This picture shows a battery integrated into the body of a bike. Your local bike-shop can arrange for getting one of these.

  My overall opinion is, that they are a big help for cargo carrying, or when you are warming up to biking while struggling with health issues concurrently, and they are definitely a commitment. Above costing hundreds of dollars extra, they tend to make the bike heavier, and you are stuck carrying at least part of the extra weight around, want it or not.

  I described my experience with electric bikes and kits here in an answer to a commenter.

  

  

  

  
  

  

  
  

One can carry stuff without a cargo bike as well. Not as well and not as much than with a cargo bike, but it is possible. Especially if we put some mind into it.

One way is creating a space where load can be placed. In the US bikes many times come without basic accessories like fenders and a bike rack. So having a bike rack over the back wheel is helpful. Panniers on it may also be helpful. But what if you already have them, and you want more?

Another logical place is over the front wheel. It doesn’t extend the length of the bike, and it doesn’t interfere there with pumping legs or hands holding the handlebar. And it places load on the wheel, where there is less load: may make the weight distribution more even between the two wheels. Plus, it can look interesting and unique as they are a lot less frequent.

However, because of the location, some things come into play, which doesn’t tend to matter elsewhere.

The most important consideration is where the rack or basket is mounted. Most baskets are mounted on the front side of the handle bar, and most racks are mounted on the forks/crown of the front wheel. Both of these cases have a few major problems: they make the bike harder to steer – since the load turns with the handle bar or the front wheel forks, every turning action will make the load move sideways: instead of a light wheel, we are now turning a heavy load along. Another problem comes to light when you put the bike on the kickstand: the front wheel area will be unbalanced so the handle bar along with the wheel will turn sharp to one side, and will pull the bike towards that side strong enough so bike and basket both fall over. If the basket or rack heavy enough, or your kickstand doesn’t provide enough support, this may happen with an unloaded rack, that renders the kickstand totally useless or even straight harmful.

There are some clever design solutions to make the front area of a bike with a front basket more stable. One, which I like is shown here. See that little spring, that connects the frame with the rear end of the fork crown? That way the more the front wheel is turned, the more the spring pulls it back to the straight, neutral position. I like this even on bikes, that don’t have anything on the front – I sometimes use the handle bar to carry things, and the spring, if it is present, will make the bike more stable when the kickstand is used.

Another fastening method is to mount the basket or rack right to the frame. It is design-wise a bit harder to do, as on most bikes there is not that much space. However the difference is humongous: no wheel turning, no bikes falling over, no hard steering.

The Bread Basket on my Yuba Mundo is like that, and I love it. Not only the bike doesn’t fall over, but there is a well balanced feeling to the whole bike. A much less serious side effect to this mounting is that all the basket or rack will have to be over the wheel, otherwise the turning of the wheel would interfere with the basket. This makes the point of gravity higher. But with a two-legged kickstand, that holds the bike vertical that will not matter much.

The best test of the pie is to eat it. So try it out! You can order frame mounting front cargo area from… um only Yuba?

I don’t know how it is with you, but for me sitting in a car is like walking on crutches – there is an extra layer, an extra abstraction between me and reality: I can’t I can’t just feel my speed in my body and through the wind, I have to look at the car’s speedometer I can’t just move my body to indicate direction, I need to use the car’s directional appendage, I can’t just cross a road when it is safe, I need to sit there and wait for the green light even if nobody else is around. I am in general not much in charge: a single 4×4 accross the road or parking area stops most cars and I have to park at designated parking spots almost exclusively – empty ones, that is.

I sure feel more comfortable and in charge biking: for example if I am on the road, and my bike broke down or malfunctions, I will most likely be able to manage the glitch, and be on my way a bit late maybe. But with a car it is a totally different story: I will have to wait for AAA or another agency, maybe for hours, getting towed, waiting for somebody else to fix the thing, and worry about what amount it will cost. And the type and complexity of errors that can happen on a car vs on a bike is another story all together: even shops have to specialize in a brand of autos if they hope to keep up.

What can I say: biking feels much more human. And as a reason, I sense bicyclists on the road behave more human as well: we most often acknowledge each other with a nod, talk to each other in passing, and I have yet to meet another biker, who goes out of their way to threaten me. In contrast I frequently get honked at by car-drivers either as a way of greeting or just showing force for fun, startling either way. Some pass intentionally close, some steps on the gas in a loud vehicle just as they pass me. Credit to them, only a few percentage of all drives do things like that, mostly people just pass, many times giving me plenty of space to live, only blowing some exhaust fume my way.

And then there are those petty little annoyances: Since traffic tickets are increasingly viewed as a revenue raising tool for state and local governments, more effort goes into making it lucrative, whether it is through setting up traffic cameras, streamlining the collection process or even changing the laws – this all mostly rests on the back of car-drivers as they are, so to say, the low-hanging fruit. Bicyclists rarely can speed, and they don’t occupy a paid-for parking spot. They do go through red lights, but mostly they don’t endanger anyone and anything (as the first person they would endanger is themselves, and that is a strong deterring factor). Plus processing them can be a lot harder, as the police rarely knows the exact process to follow regarding bicyclists. A friend of mine, after he got ticketed for speeding (in a car) by the police, described the situation with rage in his voice: “I feel they are like vultures, hovering around silently waiting for the opportunity to ticket hapless drivers”.

Believe me or not, I feel more secure biking around on roads full of two-ton behemoths, because at least I don’t feel constantly preyed upon. Plus it is good to know as well, that me making a mistake on my bicycle would lead to nothing serious or me getting hurt at worst. When I drive, I travel with the burden that my mistakes will endanger others, and mistakes I do make (I hear they are human to make).

One reason cars can so easily imprison us, is because we live in a world where we can’t even imagine an alternative. We might be able to change that however : one of these days I will tackle the subject of a world without cars.
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Since there is not a real appropriate picture to go with this post, I decided to experiment with something new. A video anyone?

Leaving with the Yuba Mundo.

It just so happened, that last weekend I needed to pick up chicken feed, and since I expect grain prices to increase soon due to the drought, I decided to get some extra. So I took the Mundo, and once at the store, I bought four fifty-pound bags to spur myself to figure out how to secure them all on the bike and haul them home.

Well, it wasn’t hard: one fit into each of the side panniers with quite a bit of room to spare, and the other two I put onto the top platform, side-by-side, again with some room to spare. I certainly felt the two hundred extra pounds, especially on the uphills, but the bike had plenty of gearing, so the hardest part was to balance the bike at other errand stops on the way home. Because of balancing only on two wheels, and having to put two bags up on the top platform, I had to really pay attention to which way the bike leaned. The standalone kickstand took care of the balance once it was set, but getting there required to lift part of the bike, and every part seemed to be quite heavy.

Encouraged by the apparent ease of riding the Mundo with heavy load, I decided on doing an errand, that I was thinking about for a while. The load was steel, so the volume remained small, but it sure turned out to be heavy. Unfortunately, since it was a secret operation, I must keep the nature of the load and the location of the source private – you can surmise parts of it from the pictures.

So Marianne and I got on our bikes on a quiet Sunday evening, timing our trip so that by the time we reached our destination, it would be dark. We even had to travel on a longer way, so we wouldn’t arrive too soon. But arrive we eventually did, and the cache was there, waiting – unfortunately out in the weather, so quite rusty, instead of the gleaming as treasure caches usually wait, no?… We expected the rustiness, however, so in the two go-getter bags I had a good pile of newspapers to help avoid my new bags getting dirty, and also to reduce the noise iron pieces would make when carried over uneven surfaces with a bike.

Once all loaded including the front mounted bread-basket, which I am rather impressed with, I grabbed the bike by the horns to get it off the two pointed wide kickstand, and … nothing happened. I had to lay my whole body into the effort before the bike budged and would move. Getting onto the road was also a workout as the path was dirt and slightly uphill. But I really got to experience the weigh, as balancing a lot of weight on two wheels can be challenging.

Once we were moving though, it all went smoothly. I mean the ride was bumpy all right towards home but only because of the bumpiness of the road surface, and the newspapers only worked somewhat – I guess the pieces were two heavy to be silenced by the New York Times from the neighbors recycling bin. However the whole ride went easier than I expected, and although there was a section of a steep uphill, I even had a low gear to spare – one which I ended up not having to use.

Once we arrived home, and I successfully put the bike on the kickstand, we measured how much I carried on the Mundo. This picture shows the weight of only part of the load. The total turned out to be about 280 pounds. Plus me, of course, the occasionally huffing and puffing 190 pond motor (although it was hard work, I managed to mostly keep up with Marianne, to my surprise – she only had to slow down on steeper or longer uphills during the 3+ mile long journey home.

What did I learn? Carrying a lot of weight on a bike doesn’t have to be very hard. I tried it on a trailer pulled by my bike, and that way it was harder – it is true the weight was also larger. And I carried a bit more weight on my bakfiets, but riding a tricycle with a big box up front is just such a different feeling, regardless whether it is loaded or not, that I was too busy perceiving that, rather than how the weight exactly feel on it.

I also learned, that balancing weight on a two wheeler is harder than I thought. Or, rather, that handling a heavily loaded two-wheeler requires constant and keen presence: once that thing starts to lean to one side, I better be already pulling it to the other, because with each passing instant of the leaning my job to restore the balance will be increasingly harder.

A trick to that is to place the heavier load to the bottom of the bag – the lower the center of mass the bike has, the easier it is to balance it. I felt that clearly: with the 200 pound chicken feed, where two bags had to be placed onto the platform above the wheel, the balancing of the bike was just as hard, than with the heavier evening load, that did fit into the bags, while applying the kickstand was considerably easier with the lighter load.

Another manageability trick is balance. put equal amount of weight onto each side, otherwise paying attention to riding out of balance is just another challenge you don’t want.

Normally you also want to consider the limit of what the bike and the bike-rack can carry – I luckily didn’t have to pay attention to that, as racking up a 450 pound load involves an insane amount of stuff – except if you get to carry iron pieces as I did this time.

Not using a car presents simple challenges, that is fun to overcome and makes life more interesting. For me one of them has been how to transport bicycles in various working conditions, while on my bike (from the dump or tag-sale to home, from home to the bike-shop and back, even to do a favor to friends without a car-attachable bike-rack).

I have learned how to ghost-ride a bicycle, that is, to lead one with one hand by the handle bar, while handling my own bike with the other hand. Years ago, after some awkward attempts I finally was able to lead another bike if both wheels were able to turn freely. I use it frequently ever since, and luckily very rarely do I manage to mangle up the two bikes any more. For short distances it works best; I don’t even have to put my feet down when stopping at a red light, as I can balance as I am holding on to the ghost bicycle. But this approach has shortcomings: longer distances can get tiring quickly and uphills, downhills and braking are especially taxing on the holding arm, having to push the extra bike uphill, and having to hold it back on downhill stretches or while slowing down (and don’t ever use the brakes on the ghost bike no matter what, as that is a pretty good recipe for falling!)

Just a few weeks ago a situation came up where I had to transport a bike home from work. The distance is 3 miles, and quite hilly, and once I did do it years ago, when I had to take a small bike home – I still remember it was no fun, as I am tall and like to use upright bikes, but the handle bar of the gost bike was way down, so I had to reach deep down with my ghost-guiding hand, and hold my own bike’s handlebar (and the weight of my upper body) with an almost fully bent elbow.

Well, I read, that you can get a towing tray for the Yuba Mundo. However I didn’t want to wait for the part, because the prize for transporting the bike home was shower-accessibility for everyone at work, as the bike that I needed to remove was stored in the shower room, belonging to a person not working there any more, but living very close to me. So I tested if I can safely mount a bike onto the Yuba without a towing tray like the picture suggests on Yuba’s website with the tray. Surprise, surprise, for a bike with full-size wheels I don’t even need a towing tray, as the base attachment for the Mundo is already the right size. So, armed with a single bungie cord and the Mundo, I went to work.

It worked like a dream. After filling the tires of the extra bike with air and mounting the front to the back of my Mundo, I hardly felt the extra weight of the attachment: sometimes I needed to look back to see if the other bike is still in tow or not, it was so easy — quiet and effortless.

Unfortunately at that time I didn’t have easy access to someone making a picture of me while I rode home transporting that bike, but on the right is a picture after I arrived home unscathed and at ease.

While I was at it, I played around a bit to see how other bicycles handle when they are being towed. I selected a more complicated-to-hook-up bicycle, my regular commuter with a large front basket. The basket’s support studs made it harder to mount the bike, but by raising the front of the towed bike a bit with a piece of bent pipe that worked out fine as well, as you may be able to see from the picture. Okay, it did take two bungee cords, instead of one, to attach the second bike securely.

With this setup I really wanted to test the limits, so I rode up and down, on less smooth surfaces, I turned, I pushed the unit forward and back and turned around in small spaces while pushing, but the integrity of the connection held out. The only thing I noticed was, when I pushed the attached bikes backward to help turning around in a limited space, the back bike pulled out to the left, and I almost lost the balance of the front bike because of the resulting shift of the load. But the bungee cords didn’t get lose, so the setup survived, and after I pulled the front bike back, I could continue turning and riding again.