A Year of e-Biking Safely

2024 December 12

This week marks my first full year of commuting on an e-bike — a Rad Power Bikes RadCity 5 Plus, to be precise. Because most online reviews of this sort of equipment seem to take the form of “I’ve had it for three days, seems great so far!”, I thought that it might be helpful to take the time to write up some reflections on my how my experience has been after spending a decently long chunk of time in the saddle, and some suggestions about topics to consider if you’re thinking about getting an e-bike yourself.

TL;DR🔗

The short answer is: it’s been great. Over the past year I’ve put about 1,050 miles on my bike, which is easily more than I’ve ever ridden before. It has worked out fantastically well for my commute, and I have trouble imagining a (realistic) superior alternative way for me to get into work. I feel like the bike itself has performed quite nicely and would wholeheartedly recommend getting a RadCity 5 Plus if it feels like the right choice for you, although I’ve had a few things to address (which I go into below).

It’s not like there are no negatives — there are certainly some aspects of the e-bike experience that I wish were different. But tradeoffs are inescapable in life, and the good parts of my experience are more than enough to get me to put up with the less-good parts.

Systemic Considerations🔗

After test-riding a RadCity last fall (thanks to what is now called the Community Pedal Power E-bike Lending Library!) a lot of my motivation to go ahead and get a bike had nothing to do with batteries or motors. Rather, it came from the realization that my local bike infrastructure was in great shape, especially for my particular commute. Most of my route follows the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway, a car-free path converted from an old rail line. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a difference it makes to be able to bike on your own path instead of being mixed in with car traffic. I would not be regularly commuting on a bike if I had to spend most of my time on a busy stroad.

(Side note: you can easily imagine lots of political-economy reasons why America has emphasized mixing bikes with automobiles, but there’s an ideological component too. Some proponents of vehicular cycling seem to believe not just that bikes can mix with cars but that they should: they fight against segregated bike lines and the like. Visit a place like Amsterdam and you’ll see how wrong this is. I would call it foolishness, except that it’s deadly serious — lives are lost every day when cars and bikes mix. The legacy of John Forester, the father of vehicular cycling, is stained with blood.)

At the statewide level, Massachusetts seems to be doing a very good job of encouraging good bike infrastructure. There’s a whole statewide bicycle plan and funding to build out trails bit-by-bit across the state. The construction is done on a city-by-city basis, so sometimes the details get a bit silly: you can almost bike from Cambridge to Waltham on a trail, but Waltham has started building from its west side, so the trail stops for a mile and starts back up again. But in a future that’s not too far off to contemplate, I might be able to bike 100 miles into the center of the state all on a protected Mass Central Rail Trail. And the prospects look good that bike infrastructure will keep on getting better in the Boston metropolitan core. That’s not the kind of thing that ought to affect your decision-making if you’re thinking about buying a bike tomorrow, but it doesn’t hurt.

Another systemic factor that might play a role: physical security of your bike, and the related factor of money. E-bikes are at the unfortunate intersection where they’re a lot more expensive than regular (non-fancy) bikes, but you can still expect the same level of support from the authorities if it gets stolen: basically nothing. Even if the stars align in every other way, if you’re not going to be able to park your bike securely in the places where it spends the most time (see CPP on theft prevention and insurance), an e-bike might not be a good choice.

Choosing the Bike🔗

When I was looking at which e-bike to buy last year, the offerings seemed to come in three general classes: (1) relatively inexpensive models costing around $800; (2) mid-tier models costing about $1600; and (3) much nicer models costing around $3000 and up. My eventual choice, the RadCity 5 Plus, sits comfortably in that middle tier.

There are three basic factors that drove my decision. First, I was generally in the market for a commuter bike; not a long-tail cargo bike, or a foldable, or a mountain bike, or whatever else. This leaves plenty of options.

Second, based on my test rides, I decided that I wanted a bike with a 750-watt motor. A lot of the commuter options are only 250W. I haven’t tried those, but I did find myself maxing out the motor of my test bike at the full 750, so I figured that a 250-watt limit might feel frustratingly underpowered. I can’t judge that for sure, but it does remain true that I’ll often have my motor going at full power when I want a nice burst of acceleration. On the other hand, I read a bunch of reviews when I was making my choice and I don’t recall seeing anyone complaining about any motors not delivering enough oomph, so maybe the subjective experience doesn’t map linearly onto watts.

Finally — and I totally stand by this — was the availability of this accessory:

This is a hard-shell locking pannier. I really wanted to have some kind of locking storage attached to the bike (more on that below), and Rad Power Bikes seemed to be the only manufacturer that offered it as an accessory. Combined with the other criteria, the RadCity was the single best option for me. Interestingly, I don’t see the hardshell pannier offered as an option on the Rad Power US website anymore, although they still have a hardshell top box. I’m not sure what to make of that.

If you go browsing around the web, you’ll find a number of complaints about Rad Power bikes for various reasons; there is one famous lawsuit against them. That worried me a bit, but as far as I could tell, you can find comparable reports (minus the high-profile legal action) about all of the manufacturers who operate in the sub-$3000 range — the e-bike sector seems like it attracts an above-average amount of worry about hardware quality, safety, and so on. There are obviously totally reasonable things to be concerned about, but “people online are concerned about something” is just not a data point that you can do a whole lot with. Rad has been around for a while, is one of the bigger players in the game, and, as far as I can tell, their bikes are as trustworthy as anyone else’s.

Unfortunately, the company appears to be struggling financially lately. Because e-bikes have some relatively specialized components, it’s rational to worry about buying from a company that looks like it might disappear on you. These things can evolve quickly, so I think the only advice I can offer is that it’s worthwhile to think about this as you’re considering different bike manufacturers.

Form Factor🔗

I ended up buying the step-through version of the 5+, in white. This wasn’t my preference, but it was the only version in stock at the time that I was buying, and I figured I’d give it a try. Now, it appears that it’s the only option anyway.

The ability to, well, step through the bike does come in handy, and probably moreso now that I’m in my fifth decade of life. There are some downsides that I only realized after I got the bike, though. For instance, my U-lock (see below) comes with a part to attach it to the frame, but the way it’s designed, it really wants to attach to your top tube. That’s not an option for me. Also, the down tube of the RadCity is really thick because it holds the battery, which means that I basically always have to lock the bike by its rear wheel: the down tube is too thick for my U-lock at all, and there’s no top tube. Meanwhile the back of my bike has that locking pannier attached, so it's quite wide, making it tough to fit into crowded bike racks.

If I was doing it all over again, I’d definitely consider going back to a step-over frame, rather than step-through. On the other hand, my main issues stem as much from the fact that I’m using a U-lock as from the frame type. And for what it’s worth, “Should I get step-over or step-through?” appears to be a common question on places like Reddit, and in my skimming it seems that a noticeable majority of posters prefer step-through.

As for the color, I’ve heard that for motorcycles and scooters, the color of your ride can actually make a big difference for your visibility at night. Based on vibes rather than any actual evidence, I’m going to say that increasing your own visibility is probably the best thing you can do for your own nighttime two-wheel safety, so I strongly encourage choosing a bright color.

Assembly🔗

The way Rad works, they ship your bike direct to you and you’re responsible for final assembly. The manufacturers of more expensive bikes will tell you that this is completely reckless, and you should only ride bikes completely built by professionals … such as their own products.

I suspect that those manufacturers are fear-mongering more than a little, but it’s not like they don’t have a point. I’m sufficiently confident in my own mechanical skills to feel comfortable assembling and adjusting a bike myself, but it’s not something I’d recommend for everyone. If your wheel falls off while moving down a busy street at speed, it’s going to be bad news. Rad, and presumably the other manufacturers as well, will help you pair up with a local mechanic who can do the final assembly for a fee. If you don’t feel confident doing it all yourself, it seems like a very wise idea to go that route.

One less-than-ideal thing that I’ve found about the Rads is that it seems hard to get really detailed mechanical information and diagrams. There’s a fair amount of info out there, but a lot of it is for older models, or (as best I can tell) slightly different revisions of the RadCity 5 Plus. If you find information or pictures, it’s hard to be sure that they apply to your specific bike. For instance, when I was first replacing my brake pads (see below), I didn’t take good “before” pictures of my brake assemblies, and ended up having trouble being confident that I was putting them back together correctly because I couldn’t find any manuals that unequivocally applied to my specific edition of the 5+ model. None of this is a deal-breaker to me, but It Would Be Nice™ to have better docs.

The Ride🔗

The ride is nice. Since I'm not a professional reviewer, I don’t really have anything else to compare it with, but I have no complaints. Rad Power bikes have both a pedal-assist, where the motor is constant adding power as you pedal, and a throttle that allows you to dial up extra juice on demand. I like having both of these options.

Bikes like the 5+ are very upright designs — basically beach cruisers. My bike is usually one of the tallest ones parked at the rack. They can look a little goofy in pictures, but it’s a pretty comfortable way to ride!

This bike, and most like it, has front shock absorbers, but I’ve never liked the feeling of riding with shocks, so I’ve only ever had them locked in place.

Security🔗

As I mentioned above, e-bikes sit at the unhappy intersection of being a lot more expensive than basic beater bikes, but also just as easy to get away with stealing. So to me, it makes sense to invest in bike security. I have an old Kryptonite lock and lots of other accessories lying around, but with the big jump in the value of my bike, it made sense to revisit everything.

After doing a fair amount of research, I ended up going with a Litelok X1 as my primary lock. This is fundamentally a U-lock, but a very hardcore one — there seems to be a consensus that it’s one of the most secure ones available. It’s still true that someone with an angle grinder will be able to cut it eventually, but it would be a lot harder than for most locks.

That being said, due to my parking annoyances, I’m seriously considering trying another style. I’ve never seen these in the wild, but my impression is that folding locks can be pretty secure, and I think they would solve a number of my parking challenges. Meanwhile, the Internet Consensus seems to be that even big heavy chains aren’t really that secure.

I also invested in some Pinhead “locks”, which are bolts with custom heads that, in principle, you need a special key to remove. You swap them in on your wheels and other components to make them harder to steal.

Having had a wheel stolen off my bike before, I’m not eager for it to happen again. As with any of these things, you can find people who say that Pinheads don’t work, but if nothing else they’re effective in the same way The Club is — they’re going to be more of a pain to deal with than someone else’s bike that has regular nuts (let alone quick-releases). I keep the special Pinhead key with some basic tools in my locking pannier, so I don’t have to worry about not having it handy when I need it.

For e-bikes, you need to get Pinheads that have the right sizing and screw threading for your particular model, and it was a real pain in the butt to make sure that I was getting the right parts. For posterity: for a RadCity 5 Plus, you want a 12mm M12 rear solid axle and quick-release front axle, both 125mm long. I also have a seatpost lock. I ordered a headset lock too, but unless I’ve deeply confused myself, it turns out that you can’t change out that part on a RadCity.

Safety🔗

Safety is obviously something else that we should invest in!

For a helmet, I went with a Thousand Heritage 2.0, with an optional magnetic rear light.

Once again, I got white for visibility. (Full-face motorcycle helmets are obviously a lot bigger than bike helmets, but in that context I’ve also heard that helmet color has a suprisingly large effect on your nighttime visibility.) The main factor in my brand choice was that these helmets have a little hole in the back that you can stick your U-lock through so as to secure the helmet to the bike when it’s parked, as shown in the picture above. The style of the Thousand helmets is a bit more hipstery than I’d like, but I’ve always wanted this and finally someone made it! Huzzah.

One nice thing about e-bikes is that they have built in head- and tail-lights, and that they’re pretty bright. No need to accessorize there. I’ve also seen people with bright headlights attached to their helmets, but I’ve read that it’s not clear whether they actually help safety — allegedly they can be confusing to oncoming traffic because most people don’t expect headlights to be mounted at that height. If I had a strong desire for a cool helmet-mounted headlight, I’m sure that I could find just as many sources saying that they are great for safety, but I don’t, so I left it at that.

I have a reflective safety vest. It’s dorky, but I would rather look dorky than be squashed by a car at night.

I also picked up a little rear-view mirror in this style:

I only rarely see mirrors on bikes, so I wasn’t sure if I would find this very useful. I totally do! It’s a bit fiddly to get the alignment right, and it easily gets knocked out of position in everyday handling. And it does make my already-wide handlebars just a little bit wider. But, yeah, mirrors are super useful if you’re going to be in any kind of traffic. And they’re cheap. Strong recommendation.

In my first year, I haven’t had any incidents, not even ones that I’d describe as close calls. I’m very cautious on the roads, and I do feel like I need to pay attention on the Huron Avenue portion of my commute, where there are decent paint-only bike lines but also a lot of traffic, intersections, and people pulling in and out of parking. You can’t get around the fact that when car and bike collide, car is always going to win, so I’d love to see Watertown and Cambridge keep on building out their non-automotive transit infrastructure.

Weather🔗

If you’re going to be commuting by bike in a place like Boston, weather is an obvious issue to think about. I’ve found that with the right preparation, I can bike virtually year-round. Over the past year, there have only been a handful of days when I’ve felt like I couldn’t travel on the bike — probably fewer than ten in total, although I have the luxury of a little wishful thinking because most of the time I only commute a few days every week, and I can often decide whether I want to go in or not.

A big factor there is that our winters have been unusually dry the past few years. We’ve barely had any snow or ice accumulation at all for the past few, and so far this winter is continuing the same trend. It may be a bit of a statistical outlier but it’s certainly the kind of thing that makes climate change feel awfully tangible.

It has gotten cold, though. I’ve generally found that when the temperatures are in the 50’s, a ride is pleasantly refreshing; in the 40’s, it’s very refreshing. Once you get into the 30’s, some specialized gear is helpful.

In the winter I swap in some of these handlebar mitts:

I’ve found that when the temperates get to be around freezing, if I don’t have the mitts my hands get really uncomfortably cold, even if I’m wearing my best ski mittens. At rest, things are OK, but the wind really cuts through when you’re moving. With the mitts and some decent gloves, my hands aren’t exactly warm, but they’re fine. The way that the Rad bikes are designed, the mitts cover up the secondary display that you use to power on the bike and control the pedal-assist level, which is annoying, but I’d much rather deal with that than freeze my hands off.

Speaking of ski gear: the other secret weapon is ski goggles. I’d recommend ones with changeable lenses, since during the same day you might be biking to work in a bright clear winter morning, and returning home at night after a 4:30 PM sunset. You also want to check that your goggle and helmet sizes match nicely, ideally so that you can avoid a gap between the top of the goggles and the helmet rim, while not having the goggles push into your nose too hard.

Beyond that, the foul-weather gear I use is pretty uninteresting: neck warmer, ski jacket, light raincoat, gloves, etc. If it’s actively raining, I’ll bring a change of pants and socks since there’s no way to avoid that stuff getting wet. If you can change clothes, biking in heavy rain isn’t exactly fun but it’s manageable. The pannier is waterproof and helpful for dealing with gear and spare clothing.

For what it’s worth, the Rad Power bikes have some kind of IPX rating that means that they should basically be good in water so long as you don’t, like, toss the bike in a lake. If it gets really cold you start worrying about your battery failing to hold charge, but even with temperatures down in the teens I haven’t noticed any issues on that front.

Cargo🔗

Wrapping up the Tour of Accessories, we have ones for cargo. There is, of course, that hardshell locking pannier. I truly believe this is a game-changing accessory because it gives your bike a “trunk”: a place to stash stuff safely while it’s parked. The waterproofing is a nice plus for when you’re in motion. I permanently store some basics in it: reflective vest, basic tools, the keys to my Pinhead locks, bungie cords for cargo, etc. It’s really, really nice to have a way for this stuff to always be on-hand. It’s equally nice to be able to put away whatever else you don’t need — no more being that nerd carrying around a bike helmet and laptop bag while you’re getting (a prudent number of) drinks after work.

Indeed, for my daily commute, my laptop bag fits nicely along with my coffee flask, so I don’t have to wear a backpack or carry anything outside of the waterproofed perimeter. When I’m parked at work during the day I’ll stash stuff I don’t need like sunglasses and gloves, or my helmet (it’s a bit easier to throw it into the bin than to lock it up with the U-lock). The narrow but deep shape is a good match for transporting takeout and small grocery bags.

I’ll admit that it has crossed my mind that if someone steals my bike while my laptop is locked in there, they’ll have both my bike and my laptop. That would definitely be a drag. Knock on wood, I guess.

One not-very-insightful pro tip for the pannier: I was pretty annoyed by how squeaky the metal pannier latches were whenever they moved. After putting up with this for about ten months, I finally tried giving them a few squirts of WD-40. Problem solved.

I also have a big front basket:

I don’t use it very often, but it’s come in handy for bike-powered grocery runs. (There’s a market that I like right off of the bike path!) It’s nice that the shape is complementary to the pannier — wide and shallow, instead of narrow and deep. There are plenty of times when I want to transport something that won’t fit in the pannier, but I can bungie down into the basket.

I’m satisfied with my cargo setup, but other arrangements would probably work just as well. When I was looking for locking storage, I liked the idea of a pannier more than the top box that Rad offers, but not for any specific reason — if they’re truly phasing out the hardshell panniers, so be it. As I mentioned above, the pannier does make the rear of the bike wider, which makes it harder to park, and the top box would probably help with that. The big front basket comes in handy often enough that I wouldn’t want to lose it, but it can also make things feel a bit unwieldy, and doesn’t make parking any easier.

Another note about the basket: due to the way the bike is set up, it’s surprisingly invasive to install it — you need to reroute the front brake line and do some surgery on how the handlebar is wired up. This feels like a very “e-bike” thing to me. You’d hope that installing a front basket would be a matter of a couple of screws, but with all of the wires and cables running around, and the custom parts, and extras like the built-in headlight … it’s not. I definitely find myself envying the clean simplicity of some of the beater bikes I park next to. Not to mention that my bike probably weighs more than 50 pounds; it’s not something you can hold over your head after winning the Tour de France. My best analogy is that it’s like a minivan: pragmatic but deeply unsexy, and there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to change that.

Durability🔗

I’ve only had a few technical issues in my first thousand miles on the 5+.

The first ones I should have been smarter about: if you’re riding a lot more farther than ever before, you need to do routine maintenance a lot more frequently than ever before! I let my chain get awfully gunky before cleaning it, and let my brake pads wear way too far down before I thought to replace them. I created periodic calendar events to remind myself about those, which ought to take care of that.

The brake pads merit a little discussion. Rad Power seems to have a lot of trouble keeping their official replacement parts in stock: they were out of stock when I needed them before, and they’re out of stock now. But they are actually somewhat generic parts that you can get elsewhere. I got some “osm4 All Avid Elixir and Sram Organic Semi-Metallic” pads from a place called TruckerCo and they’re virtually the same as the OEM ones, as far as I can tell.

I was pretty worried about my alternative brake pads at first, though, because they didn’t fit around my brake rotors! This turned out to be some of my ignorance of how hydraulic bike brakes work, and it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. So, for posterity once more: as the brake pads wear down, the “resting” position of the hydraulic brake pistons moves inwards, keeping their total range of motion about constant. So if, like me, you let your pads wear down a lot, the pistons will naturally be too narrow to fit new pads. If you just push them around gently, one will move out while the other moves in, not making any progress. But if you really push on both of them hard at the same time, you can get some fluid back into the reservoir to open them up again. This is difficult because the pistons are thin cylinders and there’s only a few millimeters of space between them at most. The best way I could figure out to do this (hat tip: someone on the internet, forget where) was to stick a flathead screwdriver in between the old brake pads and twist it hard. This will mess up the old pads, but you’re about to trash them anyway. I spent a long time messing around with my brake handle adjustment screws before I found the information I needed.

Having figured all of that out, I’ve found it kind of annoying to get my brake pads well-aligned. You need to align the brake assembly very carefully relative to the brake rotor, and make sure to protect the rotor well. It’s tedious.

I did have one much more significant issue. At around 900 miles, my freewheel ratchet stopped working properly, probably because there was too much gunk inside the freewheel assembly. (Here are some nice graphics if you’re interested in visualizing the mechanicals.) This had the rather alarming consequence that every so often, the pedals would suddenly start spinning freely both backwards and forwards, until after enough jiggling the pawls would re-engage. Not great, Bob!

After a couple of days of making do with this situation as I thought about how to handle it, my chain broke. The causality isn’t entirely obvious to me here, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that the chain only broke because of the freewheel issue. I could imagine that there were some weird stresses on the chain from all of the forwards-and-backwards pedaling when I would try to get the freewheel to re-engage.

It turns out that one of the perks of a hub-drive e-bike like the RadCity 5 Plus is that you can still get around even if your chain is sitting in your front basket! You have to temporarily be one of those people that coasts along without pedaling at all, relying 100% on battery power, but that’s a good trade-off if you ask me.

Anyway, I was considering getting the tools to try to disassemble and clean the freewheel assembly myself, since I had read that e-bikes often have custom ones that can’t easily be replaced. In the right circumstances, it could be a fun project and an excuse to pick up some new tools. But I wanted the bike back in action quickly, and I didn’t feel like I needed a new project to take on, so I rolled on down to my local shop (good old Farina’s). They told me that this model actually has a perfectly standard rear hub, and I was able to get it and the chain replaced in a day for around $100.

If this kind of thing happens every thousand miles, it will be pretty annoying. I have no idea whether a failure at this mileage is in the zone of “Yeah, makes sense” or “Wow, that should have lasted much longer.” Maybe it’ll help if I’m better about keeping my chain clean from here on out. I have a bit better sense of what it feels like as the freewheel mechanism degrades (e.g., with the new hub, spinning the pedals backwards is so much smoother than it was before the failure), so if it seems like things start going downhill again, I plan to do a bit of research and see if there are preventive measures I can take.

Other than those things, maintenance has been minimal. I haven’t needed to change a flat, or even put air in the tires! When I commuted on a traditional road bike in grad school, I had flats all the time — I think I’m a convert to big chonky tires.

Fitness🔗

When I decided to get my bike, I made a specific choice that I was going to think about it as a tool for transportation, not anything to do with fitness. In Dutch, apparently I’d be a “fietser” as opposed to a “wielrenner” (wheel-runner). I’ve gone on some destination-less rides along the Minuteman Bikeway, but just because it was a nice day and a pleasant thing to do, not to burn calories. (Back in grad school, I’d sometimes take a spin around the Berkeley hills on my trusty old Vespa for the same reason. Things I’d never do in a car!) I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but for me it feels important to make sure that the bike doesn’t get associated with any guilt about not being active enough, or whatever.

That being said, as soon as I started bike commuting, I noticed that I had a lot fewer mornings where I woke up feeling stiff and creaky. My commute is pretty short (about 25 minutes each way) and occasional, but I’m also awfully sedentary most of the time; empirically, it seems that adding in ~2.9 miles per day of motor-assisted pedaling is enough to make a real difference in how I feel, even if it barely gets my heart rate up. I certainly ought to have more of other kinds of physical activity in my life, but it doesn’t hurt to have something that both makes a tangible difference, and feels very sustainable in the long term. In contrast, I’ve had phases where I’ve tried to get into running but the level of impact on my knees and legs has always caught up with me.

The Electric Experience🔗

Much of what I’ve written above could apply just as well to a bike without a motor. What’s unique about commuting with an electric bike in particular?

I don’t think that I have any new insights to offer here, nor have my feelings evolved much since my first test ride. Overall, it’s just incredibly nice that biking doesn’t have to feel like work if I don’t want it to. For whatever reason, I feel most thankful for the motor when I’m facing headwinds rather than hills: I guess it always annoyed me to have to up my effort just to maintain speed on a flat. Now I can just crank the throttle a little and keep on pedaling at the level that it feels like I “should” be putting in. I don’t have any real evidence for the counterfactual, but I feel strongly that the motor assistance is the major reason that I’ve found myself commuting on the bike consistently year-round.

One very tangible benefit is that I know that I’m not going to show up to work sweaty. I have known people that commute by bike and shower at the office (there is indeed a shower at 60 Garden!) but, for better or for worse, that would be a huge barrier for me.

The motor also helps because my bike setup is, obviously, heavy. As I wrote above, I think it probably weighs in around 50 pounds, if not more. With that weight I get a bunch of the features I’ve mentioned: the chonky tires, the hardshell pannier, the head- and tail-lights. This is a far cry from the traditional equilibrium point of your stereotypical lightweight road bike with maybe at most a small tail rack for accessories. The two styles have vibes that are both strong, and outrageously different — “Wordle-solving parent of young children” vs. “tiny-apartment-dwelling grad student”. I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes think wistfully about what it would be like to sling an honest black fixie over my shoulder again, but, man, I turned 40 this year. Best to embrace reality.

Closing Thoughts🔗

I’m very happy I took the plunge and got my bike. On many days I actively enjoy and look forward to my commute! That’s something to be grateful for. Even better, I’m going green — I haven’t discussed this at all, but a lot of my short car trips have turned into bike trips — and getting some much-needed physical activity in a sustainable way, even if I personally find it essential to avoid making that the point of the bike.

If you add up the bike and all of the accessories I’ve mentioned above, the initial outlay is not a small amount of money. Everyone has to do their own math, but what I like is that the major expenses are all things that should hopefully be nice and durable, and the operating expenses should be modest. It’s only been one year, but it’s also been a thousand miles, and in that time those expenses have basically been brake pads, the freewheel repair, and whatever relatively tiny amount of electricity it takes to charge my battery — not bad at all, I think. The big question mark, of course, is how long the complex electrical components turn out to last. Also, if my assessment of the bike’s theft risk turns out to be correct.

For my particular balance of needs, the RadCity 5 Plus has turned out to be a great choice. I can’t compare head-to-head with some of the other options, but if I had to do it all over again, nothing in my experience would cause me to seek out a different bike, although I might switch up some of the accessories. The biggest concern, in my view, is not knowing how durable a bike like this will be over the long term — an issue that, as best I can tell, is in no way specific to Rad bikes. Time will have to tell. In the meantime, I’m going to be enjoying the ride.