Domain: nycewheels.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nycewheels.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:Still ugly
I find sitting in an upright position to be far more comfortable.
But if you want an electric with drop bars, Google is your friend. Here's the first that came up. There are doubtless more.
http://www.nycewheels.com/bion... -
Re:Check your local laws before ordering...
Says something about NY where your first thought is "Am I allowed to do that?"
These guys would know the laws, they're based in NY.
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Re:The Government gave us a blank check
The other problem is that the two parallel wheels thing is just pointless. There are electric scooters that do the same thing as a Segway but are way cheaper because they put the wheels one in front of the other.
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Re:Double dipping?
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I wanted to switch to bike travel for the longest
...time, but in my East Coast city, with it's hills and curves, as well as mix of urban one-way grids and wide blvd's, combined with an at the time 10mi one way communte, I didn't want to chacne arriving at work smelling like Thor, then riding home in the driving rain. Only recently did my lcoal PT (one of the largest in the country) install bike racks on its buses, and it still doesn't allow bikes on trains during rush hour (yes they are that dumb -- they encourage car use, really), so mixed mode only recently became an option. The best option I could see was an electric bike. It would allow cheap, Earth friendly travel, without the extreme exertion -- and sweating.
I looked seriously at electric bikes, but most I saw were either not cheap kits I had to install myself, which I balked at, or prebuilt bikes that were expensive and either looked like circus bikes, or something left by aliens. I refused to look like a goober while riding my bike. Fine for ex-hippies but not if I have to pay for it. So I waited and figured someone would sell something for the rest of us. And I continued to drive my not very Earth friendly European sedan.
While lounging on the couch watching the FineLiving Channel, I saw a piece on a electric assisted mountain bike and perked up. I watched for the next 10 or so minutes a report about exactly the product I'd been waiting for, the Wave Crest TIDALFORCE electric bike. I looked like a real bike with the batteries and motor in the wheel hubs, and it was on a regular bike frame. And better yet it was silent ( or nearly so). I couldn't buy one fast enough! When I went to the website the next Monday at work, the price slowed me down. $2500. I decided to wait a few or 6 months to see if the price went down.
After forgetting and remembering about a year later, I rechecked the website. Apparently I waited too long and the company stopped selling due to poor sales. All products, equipment, and lic. sold to a French company. I'm sure they have no intentino of selling any products in the US. What was worse, the few used and new units still in channels we often selling for higher prices than new -- the cheapest complete bike I found was $2700. Broken and incomplete examples could be had for anywhere from $1500 - $2000 on Ebay. Once again I gave up.
Walmart began selling cheap electric bikes, some as low as $200. I was prepared to pick on up, even at the cost of having to ride around with a brick of batteries on a bike rack, but after waiting a weekend to buy off the website, they were all gone. As if they never exhisted. What gives?
Finally, last Spring, while trolling the web for excitment I came across E+ Motion Systems. They apparenly have resurrected the Tidal Force name, and engineering, added thier own, and are reselling bikes and add-on kits. I happily picked up a kit ( I am a cheao bastard after all), installed it, and haven't looked back. It was as easy as installing two wheels and the connected wire, and done. Reading the instructions took longer than the install.
My bike commute in the morning including putting the bike on the front of a bus (crappy PT that doesn't allow bike on trains) is only 10 minutes longer than driving. I let the bike do almost all of the work going in, so no sweating, and oddly less stressful. Coming home I could actually use the bike path recently finshed, and the out-ride, in the same direction as rush hour traffic, took between 15mins, and 30, depending on whether I pedalled, the bike dragged by fat ass, or whe shared the load. I must say the bike tops out at 20MPH on cruise control, and I know I could push 25 easily pedalling. Not a big issue. I'd have been ecstatic to average 20MPH on the Expressway at the say time of day, or even during daylight hours! Saved gas and wear and tear alone for the summer recouped a good portion of the kit cos
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Re:Why hybrids?
take a look at this It's a great system that assists you and they have a upscale versino that will charge the batteries with regenerative breaking.
It's incredibly cheap considering what it does. I will be adding one to my velomobile for electric assist. -
Semi-intelligent robots? Cars? Or turtles?
Our expensive computerized cars can only go some 20mph. Quite a few of us would have expected at least 60-150mph in the city to be possible by 2004.
Try calculating the average speed of your car travel. Go to some web mapping engine, put in home address and another, get miles and driving time, calculate miles/hr.
I see cars becoming semi-accursed, slow, expensive, wasteful, polluting, dangerous, and useless money black holes.
Perhaps becoming increasingly smaller - while we figure out some way to replace it.
We're becoming quite semi-intelligent, for not coming up with a less pathetic way to get around - MUCH quicker.
Eveyone driving a one-ton $10,000 90sqft unreliable obsolete closed-source no-protocol non-networked vehicle ain't never gonna do it.
Perhaps PRT, or pneumatic tubes , or electric bicycles.
Whatever, there's dozens of better options.
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