micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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Given the disparate concerns, I think it best to divide them logically.
For the laptop, I would suggest looking at a laptop case or laptop bag, since it sounds like you were otherwise transporting the laptop naked or wrapped in a sweatshirt. Being your primary work tool, it does warrant its own protection, irrespective of an ebike or automobile or airplane commute. Laptop cases are like phone cases, in that they stay attached to the machine whether opened or close, usually by straps around the bottom. Some laptop cases are hard sized, and thus offer a lot of physical protection.
But a laptop bag would work equally well, such as those which look like messenger bags. Such soft sided bags offer less protection than a hard sided case to impacts, but they often are water/rain resistant when the bag is zipped up or the flap is laid over the top. I personally use a messenger bag with a laptop compartment, so I can carry my other work tools, like pen and paper, phone charger, and meeting headphones, whether I'm commuting to the office by car, bike, or walking.
In all circumstances, this layer of protection is bidirectional, preventing the laptop from sustaining damage but also protecting your panniers from holes. So now we get to panniers. Ideally, your laptop case/bag should fit into the pannier, and the pannier would be waterproof. This augments the rain resistancd of the laptop bag, while being flexible for other non-laptop payloads like groceries when you're not commuting.
Since you mentioned transporting other electronics as well as lunch, a dual pannier setup can make sense, where you laptop case/bag plus electronics are on one side, and lunch on the other. I do carry dual panniers on my acoustic bike, and it's terrible convenient when I don't want my payloads to unbalance the bike.
For rain clothes, presumably you would be wearing these while commuting? Do these need to be stored in the panniers? Or would this be in preparation for a rainy commute on the way back home? I personally prefer rain gear that I can shed anywhere, so I use breathable snow pants that still function in the dry, and a windbreaker than isn't too cumbersome to wear even if it isn't raining.
My bike tools are stored in an undersaddle bag which never leaves the bike. This means I need them to be fairly compact, but I do keep the essentials on me wherever I may run into trouble.
I think the key thing to remember with a bicycle commute -- electric or otherwise -- is that things will bounce around. It's not like in a car where something can be placed in the passenger footwell and it'll mostly get to the destination in one piece. No, stuff in panniers will bump into things, the side walls, and sometimes even try to escape out the top. Things like bike tools won't care about that, but electronics can be marred or damaged. Fortunately, this can be really easy to manage, with the simplest solution being a reusable grocery bag that you can tie shut. This clumps all the things together, so while the whole clump can still bounce around inside the pannier, they won't smash into each other. A step up would be some kind of padded bag, like what's used to transport cameras, with movable walls.
I wish you good luck in optimizing your bike commute! Don't be afraid to try stuff out and do test things to their limits so you have confidence that it'll serve you under all inclement conditions.
Thanks for the helpful advice!
That's another option I was leaning toward, and it looks like a great size to contain my electronics. Do you think it's a good idea to get both a sleeve and a laptop bag to protect the bag?
Right now I have a rain coat and rain pants but I don't want to wear them when it's not raining since it gets hot. There are days where it rains in the morning but not in the afternoon so it's still wet but I'm not wearing it.
I have a small container with most of the tools already, I think it's designed to attach directly with the bike actually but I don't know if it works well and I need to remove it anyways so it doesn't get stolen so it was more convenient for me to put it in another bag.
Lol so true, I've had multiple things damaged in precarious setups since there's no suspension to soften impacts. I was transporting a chest freezer once and it got dented.
This might be excessive, but I think the other problem you'd have is that most laptop bags are sized to take a naked laptop. So if a sleeve takes up the remaining margin, you might it very difficult to slide the encased laptop into the bag.
I'd probably start with the option that is most adaptable first, so if you always carry a USB C charger along with your laptop, then a laptop bag would store both of those and thus you can eschew the case. Though if you have free returns, then there's no harm in also trying the laptop case for a while.
In this case, I'd roll the coat and pants into a cylinder and then strap them down with a bungee cord over the top of your rear rack. Clothes are soft and squishy, so the tension of an adjustable bungee cord will keep them in place. BTW, an adjustable bungee cord is a valuable bike accessory in any scenario.
I don't suppose there's any way to store your bike indoors at work, or in a bike locker if your workplace has those? With how opportunistic bike theft is in the USA, you'll want to holistically assess which parts of your bike can be stolen, against how annoying/difficult it would be to do so, and by the price or inconvenient of that part. It's a rough calculus, for sure, but considering how the rear wheel of an ebike (which usually has the hub motor) is the most valuable removable component, everyone makes their own choice whether and which smaller components also need to be guarded and to what degree.
It's a fair question, about which parts to take indoors if you can't bring the whole bike in. But your risk assessment will be a lot different than mine, so I can't really give a more specific answer.
One last thought before I forget: with waterproof panniers, always check them every so often, since if they can prevent water from getting in, they can also prevent water from getting out. I once went riding in the rain where it was cold enough for water in the air to condense inside the pannier, which drained to the bottom but had no way to escape. So it just sat there in a small puddle, until I noticed.
Waterproof does not mean airtight, and humid air can carry a decent amount of water under the right conditions, especially if it can accumulate over time and no checking is being done.