this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Chapotraphouse

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Just joined the cult of the ebike. Get in here and brag about how much you love the micro mobility revolution! (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
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sicko-jammin sicko-biker sicko-pig

I'm cycle pilled and fully electric. I've got wind in my hair and bugs in my teeth. I've got places to be and sweat stains in my pits. I'm moisturized, unbothered, in my (protected!) bike lane, and flourishing. I can't fully ditch my car yet for intermittent long distance commute reasons, BUT, I think I will be able to when I switch projects next year. Capitalism is a fuck, death to AmeriKKKa, may crude oil go to $1000 a gallon!

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[–] Aurinia@lemmy.zip 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Love my icetrike, I have balance issues due to illness and still get to go over to the next town without a driver's license and get to feel "normal" when I ride around at high speeds :)

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 1 points 8 hours ago

That's awesome I'm so happy for you.

[–] oliveoil@hexbear.net 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I live in a treacherous place, so the ebike has been absolutely amazing for mobility. Slightly faster than driving.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 5 points 13 hours ago

That's wonderful. I expect to be slightly slower than driving in the city I'm living in now, but only because it's boring enough not to have real traffic. Just a cursed place built for more cars than people. I don't care so much about that, though. It's more about getting away from the car tax. The maintenance, the registration, the gas, the insurance: it's all so fucking expensive for a 14 year old piece of shit I resent having to own at all. Can't wait to sell it and be FREE from it as I build up the know how and physical fitness necessary to feel more confident just making the bike my only transport.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 11 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I fucking hate micro mobility (short term rented ebikes/bikes and electric scooters.)
I love bikes, i love ebikes, i hate micro mobility. Wrote my thesis about why it sucks ass. Bullshit capitalist bullshit that leeches off infrastructure, provides nothing and might even just be the new car in microcosm. Micromobility i hate i hate hate hate.

Anyone arguing against this needs to read this three times, because Im not going to take you seriously if you think i hate bikes.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Can you explain more?

In my city, a yearly bike rental membership is $25, allowing for free rentals of manual bicycles, and 15 cents per minute for an e-bike rental (35 cents/min without a membership).

At least for my use-case, it's more economically feasible. I rarely rent an e-bike, only if I have to get across town in hot weather and I don't want to get there all sweaty (in the past year I've only rented an e-bike twice, while a regular bike is rented 3x/week for free with membership).

I have a love-hate relationship with it right now, mainly love though.

Pros:

I don't have to worry about maintenance, if the bike is broken or breaks down, I can just put it in any dock and find a new one.

I can pick a bike up from anywhere, if I want to bike somewhere and walk around, I don't have to go back and pick it up later.

If I want to bike somewhere and metro back home I don't have to worry about bringing my bike.

No worries about bringing a bike lock with me / fears of my bike getting stolen.

Cons:

Sometimes the docks are full, this isn't an issue most of the time, but when going to busy areas of the city or to festivals it can become a huge pain. (One time I biked a mile to a soccer game and had to bike half a mile away from the fields to find an empty dock)

The bikes are hit or miss when it comes to maintenance. Some are mint, others have creaky brakes, one time I almost took off before realizing both of the brakes were broken. People don't know how to change gears and it fricks up the bike (the newer ones use stepless CVTs that I've fallen in love with)

I know I'm lucky in my city to have this as an option, and I'm sure you are talking about things like Lime and things of that nature, which I'd have to agree with, they seem to be scams and tourist traps if anything.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 8 points 14 hours ago

Ill write something longer later, but I need to make a distinction: micromobility is purely "last mile" travel. That is to say it is ebikes, scooters, etc. rented out for one trip or for a brief vacation of ~1 week. It does not include long term rentals.
The way our society is structured it incentivises some business practices that make public infrastructure less safe for pedestrians and cyclists - Under the assumption that it is in an area that has robust infrastructure.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

What's bad about it?

[–] HalfSection@lemmy.ml 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The companies that run rentals are quite scummy. They come in to a city, dump a bunch of scooters/bikes everywhere, and do not take any responsibility for them or their users. I do however think it’s generally an improvement over car traffic and wish it would be something municipalities or transit would run instead.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 5 points 15 hours ago

I mean the main problem with that business model is that people would park them on the sidewalk instead of the (car) parking spots where they belong. Because car parking is holy.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Ill write later, probably Monday, if you are interested still

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 4 points 14 hours ago

Sure

[–] Kereru@hexbear.net 5 points 18 hours ago

Hell yea

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 7 points 19 hours ago

Hell yeah ding ding

[–] Ildsaye@hexbear.net 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I'm doing a reversible conversion on my old steel touring bike, and I've been encountering a lot of friction in getting everything ready.

First, I got a Gouach battery, which is cool in theory because the 18650 cells are socketed and can be swapped out, but in practice the firmware can't be configured if you don't have a very mainstream device with bluetooth (my old phone and linux laptop wouldn't cut it [I had to visit a more square friend, and their windows-chrome setup worked instantly]), and the company seems to consist of a small team of engineers with no dedicated support. The BMS chip does have a data cable socket (though it resembles a display bus more than USB), so maybe the thing can be made to behave more sensibly, like being able to plug it into a computer and have local software for it, in future. I'd advise most readers to skip Gouach until the company gets its shit together.

So I got the battery looking the way it's supposed to more or less, identified as XT90 the cable needed to connect it to the mid-drive motor system I got, then found that my handlebars are too fat to mount the system's throttle and display. All sorts of legacy options for bottom bracket widths, but no allowance made for thick handlebars? It took me some time to learn that handlebar risers, which mount to the handlebars and float a thinner bar above them expressly for accessory mounting, exist. I guess it makes sense, since there is so much more to mount than just a bell and a headlight nowadays.

I anticipate further trouble when I install the motor and it's time to calibrate it. The motor also expects me to get the app and to manage it with bluetooth. Fucking hate how smartphones have become a pretext to ship incomplete products. I hope in the end I can configure everything to my liking and then disable the antennae on both the motor and battery.

[–] fox@hexbear.net 8 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I want an ebike but $$ and also I'm big and tall which limits me to more expensive ones with better frames and larger batteries to make up for the range loss of my size, at least as far as those calculators indicate :///

[–] HalfSection@lemmy.ml 4 points 15 hours ago

I feel you. I’m tall and need an XL frame and it seriously limits options for bikes, especially used. Hope you can find something that works

[–] ttayh@lemmy.zip 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Do you have a link for those calculators?

[–] regul@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago (4 children)

E-bikes are great.

I think the way the average non-cyclist engages with them is problematic, though. First question I always get asked by "normies" (non-cyclists) is "how fast does it go?". The second question is always "how far can it go on a single charge?" These two questions indicate how utterly missing the point of ebikes most people are. Which, I think, is why you see so many of those e-motos around with 1000W motors and huge double batteries. I think those things are annoying and unsafe.

But I have to bite my tongue about it, because:

  1. They're still better than cars for everyone involved, and the people riding them would almost certainly otherwise be driving.
  2. Boomer state legislatures are frothing at the mouth to ban e-motos without understanding anything about ebikes and almost always inadvertently nuking regular ebikes (or enacting significant barriers to them) with collateral damage
[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Why are these bad questions? I just wanna know if I can physically.handle a commute to work on one. I realize that it depends somewhat in how much I pedal, but I'm not an athlete, and I know I won't commit if I'm completely exhausted and sweaty every day at work. Whatever these other higher purposes all the snobs in the replies are about, I'm trying to find something that works for my life. Is it car brained to try and work out the practical considerations of daily travel?

[–] regul@hexbear.net 8 points 21 hours ago

The top speed of an ebike usually has nothing to do with how much effort you yourself put in. This is especially true above 20mph.

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"how fast does it go?". The second question is always "how far can it go on a single charge?"

this is car brain in two types in the sense that most drivers have an entirely fucked up view of trip time with a strenous relationship to reality at best and also that one vehicle needs to do everything. Sure I've never needed to do a cannonball run, but what if i did?

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

These freaks are so alienated from nature they think they get in the car and the world moves the 'destination' to them. They resent non-hermetically sealed non A/C spaces as an affront to man's place at the center of the universe. I beg of them to touch grass.

[–] qbduubdp@hexbear.net 1 points 6 hours ago

This comment made me remember riding through the park with a pack of rabbits running alongside me, which happened last week. Car drivers will never experience the joy of moving through nature. Nature, to them, is always a place you must drive to rather than the abundant everything around us.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 1 points 14 hours ago

the weather here sucks shit 10 months of the year. whole town needs to be torn down and rebuilt in a person-friendly layout.

[–] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I get the how fast does it go or how fast does it accelerate first-thing too. The distance thing is hard to answer because it's more about speed and how much physical effort put into it for me. If I keep it 18-22 Km/h I can e-bike all day.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

God that's the pits. I'll add it to my list of grievances against car brained society. I got myself a nice class 2-3 fat tire because I really wanted something that could handle snow and ice. I'm serious about using this in all 4 seasons. But the motor is just 750 watts and maxes out at 28 mph with pedal assist, and honestly? That sounds too fast to me anyway. I'd only really want to do that on a long distance paved trail or something where I have exceptional vision conditions.

Everything in the city I'm in is less than 5 miles away from where I live, and MOST of the streets have decent bike lanes, some are even protected. I just want to get around town and get my body moving more regularly. No need for one of those teenager death machines that are basically just electric motorcycles.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 17 hours ago

E-bikes in my city cap out at ~20mph and I feel like I'm going way too fast riding at that speed. Many such cases of schoolkids renting an e-bike without a helmet and zooming through the city hitting pedestrians.

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The 28mph is handy when I need to hop on a 25mph street with no bike accommodations to make a connection.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago

Oh that totally makes sense. Less time spent in a car lane the better. Glad I have the option then!

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[–] pr06lefs@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

fuck "master race" anything

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago (8 children)

tricked-out-ride ring ring passing on your left

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[–] microfiche@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

master race

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[–] FloridaBoi@hexbear.net 6 points 23 hours ago

Escooter purchased 18 months ago. Replaces 50% of car trips

[–] Athena5898@hexbear.net 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I haven't been able to ride in a while because of my surgery. Hoping to get back on it soon.

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 2 points 13 hours ago

You and me both! I'll see you out there when you're well :)

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