Cargo bikes have been making real in-roads in the last few years. Bike companies as varied as Trek, Kona, and Yuba have taken the long tail design made successful by Xtracycle and developed their own versions of go anywhere cargo bikes. Madsen has gone the route of combining the useful and child friendly box design of the bakfiets and merged it with the Xtracylce concept for a boxed long tail. I’ve ridden most of these bikes. They are great and extremely useful (especially for a father of 2 young children), but all of them have an Achilles heal: weight. There is just no getting around the fact that pedaling 50-80 pounds of bike plus whatever cargo you have to ride up a hill is at the least difficult and more often means a super granny gear or getting off to walk. An electric motor would help, but until recently custom builds like the Stokemonkey was your only option.
Your cargo bike options are about to get electrified, offering what I think is a a real, all around car replacement. Earlier this year, Trek announced it was pulling it’s Gary Fisher brand under the Trek name and dubbing it the Gary Fisher Collection. One of the new bikes announced with this name shuffling was the Transport, a bike barring a striking resemblance to the Kona Ute. Trek took things to their natural next step by also announcing they would offer an electric version of the Transport to give you that extra push up hills.
On the other side of the pond, a new prototype electric bakfiets was presented at Eurobike. This is one of those developments that makes you wonder what took so long. Bakfiets have long been the big kahuna when it comes to carrying things by bike. Their huge buckets and design putting cargo low and infront of you made them a great option. Plus they are almost always built with fenders, full chain guards, locks, and dynamo lights making them ideal for everyday use. Unfortunately, they are the heaviest of cargo bikes and are usually pair with internal hubs that have limited gear range. This is probably one of the reasons their popularity has been limited to flat countries like The Netherlands and Denmark.
At Eurobike, Dutch designer Wytze van Mansum introduced his prototype of an electric bakfiets that is set for production in the near future under the Urban Arrow brand. You may remember van Mansum from his very cool Dutchess protoype made last year. In addition to all the regular goodness of the bakfiets, he has used lighter materials and designed a clever built-in lights. Pair the electric motor with actually including cup holders, and you just might have a cargo bike mainstream American could really get into. Exciting!
Finally as with any rising products, you soon will have those wanting to ride the trend with no business in the industry. They provide products that are usually heavy on style and light on substance. Enter the fine folks at Puma who are producing their version of a cargo bike called the Mopion. Aside from the color choices inspired by Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, the Mopion really is a half hearted attempt at fullfiling the needs of utility cycling. There is storage in a reasonable sized front rack (though no where near the hauling capacity of long tails or bakfiets), however the design comes from Biomega, who specializes in “urban bike design” with almost no urban utility in their other designs. Wanting to ride after dark or when the road is wet? You’ll be a mud splatter ninja rider. Yes you can add lights and fenders aftermarket, but curiously there appears to be no braze-ons for fenders on this bike. To each his own, but you’d think they’d give you the option to add gear to make the bike useful. Update: I’ve had a chance to see a more detailed picture of the bike at BikeHugger, and it looks like there are braze-ons for fenders and a rear rack. I take back my earlier snarky remarks. While I’d like fenders and lights to be standard, this does look like a pretty cool light duty cargo bike. Still, more bikes on the road capable of carrying things the better, and Puma’s entry hopefully signals more cargo bikes to come.
on Sep 7th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Nice article Elliot!
I really think that electric cargo bikes are a great way to replace your car for commuting to work and running errands around town. I just used my electric xtracycle to pick up a couple bags of groceries and my mail during my lunch break without breaking a sweat in my work attire
They are also a great way for businesses to deliver their goods (pizza, etc.). E cargo bikes can maneuver crowded streets easily, are a lot cheaper than operating a car, and they offer a little extra advertising because they are not your average bike. It’s fun to watch people’s reaction when they see an e-cargo bike!
on Sep 7th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
P.S. Sorry I misspelled your name. I dig the site. I was in Austin a few years ago and it was great to see the awesome cycling scene. Keep it up!
on Sep 8th, 2010 at 2:24 am
Cargo bikes goes electric and electric pink http://bit.ly/aAjWWT #bakfiets #ebikes
on Sep 8th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
I like longtails and I agree that electric motors make them much more useful, but two of their characteristics that aren’t solved by electric motors make them a deal killer for me:
* Multimodal transportation is very important to me, and you can’t put a longtail on a bus or train. Making the longtail a second bike makes this problem tolerable, but…
* I live in a 2nd floor apartment. I’ve carried a 50 lb electric bike up the stairs to my apartment (and lived to tell the tale), but I’m not going to even try with an e-cargo bike!
on Sep 9th, 2010 at 8:42 am
Richard,
Cargo & electric are trade-offs in utility. I don’t know how you maintain the ability to carry so much and still be light and compact enough to ride transit. I think you may just be asking too much plus if you are carrying that much you are also going to have trouble carrying your stuff on transit. If you are really carring that much over a long distance, I think car-share where it’s available or just straight up car rental is a great option. Most car free carsharing members use fleet cars for just this purpose.
This prototype design of a convertible cargo e-bike probably comes closest to what you are talking about but it’s probably still over 50 pounds.
http://bikehugger.com/2010/09/convertible-cargo-with-assist.html
on Sep 10th, 2010 at 10:44 am
These have caught my attention lately. I’ve been hauling my kid via “trail-a-bike” through some of the nastiest hills in the barton hills area. Of course, at my behest, my son will give me some extra push – such is the beauty of tandems, but man it is tough work, even with that.
I think that in my case, e-assist would take the sport out of it, but when there isn’t much else to think about as your are pushing your hardest, these keep coming into my mind. Then I looked at the prices. Cripes! Maybe some folks don’t flinch at it, but when the Lithium-based kits alone are more than $1500, that is just prohibitive. Have you seen what Trek wants for one of their ebikes (not even cargo)? 2k+. Another reason people go car free is because cars are crazy expensive, and these e-cargos can’t be that much cheaper than a reasonable used vehicle.
Maybe more affordable if you use older battery technology, but… then you are talking even more weight.
on Sep 10th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Mark,
I don’t find $2000 for a quality bike that is capable of replacing my car to be too expensive. On the contrary, it’s a big savings over car ownership.
E-bikes are more expensive than conventional bikes, but I disagree about it being comparable to the price of a cars. There is a lot more to the cost of owning an automobile than just the purchase. Fuel, insurance, maintenance, repair, financing interest, depreciation. The first two you simply are not paying with e-bikes (unless you plug in the battery rather than pedal to charge, still just pennies) and the second two are are considerably cheaper. Maybe you need a loan to by an e-bike so maybe that’s a wash. The 20% immediate depreciation loss you get hit with on a new car is mitigated when you buy used, but then the repair costs are usually considerably more. I think if you look at total cost, e-bikes still come out ahead.
on Sep 10th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
On costs of cars: The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 percent of their society’s time budget to traffic instead of 28 percent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of lifetime for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html Long dated figures, but a similar calculation done with cuirrent figures yields about the same.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/18/study-average-car-costs-22-1-weeks-of-median-family-income-ave/
http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/cost-of-car-ownership.html
$19 per day, driven or not, according to this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_your_Car!
on Sep 13th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Hi All,
I just wanted to chime in on the cost of electric bikes. I totally agree with Elliott that the total life-cycle cost of owning and operating a car is way more than an electric bike. It’s true that there is a big up front cost for e-bikes, but when you break it down I believe they are one of the least expensive electric vehicles to own and operate.
I put together a resource on how to make electric bikes more affordable on a monthly basis by financing them with some of the new loan programs available. After all, we tend to finance our cars, why not finance an electric bike that could be a great substitute and/or replacement for our car. http://electricbikereport.com/electric-bikes-affordable/
on Sep 13th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
I agree with the analysis of relative cost in terms of comparing a car to a bike.
however, there are just a lot of people who won’t buy something like an ebike with prices upwards of $2000. I know some people buy regular bikes for that much, however I find that confusing behavior as well. For me, 1) Bikes are just too easily stolen (ecargos? perhaps less so, but…) 2) there are too many adequate and cheap bikes to ride… even older battery tech ebikes. I know some people argue that life is too short to ride a crappy bike. I’d argue that life is too short to worry about your extra expensive bike being stolen, or destroyed.
I think there is really an emotional component to me. Somehow, I feel like having a $2000 bike would feel like cheating. That said, hauling two small kids around is just going to get harder in the next couple of years for me, and I’m still out there looking for scrappy solutions to the pesky problem of weight.
on Sep 21st, 2010 at 5:13 am
Hi Elliott,
Thanks for posting the cargo e-bike. Very interesting comments on the ‘replacing the car’ subject.
In the Netherlands we know the puma concept for a few years now it is called a Filibus http://www.fietsfabriek.nl/pages_eng/filibus.htm I always saw that bicycle as a strange compromise between a bakfiets and a normal bike with a Cargo basket. But now I think Biomega gave it a new meaning by making this light Puma version of the filibus, that will make the concept a great everyday bicycle. If they got the steering and the pricing right they really have a very nice bike there.
on Sep 24th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
I use my bike pretty much 90% of the time now, living in the city. I keep the car garaged and that’s an unfortunate chunk of my monthly budget but there are some times when I just still need it.
on Oct 15th, 2010 at 11:12 am
If you’ve made it this far into the comments, you might be interested in my blog, where I compare the merits of various electric cargo bikes. I have an extended review of the Urban Arrow, including target price and availability; further details on the motor, battery, transmission, and brakes; videos showing riders carrying kids and pedaling uphill with and without assistance – check it out at http://mycargobike.net/2010/10/13/third-generation-electric-cargo-bike
When I compare the Urban Arrow to the other electric-assisted cargo bikes I’ve reviewed, I think this bike is probably the best choice for carrying kids in relative safety and comfort. In any case, it’s great to have expanding choices to address a variety of needs and commuting environments.