Serious question, why would a person spend that kind of money on an ebike? An entry-level motorcycle is less than half that. What benefit does the bike get you that a motorcycle doesn't?
Convenience and sense of freedom. No license required, can lend it to friends or kids. Can be parked anywhere. Can be loaded on a car, ferry and some places even the metro. Can ride them on bike lanes, the forest and the sidewalk. More approachable diy maintenance. Don't need full leather protection, just a helmet and t-shirt and you are good to go. If you are only traveling max 30km within the town, you don't need anything faster.
Some bicyclists in Palo Alto do, probably because they can't take their Ferrari's with them. A former business partner had a ~$8k bicycle stolen from Castro St. downtown in a very public area. All it takes to steal is 30 seconds and a battery-powered angle grinder. If someone doesn't have Tile, AirTag, and a GPS tracker on such a bike, then they're an idiot.
Hahaha. I hope a precondition to any bicycle theft includes requires 1 or more tracking devices and not transiting anywhere near a major metropolitan area or any city area with a drug problem.
I'm curious too when bikes became that expensive. I just recently started looking for a new bike. Every major bike brand (Specialized, Trek, Cannondale, Orbea, Canyon, Santa Cruz, etc...) all sell bikes between $4000 an $18000! That's regardless of whether they are e-bikes or non-e-bikes.
When did bikes get that expensive? I bought a "brand name bike" just like 6 years ago for $900 and thought I was going way out of a normal budget.
Even 20 years ago, $900 was on the lower side for a serious bike but the big thing to remember is that e-bikes are transformative: they make daily commuting practical for many people who are not avid cyclists and especially so for parents.
That means you should compare them to cars: I bought a cargo e-bike for just under $3k when I needed to take my son and all of his stuff to daycare near my office ~6 miles away. I certainly used to bike that distance before but the weather, workday timing, etc. meant I never did it more than 3 days a week before, but the speed & cargo capacity of the e-bike made it my preferred option every day.
The other people who didn’t live within walking distance all drove, so their trips took longer door to door (congestion around the school alone was 20 minutes) and my expensive e-bike was the equivalent of a couple months of what they spent on SUV payments, parking, gas, and insurance. Plus my son _loved_ going on the bike every day (it helped that we went by the train yard) while most of his classmates protested going in the car because they’re so isolated with nothing to see.
Most bikes are not silent. Worse, it's getting popular to make them loud. I was looking for an e-mtb recently. Tried a Trek ($4.5k down from $7.5k), ridiculously loud hub. Sales person claimed (falsely) that the more pro the hub the louder.
Talked to another dealer who gave me the same story.
MTB hubs are noisy as hell anyway, and yes, the more expensive the MTB the noisier the hub. For pedal bikes it's about being able to pedal without doing a full rotation and not losing power or wasting energy
It's kind of true. If you want the hub to engage right away when you pedal, you'll need the rachet mechanism to have more points of potential contact and those points will all make clicking sounds when you're coasting.
You can attach trailer to bicycle and use it to transport your kids to nursery/school during winter. There I live both things would be illegal with motorcycle.
Total bike and trailer builder and believer of yore here.
One can fail to appreciate the additional breaking forces
and shifts in balance a loaded trailer introduces to the bicycle.
Where the trailer attaches should be as close to the center of gravity of the bike & rider as possible so the trailer's resultant forces have the least leverage.
The trailer hitch should be rotationaly neutral which is a gentler way of saying
if the trailer flips over it should not take the bike down with it.
If the trailer has its own breaks they should slightly and lightly lead the bikes rear break.
Being careful helps, I never wrecked, but do see how the addition of electrical assist does up the concern as it could result in more mass moving fast.
I've been rear-ended by other drivers a couple of times, once in the centre of town. If a child in a trailer been between the two vehicles they would have been killed. The reason for one of the rear-endings was that the brake rubber came of the pedal. I don't trust other drivers to not be on their phone or to properly maintain attention at all times. The OP also said that he did this in winter time. Here in the UK there can be black ice on the road at that time of the year.
or a escooter or one of those things you just stand on and it moves? The main reason to ride a bike nowadays is for pleasure or exercise and a ebike defeats both.
An ebike can be for both pleasure and exercise. Most ebikes are pedelecs - you're still cycling, you're just getting a boost. They aren't loud, you just either get somewhere faster or with less effort. I find an ebike to be more pleasurable than a regular bike 90% of the time.
Just because you're doing less work, doesn't mean you're doing no work. An ebike can provide mobility for people who aren't in perfect shape. Ebikes can also allow you to use your bike for more errands, like getting groceries that people would otherwise not do on a regular bike.
With an ebike you can ride in bike lanes, sidewalks and many other places motorcycles are not allowed. They can also park loads of places motorcycles aren't allowed plus you get exercise.
Yep. Ebikes can do a lot of things motorcycles aren't allowed to do. For example, it's customary (while illegal) for ebikes to not stop at stop signs in the US because there's little-to-no enforcement of it compared to the enforcement of traffic laws against motorcyclists.
One example among many:
https://powersports.honda.com/motorcycle/cruiser/rebel-500