Every Day Adventurers

Electric installer LionTail Cycles in Seattle WA sent us this snapshot of an electrified Xtracycle they built as part of a clean-tech competition.

Here’s the scoop from Henry Kellogg of LionTail Cycles:

I was planning on sending you all a description of the project, but it looks like you found me out first! Yep, I teamed up with a couple other mechanical engineering students and entered a student design competition as LionTail Cycles, and we built a electric bike kit that integrates fully with the XtraCycle and incorporates a high efficiency solar array.

The battery enclosure is made out of aluminum and has snaphooks on the bottom. Inside there’s a controller, a 10 amp hour, 26V LiPO4 battery, and a BMS to manage the current to the battery cells when charging.

The enclosure is topped by 6 of these panels, meaning that in ideal conditions this solar array will output 20 watts — and charge the battery in a breathtaking 13 hours! :) In Seattle’s less than ideal conditions, we measured that 5 hours out in the sun (with a few clouds) charged about 25% of the battery — which is ~ 6 miles of assist. So while solar technology isn’t quite up for the task yet, this not just a toy.

For the full article from which the photo above came, click here.

Questions about this technology? Submit your comments below for responses from Henry.

Bike shops are about people, not bikes.  Here are the people that will be helping Xtracycle riders get equipped this year.  We’ll feature three new folks each week.

These dealers not in your area? Visit a full list of our dealers on our site.

	Holland’s Bicycles, CORONADO, CA Tyler Rowden • 619-435-3153 • Web Site Before working at Holland’s, Rowden was a cyclist. “I was always riding bikes,” he says, but he got seriously hooked while serving with the Army in Germany and doing some two-wheel touring. When he returned to the States, he did a ride from Salt Lake City to San Diego.
	Beehive Bicycles, SALT LAKE CITY, UT Greg Steele • 801-839-5233 • Web Site We love bikes, all bikes. Beehive Bicycles loves the simple feeling of riding a bike, a little wind in your hair, your heart pounding in your chest, and the childlike freedom that cycling provides. Every choice we make is geared towards helping you find that little bit of bliss.
	Boot Doctors, TELLURIDE, CO Becky Reimann • 800-592-6883 • Web Site The BootDoctors is an award-winning family owned and operated small outdoor retailer originally founded in 1986. In summer BootDoctors store transforms into an outdoor adventure outfitter with rafting, mountain bike tours and rentals and fly fishing.

Cemil Hope, creator of the RunningBoards and LT Footsies – has moved to a new shop in Petaluma – the new home to Xtracycle Customs – an affiliated outfit dedicated to the custom-powder-coating and build-out of one of a kind Radishes for enterprise and everyday folks. See the interview below that shows a few of his bikes in production, and explains the vision behind Xtracycle customs.

You’ll notice in this video, Cemil (pronounced Ja-meel) speaks of a few custom Radishes under production – here’s the cheatsheet:

1. Clif Bikes – Clif Bar Co. is having 2 Radishes built that will help them share their amazing Clif bars with folks at events like the upcoming Sea Otter Classic, where the Clif Bikes will debut. These bikes will be designed to be ridden around events, with an adult passenger dispensing product. Yum. Follow the red Radish!
2. Oyster Bike – A Radish that will be parked outside a restaurant – with tin oyster buckets that have togo bags of oysters inside.
3. Baguette Bike – Award winning baker will use this bike to deliver Baguettes.
4. Flower Bike – A flower-sales specific Radish with a custom flower dispensary on the back.

Enjoy!

Bicycle Press,

The cargo bike sector is longing for a great apples to apples review of the cargo bike offering on the market. Reviews that crop up in periodicals big and small continue to be cursory (hey! look at this!) and apples to oranges (comparing a 10′ long Bakfiets to a 3 wheeled Zigo to a bike with a basket). These reviews are really just page filler, and do little to increase ridership of this new and growing class of bikes.

Readers please be aware, this is a long diatribe – not for the faint of heart, or those of a fleeting Facebook-sized attention span (like myself at times). Please feel free to move along if this isn’t your scene or the right time – no hard feelings. If you are intrigued, please read on! And share.

Here’s what’s in this letter:

1. Bicycle Magazines are capable of more than an agnostic ‘survey’ of cargo-bikes couched as a ‘review’ – Bicycling already did this 1 yr. ago, with little effect on the market.
2. Regardless of style of cargo bike, what makes a cargo bike great?- Xtracycle designs around three characteristics that make all the difference.

1. Hear me reviewers! Reviews that explain, contextualize and invite people to consider cargo-bikes are possible and necessary.

If we believe in bikes, and we believe in the power of cargo bikes to transform our lives, neighborhoods, cities and culture, you owe it to our readers to do more than broadly recommend the sector without helping people understand what makes sense for what purposes when it comes to loaded bikes. Bicycling has written two stories about cargo bikes in the last year – one in May that profiled a handful of bikes with no apples to apples comparison. Each individual reviewer took their own approach to a ‘review,’ resulting in a diverse round of perspectives on a diverse round of bikes. The net effect of that review, from the perspective of someone new to cargo bikes – was the notion that cargo bikes are heavy (Mundo at 83 lbs), big (Cetma frame ships in 2 huge boxes!), may need more wheels (i.e. Kangaroo Thing). Most of these bikes are unusual even in their home turf – Europe. Walking through the streets of Europe’s cycling hubs, one is struck by the incredible proliferation of fairly regular bikes – slightly longer than those here in the States – with racks front and back, and people and stuff draped about. To promote full-blown ‘cargo-bikes’ here as the logical next step for the average intro-level utility bike consumer is absurd.

We have all ridden a Bakfiets-style bike – how many of us own one? Or will own one? They are great in limited circumstances, but for so many, they are impractical. Being cargo-bike style agnostic actively prevents people from making educated choices about bikes that might actually fit within typical North American bike preconceptions about weight, cost, size, convenience, ability to portage on a car, etc. To overlook these critical factors and how they might impact the average rider does cargo-biking and urban biking a disservice, just as it would if Consumer Reports recommended the Hummer as the perfect family car in 2012 – after all it has all the necessary qualities in spades: weight, safety, cabin room, amenities, saying nothing about cost, fuel efficiency, convenience, impact on those around you, etc. Yes, the Hummer is a great SUV, but probably not one to be recommended as equivalent to a fuel efficient and safe Toyota or something similar for a North American audience.

Think about the Oregon Manifest that billed itself as a cargo bike competition. The word around town was that the competition was already won by cargo-pants. Seriously – the challenge for these world class designers involved the portaging of a 6 pack. Hell, I’ve carried a 6-pack in my teeth while riding no hands talking on my cell phone. This is not a valid challenge! For more on that, enjoy this similarly cantankerous rant from one of my heroes.

Bicycling’s second story was by a renown writer (Nat’l Geographic, Outside, etc.) Tom Clynes and his personal experience riding a bike and profiling the sector. As he began to unravel his own relationship to biking – some truly wonderful realizations came to the fore the offered up some legitimate entry points for a large number of people to embrace this new sector of biking as a car-alternative. He spoke to bike people unable to bike because of their busy/family oriented lives – this to me is the jumping off point for a great review that forwards the conversation. Here’s a link to the Xtracycle-specific portions of that Bicycling Mag article. Here’s the full read.

Here’s how to start a review that will be incredibly useful to consumers:

Profile your reviewer and their needs clearly, then have them rate the bike on how well it meets/doesn’t meet their needs defined before riding it. Like,

• I live in the suburbs and want a safe easy to ride bike to carry kids and groceries, or pool toys to the pool.
• I am a commuter that struggles to get everything I need in my panniers – I need weather proofing, a bike that doesn’t slow me down, a bike that’s safe to park outside my office.
• I am a into bike-adventure touring, I need capacity and quality!
• I need to ride my bike more! My kids keep me behind the steering wheel too much! I need to cover some real ground! I can pay for electric assist!
• I am a community bike organizer – I need a bike that can haul a stereo for community events. Parking is not an issue – this is a bike I use once a week and park in our office as a conversation piece in between.

(you get the picture)

Help your readers, help us as manufacturers open up this sector. The bicycle press have developed such a great megaphone – now use it to get people on bikes, not marvel as this and that new gadget presented by gear heads not people with real-life problems they need solved.

2. Xtracycle’s criteria for great bikes (applies to all bikes, and especially cargo bikes).

1. Ride quality. The bike must ride GREAT! You must want to ride it. If the bike presents significant ride quality challenges, parking challenges, riding on busy street challenges, we are failing our customers and hampering the transformation we are committed to. What attention has been paid to ride quality? Does the bike ride like a bike? A tank? A boat? A stroller?

2. Cargo capacity. Cargo capacity is often linked to weight. Frequently consumers are misled to believe more capacity = better. (Dude! My bike can haul 500 lbs!) Unfortunately, more capacity = more weight, which often makes the bike less fun to ride even when you’re not carrying a 1/4 ton (which we have found is about 99% of the time). So, the key is the best cargo-capacity to weight balance. How efficient is the design? For every extra pound of bike, how much additional carrying capacity do you get? How flexible is the carrying technology – can you carry long stuff, bulky stuff, kids?

3. Affordability. Like cargo capacity – affordability, or value, is often overlooked – cargo bikes of wildly different price ranges are compared frequently (how fair might it be to review a consumer grade Jamis road bike with trek’s new full carbon?). We believe that affordability is key for our consumers – they are value driven smart consumers that are weighing options – sell our second car, join a carshare, move closer to work, get a cargo bike. Like any investment, the keys to value are

• quality – how well made? what materials? what components?
• expandability – will this bike grow and change with my needs? will my family/I grow out of this bike or cargo accessory (i.e. trailer, stroller) in a few years?

I hope some of the above perspectives help you to think about your upcoming cargo bike review. Clearly, I have spent some time thinking about this in light of recent reviews.

3. Turn the tables. Give us a challenge – that’s what we’re all about!

We at Xtracycle are excited to put our products to the test in your reviews and I would end on this question – Xtracycle has the widest array of cargo solutions of any US manufacturer – we can meet the most number of needs with an exciting array of products. What challenge would you put our products to? Who (i.e. your reviewer) has a problem we can help solve? We would love to meet the challenge, and we’re excited to send you a combination of bikes + accessories that help your reviewer find biking more fun and useful than ever before.

– Nate Byerley, Xtracycle COO, 3/27/12

Xtracycle has spent the last 14 months developing the next generation of Long-Tail Cargo Bike and, true to our nature, have partnered with several noteworthy industry leaders.

As we thought about the future of the cargo bike, no one could deny the role that electric assist would play. We are captivated by a vision of transportation that is bike-centered, but we acknowledge the role that pedal-assist technologies will play in bringing more riders of all ages, rider strengths, and ambitions to the table.

We’d like to introduce one of our partners as the first in The EdgeRunner Series: The Future of the Cargo Bike. Introducing…

Nearly every cargo company is now offering an electrified version of their cargo bike, but none seem to be taking into account the fundamentals of e-assist technology currently on the market. Most are slapping simple hub motor systems to their bikes and calling them e-cargo. While this is technically true, it’s far from ideal. Cargo makes special demands on the system and asks the most of an electric system to be efficient in high torque, low-speed scenarios (i.e. cargo bike well loaded coming to speed from a stop). As well, cargo bikes offer incredible capacity when it comes to on-board batteries. As anyone who’s seriously invested in electrified cargo-bikes knows, battery capacity is everything.

What we’ve found in prototypes is that when these different factors are optimized, an electric cargo bike begins to feel like a true car alternative – able to traverse vast distances even when loaded, ride comfortably, keep the bulk of the load low and centered, and offer amazing value (think 1/8 – 1/10th the cost of a car, with essentially no fuel costs).

We couldn’t have done this alone. We teamed with long-time Xtracycle rider and cohort in transforming biking in North America, Justin Lemire-Elmore. Just as we carry a long history of cargo-biking experience and knowhow, Justin provides a deep body of knowledge about electric cargo essential to creating a groundbreaking solution. While we will forever look back to Justin as our inception into the e-cargo biking world, I would think that Justin looks to his trans-Canadian adventure by bike as his moment of true inspiration around becoming the foremost expert on electric assist bikes in North America.

This video details his trip. This is not a punchy 1-minute video to post to your friends on Facebook. This is an inspring tale of how Justin accomplished this remarkable feat, and may be best watched in bite-sized chunks. It’s like a great lecture, told by an authentic source.

Suffice it to say, we think of Justin as a true genius in the e-biking world. He’s more than an e-bike geek, he’s an avid e-bike rider (see video above), and developer of e-bike technologies designed based on long-distance, loaded, riding, not merely recreational jaunts to the park. He sells the stuff himself and he knows intimately what works and doesn’t. His manufacturing partners in Asia are some of the most groundbreaking e-bike developers alive.

Given the above, we were pretty flattered to hear Justin’s unsolicited thoughts about the Xtracycle platform:

When I reflect about why I ride an electric Xtracycle to the exclusion of pretty much any other 2 or 3 wheeled bike, it’s because:

a) The flexibility for accommodating different load shapes/sizes is genius. With the wideloader and a few extra straps, I almost never wonder “can I fit this on the bike”, nor do I need to plan in advance if I might or might not need to carry cargo. The capacity is always there with me.

b) It’s narrow and nimble enough that on the road I never think or feel like I am taking up any additional space. I can still zip between rows of idle traffic, or hop up on shared pedestiran/bicycle sidewalks. Doing either of these with trikes or boxbikes is precarious, and makes me feel like I’m driving a semi in a lane full of smart cars.

c) It locks up in conventional crowded bike racks without hogging any additional space.

d) It lets me take on passengers on a whim and provide them with a cozier seat than mine. I find myself doubling up all the time.

e) It looks great.  You notice that it’s different, but there is different in a “look at that funny thing” kind of way, versus different in a “wow, that’s pretty awesome where did you get it?”. The look of Xtracycle Longtail is in the latter class of different. Something about it just looks right.”

Thanks Justin. We’re excited to partner with you on this incredible endeavor.

Look forward to the next installment of The EdgeRunner Series: The Fastest Man Alive Builds the Finest Cargo Bike on Earth