As a suburban American living in the northeast, it is disheartening how bad the biking “infrastructure” is here. The roads in my area are far too dangerous to bike on and there is little to zero focus on biking in any of the communities around here. I so wish I could enjoy them more (and with my kids!) but it doesn’t make sense.

I’m not sure what this says about how the internet has trained my brain, but the lead image on that article looks disturbingly like it’s going to ask me to prove I’m not a robot by finding all the images with bicycles.

We used ebikes in Japan and it was a thrillingly wonderful way of getting around. The interesting thing is how many people are using them even though the bike infrastructure isn't that good. Probably the difference is that everyone is more respectful of one another so doesn't feel unsafe. I like my foot pedal bike for short distances but I can imagine how e-biking as a commute option could be quite nice!

I'd love to get an e-bike, but the infrastructure just isn't there where I live (Austin, TX)... much of the center of the city has been transformed and is bike-friendly, but the edges are murder zones for cyclists, and the effort to find workable paths to where I need to go, makes me balk at it. There are (crowded) trails available, but to get to the nearest trailhead from where I live requires that I ride for a few miles on a shoulderless 2-lane county road. I've biked on that road before and it's terrifying. I work from home, so I don't need it to commute, so it would be more for running errands and leisure.

I really want to buy an e-cargo-bike, but I just can't justify one. My wife does most of the shopping and she's wildly uninterested in the concept. I'm a cycling fanatic, so I'm already using a (human-powered) bike for most of my short-distance errands. I'm going to keep working on the idea with my wife; maybe in a few years...

I commute to work and run errands regularly on a class 3 ebike. I’m happier when I get to work, get to decompress on the way home, and get the best parking.

You don’t need great bike infrastructure. One thing I love about ebiking: I’m able to go the speed of traffic in most reasonable places, though drivers still sometimes read me as “slow cyclist.”

What are the safeguards against someone stealing your e-bike? Do you lock them up the same way as a non-e-bike?

Part of Portland, Oregon's excellent bike infrastructure is Biketown, a bike sharing partnership between our Bureau of Transportation, operated by Lyft and sponsored by Nike, which switched to 100% electric bikes in 2021: over 1,500 bikes are available to rent across 41 square miles of the city. The e-bikes are kind of bulky, but a lot of time was obviously spent making them dead-simple to use, with shopping baskets on the front of each for storage. I feel like I have bionic super-strength when I ride one, they're incredibly fun.

I’m sitting in my tadpole e-bike right now. The day is beautiful and I’m about to ride with a friend. We both have disabilities and the e- part makes things possible that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible. Our city — Kalamazoo— is trying to expand its bike infrastructure and to slow car traffic. It’s controversial, of course, but I love it.

I live in San Francisco and have a cargo e-bike we use for erends and getting the kids to and from school. It's perfect for kid rides, since our school is just far enough that it's a long walk (uphill!), but not worth driving. It can be tough when it's raining hard, and as the kids get older they'll grow out of it, but for now it works great, and is a great start to the day - I definitely feel better just getting out for a short ride.

And for as bad a rap as SF is getting these days, the bike infrastructure (while still having room for improvement) is really great and is so much better then it used to be.

In my experience, E-bikes are so fun that you start finding ways to not drive, and venture further and further out. I picked up a Hurley Big Swell which is a wonky little e-bike, but one of the cheaper ones. I stuck a milk crate on the front, and I ride it to friends houses, the brewery, the park, ride my kid home from the school bus stop, anywhere really that doesn't involve a major road (although I do stretch that rule sometimes to get across town). Full disclaimer: I live in Boulder, CO which has a really solid bike path network and bike lane situation going on so much easier to ride safely here. You also get a lot of the benefits of non-powered cycling from an e-bike like real sunshine and air, and the Nature in general. Just being able to get outside regularly has allowed me to feel much more connected to my town/place/community. Plus 100 for e-bikes!

It's genuinely exciting to see people discover e-bikes. For me, they've been an absolute game changer.

I had knee surgery a few years ago and have other creaky bits, so I'm slower and less confident on a standard push-bike. E-bikes opened up cycling to me again - I'm able to keep pace with traffic, plus I have the stamina to travel further! A really kind friend took me out on a rented e-bike (in a park!) to show me the ropes and I haven't looked back.

I wish the cost of entry were cheaper, though. When I'm visiting family in Ireland, I rent an e-bike from a local company for €20 per week - not cheap, but doable, especially if it replaces cabs/buses/other transport (and it does!). I can keep the bike at home with me full-time while renting, and if it's stolen, I'm not on the hook for too much of a penalty (once I locked with the locks the company provides etc). If the bike breaks, I have a full support structure. Takes a lot of the risk out of using an e-bike, but I get all the pleasures and a low threshold to entry.

But back in CA, I feel like I have to buy an e-bike upfront (for thousands of dollars I don't have) to use it the same way. Local city e-bike schemes haven't arrived in my area and are a different model anyway - I like having a rental e-bike to call my own. When I cycle in CA, I'm competing with large, fast cars. It's so frustrating. I'm a total convert to e-bikes! But moving between two places helps me see that my attitude isn't the problem; I need infrastructural support.

My husband upgraded me to an Elektra Townie E-bike 3 years ago and it brought back the joy I felt as a kid just whizzing around the block on my banana seat bike - all the fun with none of the sweat, burning thighs or hill panic.
Now my son and I do what we call the “bike-walk” which is that we ride through our neighborhood to reach the limits of our little town (Birmingham, for those in the Detroit area) and lock up our bikes at a garage on the outskirts of the town, right before it starts to feel unsafe. From there we walk. Hybrid, baby!

I cobbled together my first e-bike about five years ago – actually an e-trike. It's amazing how far the engineering has come in the past ten years. With a battery the size of half a baguette, and a motor no bigger than a softball, I can go thirty miles at thirty miles an hour, with no pedaling at all. Further if I deign to pedal. We live in rural Virginia, with narrow country roads, so I quickly learned that, sadly, riding the trike was too dangerous for traffic. I envy those with protected bike lanes.

So this year we added a pair of upright two wheel e-bikes. The extra height and visibility are a big help, making short trips to the store viable. With the beach cruiser size tires, we can ride walking trails through the woods into town. Something we couldn't manage with our conventional bikes.

If we had better trails or paths, more than half our car trips would be by bike, no question.

Really really happy with our cargo ebike. Can carry my twin 6 year olds on the back (getting tight, admittedly) and then zip down to my office.

We got a retrofitted Bike Friday Haul-a-Day longline cargo bike four years ago, when my kids were two and five. We have since put thousands of miles on it. I am lucky enough to live in Eugene, OR, which is kind of a cycling paradise (although effective, head-to-toe rain gear is a must for most of the year!). I can bike to my kid's school in 20 minutes, and the vast majority of that is on a separate bike path. Of course, usually I am running late and bump up the assist to shave off five minutes or so, provided there aren't too many pedestrians around. It's good for grocery trips too!

Now this is me being unreasonably judgemental, but to ride around on the bike path without even pretending to pedal just feels gauche to me!

I hope everyone commenting about how bad their city infrastructure is for biking is taking this as a sign that they should advocate for better infrastructure, so they can have as much fun as those of us on our e-bikes!

I've put about 1,000 miles on a cargo ebike in the last year, the vast majority of those miles on daycare/elementary/summer camp/activities drop-off & pick up for a 4 & 6 year old.
I'm lucky to live in a part of Chicago where the infrastructure has not been aggressively built in opposition to me riding a bike. 90% of our elementary commute is on a multi-use path shared with walkers, dog walkers, runners, bikers & others transporting their kids around on various cargo bikes. Electric scooters are NOT currently allowed up there, and I recognize that as being an adjacent mode of transportation to what I'm riding. I don't want any future restrictions on ebikes on the rec path. It's important for riders to remember we're already larger than most other users up there & we need to be conscious of what speed we're going when we pass more pedestrian users.
That said, the more of us there are on the roads the more visible we become and the more likely other car users are to potentially make the mode-shift as well. Unfortunatley I believe on the spectrum of "safe driver...unsafe driver" it's the safe drivers that are more prone to take up the ebike (or any bike) habit. What remains is the need to continue advocating for better, safer infrastructure as many others have pointed out.
This fall while attending weekend youth soccer games the volume of families arriving on cargo bikes seems to have grown exponentially from the prior season & year. It's heartening to see all of the families not showing up in cars.
One more point - the last obstacle to keep me from using the bike more often is destination security. The more business centers, hospitals, doctors offices, retail centers, schools, etc that begin to offer secure bike parking I think the more you'll see users rapidly begin using those facilities and arriving more frequently by bicycle. The number of companies that have Sustainability Officers has been growing rapidly over the last few years, you'd like to see those organizations think about how their employees or visitors are arriving and push to install more on-site secure bicycle storage.

I am lucky enough to live in a place with excellent biking infrastructure. Ever since getting my ebike about half a year ago, I have started using it for a lot of trips, especially to work and to go grocery shopping. It does replace some trips with the car, but mostly, I use it instead of public transport. So in a way, my privilege of being able to afford an expensive ebike does have a negative impact on ridership and, since I am not buying tickets anymore, on funding for a common good which I very much appreciate.

We recently bought an ebike—picked it up during one of Massachusett's occasional sales-tax-free weekends—and indeed, it's a fun ride! As many have pointed out, it's all the goods of biking (the fresh air, the zooming, and yes the exercise), with a magic extra push.

In addition to advocating for improved infrastructure, we need better and more comprehensive education, beginning at an early age, to develop a culture in which bikes belong. I know that several European countries offer a substantial bike-safety course, akin to the US driver's-ed paradigm, when kids hit about 12 years of age. Here, bikes remain peripheral to car culture.

A feature that drew my family to an e-bike that I don't see mentioned often is that many of them are designed with fast adjustment in mind for multiple riders with different heights. We have a Tern GSD ('One size fits most') where the seat and handlebars adjust with minimal effort - a few seconds before you hop on. This makes it a much more viable car replacement. The only issue that comes up is who gets to ride it on a given day.

Also, it is exciting to see programs starting up to provide rebates for e-bike purchases. Washington state recently announced a program to provide up to $1,200 towards e-bike purchases.

As a regular bicycle commuter, I was initially somewhat disgruntled with e-bikes - new "speed limit" signs on paved bike trails, pretty bad encounters with rude e-bikers in the far western 'burbs. But, I realize a lot of my bias comes from being relatively fit and cycling in the flatlands of Chicago and greater Chicagoland.

The benefits for keeping even very fit people in very hilly places safe, as well as a general increase in the number of "alternative" vehicles on the roads seem to far outweigh the behavior of a few idiots on trails. I hope to see the number of e-biked continue to increase!

I work part time as a guide for e-bike tours on a small Hawaiian island. We have both off-road mountain e-bike tours and city tours with road e-bikes. For many of our guests this is their first experience with an e-bike and they absolutely love them.

In our small rural community we have a lot of trucks, many of which are needed for hunting and to getting to the 'other side" of the island. But for daily use (going to the store or picking up mail at your PO Box), e-bikes could transform our community. I see small e-bikes (and e-scooters) popular with kids, as it gives them an easy way get around town.

For now, I personally use a regular bike to get around much of the time. But if we ever move, I'd definitely consider trading one of our vehicles for an e-bike.

In 2014 I ran a nat'l innovation competition called The Bike Design Project challenging industrial design firms partnered with custom bike builders in five states to conceive the Ultimate Urban Utility Bike. The winner -- chosen by an online audience -- was an ebike designed by Teague/Sizemore Cycles. Our design criteria was based around car replacement, and called for integrated solutions, such as light, such as expected in a car purchase. Only recently (in the last 3 years) have the big brands caught up to these prototypes and it's entirely transforming ridership. Ebikes are the gateway drug for people who might not have previously been cyclists. Safer infrastructure will be the superhighway of pulling even more people out of their cars an into the saddle. Really heartening to see this shift in thinking and even though I prefer non-assisted cycling for myself, I LOVE seeing the scores of non-athletic people embracing a transpo mode that they previously wouldn't have considered.

I got an e-bike at the end of March as I was recovering from yet another knee injury. When I did the test ride I was really worried about being able to ride it. I had been trying to use my regular bike as an exercise bike and I would often get twinges. The assistance made all the difference. Even though it was snowing during the test ride, I came back all smiles and bought it. Since then I use it for virtually all my errands around town (using panniers), my knee mobility has improved beyond my wildest dreams, and I've lost 20 pounds. A lot of the weight loss is just from becoming so much happier to be able to ride a bike again and enjoying it so much. Being able to go on 26 mile rides for fun and being able to keep up with my experienced and skilled biker friends, and feeling so good from the exercise is phenomenal.

I suppose I still have too much guilt about electric bicycles to ever participate. To me it still feels like I’m giving up on a healthful activity for effectively a green-washed motorcycle (your power generation may vary).

The most fun I had this summer was driving aroung Copenhagen with my daughter on our rented e-bikes. It was such a joyous experience! There are dedicated bike bridges, paved paths through parks just for cyclists - it was heaven. Kinda ruined cycling in my hometown when I got back, and I had to try not to regale everyone with my tales of "well, when I was in Copenhagen...".
Where I live (Germany), it's considered lazy/indulgent to buy an e-bike unless you have to (long distances, more than one child, being old/injured, living up a very steep hill etc.). Lots of people bike everywhere within the city, but they do it on normal, sometimes deliberately bad-looking bikes, so they don't get stolen. I get teased a lot for being a very slow cyclist, so maybe that is an excuse for buying an e-bike soon, at least partially recreating that wonderful Copenhagen experience.

I got a e-bike just after the first lockdown. Since then, I've ran nearly 15,000 kilometers on them (I got one stolen, didn't attach it properly). I've saved so much money on subway fare, ubers, etc... it was already worth it.
Riding a bike in Paris is an adventure, a risky one, even if it's improving everyday (more bike lanes). But I enjoy it sooooo much. and yes, electric, because Paris is up and down and up and down all the time...

My e-bike is the highlight of my day here in Denver. And, like many others, I'm lucky enough to have great infrastructure to and from work. This is not the case throughout the city. But, boy, people are working hard to get it in.

Denver Moves

Bicycle Colorado

Vision Zero

And, great follows on Threads.