Gadgetory

welcome to top shelf my name is David Pierce and this week we're talking about bikes bikes don't seem like they've changed that much over the years they have pedals and when you pedal them they go forward but there's actually a lot happening so we're starting with electric bikes they're not that new but they're cool and they're interesting and I just really wanted to ride one so I rode one New York City and electric bikes have a particularly strained relationship lots of people use them delivery men and just people looking to get around without a car but they're also illegal and you can actually get a fine for using it and there are a bunch of different reasons it's been back and forth the changes there all the time so we're here at a company called nice wheels it's also NYC e wheels where they actually sell electric bikes and scooters and folding bikes and all kinds of stuff so I would figure out how they're here how they stay in business and where they see the future of electric bikes bill my name is Peter use kaskus I'm the manager here at the shop I've been here about three years the store in itself has been here for about ten years overall we became one of the first big dealers of electric bikes in the whole country what was the technology like on an electric scooter ten years ago you know noisier motors a lot of chain driven drive trains instead of having the motor inside the wheel so things have developed a lot in terms of batteries and also motors and a lot of new like sensor developments too why for you guys electric bikes and electric scooters and why is that particularly interesting again well it's just you know part of it is having a little bit less dependence on gas being able to get around in a clean quiet way gas powered things are noisy in general they're easier to fuel up everywhere but if you can charge your battery powered vehicle it only takes a couple cents per day and you can get you know really good range out of them so for inner-city commuting you've got like 20 miles to go you can totally do that but electric like these seem perfectly designed for cities and maybe not as much for other kinds of people well it depends I mean we have a lot of customers who are been bike riders for all their lives you know I've been in good shape all their lives even and like you know maybe they have a physical problem now with their knees or something or they can't you know get the same you know distance that they want to yeah like my mom for example has a bionics motor system installed on her bike and it allows her to keep up with my dad doing like 50 mile rides that she could never do otherwise yeah so you know we could sell it to a lot of people who aren't in cities as well okay so you're in New York City and there's all sorts of complications with be bikes in New York City so I've read a lot of things where do we stand now with electric bikes and especially New York City well this is a confusing problem because the media will have you believe that electric bikes are evil and that they change people into evil people who will run you down on the street so it's really not true so is the logic basically that it's it's quiet but it goes really fast and it's really heavy so they're definitely gonna kill you what it is is that there's always been a problem with delivery guys riding on sidewalks riding the wrong way and hitting people not obeying traffic not having licenses and so there's been no accountability and it's always hard to tag like a certain thing as being the problem right now that there's electric bikes it's really easy to be like whoa hey look the Vice different therefore it's causing the problem their fault but really what we see is that we have customers who are riding these bikes commuting to and from work every day are totally considerate are not giving any money any hassle and but all you hear about with electric bikes is like oh I saw this guy riding down the sidewalk and he almost hit me with all his you know food bags and whatever and he just throttled off down the street I mean the big thing is that they're heavier so they're more dangerous because you know they're moving out of fast speed they're heavy and that's what is theirs sure so what you've seen in that New York now is a delivery guys have these vests and they have the name of the restaurant and a little ID number and so I think what's going to happen is there's going to be a sort of a crackdown at first and then they're basically only going to bother people who are breaking traffic laws or are working delivery that don't have this commercial kind of get it right so the real problem there is not is not the bikes but the bikers like and and this is I guess an ongoing problem for people in general it's like you know people in cars like to complain that bikers think they're pedestrians and think their drivers and just do whatever they want at any given time I mean for example I read a study that last week seven people were killed by cars and crosswalks you know why isn't there a crackdown on cars driving through crosswalks that's much more important yeah there's a lot be I'm sure that's causing many more accidents and it seems like that would be impatient just get rid of cars and put everybody on electric bikes and that would like meet we solve this problem so what's what's gonna change you think we're just gonna get to the point where are they going to treat it like cars where they're gonna have to have license plates and stop at red lights and things like that or I gotta wear how do we figure that out I mean I see probably like in European countries they're usually a little bit further in terms of regulations you can kind of take a cue from Europe they're probably going to have a little bit more licensing maybe some insurance thing I mean I don't think it has to go that way I think we can all just be considerate and obey traffic laws and kind of like get along that way because in a lot of other countries these they're super prevalent right like they're they're electric bikes are everywhere well for example our most popular electric bike the Stromer over the u.s. they probably sold 500 last year but they sold 3000 and euro flesh so so you think well we'll land somewhere that makes sense with all this eventually yeah I think so yeah I mean come on it's it's here to stay it's a cool technology it's really changing a lot of people's lives for the better and you know most of the cases is not people who are like getting their lives ruined by being run over it's people who are having their lives change for the better getting more exercise staying healthy enjoying the outdoors cool so can we can we see a few of these bikes I want to yeah of course see what's going on and actually take a look at some of the tech here okay so let's start it sort of the low end like what's the cheapest easiest way for somebody to get into this sure well we get that question a lot a lot of people are unsure how much to spend you see a lot of kits out there for like $300 $500 and it's like thousand watt motor 15a power batteries any of those works yeah I mean what we sell is only like the best quality stuff so we won't always have the cheapest but we'll have the best stuff so for example a Bionic system which is this is the battery for a bionics yeah this is something as co-ops on your bike and you replace the rear wheel with a motor wheel just like this right and then the battery goes on like where your water bottle would normally go and so with that system you can start it around $1,000 if you install it yourself it's a little low powered but it's nice and lightweight again this is assistance it's not like a motorcycle so it is low power that means it's already more powerful than you are and you 11 okay but it's um you know it's lighter its cheaper and so in this case I'm still pedaling it just does a lot more every time I pedal yeah essentially you'll see that with all the bikes we have pretty much we're all based on assistance we don't want to replace your leg power in our like augment then if I want to get an actual electric bike everything built-in I don't want to you know stick this in my water bottle holder what's what's next where do we go from there the next thing would be a bike like this Stromer this one is one of the latest technology that we have the battery is actually in the tube here and you can remove it I pulled it out of another one of these bikes so you've got this removable battery that's a is all fancy I think that it's purple yes there's one that's orange too if you like orange I like that I'm gonna make the battery so you know this again is like the highest level technology this is the kind of cells that you have in like an Apple computer battery just like the best sort of thing just a ton of them yeah and this is from TD high tech which is a really good battery actually and it's made in Taiwan so a bike like this what you get is a much more powerful motor typically in the full electric bikes you have like a 500 watt loader back which is like way more powerful than Lance Armstrong for right don't quote me on that but um I mean I assume it's more powerful it better be more powerful yeah it's it's super powerful and then they tend to be also a lot more kind of cool and integrated so they have like a little light up console here that has all your bike computer functions like how fast you're going how far you're gone and all that stuff these will tell you how much you've got left in the tank in terms of percentage and yeah you can select like modes of power from low to high cool so the best electric systems will like sense your pedaling power like automatically and smoothly like as soon as you pedal the motor just engages and you're like whoa how did I get so strong who knows the superhero is that yeah yeah and that is the thing that is the coolest part about electric bikes these days is they're not they're not like mopeds are not replacing your light power you just feel like like like great all of a sudden you feel and are really far yeah - all the steroids it's great exactly Wow it's wild this bike is super heavy so it's like when I don't have any assistance actually really awful and then as soon as I turn it on just ain't no thing if I'm on eco this is the least mode this is like every time I pedal it's like I pedal you know three times I really do want this just to get to work I guess we could park bikes at our office I would start I would get one of these riders working I will say this battery is not dying slowly Oh ready you wanna see how fast I can go just between here and there ready I'm gonna take my keep up at this car I mean and beauty is I don't have to worry about cars cuz I'm much faster than all of them I don't know if that's true I have no science to back that up but I think it's probably true especially Newark so having written one of these now I kind of get why they're illegal it's all of the fun of riding a bike and none of the work and you go about five times as fast that's not to say I don't want one I do but I really don't want anybody else to have one at least not until there's a way to make them a little safer or put a bell on it that make sure it goes really loud so for now I'm the only one who has one so I don't care I'll see you later I really want an electric bike but I don't exactly have four thousand dollars burning in my pocket luckily this guy found a better way Evan Rogers you actually built yourself an electric bike right yeah pretty much I mean I assembled it what it was the difference so you had all the parts you hadn't like make battery you can retrofit a regular bike frame with all the parts you need to run an electric bike and it's a lot cheaper than buying a ready-made pre-made electric bike probably by the order of a few thousand dollars so really yeah it definitely pays off to do it yourself okay so like in in your case what where do you start what like what do you do you're like I want to build an electric bike well they sell kits like you can buy kits on Amazon um you can get them on eBay uh or you can buy them piece by piece from various like enthusiast shops online so what do you need you need like a back wheel with the right kind of motor on you can actually get a front or back wheel depending on what your what your fancy like yeah yeah uh wouldn't if you had the front wheel that would be terrifying because it would just like take off and without you well I mean if you're going short distances and you there's an are a lot of Hills like a front wheel is usually cheaper because it's usually a smaller motor um it's also a lot easier to like remove and attach because of the front wheel attachments yeah but you also need a throttle assembly you need a electric brakes so that you know when you when you stop the bike it you know stops the motor um solid play you need a control box that just kind of controls all the electronics any new battery and that's pretty much I know it all just comes in a kit that you just sort of scale on it looks like I mean if you if you have any experience just repairing or maintaining bikes it's easily within the realm so tell me walk me through like the process so you buy this kit it shows up yes ready go so one thing you got to kind of consider is that the torque of a large rear motor might actually be a little bit too much for thinner road bike frames so a hybrid frame or a mountain bike frame is really kind of more better better suited make sense also just it all kind of just holds together feels a lot better if you have a mountain bike frame because there's a lot there's a rickety other one yeah it's a lot of power behind it but usually the back motor in one of these kits is actually fully was already attached to the tire okay so you basically you just remove the back tire um and kind of replace it with this entirely different motorized back tire right um you kind of snake the wires through the frame on the back part and replace your existing brakes the electric brakes kind of mount the throttle up on the top and find a place for the control box and your battery and you're good to go okay so this is like an afternoon project yeah theoretically just you know flip the bike over in your backyard and just do yeah I feel like this would also be a great thing to get horribly wrong on your first try and either doubt yourself into the stratosphere or just like nothing would happen I don't know it's that I don't even it's pretty straightforward um the pedal detection actually now that you mention it can be a little funny because there's a little black motion detector that you put near the pedals um but I actually found that to be really annoying and I just never used it uh also it's just way more enjoyable to just throttle it just as hard as you can yeah it just feels awesome yeah one of the places where I went wrong is I thought that I would need a huge 40 amp hour battery okay um this is back when I was in school I was traveling between two and three miles to campus every day uh just riding a clock just riding to class which is I feel like what most people need is that range it's like I for me I'm the same way I need that ride to work and from work every day that's all I yeah um and I you know I was on a really steep incline both ways actually depending on which way you get to my apartment so three miles so like miles I mean but it accumulated like going back and forth between campus and classes like ten miles a day okay but I would have to charge my my 40 amp hour battery maybe once every week and a half realist overkill like krei and a 48 hour battery would be like enormous yeah it's very range very heavy and I really wish that I had gotten a smaller one because it does a lot of weight and it just makes a bike very cumbersome yeah especially considering that when I originally got the bike the battery was mounted behind the tire above above it so the center of gravity was very high and shifted towards the back and made it very awkward yeah I ended up retrofitting the battery into the center of the frame which helped a lot but it was still a very large battery I think you try to carry that thing upstairs and you're just you're gonna die yeah and the other thing I wish I would have done was was buy the frame and all the parts separately so that I could have chosen like a higher quality aluminum so you also maybe got a smaller battery and it was just you fit it to what you needed yes this is the big thing I was worried about seeing all these folks with the electric bikes at nice wheels is that they have their range is like 40 miles some of them and that's like that's nice yeah you know people get mad about their electric cars with 300 mile range like I get that it's different but it's still I would worry but I guess for most people it's just the kids I need to go few miles at a time and then the others case it just becomes a bike I would really much rather have a lighter bike with significantly reduced my like even if you can only go 15 miles in a day yeah I'd really much rather have that and take it like actually in two buildings instead of like struggling with those like an 85-pound bike assembly there uh so how much did you spend on this whole thing the whole thing was seven hundred and fifty bucks which is pretty good like that booting a bike frame yeah including the bike frame that's the thing is the bike frame was yeah it's just not a good bike for spend a bit more on automatic brake I mean that's still that's a quarter of what some of these electric bikes yes artwork you don't have to spend four or five thousand dollars right um if you really pick out a good kit one that fits your needs well and use a quality bike frame I mean you might go over a thousand dollars but a lot of enthusiasts or well-designed pre-made bikes are well over to the two or three thousand dollar so I'm assuming I know you relatively well and I'm assuming you looked at every single kit on the internet before picking one yes why did you pick the one you picked um that battery it was in the just like give me all that battery well the bet ya the battery by itself usually cost like $350 okay for like a 40 amp hour battery yeah and I mean that may have gone down slightly since I got it but I got the most battery for my buck which I feel like was a good thought process at the time until I really came to grips with how much it actually weighed so is that the big difference between all the options you looked at is just battery everything else because it's all basically the single assembly right well be the 500 to 700 watt motor that I got I wouldn't skimp on that because it'll take you a pretty steep hill but not without a little bit of help but anything less than that I think it would really chug and you know if you're just on flat ground I mean it really depends on your situation yeah so if you are like here in the city and you it's really pretty flat um don't spend this much on a motor you won't need it yet I mean it'll go it might take you pretty fast but I mean it's also pretty dangerous well that's I mean that's that's my other question here is like on one hand I feel like it's more dangerous just cuz you made it yourself well but on the other hand like did you feel you know you're in a college situation it's there's a lot of people around did you feel unsafe like I haven't spent that much time on electric by god it was terrifying I just killed so many I mean I got used to it and like it wasn't the experience was not terrifying but well and it seems like to me riding this thing with bike breaks but a motor just felt terribly like efficient it was like oh I'm gonna just use these little handles and that'll stop me it know doesn't stop you it just nuts the motor here like you have to put apply the mechanical pressure to stop yeah your body and like a 60 pound or a 60 pound battery from moving it like a pretty decent clip okay going it like 30 miles an hour yes it's crazy it's pretty scary on the bicycle yeah um so I mean well first of all you should definitely wear a helmet um a few people ever do but they're if you're going 30 miles an hour on a motorized piece of equipment I'm gonna recommend that you use a helmet fair enough so speaking of safety that's actually one of the big things that we looked at this week there's a lot of issues here city bike doesn't require that you wear a helmet in New York and accidents have gone up because of it and electric bikes as Evan said will almost definitely kill you if you don't wear the right helmet so we went to NYU to talk to a professor there about what they're doing and what they're working on to make helmets not only safer but cheaper and lighter and better so that you'll actually wear the thing and stay alive my parents always wanted me to wear a bike helmet when I was a kid because you know it keeps me alive but I never wanted to it was big and ugly and made my hair look funny but there were people trying to solve that we're here at the Polytechnic Institute at NYU to talk to dr. Nikhil Gupta who's worked on helmets for Olympians the military athletes of all kinds and basically his goal is to make the safest best-looking lightest coolest helmet on the planet and it all starts with foam so okay so first sort of at a very broad level what happens in this lab what are you guys working on in here well we work on understanding how materials absorb energy and that's a very important application when you look at helmets you are looking at a very small space in which a lot of energy has to be absorbed we don't work on individual products we mainly work on developing materials and finding out what kind of loading conditions those materials will be working well in so we have six different kinds here right so what what differentiates I guess sort of my scientific knowledge is lacking so what what differentiates sort of one foam from the next so there are a few things that you can look at the foams if you look closely that the cell size of these forms is different that means how big the pores are and these forms and that kind of determines the density of these materials okay and how much energy they would absorb is related to the density of a form the denser the foam is it may absorb more energy compared to a much more lighter weight forms okay but now we have new methods of making forms lighter but increasing their energy absorption capability so some of these fancy forms not these ones but the ones that we are working in developing new ones might actually involve things like carbon nanotubes or nano fibers interest so which keep the foams low density but at the same time they absorb a lot more energy then the traditional forms dr. Gupta told us that what he's testing isn't how aerodynamic your health it is or how cool it looks he's not testing any particular helmet at all he's focused on foam every kind of foam you can imagine at about 10,000 other kinds phone is the backbone of your helmet it's what absorbs the impact when you fall off your bike or get punched in the head and depending on what you're doing you need something very different in his lab dr. Gupta tests the power of foam over and over he's constantly trying to find how much of a beating a certain type can take what if there's a pebble flying at it at 100 miles an hour or if you're on your bike skidding along the ground on a hot summer day what happens then dr. Gupta knows the effects of temperature vibration and time he also knows what happens if you fire a gun in terms of its ratio of density to strength the phone he makes can be stronger than steel of course everyone needs different phones though dense foam is heavy foam and dense foam might not be what protects us best anyway dr. Gupta works with the military and Olympians and regular people like me he's designing armor for the military that's both incredibly light and incredibly strong he's worked with Olympic boxers who need a helmet that will take repeated abuse he's also worked with equestrians who need to be able to fall off a horse and survive those riders need a helmet that will take huge impact once rather than lesser impact over time or Olympic cyclist who spill off their bikes at huge speed and skid along the ground each needs a different kind of foam for a different kind of impact dr. Gupta's making sure helmets do what they really have to do keep us safe and that's her first show thanks so much for watching thanks to the team at nice wheels for hanging out with us thanks to dr. Nikhil Gupta and the team at the Polytechnic Institute at NYU and thanks to Evan Rogers for probably convincing me to buy a bike that's going to kill me we'll be back next Monday and we'll see you then you