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Comment by charlieok | Hacker News Reader

Jump just landed in Denver a few days ago with dockless electric bikes. I've taken two rides so far.

These blow scooters right out of the water. I can get exercise and extra speed by pedaling along with the motor. Their app passed the ride data to my iPhone's health app for activity tracking.

Other bonuses come to mind. If it should run out of charge, it would be a heavy bike. People don't look as dorky on bikes.

I don't get why people are angry about scooters, but these E-bikes are awesome and I'd much rather use them given the choice. I'd love to see E-bikes take over as the dominant way of getting around.

P.S. Almost forgot to mention: that thing was fun! (No, I'm not affiliated with Jump/Uber).

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My wife and I purchased a pair of e-bikes (I haven't seen any for rent where we are except at bike shops, and I can bike to work which makes owning one make sense), and yeah, they are -insanely- fun. Even for exercise they're great; you can pedal without pedal assist...but hit a steep hill, or have to stop due to traffic, having a throttle to get you moving just makes everything so much smoother.

My fitness has improved so much since owning an ebike. Yeah it's not nearly as much work as using a regular bike but unless you are using a bike all the time you are going to see a massive improvement from switching from a car to an ebike.

I own an ebike as well as a bunch of non ebikes and while I love riding regular bikes on the weekend, the ebike is just so useful for getting to work fast and sweat free. I live in a very hilly area and the ebike makes it like riding on flat ground.

Electric bikes (e-bikes) are safer and more durable than scooters, BUT they cost way more (>5x I think) and take up more space. There are also the issues of changing seat height and dresses/long clothes getting caught in bikes.

I'm based in London, where scooters are still banned, but tried Lime in Austin when it first launched. I found the digital experience incredible and I had a great time. But the small wheels on anything other than silky smooth surfaces makes trips uncomfortable and I did almost wipe out. Plus the brakes are not great and the battery performance deteriorates noticeably on longer trips.

There is a place for scooters (small downtown areas) but I think that E-bikes make more sense and can use existing cycling infrastructure more easily. Excited by all these changes...

Thanks, I forgot to mention the safety part. Then I saw this which seems to confirm that there's an issue there.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/e-scoot...

Re: cost and taking up space... sure ok. But all these things still compare favorably to cars in that regard.

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