[Music] hey welcome back everybody Jeff freek here with the cube we're in Reno Nevada at the inner bike show it's a big show all about bikes and mountain bikes but we're really to talk about ebike skuzzy bikes is this new class of really transportation not really new turns out that gazelles been making them since 2002 so we're at the Royal Dutch gazelle event that adjective in next to enter bike and we're excited to see they're releasing a bunch of new bikes and really dig into what are these e bikes all about we've been told that the United States a little bit behind you're starting to see them show up is it a last mile vehicle is it you know a primary vehicle what are the laws and regulations or we're really excited to have our first guest she's been dealing with this for years and years and years it's current wiener she is a co-owner of the new wheel Carn great to see you thanks thanks for having me absolutely so give us a little background on the new wheel where are you guys how long have been around what's your what's your focus yeah and the new wheel is located in San Francisco and Marin County and Larkspur we opened in 2010 so about eight years ago out of our excuse me out of our apartment because we realized that nobody was really seeing the opportunity in this transportation alternative right and so we were seeing what was happening in Europe which like you said has been happening for a while and we realized that gosh San Francisco is the perfect place it's it's an obvious match an electric bike which basically amplifies your pedaling power acts exactly like a bicycle except for you're always in your best shape and having your best day and having the most fun and so um we started with basically one bike who are three bikes and we had a mobile shop that we would ride from farmers market to farmers market then we opened our first store in 2012 and we're still in that location in Bernal Heights in San Francisco and we focus on curating high quality electric bikes that are going to work really well in San Francisco which as you know is a really rugged especially in terms of elevation gain environment right so what if you could talk about some things some miss or not miss so one thing is why we came here is we were really looking at e-bikes is really a last bio vehicle and that's kind of in the in the line of smart cities and in kind of multimodal transportation do you'd have a lime scooter to the Cal train maybe it's your car maybe you've got your own bike but what I'm hearing here is these things are a lot more than last mile vehicles these are actually substitution vehicles for a significant amount of car rides not just the two miles run down to the store to get some milk or to get some cereal or to get some coffee but a much heavier load on these things yeah it's very very interesting so if we look to Europe the ebike started as a replacement for bicycle trips in kind of urban environments for people who are maybe getting older or whatever and the Bison and any bike works really well for just in in turn inner-city transportation there's been an interesting kind of development in Europe in the last say four or five years which is the rise of the speed electric bike you can with a very small battery you can ride 40 to 60 miles 40 to 60 months yeah and that means that you can ride from one city to another so now what we're seeing is a clerk across the Netherlands actual bicycle super highways that cover maybe you know five to 20 miles and that becomes a reasonable bicycle ride on the daily basis and that's really exciting it's something that is unlike basically any other form of transportation it's not a motorcycle it's not that heavy-duty you don't need license or insurance or anything like that you're still getting exercise and you're getting where you need to get right so it's talked about the speed because the speed is interesting thing and I think the speed is what dictates some of the regulation so we see in San Francisco got inundated with the Lyme scooters and there's boosted boards and one wheels and all sorts of kind of contraptions with these great high-capacity batteries and these itty-bitty little little motors so the form factors are numerous but all of them seem to be gated around 20 miles an hour which I think is the regulation to keep them from being considered a scooter you know a internal-combustion scooter so you're talking about speed bikes so they've got bikes here today that goes like 28 miles an hour so how are the regulations keeping up with us a bike that goes 28 miles an hour so it's developing slowly it's developing based on models that have already been tested and used in Europe in California there was actually a model legislation passed I think three years ago which defined three types of electric bikes and defines them as bicycles so type 1 is a bicycle that goes to 20 miles an hour and basically it has to be you have to be pedaling type 2 is a bicycle it also goes to 20 miles an hour but can have a throttle now this is a very Asian type of electric bike it's not quite as polished but usually they're lower-cost okay and then type three is this 27 mile an hour type still a bicycle you're required to wear a helmet and there are some places that you're not allowed to ride them like on shared pedestrian paths right and so what's good about this is it's creating a model for different local and regional governments to create rules it's taking time from but what's exciting is that there is a model so the scooters and the one wheels are all operating under cut-ins this DMV law that is kind of this type of as you describe it is kind of type 1 but it's also kind of skirt like it seems really unclear right I think there's an opportunity and electric bikes for it to be very clear and I think we're on the way to that it's just going to take something right now in terms of the actual utility obviously this is a Dutch company they don't have great weather in Holland as we know San Francisco as you mentioned is a rugged place not to mention the fact it's about as rough as it gets for parked cars getting broken into so what do you see from your customers in terms of the actual utility carrying stuff home from the store survivability in the streets you know not getting stolen inexpensive pieces of gear so what's kind of the experience you've seen with your kind of long history in this space in the city so what I've seen is that what you use matters a lot so the type of bike that you choose out of the gate is going to dictate first of all how well it's going to last and second of all how well it's gonna work in the first place right the other thing is that the way it's not only the bicycle you also have to have the right lock and you have to have the right bag and the right set up to give you the actual full utility potential of the bicycle and that's where you know specialists and retailers really come in you also need service so most people have owned bicycles in their lifetime and it may be stretched one train stretching a chain takes about 2,000 miles on a bike okay an e bike rider usually stretches a train in a little under a year because suddenly your bicycle is your preferred mode of transportation for thousands of miles of errands and and urban duties and and pleasure right that you never had before on a bicycle so it's a switch in terms of how people understand the maintenance that they need on their bike but also what kind of tools they need like a great lock and it turns out that you actually can lock a bike safely not overnight on the street but at any time of day there are locks that work really really well through the bike safe so next day on touch bases kind of the evolving technology yeah so we're hearing over and over that really the the battery technology is getting this just huge boost from autonomous cars because now there's huge investments in battery you've probably seen tremendous developments both in the batteries and the propulsion systems and the technology and these bikes since you've been out that's four for eight years how is that kind of changing and how is that opening up you know maybe the opportunity to people that maybe didn't wanna a shorter range you know six a 10 a 12 a 15 wherever the older kind of range models were battery technology that that originated in laptops and I was being used in cars and autonomous vehicles totally changed the potential for electric bikes and it changes it will change so many things about your bicycle for example not too far down the road I believe that there will be anti-theft devices on every electric bicycle that you buy you're gonna be able to track your bicycle you're gonna be able to track your heart rate you're gonna be able to do all these things seamlessly just as part of your life so when you put a battery on a bike it changes everything about what it can do right now it's assist in the future will be many things there was this switch about eight years ago from old very heavy very polluting batteries to lithium-ion batteries and it it means that you can have a bicycle that is that you can lift you know that weighs between maybe 35 and 60 pounds that will take you anywhere from 25 to 100 miles right right and that's a game-changer right so last question for you what is like the biggest surprise when somebody comes in the store you know you sit him down so any bike and they come back for their first maintenance whatever that they say how this thing has really impacted their lives integrating activity into your life can change your life in all sorts of ways it can reduce stress the funniest one was this this guy came in they'd had this family that had a baby like six months ago guy comes in buys a bike and he comes back for his new tuna and he goes Karen my wife owes you a big one she's a much happier woman now people love their bikes what surprises them I think the most most often is just how many miles they're accruing on their odometer and that makes them excited from a health standpoint from an environmental standpoint and just from a joy in your daily life standpoint when we all live with a lot of stress at a lot of multitasking and taking 20 minutes on your bike and just having a great relaxing time is unbeatable right well thanks for a card take it a few minutes and and sharing the story and nothing but success for the store alright cheese Caron I'm Jeff you're watching the cube we're at the Royal Dutch gazelle bike event outside of Interbike in Reno Nevada thanks for watching [Music]