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This bike booster will probably come in at less than half the cost but the Bimotal kit is another option that doesn't have the tire wear issue, offers better performance, and the form factor is much nicer.

https://bimotal.com/products/elevate

Also:

* you cannot install them on bikes with a rear rack. Here most city bikes have them.

And, don't forget: easy to steal off even a well-secured bicycle.

Yeah. I don’t see weather or theft addressed in this design.

I recall a wheel-mounted rotor system from a few years back that did address theft, tire-wear, and weather, but it suffered from far too little torque and very limited battery life.

Looks like you can't have a passenger anymore either. I like to have my kid on the backseat of my e-bike.

I'm not in the market for this, but I am in the market for making my cargo bike electric. Having to slow down at a traffic light and then start from zero absolutely sucks. It goes very slow, it is rough, and you won't have time. I'd use it just for that specific use-case.

Personally I also don't see the niche they serve. If I'm going far away I take a train or a car. I pretty much exclusively use my bike to ride to a nearby grocery store or do other close-by errands. If I'm doing short errands like this, I really prize being able to get on and off quickly and lock my bike up quickly. A device like this needs to be taken with you when you leave your bike to prevent theft. It's a whole nother step and a lot of extra weight

Are there any mechanically coupled solutions that can be field installed by the owner?

I had a gas powered goped that worked that way years ago. Had all those problems but it was fun. The second you hit any water the drive shaft would just spin against the tire.

I remember back in the 90s some guys at my school fitted a whipper snipper motor to a 12” kiddy bike with a friction drive (I think it was a skateboard wheel fitted to the output shaft).

They could have made basically the same thing except with a sprocket to help drive the chain.

Throttled motors on ebikes are terribly unsafe, compared to pedal assist centeral motors. I just got rear-ended by a illegally hot-rodded fat bike with a throttle, when the asshole lost control of his bike after hitting my rear wheel trying to pass at illegally high speed without bothering to ring his bell, and he flipped over and spilled onto the bike path.

I was fine, but surprised he so carelessly and thoughtlessly sneaked up on me and tried to pass when I was already going fast down hill off of a bridge over a canal, on my legal eBike with 25 kph maximum assist.

Pedaling makes you pay attention and gives you direct control over the speed, and the assist drops out once you'r going >25 kph. The asshole who hit me from behind probably didn't have time to find the throttle with his hand, and was never really in control of his bike or paying much attention up to when he freaked out and hit me.

What to do about fatbikes endangering our safety?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/1knza1c/what_t...

Fatbikes in the Netherlands 2026: What You Actually Need to Know

https://bikefair.org/blog/fatbikes-netherlands-guide-2026

If the road is even little bit wet like after rain or morning mist, the dirt from the road ends up in your backside without fenders unless you drive very slowly.

Find a bicycle without mudguards and ride very slowly, or just ride on clean roads on a sunny days.

Yes my grandfather had one. It worked well on flat terrain. I think it used a motorcycle battery so batteries were easy to find and charge.

Solex got used much longer than post WWII, the engine is very easy to service. I had one when I was 15, and most of my friends did as well. Everyone in the village had either a "solex" or an old "mobilette".

That is the same for most bicycle parts that you can remove with a small multitool and optionally a cable cutter yet most thieves just grub the whole bike as it is more convenient and it provides the getaway vehicle.

pitlock pit stoppers?

https://www.pitlock.de/en/set-sichert-2-innensechskantschrau...

They could ship it with a pair of those bolts where the heads break off during installation

In addition to the theft concerns, it's also not a great product.

This product is for people who live in safe neighborhoods and bike a lot, aka not the average American.

I actually bought one of these and love it. My road bike is indistinguishable from any other normal road bike with the exception of it being much easier to get around now.

From experience I can say that it seems like a lot more common sense to simply replace the front wheel of your bike with a wheel containing an electric motor, rather than attaching whatever Asus is selling to your bike.

It says it has a wireless cadence sensor. With that said, torque sensors were an improvement over cadence sensors.

To elaborate a bit, friends of mine have had bikes with both cadence and torque sensors. And I've tried their bikes out. Agreeing with one friend, the bike with the cadence sensor seems to decide how fast it wants to go.

The bike with the torque sensor behaves a lot more like what you're used to from riding a conventional bike. After all, the control input to a conventional bike is torque.

ASUS does make power banks, and the vast majority of the cost of any ebike is in the battery.

> I really want to know how they landed on this.

RAM prices.

Similar friction drives have existed for a while. The battery is very small compared to a regular ebike (typically they start at about 300wh.) Also, IIRC the friction drive is not very efficient.

Get a Bafang kit or a hub motor replacement rear wheel instead. At least those systems work well.

Have a look at Bafang or Tongsheng kits

"How do I take it off to charge inside?"

It has a removable battery so it seems the mechanism is designed to be left on the bike.

It's fashionable and it takes strong leadership to avoid fashionable things even when they make absolutely no sense

A follow-me tandem (which couples a kids bike to your bike) is a much better solution than giving a 9yo a poorly controlled motor.

Basically, the Copenhagen Wheel moved all the complexity of setting up a hub motor drive system - motor, battery, controller, sensors, computer - into the hub shell itself.

Which made it seem neat and clean, but meant it had serious reliability issues, couldn't handle wet conditions[], wasn't really repairable, and was expensive compared to more reliable alternatives with better battery life, etc.

[] The manufacturer apparently stated that "[...bad bearings] can occur when the Wheel is repeatedly exposed to wet conditions. Due to the nature of the problem, this cannot be repaired": https://forums.electricbikereview.com/threads/known-issues-p...

It went on sale in the US before the EU. Did you even skim the wiki page you linked?

Their AI bot is just as grim

Me: when's the bike booster available to purchase?

ASUS AI: For the most accurate and up-to-date product release information, we recommend following our Facebook and Instagram channels. We share all our launch announcements there first, along with exciting product previews.

Hilarious advice given both Meta products are notorious for not showing everything from the accounts you follow.

Bicycles in general can be trivially stolen.

According to articles like this one[0], they haven't shared pricing yet - so I guess it can't be bought quite yet.

[0]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/outdoors/asus-made-an-e-bike-c...

It's less of an issue for this device. The reason is that the motor is further from the axle than a hub motor would be. Thus, there's less force on the frame for a given amount of torque.

Depends on the bike and motor combo. Something like a mountain bike from the last 20 years would be fine, but I wouldn’t try and put one on like a road bike from the 70s or something. Basically anything that’s well built sturdy steel is going to be ok with the common sub kilowatt motors, but there are like crazy ones that will output considerably more power than that.

Also that’s going to be more applicable with a mid drive or a hub motor than something like this.

Interesting point. That might be the only thing this thing has going for it self. The angle of force is perfect even for the most fragile frame.

Weight

3.7 kg (including battery)

In the USA, there are more than 52 jurisdictions not including towns and cities and counties, but most (not all) states think of ebikes as being slightly restricted bicycles rather than motorcycles, as long as:

- they have functional pedals (otherwise it's a motorcycle of some kind)

- they require pedal assist at all times and have some kind of power or speed limitation (anyone can use this, or at least it is least restricted)

- they have pedal assist available and have a different, higher power or speed limitation (usually reserved for 16+ or something similar)

- they have a power or speed limitation that makes them suitable for adults only but doesn't require a driver's license or inspection

There are efforts to regularize these, and also efforts to make things more chaotic. For example, New Jersey decided that all ebikes require a new ebike license and vehicle registration. Across the river in New York, no ebikes require a license or registration, and may be operated on any street which has a 30mph speed limit or less... but cities are allowed to make their own rules.

California's laws are mostly regarded by bicyclists as being sensible, at least in every discussion I've seen that didn't feature a twelve year old trying to convince his parents to buy him a 70mph electric motorcycle. See https://thecyclistchoice.com/resources/california-ebike-laws...

In most jurisdictions it's only a motorcycle if it can exceed a certain speed or has a motor over a certain power in kilowatts. Or some combination of both.

recent news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89nyk4pz74o

There's no restriction on manufacturing e-bikes anywhere that I know of, as long as they obey the speed/power limits. (That's why it says 500W "peak" power - the continuous power limit in the UK at least is 250W but manufacturers just make the "peak" last for a very long time.)

When I see obvious out of shape ebikers passing me uphill while barely moving their legs, I’m assuming that the power rating of their ebike is about right and the torque curve might be weird to stay legal.

I agree that rim brakes on an e-bike is extra bad.

> Almost everything was invented in the 1890s, and every couple of decades someone tries another old idea.

What about wireless shifting systems like Di2?

It only gives a boost for 50km.

These would be great for many places that have storage restrictions on e-bikes, but not normal bikes. So you can easily detach and bring with you before storing it.

any particular one you recommend in usa

my costco has magnum melody

People with knee problems, areas with hills. An ebike is still active movement; sure you're not getting any cardio, but it's immeasurably better than driving. If this (or any ebike) is a thing that gets someone on a bike that otherwise wouldn't be on a bike, it is a good thing. For some it might be a stepping stone, for others it allows them to ride where they can't/won't ride at all.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019821...

"Physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists."

E-bikes make people who aren't fit enough to ride muscle powered bikes to start doing moderate exercise on local trips they would used cars for before.

Found the person who lives in Kansas. Sometimes I just want to ride to work without having to deal with that 2km hill on the way. And my bike is still human-powered, with electric assist. Do you not know how e-bikes work, perhaps?

Signed, former Cat 2 road racer