Huh, I’m not gonna buy one because I have 2-3 more bikes/ ebikes and an electric unicycle in line in front of it, but that’s really cool. I don’t see schematics, but I didn’t look very hard. I did look at the parts section and that’s cool. Looks like they might have gotten their start making kits for other manufacturers vehicles.

Conversely, I poked my head into Open Street Map the other day to contribute some new bike rack locations I found and it’s amazing the amount of detail people have curated on there. I can see where the streetlights are in the parking lots, every power pole, etc. Soon I’ll be able to see what color the Marigolds in your mom’s yard are. :D

The enshittification of maps didn’t hit me as hard as search did, but maps was always a centralized service with a few key players, whereas the enshittification of search was helped by the web 2.0 shift.

Yup, with a minimum completion time of 1 hour for the video training and the policies you have to read afterwards. Also remember not to click the super obvious phishing emails that obviously came straight from your own IT department. :D

Louis Rossman, the revered right-to-repair crusader, had a similar take. Leaning and overleaning is inherent to how the device works and if you bust your head because you pushed past the point of failure that’s not 100% on Future Motion. I also rented a one wheel through a gear sharing app and had a similar impression: its clear when you’re reaching max lean.

What is on Future Motion and other EV manufacturers, in my opinion, is how all this bullshit tech that makes cars more difficult to repair at home or at the third party shop is being added to micro mobility devices. These vehicles should be easy to service, like a muscle bike or an unpowered skateboard. Isn’t one of the reasons cars suck that we spend way too much time/money maintaining them. I’d like that million dollars back please.

If people are blowing things up, perhaps we should teach more classes on electricity in high school. Or we could establish a trade license similar to a plumber or electrician, but certified to work on all small electronics. Obviously self-repair would still be legal, but to do it commercially in a storefront, you could guarantee that those people understand the difference between volts and amps and could define an ohm. Suddenly, 50% less houses burn down due to EV fires. (I would hope)

I imagine then that for an equivalent battery our sodium battery would weight 3 times as much and take up twice as much space as a lithium battery (plus any extra weight a larger housing or heavier mounting brackets add). Most of the ebikes I’ve ridden have batteries approximately the size of a 2L of cola.

My battery would no longer fit fully in the downtube, or would have to be paired with a second battery. Perhaps putting it in the frame triangle would work. For larger bikes, like cargo bikes, I could see a large flat battery being put in the bottom of the wheelbarrow part without really being that noticeable. Even if only half of bikes changed over, it would still be a win.

I’ve also visited a lithium mining area in the salt flats and what we’ve done to the indigenous folks’ land, communities, and to the people themselves is abhorrent. We can do better. Let’s hope these sodium batteries become available sooner rather than later, especially for circumstances where the weight/size are less of an issue.

The first time anything got caught in the gap, it would probably shatter the screens. I do like it better than the crease though

That’ll come out. Good thing I bough the optional $400 i…ron.

I have never had to make a claim on my bikes, so I can’t make a recommendation, but the insurance through my car insurance/ home insurance company.

Probably pretty low.

Congrats in the bike! I hope you have fun zipping all over town. If bike theft is a thing where you live, grab the serial number andsee about getting it added to your insurance under a personal articles policy. Mine is only $100/yr and I feel so much better about leaving it locked up out of my sight for a second.

Once we hit a critical mass of cyclists, more places will start getting valet bike parking or at least monitored bike parking. It’ll happen with breweries and trail adjacent businesses first. My town offers event racks at street fairs and parades and such. Not sure if they are monitored.

We can speed this along by requiring all commercial buildings of a certain size, renovated or newly constructed to have a signed bike room or monitored rack area.

It’s a shame that one asshole can ruin the fun for so many people. For $8k+ he could have stolen a single Ram 3500 hemi super duty mega cab instead and only negatively impacted a few people while making the roads safer for everyone.

I’ll reply without knowing your situation fully. If you don’t have an emergency fund that would cover several months worth of expenses that is probably the single most impactful thing you can do with $10k. A few high yield savings account offer rates around 4%, some of them have strings attached, so read how it works carefully. Think of this as insurance against unforseen expenses that you might otherwise have to put on a card and consequently pay interest for. Pick a number and always make sure you keep that account at that number.

If you already have an emergency fund, you have lots of options. Personally, I am onboard with the folks recommending index funds. I have an ETF that tracks the DOW and it has outperformed most of my individual stocks significantly over time.

Most importantly, strangers on the internet are likely not financial advisors and may not even know what they are doing. Take everything with a grain of salt and if you talk to any investment companies make sure you understand the difference and overlap between a financial advisor and a fiduciary.

So I already responded, but I’m seeing here that you are also a cyclist! I have tried a number of watches over the years and Garmin is absolutely the gold standard for fitness focused smartwatches. Some of them, like mine, only have buttons, no touchscreen, which sounds bad, but is actually amazing. Sure I can only choose from prewritten SMS responses, but I can get there with a few button clicks while riding (even on gravel). With my touchscreen watches, I used to have to stop to reply. The TFT screens also look better in direct sunlight than an LCD or OLED. So now, whenever my wife texts “where are you?” I can send a “out riding, love you” with only a few clicks. I also send her my GPS location when I ride in the road so she can have some peace of mind. I hear Wahoo also released a watch, haven’t heard much about it.

Cons are a weak app ecosystem and not quite as “smart” (meaning it is not as filled with tech gimmicks and an endless stream of notification chum). The stat analysis of your health data is best done via Garmin Connect app or even better, the desktop website. They let you download some of the reports as a CSV, but I’ve found that more often than that, the formatting and how the data is broken up in the csvs needs some work.

Do remember, while not a Google or an Apple, Garmin is still a big evil corporation trying to make money off chumps like you and me. You likely won’t get these features and keep your privacy 100% intact

Someone close to me had positive things to say about the Wyze watch as well. If apple and android are tier A, wyze is below that, but above all the F tier temu and amazon junk.

As someone who has bought a fair number of smartwatches and fitness trackers and always over-researches every decision I make:

• See the rest of the replies for info on cheap smart watches. They’re basically a cereal box toy.
• Depending on what you need, the MiBand or Amazfit bands had excellent battery life and there used to be 3rd party apps for your phone that did a much better job collecting and displaying your stats than Zepp or MiFit (the official apps) did. I miss my 1.5 month battery life. Its also possible to use gadget bridge so it’s all 100% offline though I understand its still a bit more rudimentary than a corporate cloud-based solution. I remember the bands I got from them running $25-50 USD
• Used Garmin devices or previous gen garmin devices can be had MUCH cheaper than list price on Amazon or so. I picked up a Fenix 6 a few years ago for less than half of the $600 list price. I love the lack of touchscreen because the button navigation is absurdly fast and no mistouches! This suits how I use a watch much better than trying to put a tiny a 2x2cm touchscreen on my wrist. These are fitness watches, but some have a few smart features. Depends on what you plan to use it for I guess.
• If you are a nerd (a good thing) and want to contribute to a cool project, Pine Computers, which makes the pinebook, pinetab, pinephone, etc. makes a device called the pinetime that is basically a smartwatch that is open to the community’s hacks and modifications. I haven’t bought one because my biking depends on my Garmin stats, but I am tempted to grab one to mess with it.

None of these are fancy “smarts first” watches like an Apple Watch or an Android Watch. I found I needed less smarts than I thought as I usually carry my phone at all times anyway. It is nice to have the doorbell ring on my wrist and to reply to texts by choosing from a few pre-written responses while biking, or otherwise unavailable to text. If you really want a bunch of apps and integration with your phones OS, Apple and Android are the big two and its not really feasible to go 3rd party for the same experience.

I spent around $3750 for my ebike. As an example of what that gets you, I tested a lot of bikes, cheap and expensive and here’s what stood out to me:

• Torque sensing rather than cadence sensing for pedal activation means my bikes torque scales with my own. A cheap bike just goes “oh, the pedals moved a half rotation, engage electric motorcycle mode”. This makes my bike feel more connected, it’s the difference between putting on an exoskeleton versus driving a walking robot from a cockpit.
• Torque specs and maintenance info clearly listed, bike shop can get spare parts. While I’d like to see parts availability commitments become more common, right now the best you can do is go with a well known brand.
• Frame geometry is often better on bikes from bike brands making bikes with tech than tech startups making bikes. This relates directly to on-bike comfort
• As we’re all discussing here, battery quality can make a difference in safety and functionality.

I hope this helps. I still think you can get a reputable bike at a good price, but I would generally skip the Temu, Amazon, no name rebrand ebikes out of concern for their quality.

I’m seeing that sodium ion batteries have lower energy density than lithium ion batteries. I’m not a chemist. So I had to do some searches and it appears this is measured by weight, not volume.

Using hypothetical numbers to explain my question imagine that…

• lithium battery weighs 1kg and has 5 stored energy units
• sodium battery weighs 3kg and has 5 stored energy units

How does this effect the space needed for the battery? If the physical density (not energy density) of sodium was 10 higher, maybe the battery weighs 3 times as much but because it is dense, that weight fits in a smaller (say 100 cubic units), heavier package. Conversely, if the physical density was 10 times lower the battery would be 3 times heavier but be 1000 cubic units.

My question is basically what is the difference in physical density of the materials (kg per cm^2)?

Unfortunately, ddg and google keep assuming I want to know about energy density.

$ wget kiasorrento. sh

…looks like it’s my car now. 😈😆

This is my car, I have a stereo with entertainment features. My mileage, drive time, fuel economy, and anything related to the systems of the car, shows up on a separate display strip. To the best of my knowledge, the stereo cannot control the car in any way. Its just there to play music for me. I dread the day I have to replace this car. I may just buy an old pre-telemetry 4x4. The roads around here have gotten too bad for a hatchback anyway.

I live in a suburban part of a medium sized US city. There is a school nearby that has similar problems.

• situated on a 2 lane collector road with bike lanes
• lots of no parking signs -they set up a bunch of cones and have crossing guards all around
• there are school zone flashers

Despite All This

• people park in doubled up bike lane/no parking area all the time and the way the cones are set up encourages it
• people swing their doors open into traffic and cross wherever they want
• during off times, the school has a sign forbidding use of their parking lot so people park in the bike lanes

Luckily, the speed limit is only 30 so when school is in letting out I take the lane and anyone that doesn’t like it can choke on a bottle of tire sealant.

My city is generally responsive when enough people comment on something and in general, you are likely to get a sentence or two back no matter what you comment on. I’m afraid to comment on this because the people picking up their kids in cars outnumber the cyclists and I forsee the school holding firm on closing their lot and they’ll probably quote something stupid like liability or security. Is it not also a liability if a kid steps out from behind a parked car and gets squished by an F350 Crew Cab Mega Hemi Coal Roaler? In any case, I think the more likely outcome would be accommodating the cars and moving the bikes into the road with sharrows or doing something like that.

If I was in charge, I’d put a speed table at each end of the school zone, narrow all crosswalks to the minimum acceptable distance and put the bike lanes behind a 6inch wide curb to make it more obvious that you cannot park there. I also want these lifted Ford Excursion drivers to watch us casually pedal past the traffic jam they create every single day. I’d force the school to open their lot where capacity permits and I’d start ticketing the shit out of anyone who stows up traffic in the area or parks where it is not allowed. There is a trail just south of the school that leads to a grocery store maybe 1/4 mile away. That’s where the car drivers could best pick up their kids. All the tickets should easily pay for the speed tables and upgrading the bike lanes and walking paths.

My wife balked when I bought a Ducky keyboard to replace the solar UN-powered, Bluetooth DIS-connected, keys popping everywhere garbage I got from work. Once she typed on it, she never had another complaint.