I’d be riding an ebike right now, if I knew how I could park it safely :/ do you typically bring it with you?
I mean, how much does your e-bike cost? If you can get one, especially a used one for a relatively affordable price and you actually sit down and tally up car costs like insurance, gas, maintenance, AAA, tires, any number of other costs…. I don’t think it matters if someone occasionally steals your e-bike (outside of it being extremely frustrating and inconvenient). Someone could steal your e-bike every 6 months or so and you likely will still be spending FARRRRRR less buying a new/used electric bicycle than you would just owning a car and using it and then having to deal with the insane never ending bullshit costs of keeping a car on the road.
So idk, build up a savings so you can replace your e-bike if you need to and then just use it. So long as you get a years use out of it or so it has already earned you quite a bit of money from cutting car costs.
Get one of those e-bikes with a removable battery with a key lock, then take your battery so if someone steals your bicycle they can’t steal the actually expensive part.
“It doesn’t matter if someone occasionally steals your bike” is… one hell of a crap take.
Why? Using a car you can lock up seems like a better alternative intuitively, I am pointing out that other than the emotional distress of having an object of yours stolen, owning a car is a regular rolling disaster of costs and suffering that dwarfs somebody running off with your $800 used e-bike every couple of months.
How is this a bad take? It is literally a documented phenomena that people don’t rationally take into account how expensive owning and using a car is.
I use an Oxford Monster chain and U lock. I park my bike in highly visible areas. Registered it with 529 garage and have the tracking sticker on it. And if I’m really sketched out, I activate a bike alarm that is ungodly loud.
Mostly, it’s about making your bike harder to steal. Cutting through 12mm chain and a standard ulock sucks. Getting caught with it being easily identified on 529 makes it risky to steal and easy to be returned. Some cities also do bike valet or bike lockers.
