Citi Bike’s Fleet of eBikes are Back in New York City

The electric bike situation in New York City continues to make its rounds as Citi Bike, a company owned by Lyft reintroduces a new line of ebikes into New York City today for their bike share program.

Reports say that about 250 new ebikes will be available at bike share stations around NYC within the week. This is huge news as not only have the use of ebikes in New York been a controversial topic as of late, but also after Lyft recalled 2,500 of their ride share electric bikes from New York City, San Francisco and D.C. just last April due to safety concerns.

Citi Bike looks to relieve some of those concerns now with their newly designed ebikes that feature more efficient brakes, a single gear, and 2 bells which should help as many of the concerns of safety came from pedestrians of the city.

The new bikes will be class 1 e-bikes without a throttle and feature speed-assist up to 18 mph. As many ebikers know, this is a fairly low power compared to the class 2 and  3 electric bikes that are popular amongst cyclists but great for those who aren’t particularly used to riding ebikes.

Citi bike has also made a change for their electric bike pricing, having switched from a flat $2 fee for all ebike rentals to a per minute charge of 10 cents per minute for members and 15 cents per minute for non members with a cap of $2 for members who ride for less than 45 minutes outside of Manhattan.

This is a small reintroduction of their new electric bike line from Citi Bike and they most likely look to slowly increase the number of ebikes in their NYC fleet within time as they see fit.


(Source: TheVerge.com)