Lectric XP4: First Ride

 After MANY delays and much hemming and hawing, my Lectric XP4.0 750W e-bike was delivered today.

Here are my thoughts:

First off, it’s heavy. I cannot stress how heavy this thing is, weighing in at around 70 lbs., STOCK (I added a saddle bag and a rear basket to the built-in rack, so as equipped and with no cargo it has to weigh closer to 75 lbs. now).

Putting it together was easy, as it is mostly assembled out of the box, with a few items requiring adjustments and nearly everything requiring tightening up. The biggest issue I had during assembly was the mount for the included bicycle lock; the instructions show the mounting points below the seat post, but if you mount the lock case in that position there is no way to replace the bike lock into the sheath, meaning that the instructions are for an earlier model. It was honestly such a pain in the ass to put on, and such a weird lock (it’s not a chain, but a bunch of flat pieces on hinges, kind of like those old folding rulers that we used to have) that I’m not sure that it’s worth bothering with at all, but it was free. 

I put air in the tires, adjusted the seat and the handlebars, which are on tube latches, so once you get them into the position you want adjusting them up and down is a snap. 

I should point out that the official “how to video” is pretty irritating to watch, as it uses the same sound cues for every little segment, and for the most part is about as exciting as watching a 90s-style VHS “how to operate your copier/printer” sort of ad. One thing of note though, is they have you fold the bicycle, remove the battery, and then plug the battery in (which is a lot of steps and is particularly annoying for me, because of the lack of workspace in my back room). It’s only after I did all of those steps that the video shows that you can just plug the charger in on the bicycle while it’s all together, negating the need for any of the previous five minutes of the video. I suppose that info is there if you want it, but I really didn’t need it.

I put it on the charger and then went to bed. They recommend NOT doing this, as they want you to be awake if the lithium ion battery pack decides to explode, but I had been up since 3 AM and really couldn’t be bothered. I woke up at 7 PM to a fully charged bicycle (it took about 4 hours total), and then I decided to play “hooky” and call off work. Despite the warnings of rain it was still quite bright and blue outside, and so I wanted to take my new ride out on an adventure. 

Getting it down the stairs was difficult. All of the weight is in the back of the machine, so despite there being sufficient hand-holds it’s still difficult to manage. The thing is surprisingly large and chunky for being such a small shipping package, and the “fat tire” style of the wheels make up for their lack of diameter with an impressive girth. Still, once it was on the ground, the “step-through” frame is a welcome innovation.

The first thing I tried was riding the bike without the pedal assist on. This was a mistake. It functions as a regular bicycle with the assist off, but it functions as a 75 lb. bicycle, which is horrifying if you think about it too much. I put it in the first assist mode, “Eco,” which really just seems to compensate for the weight of the bike, and honestly makes it feel like pushing a proper road bike on flat pavement, giving you the cadence and torque that you would expect from a much lighter machine, but not exactly speedy in itself. 

I should explain that there are basically two types of e-bikes: Ones with cadence sensors, and ones with torque sensors. A cadence sensor reads your pedal inputs and works to match your speed, while a torque sensor actually reads the amount of torque you’re putting into the pedals and adjusting accordingly. This bike has the torque sensor system, so when you’re going up hills or trying to speed faster there is absolutely resistance like a regular bike, even in the faster pedal assist modes. It’s sort of a weird sensation, and there’s definitely a delay (especially when you switch gears using the rear hub derailer), but I never got stuck on a hill still having to switch gears, so that’s something.

I decided to take my bike past my place of work to see if it was any faster or easier than with my road bike, and… yeah. Even in “Eco” mode, I was able to maintain a higher speed at a lower resistance with a higher cadence. It felt good. The bike’s front fork and seat suspension took much of the impact away from “the cheese grater” (how I refer to the bike-hike trail in its current condition), and even the ridiculous gaps between the blacktop slabs feel far less damaging to my spine than they do on my “boneshaker” road bike, but it still doesn’t feel good, because that trail is terrible. 

After that I wanted to see if it was any easier to climb Hatch Run (I attempted that route yesterday on my road bike, and I failed), but on my way up just past the mall I came across a sight that you don’t see every day: A discarded wallet, with all of the ID and everything still in it. I found the driver’s license, and it was an address in Russel. I put the address into Google maps, and it was about twelve miles away. “Huh,” I said, “I can do that!”

So the route Google took me is as follows:

Hatch run to Conewango Avenue, Conewango Avenue to Big 4 Road, Big 4 Road to Priest Hollow, Priest Hollow to Renolds Road, Renolds Road to Cable Hollow Road, Cable Hollow Road to Warren-Onoville Road, Warren-Onoville Road to Norman Road, and Norman Road to Carr Road. 

I wanted to see how bad Big 4 Road was to bike on for a while now, so I didn’t question Google at all. Big 4 was pleasant. Big 4 was stony, but nice. Renolds Road, however… 

I could swear that I heard banjo music playing when I first got on that road. Well, when I say “road” that implies infrastructure, but the reality of the situation is that Renolds Road is a strip of mud sprinkled with gravel that is draped over a few huge boulders slapped onto a hill with street signs pointing to it. It’s also extremely vertical. Unpleasantly vertical. I tried my bike’s “Sport+” pedal assist mode because my speed had diminished to about 4 miles per hour at one point and I thought that I might be crushed underneath it if I fell. I’m sure that it was this stretch that ate up most of my battery power, dropping from around 80% to 60% over the course of the ascent. 

It was only when I reached the top of Renolds Road that I realized where I was, and that I probably could have just taken Priest Hollow or Hatch Run up there and saved myself a bit of agony. The address in question was in Red Oak Campground. I put the bike back down to “Eco” mode, but the lure of “Sport” mode was just too much, and so that’s where I left it almost the entire rest of the night.

When I got to Red Oak, it was quickly becoming dark, and I discovered that the bike’s built in “Pro Light” was woefully insufficient to provide any meaningful illumination. Seriously, I can’t imagine the reason for even having the non-Pro version of this piece of junk. Even worse, every time I hit a bump (which was frequent in Russell), the obnoxiously heavy thing would start tipping toward the front wheel, and this was a constant problem for the rest of the night even after I had tightened it a few times.

After Google tried to send me down an imaginary road a couple of times, I finally made it to Carr Road, where I found a man weed-whacking in the front yard of what I presumed was the address. “Excuse me sir, I’m looking for Micah.” 

He looked at me suspiciously, “do you know Micah?

“No,” I responded, getting off my bike, “but I found his wallet on the side of the road.”

It turns out that the man was his father, and that Micah has lost it on his way home after getting gas. He must have laid it on his car, where it fell off on his way home.

“Tell me you didn’t ride all the way up here just to return this.” 

“Yes,” I responded, “it’s okay: I was planning on being on my bike all night long anyway.”

I turned around to come home, deciding to just follow Scandia Road back down to town, as I’m more familiar with it, and the state of the light wasn’t instilling within me a lot of confidence. While on my way back, a pickup truck pulled up beside me. It was the man again, clearly thankful and he offered me $4 out of his wallet and to give me a ride home. “No need,” I said, “I’m just out here for an adventure.” A car came up behind and we parted ways.

As I made my way back to town around a quarter after 10 PM, I noticed even through the darkness that the clouds over Warren were a much uglier shade of purple than the ones over Scandia. I decided to take Conewango Avenue to go to the downtown Country Fair, as they’re open 24 hours a day and I hadn’t anything to eat since about 6:30 in morning. Just before I got to the lit streets of downtown Warren though, the rain started falling. I wasn’t too concerned, as the XP4.0 is IPX5 rated for splashes and heavy rain (it probably wouldn’t survive a dip in the river, though), but I was concerned about visibility, so I decided to cut the night short and head home (by this point I was down to 30% battery power, and from what I’ve heard after they drop to 20% they start to lose steam). Lucky me, though: Once I got to Pleasant Drive the rain had stopped, the Pleasant Drive Country Fair was still open (although I got attitude from the people there for coming in a little less than two hours before they closed expecting food), and the ride home was pleasant enough.

Getting the bike back up the stairs though… That was a challenge.

So my odometer on the first day is 39 miles over the course of about three hours of riding, which isn’t too shabby (especially considering the terrain and verticality of much of it). I had a lot more fun than I had anticipated.

Final thoughts: I might have to go with a more traditional bicycle saddle than the cushy one that Lectric included, as I’m going to be sore tomorrow from my poor job of adjusting it and the fact that it’s so wide that my fat thighs kept rubbing up against the “horn.” The bike very sturdy and the electric motor is very quiet, but in spite of that there is a lot of rattle noise, mostly from the chain, the battery, and the beefy plastic fenders. If you’re paranoid about every little sound it can weigh on you during the ride, but once you know what these sounds are you can tune them out (but they’ll still always be there). Shifting while going uphill causes the motor to cut out as a safety feature, but you can lose a lot of forward momentum if you’re not careful – you do not want this thing falling over onto you. The included light runs off the bike’s power, which is great, but it just makes me think that the light should have been better. The bike has hydraulic brakes which are a bit noisy but oh-so-abrupt. It definitely feels like the best-stopping bicycle that I’ve ever ridden. Riding was a workout, but not the workout that I’m used to with my road bike; there’s more of a feel of cadence and movement and not the raw strength that’s generally used to climb hills around here. As a result, my bum knee still feels wonky, but not as sore as it would normally be after such a long uphill ride.

Overall a pleasant experience with a few bumps in the road, both figuratively and literally.