While I’m still looking into an allegation that Lyft ordered the destruction of 400 Biketown bikes, I’ve got some interesting related news to share: Portland will soon get Lyft’s newest generation e-bike. (UPDATE. 4:45 pm: They’ve been launched! Scroll to end for the official word.)
Users of the Biketown app and website recently reported seeing a graphic and text that reads, “Meet the new Biketown e-bike.” I reached out to Lyft and they confirmed Portland will get the new bikes after a testing phase is complete. No word yet on when we’ll see the new bikes or how many will be added to our fleet.
The bikes Portland is about to get are known as Lyft’s “Cosmo” model that the company debuted in 2021 and was first used in Chicago later that same year. Since then the bike has been launched in San Francisco and New York City, where they are so popular it’s often hard to find one to rent. Lyft says when the bikes launched in Chicago they received almost 90% more trips per day than the bikes they replaced.
Given how Lyft has rolled these out in other cities and given that the Biketown website still shows the current e-bike models on the page, we can expect Portland’s bike share system to offer both bikes simultaneously. (Citi Bike in New York City has three different bikes in their system: A non-motorized bike, a first-gen e-bike, and the new Cosmo model.)
Portland’s new bike share bikes will be much different than the e-bikes we currently have in the fleet. Biketown will drop the bright “Nike box orange” color it’s had since its launch in 2016. The new color will be light grey, the same as the new electric scooters that hit the streets last week. Lyft and the City of Portland have had major issues with fading paint, so the new color will remedy that problem.
The new bikes will have a more modern look with a one-piece downtube that has an integrated battery. The fully enclosed chain is also different than the bikes we use now. Users will also appreciate the new seat adjustment lever because it’s much more ergonomic and easy-to-use than the current bikes. Other distinct features include an LCD screen on the dash and a futuristic front light.
I rode the Cosmo e-bikes extensively in New York City last fall and they were really fun and worked well. There is no shifting and the powerful motor simply adjusts to your input. One negative I recall is that the ride is extremely harsh — of course that could be partly a function of the bumpy street conditions in Manhattan.
Lyft says the new bikes have stronger batteries which means they’ll remain in the field (and available to riders) longer before having to be swapped out. A brighter headlight and reflective paint will make these bikes safer than the older ones.
Portland launched Biketown in 2016 with analog bikes, then went fully electric in 2020.
Look for these new bikes to land soon. If you see one in the field please let me know. I’ll update this post if I hear any confirmation about a launch date.
UPDATE, 4:45 pm: PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera said the new bikes have hit the streets today. In the coming weeks Lyft will deploy 350 new Cosmo e-bikes. That, along with a service area expansion in the Sellwood area (including the Springwater Corridor), is “great news for Biketown riders,” Rivera said.
Thanks for reading.
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Interesting. Looks like no disc brake in the front, probably saves some maintenance. Can’t tell on the back if that’s a disc. If they’re all internal, I hope they’re good because those bikes go fast!
I’m sure the harsh ride feel is just that they’re really overbuild and have the tires inflated to diamond hardness to protect the rims.
I wonder about the internal battery choice. Does that mean they have to move the whole bike to charge? Maybe that’s what they do now, but at least now there is a possibility of just swapping batteries. I commented in another post that I don’t know the solution to the “trucks have to drive around to service the bikes” problem, and I was thinking maybe one possibility is if they were user-serviceable, with charging stations that let users swap a battery in exchange for free ride credit or something. Obviously with repercussions for disappearing batteries / batteries that can’t be used elsewhere easily. Then you don’t need thousands of charging stations and you “only” have to deal with bike maintenance.
Maybe these new batteries are integrated but still easily removed.
Just wanted to clarify: the battery is “integrated” into the down-tube, rather than a bulky knob that sits on-top of the down-tube.
The batteries will still be able to be swapped. More info here: https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/meet-lyfts-new-ebike
IIRC, Lime has a contract with B-Line Cargo bikes to perform battery swaps. A similar model might work well here.
From the photos, it appears there is no bungee or tiedowns on the front basket. If that’s the case, is it useful for anything?
It has a built in Bungie, but it’s mostly only visible from above.
And they still don’t have full fenders. Fine if you don’t care about being splattered with road grime I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It does have a front fender
A very inadequate one, yes.
Lyft’s website brags about the “thousands of hours of testing and tinkering” that went into the new design. Apparently at no time during those tests did anyone try to carry anything in the front basket after dark, or they would have noticed that bulky objects (like shopping bags) would block the headlight. Ah, but now the bike looks more like a car! Hooray!
Headlight is below the basket. The light above the basket can red if the bike isn’t available.
No shifting sounds like it might make it tricky to get started. Of course, many bikeshares I’ve ridden don’t properly shift anyway so it could be an improvement!
They added Sellwood and the Springwater corridor?! Way to bury the lede Jonathan! Seriously though, with the amount of wrangling PPR required I never thought we’d see the day…
haha I hear you William. But consider that this story came only from my work to get the scoop on the new bikes and there has been no formal press release or statement about the service expansion yet AFAIK. What’s really odd to me is that PBOT/Lyft would add all these bikes and the service extension and not let me and other news people know about it beforehand!!
Seriously, what an odd PR tactic. It almost makes me wonder if this is some sort of soft-launch designed to test allowing ebikes on PPR territory, with the possibility it will be rolled back if things are not to their liking? Trying not to see a conspiracy in an ostensibly good thing, maybe I’ve just been reading too much of The Power Broker…
then again, as is sometimes the case I will share things on here that PBOT isn’t quite ready to fully release publicly, so I won’t be surprised if we do see the formal statement and announcement in the coming days.
The COSMO is an interesting vehicle for shared fleet use…I have ridden it in other cities since 2022 and love some design features (seat adjustment) but not others (weight, fender coverage, etc.) and question others (retro reflective paint = more rider safety). The big question is “this” the best direction to go for a city (vs corporation)? This is a key question, in our planning for introducing ebikes in Honolulu we debated the higher (retail) cost of the COSMO (~>$5k) vs PBSCs eFIT ebike (~$2.5k). [And then again Lisbon’s (made in the EU) GIRA ebike was half the cost of PBSCs bike the last time I got a quote.] What is better for a system: more bikes or more features, etc.? If grants cover the higher fleet capital cost and you can meet demand then more expensive bikes may be the may to go. Additionally, the PBSC eBikes allow recharging at the dock, saving labour and vehicle emissions. (Assuming the station connection costs are manageable). Rebalancing by cargo bicycles is good but still labour intensive without some customer gamification of rebalancing (bikeshare angel credits).
The US bikeshare industry is at a similar crossroads that US carshare was at ~10 years ago…like when Car2Go decided to shift from small 2 seater Smart Cars (some electric) to larger 4 seater more conventional cars for oneway rental trips. IMTO: The smaller cars were better for typical car share user needs (in town trips) and more iconic (visible). [SADLY Car2Go went away to become ShareNow which then failed in the US and has now become Free2Move in EU.] And we will see if more expensive feature rich ebikes [with likely higher rental costs] will be the best way to grow bikeshare in the US.
If any Lyft people are reading this, here’s an app suggestion. Let me store my preferred seat setting, and make it visible to me when I check out a bike. I don’t ride all that often, and so I don’t usually remember what setting I like. It would be great if I could store and easily see it, and even better if it showed up on the bike display itself at the beginning of the ride in some unobtrusive manner.
Then it would become a preference that you have to manually update if it’s not feeling right.
I think a configuration question before your first rental would be better. “How tall are you?” Then it could recommend a range for your height in a popup when the rental starts: “We recommend setting the seatpost between 6 and 9”
Yes — that’s exactly what I want.
I’m less interested in the second option, but I could see a way of working that in.
I saw one of those locked out on SE Holgate the other day.
Idk about “Fading paint causing major issues”, seems pretty minor to me.