UNEASY RIDER

When you want some extra oomph on two wheels.

- PATRICIA MARX

You ou can learn a lot about what's trending by reading T-shirts. A few months ago, I saw someone on the subway whose chest announced, "My other car is an eBike."The tee was onto something: e-bikes are the top-selling electric vehicle in the United States. In 2020, Americans bought more than twice as many e-bikes as they did electric cars (score: an estimated 500,000 to 231,000).

In China, e-bikes outnumber all cars, e- and not e-, Edward Benjamin, the chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle Association, told me over the phone from his house in Fort Myers, Florida.

He went on, "Can Americans change from a four-wheel culture to a two-wheel culture in the next century? I say absolutely! There ain't enough roadway, there ain't enough materials to build cars, there ain't enough wealth to sustain the car culture." As someone who is not an influencer but an influencee, I have had an urge lately to strap on a helmet, join the traffic, and e-go with the flow. "When the pandemic came, that pretty much ripped the cover off of the e-bike business," Shane Hall, a senior buyer for Bicycles NYC, told me one afternoon at the company's Upper East Side operation, which was crammed with bicycles and accessories.