![]() ![]() This was in contrast to the few light and low-powered European and Japanese e-bikes available a decade and a half ago. In other words, a blend of a bicycle, moped, scooter and motorcycle. “They wanted high handlebars, comfortable seats, powerful motors and long range,” he said. When he was starting out in Humboldt County - home to back-to-the-landers and backwoods pot farmers - Mr. Numbers aren’t well reported for this young industry, but Rad Power Bikes is widely considered the largest e-bike seller in the United States. Now based in Seattle, his company approached $100 million in sales in 2019. I quickly became known as the kooky e-bike guy in my little hometown.”īy his junior year, he’d founded Rad Power Bikes. “All of a sudden, I’d be riding into town passing slow cars. Radenbaugh had a semi-reliable electric bike. But after six months of experimentation, Mr. “I needed to find a solution where I had freedom as a young person without a lot of dollars,” he said.īefore long, he was making his 16-mile school commute on his electric Frankenbike. Radenbaugh started tricking them out with old motorcycle-starter batteries, moped motors mail-ordered from Japan and crude powertrains held together with bungee cords, pipe clamps and thick layers of electrical tape. He seemed to defy gravity as he ascended the region’s steep winding roads lined with 300-foot redwoods.Īs the captain of the school’s mountain-bike racing team, he had collected a heap of spare frames and parts. ![]() It was 2005, the home-brew era for electric vehicles, and there he was, a high school freshman zooming by at up to 35 miles an hour, not even pedaling. The residents of Garberville, Calif., didn’t know what to make of 15-year-old Mike Radenbaugh and the odd motorized bikes he was concocting in his family’s garage. ![]()
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