#FlyKly #SmartWheel, First Thoughts on the First 100 Km

As many of you know, I was one of the funders for the FlyKly Smart Wheel. It's an electric pedal-assist rear bike tire with everything integrated inside.

I've now had it for two months, and I've been riding it to and from work pretty steadily. Here are my thoughts:

• The motor needs more torque. It's simply not capable of getting my fat ass up anything like a steep hill. I suspect the Venn diagram of what-I-need and what-they-can-manufacture don't intersect. I really think they designed this for fit people to get around a densely populated, small, flat country - the Dutch basically. Canadians built like Shrek? Not so much.
  
• Even the minimal force it puts out has declined markedly since I first started using it. I suspect I'm simply burning the motor out. That I can still get up the one major hill I need to, may have more to do with minuscule improvements in fitness, then with the motor.
  
• If the battery drops below 50% it can't even manage that - it just makes a sad whirring noise if I try to climb a hill at that point.
  
• That said, I can get about three round trips to work out of a single charge. My one longer trip (about 14 Km) blew past that 50% point, leaving me walking up the hill to my house - the only time I've had to do so with this bike.
  
• The power-assist, weak as it is, does give me one nice luxury - on a level road, I can get moving from a stop fairly easily, which makes me a better cyclist. I'm less likely to blow through a stop sign if I don't care about losing all my momentum.
  
• The bluetooth on the Smart Wheel well and truly sucks. I generally need to hold my phone against the hub to get a connection, and even then, it only connects about one time out of ten. It's at the point where I'm engaging in serious magical thinking to make it connect. As in, I imagine holding it here, after turning the bluetooth on and off, with the phone at a 45° angle, and sticking my tongue out, will make it connect.
  
• Simply getting the bike took a long time. First they delivered to all the European backers; then they delivered to all the American backers; then they delivered to everyone else. Finally, on the second everyone-else-shipment, I got mine. I have a sneaky suspicion they forgot about me until I nagged them. I may be the last of the original backers to get their product. Ha ha, No. I'm sure there's some sad sack out there who still hasn't gotten theirs and is silently seething about it.
  
• People online who have had to contact FlyKly seem to have universally negative experiences, mostly do to not being able to contact FlyKly at all. When they do get through, not a lot gets done because they're overwhelmed.
  
• I don't expect FlyKly to be around in two years to service these things anyway - they're being sued by the folks making the Copenhagen wheel (an identical product that hasn't shipped yet, probably because they're trying to sort out all of the above). If half of what I read in the deposition is true, they won't have their shoes left, much less a viable company.

Despite all that, I like my bike. I've used it more in the last two months than I've used my previous bike in five years.

Part of that is the novelty of the Smart Wheel itself. I just love the concept of it. I want this product, or one like it, to succeed. Given that purpose-built electric bikes start around $2500, paying $700 for a wheel to add to an existing bike is an awesome middle ground. Does it need to be as good as a purpose-built electric bike? No. Does it need to be much better than what it is? Yes.

Another two big components of my newly-rekindled joy of bike riding (after learning to ride as a kid, I basically never got off my bike in the summer) have nothing to do with the Smart Wheel though. The rest of the bike, and the city's new bike lane policy.

The bike is an Electra Cruiser 7D, modified by the good folks at Bow Cycle to use the Smart Wheel. Even without it, this is the nicest bike I've owned. It's built for comfort, not speed, so (as a coworker with the same bike, sans Smart Wheel, put it) asshole bike owners aren't going to try to race you. Also, it's pretty. I need to start looking at accessories for it.

The city of Calgary is also pushing dedicated bike lanes. I live pretty close to work anyway, so the ride isn't hard. Bike lanes covering about 80% of the route make it much much easier. I like not having to worry about getting side swiped by a car.

Would I recommend the FlyKly Smart Wheel? No. I think the potential for pedal-assist electric hubs is there, but not yet. I doubt FlyKly is going to be the one to get us through the home-stretch. I'd certainly look closely at a similar product, with decent reviews, when such a beast exists though.