How does it work?


The Giant Suede e is powered by an electric motor in the front hub. When you pedal, the bike’s torque sensor matches your output to the rear wheel with a double-shot of juice to the front wheel. Other than an initial sense of undeserved acceleration when you push off, it feels entirely like a regular bike except your legs hurt less. In essence, then, Green Bike does two-thirds of the work and you do one-third, which seems fair to me.

That’s mode one. Mode two is cruise control. For cruise control, twist the right grip just like on a motorcycle. You have to already be moving so you don’t accidentally drive into the bottle-recycle machine they put next to the bike rack at the supermarket. Give the pedal a good push, then twist the grip, and the bike accelerates up to about twelve miles per hour on level ground, give or take some head- or tailwind. I’ve checked this with my GPS.

Mode two is my favorite because it seems to confuse people. When I’m “coasting” uphill or silently accelerating without pedaling, I notice people realizing that something doesn’t add up here. If people actually scratched their head in confusion, I think I’d be seeing some people scratching their heads.

There is also mode three, which the manual has a name for, but I lost the manual already. I have another one ordered. I call mode three “turbo boost.” Again, twist the grip, but this time, continue pedaling. Green Bike can sense that your legs are about to explode and gives you a little more juice. Suddenly, you’re accelerating up steeper hills as if the Oregon Vortex were sucking you forward. If you don’t try to hurry, it takes very little effort to climb moderate hills, say up to about six percent. For more exercise, try to hurry a little.

Turbo boost is definitely how I get home up my four-block-long hill, with grades up to ten percent. I’m practicing doing hard parts of my ride totally without measurable effort because I want to be able to keep riding when I’m officially a senior citizen. (I’m still a junior citizen).

Mode four, not covered in the manual, is your battery’s dead because you’ve been using too much mode two and three. Fortunately, Green Bike is at heart still just a bike. You can ride it on home just like the Beaver did after he finished his paper route, but remember: Green Bike is a leviathan of bicycles. It weighs over fifty pounds. Even without the motor, it’s considered a cruiser, which is a bicycle built for old people to ride from their retirement cottage down to the clubhouse without the aid of an LPN. This is why most retirement communities have no hills.

Despite the ease, Green Bike asks something in return, and you will get some exercise on it. I think I might even be getting in shape. I’ve been riding ten or fifteen miles a day since I got it on Tuesday, and my legs are already slightly less rubbery when I get home. Think Gumby after a couple of shooters.

But you have to start from where you are, not from where you’d like to be. Without Green Bike, I wouldn’t be starting at all.