This week, WYSO is joining NPR for Climate Solutions Week, as we tell stories about climate solutions on the local level.
The average price for a new electric car is just under $60,000.
But some people are finding a more affordable way to go electric.
About 1.5 million e-bikes were sold in the U.S. in 2025 and that number is forecast to keep growing, according to Global Market Insights.
E-bikes make it easier to ride around without as much physical exertion than a conventional bike. WYSO’s Mike Frazier spoke with Mike Bisig, owner of Mike’s Bike Park in Dayton, to learn more.
This transcript was lightly edited for clarification.
Mike Bisig: It's still very much a bicycle. You pedal it, you shift gears, you ride it just like a bicycle, it just also has the ability to assist you in that process. Depending on what bike you get, depending on what class you get, they will have things like pedal assist, which means you're doing the pedaling, but the bike is helping you along. Most of those e-bikes are going to have different levels of assist. So if you just want just a little bit of help, maybe getting up a hill or something like that, it can help you out. If you want a lot of help just because you want to get up that hill even faster, or maybe it's a really steep hill, so you want some more help on that. That pedal assist will sort of help you ride the bike, but you're still physically doing that.
Mike Frazier: So top speed - does that mean that if you reach a certain speed it'll slow it down by itself?
Bisig: Nope, it'll just stop helping you. I like riding a bike and I've certainly been known to try to see how fast I can go on my bicycle at times. I have certainly many times pedaled faster than 28 miles an hour on my road bike. So if you were to do that on an e-bike and you had it set to where it would help you up to 28, once you hit 28 miles an hour, if you wanted to go 29, you are pedaling it past that, the bike isn't helping you go any faster than that. It's going to sort of, it's like a governor on a car or on a lawnmower or something like that, it is going to cap the top speed of the bike.
Frazier: And you change those settings using the screen on the bike or is there like a control on the handlebars or on the hand grips?
Bisig: Everything is controlled with the sort of the control center on the handlebars. You'll have a set of buttons on the handle bar and the screen. That set of buttons will determine what that level is, how fast the bike's going to go, as well as some other things. So you get to control that the whole time. The bike never does anything that you don't want it to do.
"That's been one of my favorite things about the e-bike is just that we've been able to open up a whole world out there to some customers that would have never been able to experience that and it's a great thing."
Frazier: Now, being an e-bike, there's a battery in there, I assume. How long would the battery last?
Bisig: Most bikes these days will be - on the low end - maybe 60 or 65 miles of range per charge, up to even close to 90 miles of range without any sort of extended battery. And if you find that you are a person that does ride longer than that, or maybe you're going on a two or three day long bike ride, they've got some battery extenders. You can get other batteries, you can take the battery out and put a new battery in. So there's ways to extend it beyond that.
Frazier: Now do those batteries wear out over time? I know car batteries have to be replaced every couple of years. Is it the same with an e-bike battery?
Bisig: Yeah, same as anything that we have that has a battery, it has a lifespan on it. Most of those batteries, we tell our customers, if you use it heavily all the time, it might get less. But in general, I always say you should expect to get four to five years out of a battery when actually using the bike. A few never use it just like everything else that can and sometimes make the battery not last as long. If you use it every single day is just as hard as it possibly can, it might not last five years, but generally speaking, our customers are seeing four to five years easily. I've got plenty of customers that bought an e-bike from us eight years ago, and they still have not replaced the battery.
Frazier: And how much do they (the batteries) cost?
Bisig: Depends on the model. That type of technology is always getting cheaper. So I would expect right now today, May 2026, to be somewhere between $200 and $400 for a replacement battery, depending on what the battery is and what the bike is. So they're always trying to lower that cost, obviously, but in that $200 to $400 range to replace the battery.
Frazier: What advice would you give to someone who's always ridden a conventional bike that may want to consider an e-bike, what would you tell them?
Bisig: The electric aspect is great. It's not just simply “I want an electric version of the bike that I'm already riding.” In many ways, it is opening up, getting exercise, getting out, getting active, to a whole new set of people who have been limited in some way, shape or form, just by the physical aspect of riding a bike. Now they have a bike that can help them. Now they're getting out and getting on the trails and stuff. So that's been one of my favorite things about the e-bike is just that we've been able to open up a whole world out there to some customers that would have never been able to experience that and it's a great thing.
