Review: Rad Power Bikes Radster Road

The first thing you notice on Rad Power Bikes’ latest commuter model is not the enormous tires, the unique half-integrated battery, or the stylish display. When you straddle the bike, the first thing you see are several disclaimers on the downtube. “16+ Operator Minimum Age,” it says. It’s a reminder that several years ago, a 12-year-old died from not being able to stop a Rad Power Bike from going into an intersection.

Photograph: Adrienne So

Rad Power Bikes was one of the first brands to mass-market a direct-to-consumer ebike. It’s hard to be first to do anything. You can't know what you don't know. Now Rad Power Bikes knows you have to explicitly tell parents to not let small children operate powerful vehicles. I am also a little more experienced since the days when it took me three days to assemble a bike, and when Rad Power Bikes seemed to be fighting off lawsuits in every direction. Now the company has a new CEO and has realigned its priorities. Safety is number one, and like many other ebikes, all of Rad’s latest bikes and batteries are UL-certified to meet current safety standards.

The Radster Road is one of a few brand-new Rads launching this year, and I have to say, I really like it. It’s intended for comfortable, convenient, long-distance commutes, and it fulfills that promise. For the past few weeks, it’s been the bike that I automatically reach for when I’m running late, dropping my kids off at school or meeting my friends at the movie theater, and it’s moderately priced to boot. You can’t ask much more of an electric bike than that.

Keep on Turning

Rad has made a few bold choices with the Radster Road. For example, many electric bikes now have tiny wheels. Big wheels go over obstacles more easily and are more efficient, but efficiency matters less when you have a motor powering your bike instead of your legs. Small wheels are lighter in the box and more easily maneuverable. In contrast to the RadRunner’s 26-inchers, the Radster Road has massive 29-inch Kenda tires that seem more suited to long-distance touring than taking your kids to school.

Photograph: Adrienne So

As hard as it is to maneuver 29-inch wheels through a crowd of kindergarteners on my way to the bike rack, it's hard to argue against their benefits. I can see just how much less energy it uses when I’m on the first level of assistance and pedaling, versus using the half-twist throttle (8 watts versus the full 720 watts, for example). That helps make the battery life stretch much longer. I’ve got about 30 miles on the odometer, and the battery still has half of its capacity left, even though, in addition to myself, I’ve been running groceries and 27-pound bags of dog food on it.

Another word on the battery—the Radster Road has a new technology now called Safe Shield. In addition to being UL-certified, the cells in the battery are now encapsulated separately in heat-absorbing resin so that in the (unlikely!) event of a battery fire, it will remain localized and hopefully extinguish itself. It’s the same technology that you might find in an electric car battery, intended to combat last year's rash of battery fires.

It's also semi-integrated, which might look weird. It toes the line between a sleek, fully integrated battery inside the frame and a convenient mounted one that you can pop off if you don’t want to charge your bike outside. It looks all right, I guess. I like Safe Shield way more than I like this battery design, honestly.

Photograph: Adrienne So

City Lights

My tester was the Radster Road in the regular aluminum frame size, which comes in a pretty, blue step-through frame that easily accommodated my 5’2” height. It looks like an upright, sit-up frame, but you do lean forward in a slightly sportier stance. It has an IPX6-rated 750-watt rear hub motor and a 720-Wh proprietary battery, which means it’s waterproof and can even handle submersion (I am obligated not to recommend this).

Photograph: Adrienne So

There’s eight gears, five levels of assistance, a twist throttle, and also a zero assist mode. Rad now has a new torque sensor which makes it feel infinitely better and so much more natural to pedal. It’s also much quieter. I previously put Lectric’s bikes in a similar category of affordable direct-to-consumers, but my husband rides a Lectric and became angry when he realized how smoothly and quietly I was pedaling, while he buzzed along.

It also has hydraulic disc brakes, front suspension with 80 millimeters of travel (feels great! feels comfy!), and a ton of features that make it seem way more expensive than it is. For example, you may have noticed I did not mention what class of ebike it is. While it ships as a Class 2 ebike, you can scroll through the menu and change which class it’s in, and thus what the legal top speed is, depending on whether you're in the city or the country. It is very cool. In the menu, you can also do things like wipe trip data or set a passcode to lock the display.

Photograph: Adrienne So

It also has a bell! And signal buttons! What people I know have reported is that I often turn the signal on and forget to turn it off, or accidentally turn it on when I’m switching the assistance, and then my hand flies up to the point where I’m going automatically because I’ve been signaling with my arms for 30 years. That's fun. Rather than turn signals, I would’ve preferred a brighter front headlight. Two hundred lumens is brighter than forgetting your front light, but I would really prefer 400 or even 1,000 when biking at night in the rain, which I often do.

A big reason why people often buy direct-to-consumer bikes is the proprietary accessories. Cars don’t ship without lights or storage options, so car substitutes have to have them too. The Radster Road does ship with fenders, a chain guard, and a rear rack with a 55-pound payload. It fit my Po Campo backpack pannier without issue. As compared to other direct-to-consumers, Rad Power Bikes has a whopping array of accessories; I would be remiss if I did not admit that as I was biking around with my children and spouse, I did think about attaching some locking storage and a pet trailer so that my elderly dog could come along too.

I do think $2,000 is the sweet spot for electric commuter bikes. It’s enough to cover some very solid components, but not so expensive that it deters you from biking because you're worried about it getting stolen or damaged. It slots nicely into regular bike racks, and I can use a regular U-lock on the head tube, although I did feel more comfortable double-locking it on multiple parts of the frame. Unlike the Santa Cruz Skitch (9/10, WIRED Recommends), I did grab the Radster Road and hop on it when I had to run to the Grocery Outlet. Not every ride needs to be so dazzlingly fun that you can’t stop giggling—sometimes you just need to get somewhere, and you hate parking your car, and you’re super late.

I was wary of Rad Power Bikes for many years—it’s hard for a gear tester to set things aside like a bike arcing on you, or multiple lawsuits. However, it is clear that very many lessons have been learned over the past few years. The Radster Road does that well, for miles and miles.