LeGrand Crewse, co-founder and chief executive of Super73, recently showed off the company’s latest product, a small motorized bike called the K1D. Aimed at riders 4 years and older, the vehicle lacks pedals, in the spirit of an exercise bike, and has a throttle. The company calls the K1D an “electric balance bike.”
“But you can also call it a motorcycle,” said Mr. Crewse on a tour of the company’s 60,000-square-foot headquarters. In “normal mode” the K1D can reach 13 miles per hour. “Then we have race mode,” said Mr. Crewse – at 15 miles per hour.
The e-bike industry is already pushing the boundaries of youth transportation, and the Super73 is an early customer favorite. The company aims to sell more than 25,000 units this year, a large portion of them for young people, Mr. Crews. Unlike the K1D, most Super73 e-bikes have pedals as well as a throttle-powered electric motor. What the company sells, said Mr. Crewse, is a lifestyle, featuring “cool” products that are not subject to heavy regulation.
“Ride without restrictions,” the Super73 website proclaims, in bold letters. “No license, registration, or insurance required.”
Mr. added Crewse: “Actually no helmet is required though, except on one class of bikes – and even then, particularly for younger riders.”
State and federal laws essentially treat e-bikes as traditional bicycles as long as they don’t exceed speed limits — though many e-bikes can be easily modified to do so. This laissez-faire administration, says Mr. Crewse, “a perfect match” with the ethos of the younger generation.
“If you think about Gen Z and millennials, if they don’t have instant gratification, they don’t want to do anything with it,” he said. “They’re not interested in taking the time to learn something: ‘I’m not going to get my motorcycle license, I don’t want to go through this course that takes X-amount of time — it’s too busy.'”
But law enforcement officials and some safety experts worry that many e-bikes are dangerously unlike traditional bikes: too fast for sidewalks and not built for the complexity and speed of roads. Some retailers have refused to carry Super73 e-bikes or others like them, saying they tempt young riders, who aren’t trained in road safety, into thinking they’re safe in fast-moving car traffic. Several children in their youth have recently died in e-bike accidents. Some e-bikes can travel at speeds that would qualify them as motor vehicles, but federal regulation has not complied.
“There is pressure from the market to sell novel and interesting things that are faster and more fun,” said Christopher Cherry, a civil engineer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who studies e-bike safety. .
Mr. entered Crewse in the fledgling e-bike industry more than a decade ago, when he began thinking of ways to add motors to bicycles. In 2012 he toured China as an open-eyed businessman. “I booked a trip without a plan,” he recalls. “In those two weeks, I met a whole bunch of people, went to a whole bunch of factories — relationships I still have to this day.”
In 2016, he founded Super73 with Michael Cannavo and Aaron Wong, with the goal of selling more stylish e-bikes that aren’t “for the geriatric crowd,” Mr. Crews; the standard Super73 model resembles a dirt bike or a minimotorcycle with pedals. “I read somewhere that like 98 percent of people think they’d be cool on a motorcycle,” he said. “We bring moto-heritage with youth culture.”
Many retailers initially wouldn’t carry the company’s first mass-produced Super73, which was introduced in 2017. “‘It’s not a bike, it’s not a bicycle,'” Mr. recalled. Crewse said he was told by retailers. “We laughed in every place.”
PeopleForBikes, the trade group representing traditional bicycle companies and e-bike manufacturers, spoke with Super73 and other manufacturers that sell products that can be reprogrammed to effectively become vehicles motorized and not e-bikes.
Most Super73 models offer a re-programmable option, including the Z-Miami, which is small, pink in color and, Mr. Crewse, is “popular with the younger riders.” Parental controls aren’t possible on current models, he said, because of “a limitation of the current software.” He added, “That will absolutely happen in future software releases.”
He floated the prospect of e-bike training for young riders. “The motorcycle training program I took literally saved my life,” he said. But he noted that requiring e-bike training could hurt an industry he credits with creating more sustainable transportation. “The question is, how much do we want to force,” he said.
A father of five children, advised by Mr. Crewse parents who buy an e-bike to invest in a high-quality helmet and other safety equipment. “The biggest thing is understanding the danger of a vehicle going 20 miles an hour,” he said. “There are consequences. Things can go wrong.”