 Hey everybody, it's Ben Popper with The Verge. I'm out here today with the Copenhagen wheel from a company called Super Pedestrian. Now this looks basically like a normal bike except for the shiny red hubcap. Inside of that is all kinds of cool motors, batteries, and sensors that turn this into an e-bike. I pedal it like normal but I've got an electric assist giving me a little extra power with each push. Kind of makes you feel like a superhero. The best part is going uphill 25 miles an hour without breaking a sweat. Yeah I'm cheating. Now to learn how to ride this you just have to know how to ride a bike. As you pedal the sensors measure hundreds of times a second to get your power, your torque, your speed, even your cadence. Then they adapt and give you a little bit of a boost. It feels totally natural. The tech was developed at MIT and then spun out into a startup. Now with the battery and the motor the back wheel is obviously very heavy but it's got lots of range. In my testing I found it got about 20 miles on a single charge. Now of course this being a high-tech wheel it needs an app. In fact you can only turn the wheel on when Bluetooth connected to a registered phone. That's a nice security measure but also kind of tricky if your phone dies. Without the phone the wheel is just 17 pounds of metal. Inside you've got your log of all your trips and you click to ride. Then you've got your mode. The normal one is standard, turbo is for extra boost, eco which is low, completely off, or exercise which offers some resistance. The app also tells you how much battery you've got left, how fast you're going, and how much of the energy pushing the bike forward comes from you versus the wheel. One of the nice things about the Copenhagen wheel is that it can be attached to basically any bike. You can buy a whole unit like I have here, the wheel and the frame from Super Pedestrian, or you can buy just the wheel. Our art director Will has got the wheel attached to his own beater over here. Installing it on your own bike requires a little know-how and courage, especially when things go wrong like they did with Will and his squeaky wheel. The entire bike cost $2,000 which is comparable to a good road bike. They sell five different brands and 18 different frames. Now the wheel all by itself is $1,500. That's a lot for a wheel but you're really getting a whole new kind of bike with it. But the wheel is also 17 pounds, about the same weight as some entire road bikes, so if you have to lift it up a bunch of stairs every day you're probably not going to want to own this unit. Also because of the heavy wheel the bike isn't very well balanced so it's not great for hanging on a rack. I've been testing the bike for a few weeks and I find it cuts about a third off my commute time. I went from 22 minutes to just under 15 to get from my house in downtown Brooklyn to our office in Lower Manhattan. Not only was the trip faster it's much easier. One of the things I love is that with the electric assist I don't break a sweat. It was light exercise enough to get my heart rate up but not so much that I was straining. For me as a daily commuter that's the perfect balance. That being said you can always turn the assist down or completely off. You could even add resistance if you want an intense workout. All of which is to say using the wheel doesn't mean you can't exercise, you probably just won't.
 Hey everybody, it's Ben Popper with The Verge. I'm out here today with the
 Copenhagen wheel from a company called Super Pedestrian. Now this looks
 basically like a normal bike except for the shiny red hubcap. Inside of that is
 all kinds of cool motors, batteries, and sensors that turn this into an e-bike.
 I pedal it like normal but I've got an electric assist giving me a little extra
 power with each push. Kind of makes you feel like a superhero. The best part is
 going uphill 25 miles an hour without breaking a sweat.
 Yeah I'm cheating. Now to learn how to ride this you just have to know how to
 ride a bike. As you pedal the sensors measure hundreds of times a second to
 get your power, your torque, your speed, even your cadence. Then they adapt and
 give you a little bit of a boost. It feels totally natural. The tech was
 developed at MIT and then spun out into a startup. Now with the battery and the
 motor the back wheel is obviously very heavy but it's got lots of range. In my
 testing I found it got about 20 miles on a single charge. Now of course this being
 a high-tech wheel it needs an app. In fact you can only turn the wheel on when
 Bluetooth connected to a registered phone. That's a nice security measure but
 also kind of tricky if your phone dies. Without the phone the wheel is just 17
 pounds of metal. Inside you've got your log of all your trips and you click to
 ride. Then you've got your mode. The normal one is standard, turbo is for extra
 boost, eco which is low, completely off, or exercise which offers some resistance.
 The app also tells you how much battery you've got left, how fast you're going,
 and how much of the energy pushing the bike forward comes from you versus the
 wheel. One of the nice things about the Copenhagen wheel is that it can be
 attached to basically any bike. You can buy a whole unit like I have here, the
 wheel and the frame from Super Pedestrian, or you can buy just the wheel.
 Our art director Will has got the wheel attached to his own beater over here.
 Installing it on your own bike requires a little know-how and courage, especially
 when things go wrong like they did with Will and his squeaky wheel. The entire
 bike cost $2,000 which is comparable to a good road bike. They sell five different
 brands and 18 different frames. Now the wheel all by itself is $1,500. That's a
 lot for a wheel but you're really getting a whole new kind of bike with it.
 But the wheel is also 17 pounds, about the same weight as some entire road
 bikes, so if you have to lift it up a bunch of stairs every day you're
 probably not going to want to own this unit. Also because of the heavy wheel the
 bike isn't very well balanced so it's not great for hanging on a rack. I've
 been testing the bike for a few weeks and I find it cuts about a third off my
 commute time. I went from 22 minutes to just under 15 to get from my house in
 downtown Brooklyn to our office in Lower Manhattan. Not only was the trip faster
 it's much easier. One of the things I love is that with the electric assist I
 don't break a sweat. It was light exercise enough to get my heart rate up
 but not so much that I was straining. For me as a daily commuter that's the
 perfect balance. That being said you can always turn the assist down or
 completely off. You could even add resistance if you want an intense
 workout. All of which is to say using the wheel doesn't mean you can't exercise,
 you probably just won't.