My 2007 Veloteq Commander SHO

Last summer I caught wind of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s Power-Assisted Bicycle pilot programme and was immediately excited by the prospect of cruising through Toronto’s downtown streets without pedaling.  Though I love my bicycle, I’ve turned down too many social invitations to far-off regions of the city (like, ahem, Roncesvalles) because the bike ride would take too long and riding the TTC both ways would entail coming home early enough to not suffer waiting around for the next streetcar/bus/etc…

After some creative Google-ing, I had located the four downtown dealers of these wonderful contraptions and set off to check out Silent Rider, located just down from my flat – next to the St Lawrence Market.  As they had just opened I resolved to return in Spring to inspect a fuller range of models, and researched the larger picture during the winter.

It turns out that most e-bikes are manufactured from parts made in China.  Though power assisted bicycles may not be a new concept, even in China the electric scooter is a fairly new product – which means that technologies they employ are still evolving.  In Toronto there are just a handful of folks either importing scooters from China (like Blue Avenue – or from China through US distributors like Segway of Ontario) or bringing in parts from there to assemble into their own-branded models (namely, Daymak and Electro-Wheels) – but all of them pretty much use the same components, so the differences between ‘brands’ are more nuanced than with say, the combustion-engine motor industry.

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