Customer Spotlight: A Texan Bike Commuter
We recently learned that 45% of our Faraday riders use their Faraday almost daily to get to work and back – and to run errands. How awesome is that?
To celebrate riders who love their Faradays, we’re highlighting one of our first customers in Texas, Jeremy Myers, who lives near Austin where we now have a dealer at Rocket Electrics. Jeremy loves his Faraday for the same reasons that Hum of the City did: It’s so fun to ride that you want to ride it all the time.
Read on for Jeremy’s first-hand experience using his Faraday to spend time with his son and commute to work. You can already see that he has that patented “Faraday Smile.”
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My family and I live near downtown Austin. For years, I was a daily bike commuter to my job as a professor at the University of Texas. My wife and I had only one car because I used my bike to get just about everywhere.
In 2014, I took a new position at a clean energy materials startup, located about 15-20 miles away from our home. I was excited by the opportunity, but hated to have to give up being a bike commuter.
Since getting the Faraday, I’m back to biking to work 2 or 3 times per week. It’s still not every day –the round trip commute is 40 miles if I don’t take freeways the whole way there– but I’m getting that time on the bike that I wasn’t getting before.
I get to ride out in the Texas hill country on my way to work, and the electric assist makes the commute so much more manageable. It helps me maintain higher speeds and climb hills, but also makes it easier for me to stay out of the way of motorized traffic out on the two-lane highways where some of my commute takes me.
While Austin has done a tremendous job in recent years to add bike lanes and make the city more bicycle friendly, the new job is on the outskirts of town, out past where the bicycle infrastructure has been built out.
I have a rear view mirror mounted on my handlebar, and I keep an eye out for who’s behind me and pull over to the side of the road to let cars and trucks pass more easily. With the electric assist start, I don’t mind coming to a stop to make my commute a little safer and to generate a little good will with auto commuters who don’t want to be stuck behind me. Electric assist to 20 mph is good, but it’s still a lot slower than car traffic wants to be going.
It’s also been great for running errands and going on adventures with my son. He’s still learning to ride a bike himself, but I put the trailer on the back of the Faraday, and he and I are off to parks and swimming holes and to our favorite restaurants without having to worry about parking.
It looks good, and it’s so much fun! The first time I turned on the assist and pedaled away, I broke out into a huge grin. Hundreds of miles later, and I still get that grin.
I don’t think I’ll ever want a luxury car, per se, but this is a luxury bicycle: I love my Faraday.