I like to I think of myself as a cyclist, but bikes are incredibly complicated. They have a ton of different parts that move at high speeds and endure a lot of stress, and those parts tend to break or squeak. The number of times I have cooked over cooked tires and other mechanical problems is too great for someone who, you know, gets paid to know these things.
That’s why I love the Cowboy 4 ebike. It has no gears, but it does have a built-in phone holder and cordless charger, beautiful automatic lights and sleek splash screens. It came in a recyclable box. All I had to do was turn the handles over, attach some pedals, adjust the seat, and inflate the tires.
On the go, it works well, and it looks beautiful while doing so. The app asks you to name your bike, and I named my off-white review unit Wayne. I drive Wayne everywhere. He’s not as fast as higher-end bikes, and you’ll have to grab something bigger if you really want to transport kids or any significant amount of groceries. But honestly? I wish more ebikes were such reliable stablemates.
The All-In-One Mystery
Photographer: Cowboy
Many direct-to-consumer bicycle companies make things too damn difficult. You order a bike, get a pile of parts in a box, and you have to put it together. This can be especially challenging if you have ordered a cheaper one. And of course, most people have no experience building an ebike.
Building a motorized device in your backyard that can easily kill you or others has never sat with me. So I was immediately skeptical when the Cowboy 4 arrived at my front porch. But the packing in his large cardboard box eased my worries.
The beautiful, off-white, door-step ebike is fully assembled, with the handlebar sideways, but otherwise everything except the pedals attached. A box full of tools that were clearly labeled and a simple manual had me fully ready to ride within minutes, to a quick tire pump and seat adjustment (things you would do with literally any bike).
The Cowboy is an app-coupled bike, which means you’ll have to pair your phone, and then lock and unlock it in the app to get the benefit of the 250-watt rear-wheel drive motor. You can ride the bike without unlocking it in the app, at which point it just becomes a rather cumbersome one-piece powder, but it does have GPS tracking if someone nickes it. It also has crash detection and can automatically share your location with emergency contacts.
However, you probably will not find yourself in a case when you are without juice on your phone, because the stem of the Cowboy 4 has a built-in four-lock system and wireless charging. Buy a compatible phone holder (they have it for almost all modern devices) and you can put your phone to your bike to charge it while riding – a super-sleek option, and one that makes using Google Maps simply delicious while traveling in the city.