Eco-friendly electric motorized bikes are now being sold at the UCSD Bookstore

Go Bikes USA is urging students to join the fight to go green and save time and money by riding electric motorized bikes. The UCSD Bookstore is now selling these bikes at a lowered student price of $899.

Each bike is equipped with an electric motor that requires regular charging from an outlet. The drum brakes on the bike offer better stopping ability than those on a regular bicycle, and there are three speeds to switch between depending on the rider’s need. The bike also comes with a front basket and a dual-purpose rear platform, which can support up to 350 pounds. The platform can either be used to stow items like backpacks and books or can be folded out to form a backseat.

According to Go Bikes USA, representative Henry Wei, the electric bikes can travel three to four times faster than regular bicycles.

“Time is money,” he said. “For you, walking across [campus for] 25 minutes [means] you’re going to have to wake up 30 minutes earlier to go to that same class. You could save yourself a lot of time and a lot of headaches by riding a bicycle or having any type of transportation like this.”

Not only do the bikes save time, according to Wei, they also save a lot of money; students don’t need to pay for parking permits for the bikes, and the cost of such transportation works out to be about a penny a mile, roughly $60 to $70 per year.

Wei said that legally, the electric bikes conform to federal and California state law.

“This is classified with federal law and California state law as a bicycle,” he said. “So, all the bicycle rules of California [apply]. With our bikes — since they go 20 miles per hour by federal and state law — you don’t need a license, registration or insurance.”

The company also seeks to contribute to the global initiative to become more eco-friendly. Go Bikes USA has sold to students at UC Irvine and Chapman University and has partnered with fast food restaurants in Chicago with delivery services and RV owners who frequent campgrounds that have strict noise pollution policies.

“There’s no carbon,” Wei said. “[We’re] going green by using electricity like the Priuses and anything else. With electric, also, there’s no type of issues with gas, oil gaskets and stuff like that, so you don’t need to ‘fix’ these. And plus, there’s no noise. That’s what the green initiative is all about.”

Wei contends that if a student were to use a bike to get to and from classes, the bike would only need to be charged once a week. The school will not permit students to store the bikes in the common areas of dorm rooms, but students can keep them in their individual rooms, or store them alongside the bike racks. Each bike has its own security system that, when locked, causes any movement of the bike to trigger an alarm and automatically lock the back wheel.

Go Bikes USA is committed to assisting students and making everything as easy as possible; according to Wei this is the first priority for Go Bikes USA. Wei explained how they personalize every sale and make sure that each student is happy and comfortable with his or her purchase.

“I will be [at the UCSD Bookstore] once a week to help everybody, and we can come by and actually fix the bikes for you,” Wei said. “You don’t have to bring it to us; we’ll come to you. What we do is when UCSD students buy one of these from us, we actually bring the bike to them. We deliver it, and we fit it to you exactly and show you everything about it before we let you go.”