Monthly Archives: March 2016

Lately my reviews have been slowing down. This is not an accident. My kids, now ages 10 and 7, are getting big enough that I’m increasingly distant from the range of kids normally carried by bike. Our son will be starting middle school next year, and for multiple reasons will be on his own bike then. Plus, after years of reviewing, I have dropped my kids on unfamiliar bikes often enough that they can be understandably wary of trying out new models with me. Under the circumstances, I’m not sure how many more family bike reviews I can really do. This is a shame, because my son in particular is now experienced enough with various family bikes that he offers a helpful and fairly unusual perspective on what’s it’s like to be a kid passenger on different kinds of family bikes, when I can convince him to do it.

Boy on bike

Anyway, late in 2015 I managed to coax my son onto Yuba’s Spicy Curry for a test ride. Vie Bikes, which as I’ve mentioned before rents and sells family bikes to those of us in San Francisco, was having an open house where families could try all the bikes. We had tried most of the models they stock already, because that’s what I do for fun, but we had yet to try the new Yuba.  I joked at the time that this was the only spicy curry that my son would ever try, which was one of those jokes that is actually less funny because it’s true.

(Aside: if you live in San Francisco and ride with kids, or want to, Vie is incredible—they will bring test bikes and child-sized helmets and kid seats to your home to try! There’s no need to get cranky kids across town and hope their mood will allow a test ride. I wish they had been around when we were shopping for our bikes, but alas, no such luck. Once they asked if they could advertise on this blog, which I would support except for the fact that no one can advertise on this blog, because my job considers that a potential conflict of interest, which is a bit of a reach but not a point worth arguing. So consider this my unpaid endorsement.)

The Spicy Curry is a different kind of bike for Yuba. In the past, I’ve had mixed feelings about the Yuba offerings, which are undeniably inexpensive, but that managed to hit those price points by making some compromises that make me uncomfortable when hauling kids in a hilly city like San Francisco. For example, their base models of the Mundo and Boda Boda did not come with disc brakes, which for the terrain we ride is frankly unsafe when carrying a kid or two. The Mundo in particular felt as heavy as a cargo ship or a 1970s land yacht, which on the one hand meant that it could move major weight, but on the other hand  meant that getting it started from a stop could be miserable. Thus for years I considered Yubas to be flat earther bikes, and kind of resented that because some of their family biking accessories are fantastic.

The Spicy Curry, in contrast, was built from the ground up as an assisted cargo bike for hills. It is very different from their other models, from my perspective in a good way. I have been kind of regretting promising 6-word reviews of all the bikes because at times inspiration does not strike, and then I delay writing the review, and that is exactly what happened in this case. Anyway, here’s the best I could do.

Yuba Spicy Curry: small, lightweight, value.

What I like about the Spicy Curry

• The Spicy Curry is designed as an assisted bike, and has a pedal assist mid-drive electric motor included as standard. I am an unabashed fan of pedal assists, which work seamlessly without requiring riders to mess with
  

  Mid-drive assist for the Spicy Curry

  stuff on the handlebars much. Twist throttle assists that require my hand be engaged for the assist to be engaged mean that I have one less hand available to deal with other stuff going on, and with kids on the bike there is always other stuff going on. Plus I like to be able to signal with either hand. The mid-drive assist is the up and coming style of cargo bike assist, after a long spell in which the only mid-drive options in the US seemed to be the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t Stokemonkey and the ridiculously loud, powerful, and heart-stoppingly expensive Ecospeed, both of which required a knowledgeable after-market installer. An advantage of a mid-drive assist is that it works with the gears, so that the experience is less like getting a boost and more like finding that you are simply a very strong rider all of a sudden. Another selling point for mid-drives is that they are typically have a lot of torque, meaning that they can conquer hills that make other assists burn out, and they don’t typically cut out the power when the ride gets steep. (Our old BionX system would sometimes overheat on steep hills with both kids in the box, although the new BionX D on our Bullitt does not.) The battery sits neatly under the rear deck. The controller is pretty intuitive.

• Riffing on the EdgeRunner before it, the Spicy Curry has a low rear deck over a 20” wheel. Originally longtail cargo bikes simply extended the frame of the bike at standard height. That was fine if the loads were tied down at wheel level as intended. However when parents figured out that kids could sit on those decks things got hairier, as that put a lot of (live, squirming) weight way above the frame. Longtails and midtails with high rear decks are tippy (meaning that I have dropped those bikes with the kids on board) and feel like they’ll roll right over if you take a corner too quickly. Putting weight on top of a lower deck is much more stable, and makes it possible to carry more weight safely.
• The Spicy Curry, unusually, seems designed for shorter parents. It felt like the frame had been shrunk by 10% or so. I can’t remember ever riding a cargo bike like it before. The only model that seems even vaguely comparable is the extremely adjustable Haul-A-Day, which can be tweaked down for shorter riders as well as extended out in multiple dimensions for taller riders. The Spicy Curry has a low top tube, making the frame kind of step through-ish, the height of the frame is low, and there is surprisingly little distance between the seat and the handlebars. This wasn’t the greatest setup for me personally, as I am what the bike industry considers to be “normal” height, however I’ve noticed for some time that shorter riders, who are disproportionately mothers, sometimes have trouble managing “one size fits all” cargo bikes or even the smaller versions of cargo bike frames, which honestly don’t necessarily suit short people as much as they suit people who are slightly shorter than “normal.”
• Transportation accessories come standard on this model. In this case that means that the Spicy Curry comes with full fenders and permanent, hard-wired lights that run off the main battery. These features are still unusual on US bikes
  

  Front headlight

  across the board, despite being totally expected and normal on European and Japanese bikes. Given that no one is racing bikes that are clearly designed for transportation (those readers familiar with the Pixar oeuvre can say along with me that “race cars don’t need headlights!”) these things should be standard on cargo bikes. So I salute Yuba for including them.

• Yuba makes and supports a range of nifty family and cargo hauling accessories which can be attached to this bike. That includes a large frame-mounted front basket, the Bread Basket, an early and excellent Yuba innovation. Another neat Yuba innovation is the Ring (for once a descriptive name that does not aim for cutesy but land directly on saccharine), which can be used as handlebars or a back rest for kids on the deck. Yepp seats can be latched on the frame for younger kids, and there are seat pads available as well as stoker bars or the two-kid corral (very similar to the Xtracycle Hooptie, probably not accidentally) that Yuba labels Mini Monkey Bars; as the name implies this version is smaller than the Monkey Bars developed for the Mundo (see above). There is also a set of side bars called the Carry-On, which appears to be designed to carry large flat loads or provide footrests for kids. (Yuba also sells a variety of bags for its bikes that don’t seem to last long; I would say that this area is not their core competency.) These accessories all cost extra money, but no rider would want or need all of them at once, plus the fenders and lights are included, and that makes the prospect of making the bike a kid-hauler somewhat less daunting.
• Although Yuba has not historically been known for investing in great parts, this model raises their quality substantially. The bike has eight gears, which don’t provide huge range but don’t really need to given that it’s an assisted bike, and shifting is smooth. Hydraulic disc brakes are standard and stopped cleanly on our test ride, which included some decent hills with ~60 pounds/27 kilos of my son on the rear deck. The handlebars, saddle, pedals and so on were all unremarkable from my perspective (I am not especially picky about these things). The tires are Schwalbe Big Apples which, although not as puncture resistant as Marathons, offer a cushy ride. This is not the older, creakier style of Yuba. The bike rides nicely and makes clean turns. There is no chain guard but given that there is only one ring on the front the potential clothing damage from this is less risky than it could be.
• The Spicy Curry is lightweight for an assisted cargo bike at 55 pounds, making it lighter in fact than the original unassisted Mundo. (Yuba lists the weight of the Spicy Curry right on its splash page, which is the kind of thing manufacturers only do when the bike is not outrageously heavy.) While I wouldn’t want to carry it up a flight of steps every day, it’s easy enough to bump it over curbs, and hauling it up and down a few steps here and there or grabbing the deck to move it around an obstacle wouldn’t kill me.
• Like all longtail bikes, this model is relatively easy to park, as it can use a standard bike rack without much maneuvering. As much as I like our Bullitt, I admit that it can be tricky to snuggle it up to some bike racks or to parking meters.
• The neon green color does not photograph well in my opinion, but it is surprisingly attractive in real life.
• Last but not least: value, value, value. The list price of the Yuba Spicy Curry is $4,300, which although not cheap, is less expensive than most other assisted longtails. I mean, there are cheaper models out there, but they weigh more, which cuts into range, and the parts are not as good. And we have learned from hard experience that there is a certain level of parts quality below which it is not safe to go on a family bike.

What I don’t like about the Spicy Curry

• Things than are positives can also be negatives: the Spicy Curry frame seemed small enough that I felt cramped on it. I am 5’7”/170cm and ended up squeezing my arms in to ride the bike, given that the
  

  You can sort of see the tight clearances here.

  space between the seat and the handlebars was so much smaller than on other bikes we ride. I talked to riders taller than I am who tried the Spicy Curry and ended up hitting the back of their thighs on the rear deck or their heels on the frame when pedaling. That didn’t happen to me but I can see exactly how it happened to them. This concern would rule the Spicy Curry out for us if we were looking for a new cargo bike (we are not.) While a smaller frame is great for people who’ve had difficulty handling larger bikes, there’s an obvious tradeoff here.

• Speaking of tradeoffs, the tradeoff for a low deck that makes the bike less tippy is that taller kids like my son can drag his feet on the ground, which will slow the bike down whether you want it to or not, and can also do serious damage to their shoes. We have this issue on our EdgeRunner and while he’s gotten better about keeping his feet up, there have been moments. Also, it is not my idea of a good time when he loses a shoe outright doing this, which always seems to happen in terrifyingly wide intersections with short light cycles. I hear some people have both more and less cooperative kids than mine, which may be relevant here.
• I found the handlebars were set very low on this bike, making for a pretty aggressive racing-style riding position. I like to ride upright when I’m noodling around town, because it allows me to see over the top of normal cars (unfortunately not SUVs). It was not really possible to get this kind of view on the Spicy Curry we rode. I’m pretty sure you could get a stem extender to bump the handlebars up a couple of inches, and it would be worth it. I’m not sure why the bike is set up this way, though, given that in almost every other way it’s designed for transportation.
• Although many of the Yuba accessories are great, the kickstand that comes with the bike is crappy and unsuitable for real loads. It’s a side kickstand rather than a center stand, so you would need to hold the bike up when loading or have it tip over. There is an upgraded center stand you can pay extra for, but I can’t imagine anyone not needing it, so it’s annoying that it’s not standard.
• The mid-drive assist on the Spicy Curry does not have a quick start or boost button, which can be nerve wracking when starting on a hill. This is pretty common with mid-drive assists generally and not unique to this bike. Nonetheless it made me edgy on certain parts of our ride. There are various points on my regular commute where it’s not possible to stop where it’s flat, and before we upgraded to the new BionX system there were times when we had to hop off the (fully loaded) bike and walk it over to places where we weren’t fighting gravity to get started. Ultimately I was able to start on every hill we rode with the Spicy Curry but there were some uncomfortable moments when I felt unsure, and this was with one kid rather than both. I suspect that this is one of those “only in San Francisco” issues but it comes up frequently for us.
• Like all mid-drive assists, the Currie motor on the Spicy Curry is not silent. It’s not bad for a mid-drive but you’ll definitely know when it’s on.
• To my surprise, my son managed to accidentally trap his arm in the space between the two bars on one side of the Mini-Monkey Bars on this bike. He is skinny like a skeleton and because he has no body fat to squeeze it
  

  The third time he stuck his arm in there I took a picture.

  actually took some panicked maneuvering to get him free. Then of course he did it twice more on purpose, don’t ask me why, I don’t know why my kids do this stuff. At least the next two times I knew I could get him out without disassembling the bars. Anyway, I would be wary of this and if I owned the bike I would probably tape a pool noodle or two over the bars to keep it from happening again. The spacing seems unfortunate on these and I hope it changes in future models.

• Also to my surprise, my son complained about vibrations from the motor when riding on the deck of the Spicy Curry. As a rider I didn’t notice it, and this is not something I have heard from him before, but it bothered him enough that he commented on it more than once. When I asked him about other mid-drive bikes we’d ridden, he said the issue was unique to this bike. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. He can be idiosyncratic. At a minimum, if we were in the market for this bike, I would be sure to spend more time test riding to make sure he didn’t find it so annoying that he would start a bike-riding strike.
• As with some other longtail cargo bikes, it was difficult to hear my son talking on the rear deck, and he sometimes had trouble hearing me. I don’t know why this is more of an issue on some models of longtail bikes than others. It wasn’t the worst we’ve experienced but it could be annoying. This problem can of course be resolved by getting a front loading bike instead, but those are much more expensive.

Things I’m clueless about and some hearsay

• I’m not sure just how steep a hill that the Spicy Curry’s assist can handle. At one point before my son joined me I found a steep hill (they’re never far away in San Francisco), “street grade over 18%” according to the SF Bike Coalition map, and figured I’d give it a go. I made it about a quarter of the way up before starting to wobble and losing my nerve. It’s possible that the assist could have handled it but I had slowed down enough that I was afraid I would lose control of the steering and topple over. Of course it was sunny enough that day that a bunch of neighbors were out enjoying the weather in deck chairs on the sidewalk, and after checking to see that I was okay they all laughed at my ambition. I suspect this is a situation that would not be relevant for something like 99% of riders, who don’t face this kind of hill daily, or may even ever. It makes for a funny story, though.
• I didn’t ride the Spicy Curry long enough to get any sense of its range. Like most assists I’ve seen it claims that you can ride 20-35 miles on a charge (depending on terrain and load). Given that the bike is pretty light for an assisted cargo bike this stated range doesn’t strain credulity.
• I have no idea how reliable this bike would be in the long term. This is a new model for Yuba and in general bikes seem to be a bit wonky at the margins in the first year of production, and then in future years the manufacturer cleans up whatever issues arose. Yuba has been around for a while so I wouldn’t be concerned that the company is going to disappear.
• In the hearsay zone, the mid-drive motor is made by Currie (hence the name Spicy Curry), which produces e-bikes as well as motors, and the e-bikes seem to have something of a hit or miss reputation with respect to longevity. Thus if I were interested in buying this bike I would get it from a shop that I could count on to fix any problems that arose.

And here it is again.

Overall I think that the Spicy Curry fills an interesting and under-appreciated niche. My sense is that it is targeted to shorter parents, whom many manufacturers have neglected. That’s not a good fit for our family but I can think of several families we know that would find it very appealing. In addition, it seems to have found a sweet spot with respect to the price relative to the quality of the parts. Although this bike isn’t designed for a rider like me (I felt like I was too tall, or maybe too long-limbed, which is not something I get to say often) it is designed for local conditions, and riding it changed my perception of Yuba for the better. This bike isn’t for everyone, but honestly it’s nice to see that there is enough of a market for cargo bikes now that manufacturers can begin to specialize.