How I flew halfway around the world with an electric bike (legally)
Have you ever tried flying with an electric bike? It’s surprisingly hard since those big lithium-ion batteries are usually not allowed in your checked luggage or in your carry-on. But that just made me even more determined to figure out a way to do it.
Electric bikes are a fast growing and fun way to get to work, get exercise, or just get around and have fun. While often used for transportation or utility, electric bikes are also great for recreation. That means many people want to travel on vacation or for work with an e-bike. But those big lithium-ion batteries pose a problem since they are too large for air travel.
Or at least most of them are.
Nearly all airlines will allow batteries up to 100 Wh of capacity, and many allow batteries up to 160 Wh. That’s not very much, and is usually the size of a chunky portable cell phone charging battery. By comparison, a typical e-bike battery ranges from 300-700Wh.
And so to find an e-bike I could take on a plane, I had to cheat. I had to find an unusual e-bike that would actually fit the bill. And boy, did I!
The JackRabbit’s battery measures in at 36V and 4.2Ah, or around 151 Wh. It’s not much, only enough for around 10 miles (16 km) of range per charge. But it’s also just $199 to snag a second pocket-sized battery, which is what many people do to extend their range.
If you guys haven’t seen my review of the JackRabbit, you’ll want to check that out.
It may look oddly proportioned, and it is, but it’s also fun to ride and amazingly convenient for a city dweller thanks to its mere 11 kg (25 lb) weight.
It was originally designed for students to navigate college campuses, and so it favors a small, lightweight, relatively inexpensive ride that works well in an urban environment.
Plus it’s the perfect e-bike for traveling by plane since it slips just under the regulations to allow it to be legally transported on passenger aircraft.
So to travel halfway around the world on a recent trip, I loaded up my JackRabbit e-bike (technically a form of seated scooter, also known as micro e-bikes) and its battery for the trip.
JackRabbit knows that many people use their e-bikes for travel, and they’re also common on private aircraft or boats as a way to get around once you land at a small airstrip or port. For that reason, the company created a travel bag perfectly sized for the JackRabbit.
The bag is just $125, which is actually pretty good for a travel bike bag. My main bike bag that I use for larger bikes cost around 5x as much (though it also has wheels) and hard armor. The JackRabbit travel bag may be lightweight and small, but it is reinforced in the areas where the axles and other hard points touch the bag. That means it is still small enough to fold up into something the size of a lunchbox.
I loaded up my JackRabbit in the bag, though I found it was a very tight fit. It took some serious jiggling, but it finally worked its way in.
The trick seemed to be to get the bike most of the way in, then hold the bag up on end and do a bit of wiggling and bouncing.
I had to remove the battery to keep it in my carry-on, since the batteries aren’t allowed in checked bags. Just to be safe, I also ran the battery to empty before the flight and also put a piece of tape over the battery contact.
From there, I simply checked in the bag like any other piece of checked luggage. That’s basically what it looks like, and I even managed to stuff about a week’s worth of laundry into the bag too (once the bike gets squeezed in, there’s still lots of negative space around the frame where your laundry can go).
I tossed an Airtag into the bag just to follow it along through the airports, which was useful since I also brought it on a several-day trip that had me passing through 5 or 6 different airports.
Once I made it to my final destination, which was a solid 7,000 or so miles (12,000-ish km) away from where I started, I unpacked the bike and charged up the battery. A couple hours later I was ready to rock and roll, riding away on my e-bike halfway around the world!
If I tried this with larger e-bikes that have higher capacity batteries, I’d have to ship the battery separately and go through a hazardous goods process.
I’ve done it before but it’s super complicated, costly and more of a hassle than most people will ever want to put up with. For those cases in the past I had to become a certified hazmat shipper, believe it or not.
Being able to simply drop your e-bike off at the check-in counter and pick it up at baggage claim is a pretty awesome perk of a small battery e-bike. You may not be traveling very far on a charge, but if you’re using the bike as a way to get around the city, then a shorter range likely isn’t a big problem. And worst case scenario: you just bring a spare battery. The more, the merrier!
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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