Want to Go Car-Free? Test the Waters by Renting a Cargo Bike

WIRED

05-03-2025

Mar 5, 2025 5:30 AM For around $150 per month, you can see how a cargo bike fits into your life. If you find you prefer two wheels to four, you can even buy your rental at a discount.
I love my bicycle. If I could, I'd ride it everywhere for fun and even run errands on it. I also have an old car that I do my best to take care of and use for big trips, extensive errand running, or if it's just really gross outside. I've always wanted to put a dent in the car usage and get greener about getting around, but that's been a tough nut to crack.
The most logical place to make the switch seemed to be on the grocery side of things. We've got a walkable but expensive grocery store down our street in Seattle, and I wanted to be able to do bulk runs to Costco and support my favorite local produce stand, MacPherson's, for our household of two. MacPherson's is a mile away, up at the top of Beacon Hill, and Costco is two miles away, clear on the other side of the hill.
Heavy loads and big hills made me think an electric cargo bike could do the trick, but there was a bigger obstacle than the hill: money. A good electric cargo bike can easily cost over $2,000 and as much as $8,500, which is a lot of money to try something out just to see if it works.
Enter the Australian company, Wombi—they say 'short for wombat' and I say 'that's not what I found on Urban Dictionary'—which landed in the United States with a branch in Los Angeles in 2023 and followed with one in Seattle in mid-2024. It leases three different WIRED Recommended Tern electric cargo bikes for $135 to $175 per month, plus additional fees for renting accessories like cargo racks and child seats. The company may expand its United States footprint in 2025.
I couldn't risk a couple grand trying out a bike, but I could swing a pretty reasonable monthly charge to see how these bikes suited me. I set up the use of a loaner bike with Wombi for a three-month trial, got on the bus, and headed up to Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood to pick it up.
Seattle shop's general manager, David Giugliano, aka Seattle bicycle legend Davey Oil, took me on a test ride and gave me a run-through. I learned Wombi would pick up and drop off the bike at the beginning and end of my lease at my home as long as I live within a nine-mile radius of the University of Washington. The subscription also includes maintenance and repairs and a "rider rescue" service that allows me to lock up the bike and leave it to be picked up and fixed while I take a rideshare home at Wombi's expense. The company lets renters swap bikes to another model if they need to. Insurance against damage is part of the lease. All bikes are equipped with sturdy fenders, welcome news for the good people of the Pacific Northwest.
According to a company rep, Wombi has 1,800 subscriptions across three cities in Australia and an additional 1,000 customers who chose to buy their bikes after a year. So far in Los Angeles and Seattle, there are more than 475 riders on the road, and while Wombi is selective on what it shares about its users, I gleaned that most people opt for accessories that allow them to carry extra passengers—kids, other adults, or pets—and that there are slightly more men riding than women.
The HSD is one of three Tern bikes Wombi leases. Accessories like racks, bags, and child seats can be affixed to the bike depending on the rider's needs. Photograph: Tern Bicycles
The Tern HSD I chose is the midsize model in Wombi's offerings, with a 400-pound total capacity (rider and cargo), a smooth belt drive (instead of a chain), and plenty of options for different rack, seat, and bag configurations. I chose a big rack for the front and a large basket-like setup for the back. I would have added panniers (bike bags), but the shop was out of them when I picked up the bike.
Wombi offers two other bikes. The speedy and nimble Quick Haul is what you might call a light-haul commuter that carries a total of 330 pounds. The other one is the GSD, which can take 440 pounds, is more luxurious, has a longer range, and has a huge rear rack and double battery option. Wombi refers to the GSD as the one to 'replace the family van.' Unsurprisingly, Tern and Wombi are in a partnership, the terms of which the companies are unwilling to divulge.
I rode off on the HSD and was instantly happy. As a lifelong cyclist and bike commuter, the learning curve proved to be pretty easy. The Tern uses a lovely mid-mounted Bosch drive, which only assists you when you're pedaling—no throttle here, sorry lazy riders!—and the five assist levels range from minimal to what the Wombi people call 'turbo all the time, baby.' In my 10-mile ride home, I got used to all of the speed variables. It felt comfortable and peppy when I needed it to be, especially since it's big and heavy compared to a regular (non-electric) bike. It's also fairly agile, and I liked being nice and upright, European bike style, making me visible and giving me a high perch to navigate from.
I also noticed pretty immediately that I was booted out of my old bike club and into a new one. If I waved at the cool kids on their fancy bikes, I didn't always get a wave back, or I just got the thousand-yard stare. I wasn't riding a cool bike anymore, I was riding a motor-assisted grocery-getter.
'Whatever, cool kids,' I thought, 'I'm going to Costco.'
I swung into the Costco parking lot, wiggled past all the cars, and locked the Wombi to the rack right next to the entrance. How's that for perfect parking? I took a mental image of the bike's cargo rack setup to keep from overdoing it and got shopping.
At Costco, I got a case of beer, some whiskey and wine, some cheese, some more cheese, a two-pack of 32-ounce yogurts, and a fair amount of other stuff, but it all fit neatly into the racks. On a run the following week, I was able to get one of those giant packs of toilet paper on the back rack and still have room for other supplies.
And this was the part where I was reminded what a pain in the ass it can be to go north or south on a bicycle in the south half of Seattle. It's as though city planners think that all of its cyclists are pleasure seekers, unbound by the commuter-y needs to easily and safely get to places like downtown. Yes, there are some bike lanes here and there, and good for you if you're live right near one that goes where you want to go, but for the most part, it's tricky to get where you want to go safely without riding way out of your way.
Costco is on Fourth Avenue and, like most north-south avenues in the SoDo neighborhood, is not at all bike-friendly. The road is too much like a highway, and I rode south on an impressively crappy stretch of sidewalk for several long blocks, passed over a bridge with a too-low outside guardrail, and took my first possible left turn to get off of it. Not fun! It's hard to imagine a newbie safely navigating this. At least the bike and the tires didn't seem to mind the broken sidewalk and sprinklings of glass.
Despite this, I began to appreciate the smooth-riding capabilities of the bike, many of which revolved around feeling safe and comfortable on it while lugging stuff around. (For a ride like this, that's really the whole enchilada.) The frame is smooth and solid, and it only started to flex under load. Every once in a while, I'd really load it up, which could create undesirable but not insurmountable wobble. Big, fat tires absorb the bumps with help from a front shock absorber. Shifting with the grip shifter is easy. Cargo capacities aside, it's a surprisingly enjoyable bike to ride.
Getting a hang of the power-assist was easy, and I thought it was funny that I turned out to be a 'turbo all the time' person. I particularly liked being able to get up to speed quickly and being better able to match car speeds, as this not only made the rides more fun but made me feel safer on busy streets. Above all, I loved the brakes: big, smooth, and sumptuous suckers that create a sense of control, especially when you're all loaded up. The Terns also have a sturdy kickstands, which is wonderful when you get off the bike with a load full of groceries.
I also loved going green. Sure, I occasionally felt smug about it, but mostly it just felt like the right thing to do, especially considering that Washington state where I live is majority hydroelectric.
I kept up my usage, doing my regular Costco and MacPherson's runs, noticing a few things as I went. Most notable was how I almost completely stopped using my car. I got into the driver's seat at one point and realized it was my first time behind the wheel in about a month. I hadn't filled the car up with gas, hadn't washed it either. One good and funny thing was how the cargo bike kept me from overdoing it at Costco. Once, I bought too much and was unable to Tetris everything into the racks, forcing me to return something before even leaving the store, which was enough of a pain that it kept me from doing it again.
Closer to home, I got in a discussion with my butcher about his ebike. 'It's like a cheat code for getting around in the city,' he said. That rang true for me. Seattle tries to present itself as transportation forward, but the city has only a single subway-esque light-rail line, and the buses often feel sketchy. Cars are king here. Leasing a bike for me was a way break through that a bit.
The lease-(or subscribe)-to-own model is intriguing, and while final pricing if you choose to buy the bike depends on usage and overall time leased, the Wombi representative shared an example. The $135-per-month Quick Haul has a retail price of $2,900. Tax and accessories aside, after a year you'll have paid $1,620 for the subscription and have the option to buy for a little over $2,200, making lease-to-own a bit more than $3,600. (It's a bit more complicated than that, but these are decent ballpark numbers.) So you're paying a few hundred extra bucks to be able to try it out and getting a lot of subscription benefits during that year. It's hard to quantify, but that feels like decent math. A setup like this would make for an wonderful corporate perk.
It wasn't all perfect. Wombi's bikes have alarms that, as a condition of your lease, you are required to use outside of your home. Mine immediately started going off at random times, and Wombi had to come out and replace it. There is a leash lock that's stowed in a bag that needs relocating as it's mounted right where you want to pass your foot through to get on the bike.
Something that bugged me a bit was the cost of the accessory racks, panniers, and kid seats, which add to the monthly price. Most people opt for two accessories, and having those built into the price, even if that makes the base fee a little more expensive, makes more sense in my head. However, if you lease for a year, you can buy the accessories for half off. If you lease for two years, they're yours.
It would also be good to see Wombi offer more options for hauling stuff around in wet weather. Tern sells a dry bag that would be perfect, but it's not among Wombi's accessory offerings. Maybe it'll just take Wombi's first Seattle winter to figure out that people need that stuff.
I also think that at 6 feet, I was a little too tall for the bike. You can adjust the handlebar height and angle along with the seat height, but for as much fussing as I did, it still felt like I was always trying to correct my posture out of a bike-induced hunch.
All that said, Wombi's subscription model helped me break the ebike barrier, allowing me to do things I couldn't do on my regular bicycle and would prefer not to do in my car. Leasing and its perks allowed me to give it a full tryout for three months. Buying the bike outright still feels like too high a barrier, too much financial risk. A subscription gave me more information with less risk and could help me make the leap.