By Suzanne Bearne
Reporting
Lianne Fonseca says her life has been "transformed" by the electric bike she started using during the pandemic.
"It's game changing," claims the 31-year-old product manager who lives in Toronto, Canada.
"I wasn't a cyclist whatsoever before. Toronto isn't really a bike-friendly city, although it's getting better.
"But the pandemic meant it was empty of cars, and so I started biking a little. I now e-bike to see my friends, to do my grocery shopping, and it enables me to arrive at the office non-sweaty."
Surprisingly, the e-bike Ms Fonseca is referring to isn't actually her own. Instead she is one of a growing number of people on both sides of the Atlantic renting their bikes long-term through a subscription model.
Ms Fonseca rents hers for 149 Canadian dollars ($112; £91) a month through an e-bike rental company called Zygg. For her this generally means from March to October, pressing pause to avoid the harsh Canadian winter season when temperatures in Toronto can fall to below -30C.
Still, why rent? "It's really expensive to buy an e-bike," she responds. "They can be worth a few thousand dollars, and I don't have the confidence to select which one to buy. And I'm not confident I could fix it if it went wrong."
Instead, if anything stops working on her rented e-bike then the hire firm repairs it.
Over the past decade or so, we've seen a boom in short-term bike hire schemes as a way to navigate cities. First came docked bike systems, such as London's Santander Cycles or "Boris bike" scheme.
These require you to remove a bike from a docking station, and then return it to one.
