In the past few months, however, the company introduced a new-and-improved second version. We recently tried it out, and it definitely did add some pep to our everyday riding.

The Omni Wheel contains a 350-watt motor, powered by either an 8.7- or 14.5-Ah 24-volt battery – those two choices provide a range of up to 25 or 40 miles (40 or 64 km), respectively. The wheel can be configured in either a throttle-only mode, or in pedal-assist. We went for the latter, as pedal assist seems to be a more popular choice amongst e-bikers.

The top throttle-only speed is 17 mph (27 km/h).

Mounting the wheel on the bike was a reasonably straight-ahead process, although we couldn't use the bike we'd initially selected, as it has carbon forks (a big no-no, according to Evelo). It should also be noted that we did have to readjust the bike's V-brake in order to accommodate the Omni's wider rim – this means that swapping back and forth between the bike's regular wheel and the Omni would not take just a few seconds, and would require tools.