E-cargo bikes are pedal-assisted “micromobility” vehicles that can fit in a bike lane and transport supplies and small packages. The New York City Department of Transportation recently authorized their use on city streets.

The agency even has a small fleet of them it uses to move supplies around the city. But could these tiny, new trucks be the future of last-mile deliveries in New York too?

Writing for New York magazine’s Curbed website, John Surico looked at e-cargo bikes and what they could mean for America’s most densely populated cities. Surico joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to discuss his reporting. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Kai Ryssdal: Tell me about these e-cargo bikes. What are they, first of all? And what do they look like?

John Surico: Sure. So the best way to think about them is a bike with a little box attached to the back. It almost feels like you’re in a bit of a golf cart. I think their proponents argue that this is the future of how we’re going to deliver products around urban areas and beyond.

Ryssdal: And we should point out here that these little cargo bike things, they’re not new. But the cargo bit is new, and now they can be locked in and secured, as it were.

Surico: Yes. Cargo bikes have been around for a number of years. But I think that technology, specifically of the battery itself, of the lithium-ion batteries, is particularly what’s new and what’s really propelled the kind of advent of this technology these last couple of years.

Ryssdal: Classic last-mile problem, right? You don’t want these big, giant trucks on already-jammed Manhattan streets. And this is maybe the future?

Surico: Yeah, exactly. I think the city really struggles with handling millions of packages being delivered every single day and is trying to figure out just how to reduce congestion or reduce emissions, while also keeping the streets safe for both pedestrians and cyclists and drivers as well.

Ryssdal: I was interested, actually, in that safety part of this. So first of all, these things are speed-limited, right? But also, they are large, they have mass. And if you want to get into the physics of it, if they hit something —

Surico: Yeah, it’d definitely hurt. They’re capped at 15 miles per hour, which is a reasonable speed. It’s actually a bit slower than the existing electric city bikes, which go decently fast. But still, it would hurt if one of them hit you for sure.

Ryssdal: So it’s all well and good that the city Department of Transportation is doing these things, and, you know, government leading the way and all that, but you got to get FedEx and everybody else on board, too. Prospects of that, do you think?

Surico: Yeah, I think this is where the next couple of years are going to get really interesting. I mean, you have a supply chain that is built around putting things into trucks, it’s how we’ve gotten our products for the last 50 years. And now they’re going to move to a model where, you know, if this technology really does work, you are now completely shifting that distribution of products to much smaller and nimble machines. You have to change the way you’re charging things, you have to change the way you’re dropping off supplies and also just how you’re training drivers. I mean, drivers are trained to drive trucks, not small e-cargo bikes. So, it’s going to take some time because it’s a lot of moving parts, quite literally.

Ryssdal: How much time, John? Because it’s not like Manhattan’s getting any less crowded.

Surico: No, that’s for sure. I would say, you know, in the next year or two. It’s funny, even since I’ve published that piece, I’ve noticed just a lot more e-cargo bikes in the streets, especially in front of grocery stores. But I think the big guys like Amazon, FedEx, UPS are going to take a little bit longer.

Ryssdal: The push for this is bringing a lot of, like, actual physical changes to the city. They want to widen the bike lanes to make some actual proper lanes for bicycles, as opposed to the skinny ones that New York has now, right?

Surico: Yeah, I mean, exactly. The way that the city went about 50 years ago making truck routes, right, I think there needs to be a similar process for e-cargo bikes. If we’re really going to shift to this mode of getting our goods around, bike lanes currently are quite narrow, especially given how many people have been cycling since the pandemic. And these are quite big. So you have to really think about how we can fit these on the streets of New York City.

Ryssdal: You drove one of these puppies. What’s it like?

Surico: Yeah, it was a fun morning. I would say you feel the weight. I think once you get the electricity going through the pedal, you can move quite easily, but it’s completely different physics in a bike. You are just a much heavier weight than any normal cyclist. So, it’s something definitely to get used to.

Ryssdal: Did you scrape any curbs or fire hydrants or anything?

Surico: I needed some help at some points when I made a U-turn. I got a couple of heaves from the DOT staff, but they got me going.