I remember a Kickstarter that was popular that had a bicycle wheel with a motor in it that you could fit most bikes. I'd be far more interested in a solution like this for a daily commute, seems very elegant.
Yeah. Kickstarter has had a lot of interesting bikes in the last year. One YC company, Vanhawks (http://vanhawks.com/), came up through Kickstarter, and they've been shipping smart bikes in the last couple months.
Still, prices among electrically assisted bikes remain high. For example, the Faraday electric bike: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/faradaybikes/faraday-co... starts at $2,700. It seems like they should be less expensive, but for whatever reason few electric bikes have appeared in the U.S. for under $2K.
It seems like price is holding back electric bikes more than anything else. The system discussed in the original article appears to be much more expensive than an entire electric bike.
Pre-order phase, still.
It had its ups and downs. I certainly wasn't fresh as a daisy upon arriving at work, even with the e-bike's help.
The model I chose was rather longer and heavier than a regular bike, and that was a definite inconvenience. Going up stairs, storage, etc. And that's not getting into the mechanical reliability issues I had (Chinese off-brand import).
It was an interesting experiment, but I wouldn't do it again. You'll need to carefully consider all the factors before choosing something like this.