Why I traded my car for a cargo bike in Lisbon

LISBON — At a press dinner in Milan with Under Armour, a senior leader mentioned to me he’d replaced his second car with a cargo bike.  He takes the kids to school on it. Does the weekly shop etc. He lives in Amsterdam, I thought. It's flat, it's built for it. I live in Lisbon. Entirely different proposition.

That was eighteen months ago. In February the Omnium E Mini-Max cargo bike arrived as the car was sold.

Five days out of seven that car had been sitting outside gathering the effects of other people's poor parking. Living just off the Marquês de Pombal roundabout, crossing town could eat forty-five minutes of a morning. The lights cycling red to green and back to red. Horns. Waiting for a gap that may or may not come. All the while thinking: I could have done this on a bike. Then I'd circle for parking and hit the same lights on the way back. What exactly was I paying for?

I wouldn't call myself a cyclist. I don't wear lycra or track long weekend rides on Strava. But I do like how cycling makes me feel.

Dr. Brendon Stubbs’ (King’s College London) research with ASICS has really stuck with me. Remember their campaign for World Mental Health Day? ASICS’ research highlights the power of movement on mental wellbeing, showing that just 15 minutes and 9 seconds of exercise can trigger a measurable mental uplift. That's a short commute. A coffee run. The weekly shop.

This isn’t my first time documenting my love of cycling. If you've read our Brompton pieces you'll know I once rode thirty miles across Antigua, which was an absolute dream, and absolutely roasting. 

The first two weeks were not the story I had planned. Three named storms hit the Iberian Peninsula back to back, Kristin, Leonardo, Marta. The Omnium sat in the hallway like an expensive ornament while I waited for the weather to clear. Have you done that? Bought something and then waited for the perfect moment to use it? 

When the storms passed, Kelcie and I didn't go straight for the cargo haul. We headed to the river. The Tejo at sunset, the Ponte 25 de Abril with the sun dropping through it, locals winding down their day along the water; you only get this from a bike. You miss it entirely when you're hunting for parking.

If you ever visit, do this ride. Cycle from Praça do Comércio along the waterfront towards Belém at the end of the day. You'll see exactly what I mean. 

The first real test for the Omnium wasn't glamorous. An emergency dash for twenty-five kilos of dog food for our Spanish greyhound, Louis with a specialty coffee stop on the way back. If you're already out, you may as well. This was the exact trip I used to dread by car: double-parked, hazards on, clock-watching, hoping the queue was short and no one had ticketed me in the four minutes I was inside. With the cargo bike I pulled up at the door, loaded up, and left. No fine. No circling.

I've tried the alternatives. The Gira public bikes are fine for a short hop, though hit and miss with maintenance and safety. The Lime bikes have their place, but there's a jerkiness to them and super heavy for what they can achieve. This cargo bike reads how hard you're pushing and matches it.

"The usual autonomy and separation of the car, its hermeticism, is reversed; the responsibility of driving, its visual and mental burden, is passed to those outside it." — Rachel Cusk, The New York Times

Here's the thing people get wrong about replacing a car with a bike. A car isn't just transport. It carries, it stores, it does the work of the week, and for a lot of people it's also an extension of who they are. A regular bike solves one of those things. A cargo bike is a different use case entirely. And part of what made the Omnium the right choice was that it doesn't look like a compromise. Design mattered to me. If a bike is going to replace a car it has to want to be ridden, and I'll be honest, I wasn't ready to be the person in the fleece gilet and the waterproof trousers with the ankle clip reflector. Some cargo bikes make that look inevitable. This one doesn't.

Which brings me to a Tuesday morning in Graça. Six cases of freshly roasted specialty coffee beans, twelve pro-size cartons of Oatly, and a stash of retail-ready bags of coffee. Stock for Neighbourhood Café, Ben's place that we’ve been going to weekly since it opened. Ben opened the first Neighbourhood Café in Santos in 2019, kept it alive through Covid and has been featured in Condé Nast and Top Jaw. 

Neighbourhood now roasts their own beans and last year opened a second spot in Graça. So I had this idea: could the Omnium Mini-Max cargo bike do the job of a van? Ben was game.

Neighbourhood HQ sits just behind the Graça café, though you'd never find it without being shown. A roastery, office and cupping space rolled into one. Coincidentally that morning, the whole area was gridlocked. Everything was at a standstill. No one was going anywhere yet I weaved through with the 35kg load, pulled straight onto the cycle path and arrived at the front door. Pois é. Fabian was already outside to help offload for the baristas. No parking ticket. No waiting.

On the Dish Podcast, Louis Theroux explained why he cycles everywhere, “You know how long it'll take. You won't be late unless you get a puncture.” In a month I haven't once arrived somewhere later than I meant to. That hasn't been true of any month I spent driving.

Lisbon isn't Copenhagen. The cycling infrastructure, 256 kilometres of track built mostly since 2017, is good in long stretches and patchy in others. What the city does have, once you step out from behind the windscreen, is more space to explore than you'd expect: river paths, park routes, and lanes you can only find when you’re no longer in a car. 

And then there's the question of how the Omnium stacks up as the weather gets warmer, but that's a story for the next piece. 

The hire car is still an option for the weekends. But there's a reason the Danes call it funktionel skønhed (functional beauty) good design disappears into use. A month in, I've stopped thinking about the bike. The errands get done. The meetings happen on time. Some evenings I take the long way home. More often than I expected.

Full Omnium E-Mini-Max V3 review soon.