For a period in July, my relationship with two wheels turned upside down.
There, parked in the grass outside the Source office, I spied a new Cosmo-e, one of 227 e-bikes distributed by Veo throughout Bend’s streets since July 10. I was aware that Veo, a micromobility rideshare company, had contracted with the City of Bend. An avid cyclist, I often ride one of my conventional bikes a couple blocks to work each morning and then continue riding thereafter — churning the pedals in the analog fashion — mostly around the city center or anywhere through the vast trail complex west of town. I didn’t think the shareable e-bike program was meant for me.
Still, the Cosmo e-bike caught my eye. It was 90 degrees and my lunch break — I was over it. Returning home on the Cosmo e-bike, by contrast, seemed like a fun lark. After downloading the Veo app on my smart phone and adding my personal and billing information, I walked to the e-bike and, as directed, scanned the QR code on its handlebars with my phone. An automated female voice chirped through an unseen speaker, making me jump.
Welcome to Veo.
I straddled the Cosmo-e, which has 18-inch alloy wheels and a center of gravity closer to a Vespa than a bicycle. I scanned the rules and regulations posted on its downtube: yield to pedestrians; don’t park on sidewalks; take the bike lane and obey traffics laws like following stop signs and signals. Oh, and wear a helmet. (Pish-posh.) The 94-pound Cosmo-e, a Class-2 e-bike that Veo introduced in 2021, tops off at 15 MPH. Pedaling isn’t necessary, but doing so up a punchy hill offers a boost.
Knocking back the kickstand, I prodded the Cosmo-e’s throttle with my thumb while I situated my feet on the pedals. The e-bike, with daytime running lights, purred beneath me like an electric cat. Off I cruised — down the sidewalk. Rounding a corner, I startled a pedestrian, to whom I apologized before taking it to the street. I was home in three breezy minutes, which, after a $1 unlocking fee and a 39-cent/minute charge, ran me $2.17.
And I arrived sweat-free.
Veo has a three-year contract with the City of Bend. The program is financially self-sufficient; no taxpayer dollars fund the program at all, a city official said. In the first month, about 3,700 original Bend riders went for a spin. Collectively, we took 12,900 rides, each lasting a little more than 2 miles, according to data Veo provided the Source. That’s twice the national average, a rep told me.
Here’s the doozy — all told, we’ve logged 35,000 cumulative miles. That’s all the way around the equatorial Earth (about 24,000 miles) and back and forth across North America a couple times for good measure.
Bend is one of Veo’s approximate 55 markets nationwide. The company was founded at Purdue University in 2017, where it launched its first rideshare that year. Veo since relocated to Chicago, became profitable in 2020 and then relocated again to Santa Monica, California. Veo approached Bend around the time that Bird, the first bicycle rideshare company to contract with the City between 2022 and 2024, didn’t seek contract renewal. Bird, which enjoyed a $3 billion valuation in 2019, clawed itself out of Chapter 11 proceedings in 2024; it presently only serves two locations in the U.S.
Veo’s 2024 national rider survey, which it conducted during a six-week period between September and October of that year, offers a trough of ridership data. Nationally, 67% of Veo riders use the service to get places quickly; 51% to travel at a moment’s notice; 40% for enjoyment/fun and 23% to reduce the costs of car ownership. Veo doesn’t have those specifics for Bend, but local users’ feedback will be folded into this year’s national survey, says Paige Miller, Veo’s senior manager of policy and communications.
Visiting friends at Miller’s Landing Park one evening, I felt a cheeky need to show off by peeling out, spraying landscaping cinder into the nearby riparian area in the process. My friends guffawed.
peter madsen
Was I becoming a bad boy?
As my bicycle tires deflated back home, I was tearing up the streets with Veo, accumulating about $20 in charges in two days. (I quickly opted for VeoPlus, a $6 monthly subscription that does away with the $1 unlocking fee.) Despite being 42, I felt like a kid with a new toy — one that let me zip around town with an effortless glee that, I admit, emboldened some risk-taking.
I began treating the Cosmo-e’s capped 15 MPH setting as my default speed. Wanting to test the e-bike’s handling on loose surfaces, I took the gravel alley to work each morning. That made the kickstand knock against the undercarriage; maybe this terrain wasn’t what the Veo designers — who dreamt up their proprietary line of scooters, pedal-assist, e-bike and e-scooter varieties — had in mind.
Visiting friends at Miller’s Landing Park one evening after work, I felt a cheeky need to show off by peeling out, spraying landscaping cinder into the nearby riparian area in the process. My friends guffawed; I avoided eye contact with the assortment of folks reclining on blankets or playing hacky sack.
Was I becoming a bad boy?
I wasn’t the only one.
One morning back at the office, our calendar editor alerted me that the Cosmo-e I’d stationed outside like a faithful horse was being unlocked by two women in their 60s. I scrambled to see them arrange themselves both on the singular e-bike — very against the rules — as they eased down the sidewalk. No helmets, to boot. I waved them adieu.
Godspeed, Thelma. Nice knowing you, Louise.
That cinematic image got me wondering about any collisions, damage to property, or — gulp — DUIIs that may have stemmed from poorly considered trips on Veos. But the Bend Police Department says so far, so good. Sheila Miller, the BPD’s public information officer, didn’t immediately recall any service calls regarding Veo e-bikes, yet she’s noticed some complaints on the department’s social media accounts.
Police reports or no, Veo e-bikes have been getting a little dinged up, says Jason Castanza, Veo’s operations manager in Bend. Castanza manages a team of 10, full-time Veo-employed mechanics to keep the Cosmo e-bikes charged up and running smoothly. They use a cargo van to shuttle them to hot-spot areas such as downtown, The Box Factory, The Old Mill District and Hayden Homes Amphitheater. But Castanza is quick to mention that any damage has been minimal: a snapped-off fender, a broken wheel (“they probably went off a curb”), or a damaged handlebar bell.
“Just the other day I had to clean ice cream off a bike,” Castanza said. “But it’s no big deal.”
When damages occur — and those are usually visible in the photo a user snaps through the app to end a ride — Veo typically eats the repair costs. If intentional damage is suspected, Veo can suspend a user’s account. So far no one has thrown a Veo e-bike into the river — a watery fate that has befallen troves of rideshare bikes and scooters in Portland, for example. Still, folks on Nextdoor.com, where I solicited comments regarding Veo in Bend, mentioned their annoyance in seeing bikes “marooned” in their neighborhood for several days. Others pointed out that the e-bikes are too often parked in the middle of sidewalks, obstructing passage, especially those with mobility issues. To incentivize priority parking, Veo may introduce so-called Lucky Zones, which provide riders with a discount for parking in specific locations to rebalance e-bikes to areas with higher demand, said Paige Miller, Veo’s senior manager of policy and communications.
After I experienced a close call with the grill of a Sprinter van in the aforementioned gravel alley (my fault entirely, sorry guys), I began to reevaluate my relationship with e-biking. My self-preservation instinct had become short-circuited by a childish need to rail corners like I’m riding trails on my mountain bike. What do I have to prove?
And, like many an early-adopter, I became snobbish when I saw actual teenagers, many straight-up joy riding, along the Deschutes River Trail. Returning from a trail ride on my bike-bike, I was dismayed by a Veo-riding teenager approaching me on the footbridge — he was weaving in and out of my line of traffic. A hypocritical response lit up in me: “Quit messing around!” The boy zipped past me without saying a word.
Wait — teens under 18 aren’t allowed on Veo e-bikes; it’s right there in the user’s agreement. And now that I consider it, minors can’t legally enter contracts — a requisite for opening a line of credit. To paraphrase Veo’s contract, users of even the Veo app must be 18, as verified by a scan of an ID card. Parents or guardians can add their kids to their account, but decidedly not for e-vehicles, including e-bikes and e-scooters, which are found in other markets. Free-range parents are “fully responsible and liable for, and agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Veo harmless from, all injuries, damages, costs and expenses arising from or related to the minor’s use of the services,” says the contract.
Nico Nagle, Veo’s policy and partnerships manager, said the company has set up measures to prohibit minors from using them, but there’s not much Veo can do to prevent a parent or guardian from circumventing their safeguards by simply setting up the account with their own information. That said, Veo, through its GPS and other technologies, can deactivate a Cosmo-e and revoke the user’s account based on poor behavior. (The company has yet to do so in Bend, a rep said.) In fact, Veo has a complex technological suite that geofences their e-fleet within sanctioned boundaries — roughly Bend city limits. Also, some parks and public spaces are so-called slow-go zones (e.g., Columbia Park) and no-go zones (gracefully, Pilot Butte State Park and local schools’ sports fields), in which the e-bike will issue a verbal prompt to double-back from the area, lest it automatically slows or completely shuts down.
After returning to my traditional bikes for a few weeks, I recently popped open the Veo app. On a GPS map, I spied a nearby Cosmo-e. I unlocked it and took a short cruise downtown. Activated, the e-bike greeted me in its android tone. I mounted my phone on its handlebar cradle after activating the Bluetooth option that lets me pipe music, at a decidedly parental volume, through the Cosmo-e’s speakers (it also offers turn-by-turn navigation this way) and off I went. As a relatively veteran Veo rider who’s traveled, cumulatively, about 7 miles across 15 rides, I still felt a pronounced need to peacock. But this time, as the model Veo Cosmo-e-rider. I barely hit 15 mph. I hand-signaled my turns and let my velocity carry me through the arch, throttle-free. Yes, I had arrived on an e-bike, but far from the way I’d started out.
This article appears in the Source August 28, 2025.
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I don’t want to bad mouth anything that will get people out riding around instead of driving, but it should be pointed that I’ve seen every rule that’s on the bike broken. Especially riding on sidewalks when there’s a bike lane right there next to them. It’s funny that Veo collects and shares all this data that makes them look good, but I’m sure they could share the data of misuse and bad behavior as well.
“Helmet = Pish Posh”. And “…spraying landscaping cinder into the nearby riparian layer…”.
Shame on you Peter.