This 7 foot long bike is called the Yuba Spicy Curry - here's why it's a great thing

Hollis Johnson

The Yuba Spicy Curry, the bicycle equivalent of a small pickup truck. It could be your new car.

I don't love the name. It's painted a goofy color. It has a certain Portland, Oregon, quality I don't love.

But the Spicy Curry - an electric pedal-assist cargo bike and the creation of a small Californian company called Yuba - is an excellent thing with excellent potential.

What's a cargo bike? Basically, it's the bicycle equivalent of a pickup truck. It's a surprisingly utilitarian creation that provides an alternative, though not a replacement, for a car.

An aluminum frame behind the seat allows for a variety of attachments: a wide bed for groceries or equipment, two child seats, saddlebags, or anything else you can tie to it.

Yuba

Attachments (sold separately) include sideboards, saddlebags, a cushioned seat and handlebars for passengers, and child-seat mounts.

The Spicy Curry is also an e-bike. A battery and generous pedal-assist motor provide extra boost to whatever power the rider is already producing. There are four torque settings to dial in your preferred level of, well, spiciness.

The battery will recharge fully in 4-6 hours, and it provides a range of up to 45 miles, depending on load, road conditions, and the torque setting.

Benjamin Sarrazin, Yuba's CEO and founder, told Business Insider the name is a play on the company's partnership with motor manufacturer Currie Technologies.

Yuba makes a variety of cargo bikes, some with electric motors and some without. The Spicy Curry is its top-of-the-range model and costs $4,200.

That may sound like a lot for a bicycle, but if the Spicy Curry is used to its full potential - as a daily errand runner - there's an argument for springing that much dough for something that's well built, comfortable, and very, very versatile.

And the Yuba Spicy Curry is all of those things.