I cut my commute from an hour to 25 minutes on this new e-bike designed by car gurus - and I got to work sweat-free

Bike commuting is usually the best way to get around big cities, and where I live, in New York, it's often the fastest. I used to regularly ride the subway to work, and that took an hour, and by car it was about the same, given all the traffic. But when I started biking, my commute took just 40 minutes. Recently I got to ride a new bike, an electric one, and it cut my commute even further, to a mere 25 minutes.

It is the Elby e-bike, which officially rolls out this July. Elby was founded by Frank Stronach and Fred Gingl, whose backgrounds are in automotive design and manufacturing. Stronach founded Magna International, a leading auto-parts manufacturer that, according to Elby, is the only company of its kind to build complete cars for brands like Aston Martin, Porsche, BMW, and Mini.

A lot of their know-how comes through when you hop on the Elby and start moving. It's well designed, good-looking, and really fun to ride. Everything about the bike feels very high quality. Having ridden it for a week, I found the Elby to be among the nicer e-bikes in what is now a booming market, particularly in Europe. I've ridden the high-performance $7,000 Stromer ST2 and sub-$1,000 models at trade shows like Eurobike, and at $4,000, the Elby, though not inexpensive, slots nicely into the middle of this range.

The Elby got me to work fast and sweat-free. It's one of the best e-bikes on the market. Here's what it was like to ride for 100 miles: