Is this bike the vehicle of the future? Maxwell Macleod passes sentence on a new champion of pedal power

My first reaction on seeing

the long-awaited result of Raleigh's 10 years of research into electric bikes was a hoot of horror. ''Who in the name of the wee man,'' I sputtered at manager Colin Macdonald - of Macdonald's Edinburgh bike shop who were lending me the brute for three days - ''would pay a thousand quid for an auld wifie's bike that weighs twice as much as a mountain bike, particularly when you can buy a speedy second-hand moped for half the dosh?''

''Look, son,'' growled Colin, ''dinnae gab. Just pedal the wretched thing, it's pure magic.'' So I did, and found myself laughing like a wean.

According to Colin, laughter is the universal response from everyone when they first get on an electric bike. It's just so weird.

It's like being young again, your legs seem gifted with a magical power and you soon find yourself singing like a child out on his new Christmas bike as you silently scud along, as if with an invisible hand pushing at your saddle.

And this is no prototype. In Japan there are already more than a quarter of a million electric bicycles on the road, and if the reaction from the heid-cases at my local is anything to go by, we will soon be seeing waves of the things on our streets.

On my first day with my new toy I took it down to my local pub (the Cramond Inn) and after closing-time allowed three of Cramond's most boozalised old fossils to take turns in wheeching up and down the steep brae outside that respectably hostelry. The noise they all made whooping with delight was probably enough to make a few Cramond village residents tut into their cocoa.

All of them, thank God, returned with my thousand pound toy to exclaim considerably dirtier variations on the theme of: ''Jings, that was quite amazing. It's brilliant. I'd just love one. When do you reckon the price will come down?''

So what exactly is an electric bicycle? Simply put it is a heavily built bicycle with a low-tech, almost silent, engine built into a sealed rear hub. This engine is powered by a rechargeable nic-cad battery (with the Raleigh it's a muckle great grey slug of a thing about the size of a hoover bag) which clunk-clicks onto the front tube and doubles the oomph delivered through the pedals - or as the literature puts it, you get proportional power enhancement.

It's not like riding a moped at all. There's no engine noise, no vibration and half the time you have no idea whether the engine's cutting in or not.

Every evening you plug it into the mains which keeps it going for around 15 miles, and if the battery runs out you can just pedal it home like a normal bike, or slot in the spare battery you keep in the office or hire from the garage. Once you reach 14 miles an hour the hub engine cuts out and you revert to manual mode.

You have to be aged over 14 to

ride an ''EB'', but as yet you don't have to pass any test, wear a crash helmet or even get insurance.

The Select is built with quality components. The assistant at Macdonald's (who turns out to be Colin's dad) estimates that it would retail at around #350 without its electrical attachments. It boasts six gears, good quality cable brakes and easily adjustable seat and handle bars.

The drawbacks are that the gearing ratios are too low, there is no built-in lock, you have to bolt on your own independently powered lights and that cumbersome slug of a battery reminds us that there's still a quantum jump to be made in the storage of electrical energy before electric cars, or bikes, become entirely viable.

Raleigh have only made a few hundred of these first phase machines and the Mark II version will be out in the spring with better brakes and quick-release wheel nuts.

As you might imagine, the invention of such an ingenious machine has caused mayhem in the bicycle industry.

At a recent trade show in Germany there were two other prototype versions on show to retailers and several others are rumoured to be in development.

The real question confronting the industry is what's going to happen in a few years time when the Chinese (the world's leading bicycle manufacturers) start mass producing the next generation of EBs, perhaps with some new-wave, half-the-weight batteries stuck down the tubes instead of bolted onto them.

Can you imagine the changes in the way people go to work if such machines came on the market for a few hundred quid each?

I can. I have seen the future, and it's electric.