There's a particular kind of loneliness to a perfect ride taken solo. You crest a dune path at golden hour, the light goes the color of a peach, the ocean does that thing where it looks like hammered metal — and you turn to say something, and there's no one there. You file it away as a nice moment. You ride home. You forget it by Tuesday.
The rides you don't forget are the ones with someone on the back. The conversation that meanders for six miles. The kid who narrates every dog they see. The partner whose arms are around your waist when you both go quiet at the same time because the sunset earned it. Those rides become stories. The solo ones become cardio.
Murf clearly understands this, because they just built a bike entirely around it. The Higgs Plus is the company's first dedicated passenger e-bike — not a cargo bike you can awkwardly perch someone on, but a machine engineered from the frame up for two people to ride comfortably, safely, and without anyone gripping the seat rails in quiet terror. We've been riding one for a few weeks. It changes the math on coastal life more than we expected.
What Actually Makes the Higgs Plus a 'Plus One' Bike
Plenty of e-bikes will technically hold a second person. Most of them do it badly — a passenger sitting on a rack designed for groceries, feet dangling, center of gravity all wrong, both riders silently agreeing never to do this again. The Higgs Plus is built differently, and the details are the whole point:
- Elevated integrated passenger platform — a proper, designed seat position rather than an afterthought on top of a rear rack. The passenger sits where the engineering wants them to sit.
- Quick-release seat pad — pop it off and you've got a solo cruiser again in seconds. The bike doesn't force you to commit to passenger mode all the time.
- Passenger pegs — somewhere to actually put your feet. This sounds minor until you've ridden as a passenger without them, white-knuckling your way around every corner.
- Protective wheel shield — keeps the passenger's feet, ankles, and the occasional flip-flop well clear of the rear wheel. The kind of safety detail you only notice when it's missing.
- Murf's signature 52-volt battery — the same power platform across the lineup, which matters more with two people aboard. Higher voltage means the bike holds its speed under the extra load instead of sagging on hills and headwinds.
Why the 52V matters here specifically: Carrying a passenger is the single biggest stress test you can put on an e-bike's power system. A weaker 36V or 48V setup feels it immediately on any incline or into a coastal headwind. The Higgs Plus's 52V battery is the reason two-up riding feels effortless rather than like you're asking the bike for a favor.
The Funnels a Plus-One Opens (Or: Everyone You Could Bring)
Here's what we figured out after a few weeks: the Higgs Plus isn't really one bike. It's a different bike depending on who's on the back. And almost everyone in your life is a candidate.
Your Partner
This is the obvious one, and it's obvious because it works. There is something about riding two-up to dinner that a car will never replicate. You arrive together, literally connected, having just spent fifteen minutes moving through the evening air instead of staring at the same stretch of road through a windshield. Date night starts the moment you leave the driveway, not the moment you're seated. We took the Higgs Plus to a beachfront restaurant, parked it for free directly out front while cars circled the lot, and rode home in the dark with the lights on and the temperature perfect. It was the best part of the night, and the night had good parts.
Your Kid
For parents, the Higgs Plus quietly solves a logistics nightmare. The school run, the trip to the farmers market, the 'I'm bored' Saturday that needs an adventure injected into it fast. A kid on the back of a properly designed passenger bike is a kid having the time of their life — and a kid who is off a screen, outside, and narrating the whole experience to you in real time. The protective wheel shield and the dedicated platform are what let you say yes to this without the low-grade anxiety that comes with improvised setups.
Your Friend (Who Doesn't Have an e-Bike)
The visitor problem. Someone's in town, the weather's perfect, and they don't have wheels. Renting them a bike means a trip to a rental shop, a mediocre machine, and a separate-but-parallel experience where you ride near each other but not together. The Higgs Plus turns the visiting friend into a passenger on your ride. The conversation doesn't stop. You show them your town from the back of your bike, which is the best possible way to show anyone anything.
Your Dog
With the right carrier setup, the Higgs Plus's stable platform and low center of gravity make it a genuinely good dog bike. Beach dogs are the happiest animals on earth, and a beach dog who gets to ride to the beach instead of walking there is operating at a level of joy that should probably be studied. The quick-release pad and modular platform make it easy to swap between human and canine passengers depending on the day.
The Surf Shop Run, Two-Up
We want to talk about one specific ride, because it crystallized the whole thing. Saturday morning, we loaded up the Higgs Plus — one of us riding, one on the back — and made the run to the local surf shop. The kind of trip you'd normally do alone, or not at all, or in a car you'd then have to park.
Two-up, it became an event. We talked the whole way there. We picked up a bar of wax and shot the breeze with the guy behind the counter, who immediately wanted to know what we were riding. We rode to a taco stand after because we were already out and the morning was too good to waste. The errand became a morning. The morning became a story. That's the entire pitch for this bike, and it delivers on it without trying.
The pattern we noticed: Solo, you do the errand and come home. Two-up, the errand becomes the reason for a longer ride — the surf shop leads to the taco stand leads to the long way home along the water. The plus-one doesn't just add a person. It adds time, distance, and intention to rides you'd otherwise rush through.
Who the Higgs Plus Is Actually For
After our time on it, here's our honest read on who should be looking hard at this bike:
- Couples who want a shared ride, not two separate bikes — the Higgs Plus is more economical and more romantic than buying two cruisers.
- Parents of younger kids who want a genuine outdoor activity that doesn't require loading a car.
- People who host — if friends and family are always visiting your coastal town, a passenger bike turns every visitor into a riding companion.
- Anyone who's realized that the best version of their coastal life is a shared one, and wants gear that reflects that.
If you ride alone and like it that way, Murf makes excellent solo bikes — the Higgs Step-Thru and the Alpha ST are both superb. But if your ideal ride has someone on the back, the Higgs Plus is the first bike we've tested that was actually built for it rather than adapted to it.
The Bottom Line
We came into this expecting a niche product — a bike for the specific subset of people who carry passengers. We came out thinking the niche is bigger than anyone admits. Almost everyone has a plus-one they'd bring on a ride if the bike made it easy: a partner, a kid, a friend, a dog. The Higgs Plus makes it easy. And in doing so, it gently makes the case that the rides worth taking are the ones you take together.
Chasing sunsets is good. Chasing them with someone on the back is better.
Want one? The Higgs Plus is live now at Murf Electric Bikes — their first dedicated passenger e-bike, 52V battery, integrated passenger platform, and that classic Murf beach-cruiser look. And if you do bring a plus-one on your next ride, tag us — we feature reader rides every week.
