One common thing to do to get a lower gear is to put on a larger rear cog (you’ll probably have to replace your chain too). The drawback there is that you also reduce your high gear.

To have your cake and eat it too you can either get a new hub with wider gearing, or get something like the Schlumpf Mountain-Drive bottom bracket/crankset (which will act like a much smaller chainring- though it might actually be too low).

I don’t know your wife…

A couple things about my wife:

First: She’s a helluva pedestrian. When she gets out of her gotta-get-things-done mode and can relax, she’ll walk anywhere. And even though she’s about five inches shorter than me, I can hardly keep pace with her on foot. She has no aversion to effort. To her, driving is about time management. (I wouldn’t want you to think she’s some kind of lard ass who doesn’t like to move her body.)

Second: We live in a fairly dry place. Fenders aren’t a necessity most of the time — but I’m considering putting fenders on the Motiv. She likes the bike she has. We’ve talked about getting her a new bike. If I thought that was the magic bullet, I’d pull the trigger.

I’ve just got two comments:

1. I agree with Andrew. You really do need a better bike. If I were your wife I too would be disinclined to cycle on that bike. To start with, the lack of fenders means that if the road is wet she will be showered with filth. I don’t know your wife, but my experience is that few women really enjoy being showered with filth. I recommend David Hembrow’s excellent description of a proper utility bike here:

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2009/01/anatomy-of-reliable-everyday-bicycle.html

As to convincing your wife to give up the car, I would recommend looking at the financial benefits of going car-free. Interestingly enough, my best source is CAA. See their handy car costs calculation guide here:

http://www.caa.ca/documents/DrivingCostsBrochure-jan09-eng-v3.pdf#search=“costs”

Please note that they cleverly leave out car parking costs, which can be quite high. Where I live, if I wanted to drive my car to work, I would have to pay about $200 per month to park the car near where I live and another $200 per month to park the car near where I work. With taxes, that would be well over $5,000 per year.

Even if I were to live in far-flung suburbia, if I wanted to own a car there would still be capital and maintenance costs for a garage and driveway.

When you add up all the costs, odds are your wife’s car habit is costing over $10,000 per year. You can have a conversation along the lines of “Going car-free would allow us to retire XX years earlier.”

Or do whatever else you want with the money!