I bought an e-bike recently (at full cost) with the explicit intent of attempting to drive my ICE vehicle less and have loved every minute of owning it.
It’s a fun thing to ride, gets me a bit more activity (I don’t consider it a workout, but it is more of a workout than driving), and gets me more time outside.
I’m turning into an evangelist among my friends, and any sort of subsidy would definitely make that effort easier.
If you’re on the fence, give it a go! They’re pretty mature tech these days, with a wide range of available models and price ranges.
I bought one a year ago specifically to take my kids to school and it’s been an absolute delight. I get a slight workout, the kids get fresh air (and they love riding on it). I’m convinced everyone would be much happier if school drop offs were 70% bikes rather than 90% cars.
But the ride to my kids school has isolated bike lanes for the vast majority of the trip. Most people aren’t so lucky and will (rightly) fear the idea of taking their kids on a bike. It’s such a shame.
I'm fortunate to live in a century home neighborhood (Waterloo region, Canada) where the elementary school has a tiny parking lot that is strictly for staff only. A few parents moan about having to park on nearby side streets and walk their kids in, but the net result is overwhelmingly a huge positive— almost everyone walks or bikes to school, and is safer doing so for the fact that there isn't a giant traffic jam in front of it.
I often feel that it's a fragile equilibrium though— it wouldn't take much to get the sports field turned into a big parking lot and have everyone immediately defect in the face of it not "feeling safe" any more.
OT, I just realised now we are in year 2023 a “century” house interpreted literally can apply to something built post-WWI. I wonder how the term would work going forward.
I'm at about 90% eBike school dropoffs and pickups. Love it. Especially as I work from home. I started by doing them all at "Turbo" assist. Now down to "Tour" for the most part as my fitness improved. Love the incidental exercise, fresh air, so much easier to stop off somewhere and dropoffs are just nicer. I'm lucky that I live a few blocks from an eBike store and I could afford the impulse buy one day. Very little thought went into it.
You might be surprised. The amount of exercise you get while "cheating" on an ebike is way more than people think, especially if you don't get one powerful enough to basically classify as a motorbike. I'm Australian, and here the power output is limited to 250 watts which means it's really just an assist rather than the main power plant (which is still the rider). Riding it uses significantly more energy than walking does since I like to go fast, so it's still very much legitimate exercise.
I sometimes use a class 1 electric mountain bike (250w, assist only while pedaling) and that is a fantastic workout...provided you are riding 10-15% grades uphill and (for the upper body) going down something similarly steep.
A throttle powered class 3 ebike on a flat paved path is going to be a different story. Likely less of a workout than a walk. Much better than a car though, for both the body and the planet.
Of course, assuming terrain allows options, one could alter their route to get a better workout. Reducing the assist would be an option too.
basically you get to choose how hard you want to work out, but at about 250w-500w boost, you will maintain about 130bpm, which will burn 400+ calories per hour. It's a pretty decent work out while still being quite pleasurable.
And you get a hill you don't like, you just use max assist and go up without sweating.
Aussie pedal-elec regulations mean they only help you up to 25kmph, over that and you are just pedal power. Which is to say, the full 250watts is only ever used when taking off or going up hills in practice.
That’s just not true. Once the max assist speed on an eBike is reached, the motor will stop assisting. So you can barely pedal and use max effort from the assist, but if your meat motor is getting you to 75% max assist speed the motor is only going to push 25%. This notion that the assist will push the meat motor faster is not based in reality.
Who sells that legally? Let’s at least keep the conversations honest. If you circumvent things to an illegal situation, that’s on you. For the vast majority of people that won’t, you’re making it out to be something it’s not
I think 500 is a bit high, especially for an average. Much of the time they’re in a peloton, which will drop the average a lot. Peak can go way higher but it’s for far shorter bursts.
“During a normal stage of the Tour de France, pro riders can pump out around 230-250 watts on average, which equates to burning about 900 calories per hour. But on some of the harder stages they can average over 300 watts, or 1,100 calories per hour. Tadej Pogačar has a Functional Threshold Power – an estimate of the power he can sustain for around one hour – of around 415 watts. But for explosive one-hour attacks on big climbs, some Tour riders have been known to exceed an average of 500 watts. And in the final stages of a sprint finish, sprinters can hit maximal efforts of over 1,500 watts.”
In the states, at least mine, the limit it's 750 watts. Mine has four steps of pedal assist and a throttle, I only bump it up to level 2 PA when I'm on a long but only somewhat slope-y uphill. Crack out the throttle only for real climbs. It's a heavy bike and in the cargo category (about 60lbs) but I use it for pretty much 100% of my errands. I only take my car out to travel over 45ish minutes away or when I'm going somewhere where i'll be coming home after dark.
I have a 250W ebike as well (and in AU); the effort putting into it is really only token. If you want to go over the 25km/hr legal limit, then it becomes a workout (as the motor cuts out entirely at that point, and you're left pedalling a heavy, inefficient bike)
The effort required to pedal a 25kmh limited 250w e-bike at 35kmh (or even 30) compared to a carbon road bike at the same speed is ridiculous.
I really wish they allowed for a very token level of assist to help counter the extra weight of the system, ideally as a curved reduction down to a minimum of eg 10% of the available assist as speed increases past the assistance speed limit (or even starting at a lower speed, eg 20 kmh, thus gently increasing the pedaling effort from an earlier point).
I'm not advocating that they should be as easy, given that the extra weight of the bike makes them harder to stop and less maneuverable, however something in between would be great.
Strong riders are more often than not experienced and thus competent riders, making them safer, however ebikes removes this "barrier" altogether - even a complete noob can go very fast, without the competence - therefore I'm all for a revised (analogue trail off) speed limit system in the interest of safety.
Yeah, agree with every point there. When I find some time I'm planning to reprogram my controller (there's an open source alternative firmware!) to try to do exactly this (not technically legal, but most delivery ebikes in the city have a throttle button and zoom past at 30km/hr+, so I'm in good company :)
1000W? You must just glide up hills. My cargo bike is 750W, and on some of the hills I still have to stand up and get it to make it up when I’m loaded with cargo. If I’m dead heading it up the hill, it’s a nice comfy sit down.
Upfront transparency here: I'm obsessed with e-biking now, especially on our wagon that I use to tote the kids around.
I feel SO bad for the other parents at the park that ask me about my experience because they get a 10 minute rave session from me where I talk about all the benefits we've enjoyed, especially when a simple "we love it!" probably would have been enough.
Some of the specifics, including but not limited to: removing 1-5 mile car trips from our lives (we've put over 2k miles on it, about 1k a year), riding to random parks, bakeries, beaches, putting the kids in a great mood getting fresh air when we cruise around the neighborhood with no destination after dinner, etc.
They're not only practical for the above, but they honestly make transportation more fun.
I live in NYC and I think for A to B travel, an e-bike fits the size of the city well. It's not a tiny city by any means but I can often get to/from places quicker on an e-bike than taking the train or a car. If it's nice out, I may prefer it even if it's slower.
The problem for me is that riding a bike in the city can be unsafe - often my area is full of double parked cars even late at night and no respect for the bike lane (which to be fair is just painted on).
I think GP is trying to say there should be some sort of physical barrier (plastic posts, or potted plants or anything) to prevent the cars from crossing the line. Even we're serious about keeping cars out of bicycle lanes, there should be a physical barrier separating cars from bicycle lanes.
There are multiple TikTok accounts of (I think Canadian) bicycle parkin officers doing just this.
They basically just drive on bike lanes and give people fines for parking on it all day. People are just lazy, there might be a parking space just across the street, but they'll still rather park half way on the bike lane and half way on the pavement.
I got a boosted board years ago, before they went out of business, and I've been a huge fan ever since. It's definitely harder and more dangerous than a bike or scooter, but it's super fun and ultra compact for taking with you into destinations or onto transit vehicles.
At one point i was considering one of those monowheel skateboard dealies, but decided that I would die instantly.. and hell they aren't much cheaper than my cargo ebike.
I'd had a bee in my bonnet about Boosted ever since their original Kickstarter back in 2014 [1], so I really specifically wanted that one. From a purely vanity perspective, I love the look of a powered longboard— I feel much cooler riding it than I do teetering on an EUC/onewheel, or derping along on a scooter. But certainly there are tradeoffs too; the battery life is shorter, and the tiny wheels make you way, way more vulnerable to road conditions (like loose gravel) that would barely register for any other vehicle.
Those one wheel things are very dangerous, if the motor cuts out or overloads it pitches the nose forward and slams you into the ground. A 4 wheel electric board is safer, it turns into a regular board if the electrics die or you can just jump off at low speeds. I use a Wowgo 3X which is about as close to a Boosted as you can still buy today.
I had an ebike until it got stolen, I got another one, and the 2nd one got thrown out by my property manager, and I had to keep getting new bikes every now and then as my property manager would throw them out (yeah, they do that -- but the savings I get on my rent-controlled apartment with this shitty management compared to other apartments in the area is totally enough to buy a new ebike every 2-3 months -- hey welcome to America).
Anyway, as soon as I got an electric car I started using the ebike less and less. I was finding that it occupied an awkward middle ground between convenience and exercise. I now just use my car or my non-electric bike. The problem with ebikes is that when they run out of battery it feels like hauling rocks to pedal them. When you run out of "battery" on a non-electric bike all you need is a bowl of carbs and you're good to go for another 25-50 km. And carbs are much easier to find in the middle of nowhere than publicly-accessible electric outlets.
That seems insane, can you bribe the property manager $200/mo to not throw away your bike?
Regarding running out of battery, my ebike is 99% used for my commute and I just charge at home every 3 days I ride. Works perfectly. Shorter trips for food I use my regular bike.
They might not have a designated place to park it outside, and not enough room to park it inside. If the neighborhood is dangerous, just parking it outside is risking theft. It is harder to steal a car, since you can’t just pick it up and go.
It’s the main reason I’m not considering an e-bike right now even though I have an EV. It helps that I can just walk to anything I need to get to on daily basis (eg kid’s school is 7 minutes away by walking).
Yeah my property manager keeps telling people to move their bikes inside. I moved my regular bike to my patio, but I refused to move my ebike indoors because I'm not confident about the battery quality and don't like the idea of having 1 kWh of questionable-quality lithium battery inside my apartment in a wooden building.
I also used to charge it from the outlets in the parking lot, but the new property manager that came along last year locked those outlets up so now I have to do the more fire-hazard thing of charging it next to the wooden building with a long extension cord.
I offered them to pay a reasonable fee for the electricity to use the parking lot outlets, letting them know it was in the interest of fire safety, but they chose the more dangerous option.
I've got a large ammo can that my battery lives in when it's off the bike. Chances are exceedingly low that it would combust when not being charged, but I did have a lipo 4 cell robot battery go up on my when it was on the charger, after that I only charge in the can right by the door (i have a street door).
Is the battery removable? Chinese will lug their bike batteries at night to chargers up stairs in their apartments, but I guess the USA is different than china about this?
No good ideas otherwise. I wouldn’t worry about the battery inside much unless it’s from a really dodgy supplier (but then again, all the Chinese e-bike batteries are, and people still charge inside, it helps that they use concrete rather than wood).
> Is the battery removable? Chinese will lug their bike batteries at night to chargers up stairs in their apartments, but I guess the USA is different than china about this?
Yes it is removable, but that doesn't change anything. The problem is the battery, not the bike. I'd rather store/charge large lithium batteries away from residences and flammable structures. 1kWh going into thermal runaway is no joke. It should really not be allowed by fire code, to be honest, unless the building is concrete and the charging location allows for safe egress if a fire starts.
That said, a larger fraction of Chinese buildings are concrete and more likely to be okay (provided people pay attention to evacuation route if the battery goes on fire in their apartment). My entire complex of 50+ apartments in California is a huge wooden structure. One bad fire could easily send all of it up in flames. There are safer, concrete buildings here, but they cost USD $4000+ for a 1-bedroom.
Regardless where you are, removable battery is a huge fire hazard. News about devastating fires caused by e-bikes batteries shows up from time to time. In China, It's common to see posters advocating for the storage of e-bikes outside building.
> can you bribe the property manager $200/mo to not throw away your bike?
I don't know, but I'm mostly just focusing energy on looking for a new apartment now. My current place changed management last year and it's been horrible in many other ways as well. Frankly it's also possible they want me out so they can rent out my place to a new tenant at a much higher price, so they try to be assholes in whatever ways they legally can.
I’m interested in buying one but have been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of brands that have seemingly appeared overnight. Can you recommend any specific companies?
I would only buy an e-bike with a premium brand name motor and battery. Bosch, Panasonic, Yamaha, Shimano, Giant. The next thing I would look for is 2 or 4 piston hydraulic disc brakes from SRAM, Shimano, Hope, Magura, Tektro.
As long as the bike has those three things sorted it's probably safe. Note that these things don't come cheap, so any e-bike with these parts is likely to start at $3000.
For specific bikes I like Priority Current. They're a little vague on the exact parts used because they may swap them out based on availability, but they usually pick real parts instead of cheap replacements.
I have bikes with mechanical disk brakes and one with Magura hydraulics. I actually like the mechanicals a bit better. Although the Magura brakes have slightly more stopping power, they're also more finicky and require a trip to the bike shop if they leak or develop an air bubble. The mechanicals I can adjust myself.
For me the real key is disc brakes (whether mechanical or hydraulic). Rim brakes don't have enough stopping power for an e-bike.
I have a $3k+ eBike and lock it in San Francisco. Not all places but many. I lock it with three locks. Main lock is a D/U lock Abus. Second lock is a "LITELOCK" for front wheel. Third one is the builtin cafe Lock. It is actually pretty quick to put them all on/off. Or at least I don't find it a burden compared to parking a car. All hex things have these security by obscurity hex locks in them. I also have a child seat on the back. Perhaps I've been lucky or perhaps the optics of three locks, and a child seat and often a helmet for a 4 year old dangling down turn off thieves.
Yeah I'm at Tokyo Disneyland right now, and I've seen unattended handbags left on tables in the outdoor restaurant seating area. I can't imagine people doing that at a large attraction in any big city where I've lived (London, Beijing, Shanghai), or where I live now (San Francisco).
Japan is like a different world. At least to me as a tourist, it feels so organized, safe, culturally rich and stress-free.
I wonder what Japanese people think and feel when they visit San Francisco.
> Paris syndrome (French: syndrome de Paris; Japanese: パリ症候群, romanized: Pari shōkōgun) is a sense of extreme disappointment exhibited by some individuals when visiting Paris, who feel that the city was not what they had expected. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of culture shock.
> The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, hostility from others),[1] derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, as well as psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating most notably, but also others, such as vomiting.[2]
> While the syndrome has been particularly noted among Japanese tourists, it has also affected other travelers or temporary residents from East and Southeast Asia, such as those from China, South Korea, and Singapore.
I’m sure SF is all that and worse, although expectations might not be as high.
Similar thing noticed when visiting Korea as US natives. My wife was in a group that all headed off to the restroom at a restaurant just after getting a table, with a couple of in-laws who live there leaving their purses on the table. My wife exclaimed that they were forgetting their purses, to which they replied that it was on purpose and how else would they make sure somebody doesn't get their table!?
inside my office bike storage room, and inside my apartment building basement. the even more expensive carbon road bike goes inside my apartment. the city bike can be locked up for short grocery runs and things like that, but it doesn't stay locked outside for very long.
Even though bosch engines are amazing their support service is execrable. I had an issue where there was a weird noise after 25km/h and even if there was an warranty they are taking months to fix it. First they said it's normal then send a recording of the sound etc.. Bought a 5k bike with a good engine to not have these kind of issues or if you have them then the repair should be in point.
I don't like riding heavy bikes with mechanical brakes because they never stop as reliably as good hydraulics. The ultimate limit is always the tire grip on the road, but it's easier to control properly set up hydraulic disc brakes to hit grip limits and get shorter stopping distances. Particularly down a steep hill.
IMO this is the reason e-bike subsidies would be a gamechanger. Because everyone else replying on this thread is correct: when you know you want to get into the e-bike lifestyle you want great quality components and the start price for those is $3k and up. $4.5k for cargo bikes.
If you don’t know it’s going to fit your life that’s a lot of money to throw on a bet. I wasn’t sure so I bought a budget bike, a RadPowerBikes Radwagon. And it’s… fine. The components aren’t great. The gears are janky. The brakes are insufficient given the weight and speed the bike is capable of. But it’s $2k and if it didn’t exist I don’t think I would ever have dropped $4.5k on one of the better specced alternatives.
I just had the recalled tires replaced on mine a couple of months back. I was going to do the repair myself, but they were paying for the repair. The local repair contractor in my area makes house calls, so I decided why take money out of their hands and had them come out for the service. They told me about the upgrade. It’s the next thing I’m doing. Also, the upgraded light is worth it. It makes the one it comes with look like a match in the desert
They're a bit expensive, but from personal experience and recommendations from friends: Riese & Müller, Stromer, Koga and Flyer. Be aware of trendy brands like VanMoof or Cowboy. An electric bike is not really high tech, no need for brands that act like they're a tech company or the Tesla of electric bikes.
But first of all, look for local dealerships and find out which brands they're selling. You need regular maintenance for your electric bike and many bike shops refuse to work on bikes bought elsewhere, especially cheap bikes bought online, and I can't really blame them.
A good electric bike ain't cheap, but lasts a lot longer than a no name/cheap one. A cheap bike with one problem after the other sucks all the joy out of owning one and is the surest way to a dust collecting piece of metal in the back of your garage, nevermind the extra costs.
And get electric bike insurance. Budget for it in advance. Getting your brand new expensive ebike stolen is quite traumatic.
If you like to tinker, buy a frame from Decathlon. Install a Bafang motor. Get Onirii MT4 brakes. Both are available on AliExpress. Use a 200mm front disc and 180 rear disc. Get a wheelset with a Sturmey-Archer hub, or normal wheels with a robust Shimano 9-speed transmission. And you have a very decent e-bike for around 1600€
I bought an REI brand one, just for the peace of mind of knowing REI will work on it and support it. And the guaranteed return policy. YMMV, there are other good options. But the number of options is a bit overwhelming.
I bought the base model Radrunner (used from Craiglist) and it's been great.
If you're a cyclist, you may balk at the goofy design. But it's great for getting around town. You can zip-tie a milk crate on the back to hold your stuff.
I can recommend Decathlon. My wife has this and uses it for hercommute (10 miles and 200m of ascent each way). Works very well and is reasonably priced at £1300. Wish it had USB charging though - instead you have a large charging brick.
If you have Decathlon in your country then you might have it available too - Riverside 500E
A friend of mine has two e-bikes, one with torque sensor and the other with cadence sensor. The torque sensor definitely gives a more bike-like ride, with better control over speed.
I'm on the fence about these subsidies, because I worry it's a bit of a zero-sum game versus infrastructure. Wouldn't adding miles of protected bike lanes go further than tax breaks for these devices, and improve the situation for people who already have traditional bicycles as well?
If the infra isn't there for safe cycling as a form of transit, you end up subsidizing what become essentially toys which can only be used in places like greenways and parks which are designated for recreation. Whereas if you make the city safer for cycling first, these things could become a major component in a better / safer way to navigate the world.
Maybe the idea is that the new e-bike owners then turn around and demand (and are willing to fund) the fixes to make cities actually support these vehicles properly, but it seems like a bit of magical thinking to me.
"Protected bike lanes" may make people feel safer but they make very little difference; drivers mostly kill cyclists by driving into them at junctions, not on plain streets. So while some infrastructure changes can help, one of the biggest game-changers for safety is just getting a critical mass of bikes on the roads so that drivers start actually looking for them before turning.
picked one up just over a year ago and ride it just about everywhere. Only take the old ice car out of the garage to go see my family who are about an hour away. Groceries, lunch, general errands around my hood.. all ebike. I bought a bit on the cargoie side. Big tires, racks. Thing weighs a ton but even the first notch of pedal assist makes it a dream.
You are right, it's not really a workout.. until you run out of battery miles from home (oops), a ~60lbs bike is some inertia to overcome, but I made it without too much trouble.
Subsidies wouldn't (in my opinion) be harmful but the real transformation is changing roads. During Covid, cities in the UK built out bicycle lanes. They were not unified joy, there are still issues to resolve here. Reddit is full of pix of them being abused by white van man parking, and stupid behaviour by car drivers and roadworks. They were temporary structures. The bare minimum to demarcate ride zones. Real infrastructure makes barriers of substance even if only kerb height. Delineates the bike zone with different bricks, with independent lights, with "investment"
But, if you look to the Netherlands, building it as tram:car:bike:people each flow direction isn't a bad model. (as a sometime Amsterdam resident 7 years ago I too made the classic mistake of walking in the ride path. You don't do that too often)
If I had an e-bike I don't think I'd change very much of my distance, but I might change frequency of use.
Some friends with e-bikes say it re-socialised riding, because before power it was totally about cadence and strength so they rode 50-100m apart mostly, a function of their natural pace and ability. Now, they ride 2x the distance, companionably, and so get the same exercise (this use of eBikes is when they are co-pedalled, its not entirely free of physical effort) but much more nicely.
Right now, ebikes lie in a space which makes them fertile targets for theft. The city hire bikes in Brisbane have made a very odd height decision, you can't elevate the seat to suit my scale. I use them but its an annoyance.
If they became more ubiquitous and if the value in theft dropped, I think that would be a good thing. Or we can cut off the hands of the bike thieves, Either works.
Yup making cycling at full cost the better option (as you describe tackling the issues around safety, theft) will have a real long-term impact, otherwise you might end up subsidizing a fun little toy that is used for a few weeks then goes back to the garage.
Another problem with subsidies is that it targets a specific mode (e-bikes), while simpler, cheaper, normal bikes might be good enough already. It could also lead to local sellers increasing the price of e-bikes.
You can buy a $200,000+ hybrid Mercedes-Maybach S 580 that gets 16mpg city, 24 highway...and both state and federal governments will give you a nice big fat check for many, many thousands of dollars. It could be the fifth car you own, which sits in the garage of one of your summer homes in the Hamptons, for 10 out of 12 months.
Wringing out hands over people not using a subsidized e-bike "enough" seems pretty silly when for two decades we've been handing many thousands of dollars to anyone who has a pulse and buys a hybrid or electric, with little or no conditions. No income/worth caps, no purchase price caps, no annual usage requirements, nothing.
Yeah I'm in central London and started cycling again having done it a decade ago and they've made massive improvements. As well as cycleways there are a lot of signs saying "No entry except cycles" and similar on the regular back streets which vastly reduces vehicle traffic without much cost to put in. The cars can still access the roads, they just have to do an annoying loop of one way type stuff. I also drive and it's made driving more of a pain but still seems better overall.
E-Bikes need major reforms, at least in my area (Toronto). The problem I see it is you have two categories of the product labeled the same. On one hand, there are conventional bicycles equipped with pedal-assisted motors, designed to mimic typical human-powered speeds. On the other hand, there are E-Bikes marketed as potential substitutes for motorcycles.
Most of my issues come from people riding the latter of those two categories, however some of the concerns directly relate to both.
E-Bikes have a huge part of their ownership caught up into two groups that are doing the entire sector harm as well, the first group causing harm is those who are out modifying these bikes and getting them up to highway speeds in some cases, the second group are people who are turned to these as a mode of transport because they have lost their licenses due to DUIs and now take those same impairments to the E-Bike world.
Several crucial problems exacerbate the situation: the absence of mandatory safety equipment such as helmets, the lack of insurance coverage, insufficient training provisions, and the absence of mechanisms for accountability and identification of riders and their respective bikes.
In my personal opinion, a comprehensive solution for my region involves licensing all E-Bikes under the moped or limited-speed motorcycle license, requiring license plates, and implementing cost-effective insurance options (possibly achieved through government subsidization).
I see this all the time as well in a different area, and am really concerned about it. It was on my mind today as I was biking.
I know what you mean about there being two types of ebikes, and agree: one is basically a regular bike with assist, the other is basically a moped or motorcycle. They often look different as well, probably because of the battery size.
The problem I have is that individuals are riding the motorcycle-style ones on paths that are clearly designated as off-limits to motor vehicles for safety reasons. These are paths that see high use, with lots of pedestrians and cyclists, and the speeds that people are riding them strikes me as unsafe. They're often much faster than what someone could physically achieve without a motor. They're also often driven by older children, teenagers, or very young adults, many riding them in pairs, one driving, the other sitting behind.
If you were to step back and just consider the the moped-style ebikes for what they are, that's what they are: electric mopeds or motorcycles on a path designated for pedestrian and cycling use only.
My spouse works in rehab and has started seeing injuries from collisions involving these bikes, and they're basically the same as moped or motorcycle injuries.
I'm not sure what the solution is, because the "regular" ebikes seem just like bikes to me, and it seems strange to require a license and training for them. But it also seems unacceptable to let motorized vehicles on trails specifically meant to be free of them, because of a loophole in regulations.
For the illegal electric mopeds/motorbikes I ask myself what stops someone driving an illegal petrol moped/motorbike around without type certification/registration/licensing/insurance? Why are electric vehicles somehow able to be sold bypassing those requirements?
For the legal "electrically assisted pedal cycles" as they are called in the UK, the solution has to be police actually doing their jobs: when they see the driver of a bike with a battery & cargo casually going >= 20 mph without any effort being put into the pedals (I spot these every single day, nearly all of which are operated by Deliveroo/Just Eat/Uber Eats): Stop them! Confiscate the vehicle! Prosecute the driver for driving an unregistered, non-certified vehicle, uninsured and without a driving license!
>Why are electric vehicles somehow able to be sold bypassing those requirements?
Because they are much cheaper to produce, and overall the segment doesn't require any licensing, safety inspections, or really any "check in" to operate on the roads with the government so very difficult to enforce any rules.
>Stop them! Confiscate the vehicle! Prosecute the driver for driving an unregistered, non-certified vehicle, uninsured and without a driving license!
Easier said than done it seems because the police in my area can't barely enforce normal traffic rules on conventional bikes let alone e-bikes that go much faster.
Requiring things like licenses and insurance would be a great way to drasticially reduce the uptake of ebikes, which seems like a horrible idea. I think this is a situation where your proposes solution (which I don’t think would be effective anyway!) is worse than the problem.
Dramatically INCREASING the uptake of something that has serious safety concerns shouldn't be something we urge people to do. I can't see how having more untrained, unregistered, unregulated, vehicles and riders flying around is a good thing in any scenario.
I never said they should be unregulated! There should still be laws that ebike users have to follow (just like regular bike users do), and police should enforce those laws as strictly as possible so that most people comply to them. You can do this without requiring training, licenses or insurance.
we have a long history of no to little enforcement (because it's incredibly difficult to do) on traditional bikes largely due to lack of licensing/training.
Ironically, insurance would make it cheaper for most of us. My rationale is that car insurance carriers would compete to sign up bike commuters because of the reduced liability risk, and would do so by offering us lower rates on our car policies.
Here in Tokyo, it's legally required to have liability insurance to ride a bicycle. I don't know how many people actually do this, but it is the legal requirement. It's also very inexpensive (and a good idea in case you hurt a pedestrian). It hasn't stopped bicycling from being very popular for getting around, and it seems like every mother with kids has an ebike with a child seat or two.
That’s the opposite of what we need. Bikes should be unencumbered by all that crap. Helmets are a good idea and may save some money but it would be better to make those free as part of the deal than to regulate them. I don’t understand the argument for registration, plates, motorcycle, etc. We’re talking about low speed, low risk, low property damage. Sure, you can die or cause death on one but it’s so much less likely than a car and the exercise alone would have a positive impact in the U.S. that could very well offset the costs.
>We’re talking about low speed, low risk, low property damage.
You realize that many of these are now being sold going 40-60mph ... that's not low speed, not low risk (many of them are built with wheels and brakes that are not safe for the speeds not to mention the cheap chinese batteries that catch on fire), nor low property damage when they hit things at top speed.
> exercise alone would have a positive impact in the U.S. that could very well offset the costs.
What exercise? The vast majority of these being sold aren't "pedal assisted" they are full electric sudo motorcycles.
Aren't those already not classified as ebikes and therefore treated as motorcycles? They need insurance, registration, etc but are being driven illegally just like people drive cars illegally.
Not where I am - if you read my original comment I made that pretty clear. The term e-bike here covers everything from motor assisted traditional bikes to what is basically an electric dirt bike with the later generally being more popular than the former
In america, at least in washington state we are limited to 750w and 25mph. You can throttle or pedal assist and then the motor cuts out and it's just you and your legs. There are some electric scooters (think vespa, not razor) and such, but those need to be licensed like motorcycles.
As someone who rides motorcycles, even low speed collisions can be dangerous. Anything above ~20mph means that you are going to hit the ground pretty hard and then skid, taking off skin. Regular bikes are mostly fine, but it quickly gets dangerous even to fall off in a single-person accident at higher speeds.
"love" it that you got downvoted for expressing common sense based in your expirience
In Israel ebikes/escooters became popular 15 years ago if not more. They are universally hated by non riders, because
- riders tend not to obey any rules
- there is a bunch of deaths every year because e-whatever run into pedestrians on high speeds
- it's very fun to ride car on road and have somebody on e-whatever play chicken with you. especially during night. (once, one of those riders chased me to my home and demanded "compensation" for something)
- a whole bunch of fires due to exploding batteries (there is now Israeli startup that installs fire-proof charging stations/enclosures)
- no enforcement as policy too busy to deal with other stuff
So yes, for those who use it, it's probably comfortable and fun. Adds another drop into solving transportation/environmental problems. But at absence of proper legalization and enforcement it's not fun not be around them
I think just about everyone agrees that e-bikes need regulations with strong enforcement. We just don’t agree that they also require training, licensing and insurance.
However bad you think e-bikes are, the fact remains that cars are worse. As long as e-bikes are replacing cars, they’re a good thing.
You will never have proper enforcement without training, licensing, and insurance. For proof on that look at the lack of enforcement of traditional bikes and basic road safety for our entire lives
They don’t cause anything even close to the number of issues that cars cause. I hope my city turns as many insured car drivers into uninsured ebikers as possible.
It definitely helped that Denver (and these days Colorado in general) has one of the largest networks of bike paths in the United States. Well beyond bike lanes, the paths are separate from roads and don’t intersect with roads. So all of these e-bikes can zip around without worrying about lunatics Zooming while driving. I’d love to use an e-bike to get around, but I’m not a fan of sharing the sidewalkless, shoulderless roads that seem to be everywhere in the state I currently live in.
Living in Boulder I have however noticed that most of the trails now have “no e-bike” signs as some of those are closer to electric scooters in terms of speed so YMMV I guess even around here.
Thanks, I never knew that about Denver. And yes, bike paths, separate from roads, are the answer, not road sharing with cars. A teenager was killed on an e-bike a few miles from my house just last week: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/stor...
That's a major problem, I wouldn't cycle without good paths. The risks are too high, and I don't particularly like the idea of such an ignoble death as being smooshed by someone who was glancing at their phone and didn't see me. Death by tiktok, no thanks.
I do ride some shared roads but they are low-traffic side streets, and I have to zip down an inner city bike lane on my commute but again, totally different to a shoulderless high speed road.
I have used my Tern GSD ebike with my two kids under 6yo and it has been transformative to how we get around the suburbs of Portland. I have put on about 1800miles in a little under two years. We use it for visiting the park, grocery shopping, library, and getting to preschool.
All that being said it can be challenging in a few ways:
- Infrastructure: We partially chose our current suburb home due to the good bike infrastructure and will have to be even more hyper aware if we have to move again. The two important pieces to us are: trail systems that get you 80% of the way to most places without interacting with cars AND dedicated bike/ped under/over passes around major motordom infrastructure like freeways. Luckily our current home had both.
- Maintenance: I think there is a market opportunity for ebike components that are WAY beefier than the current incumbent components. In particular the brake pads and brake systems are just not up for the job in any hilly terrain. And given the weight/size of a cargo ebike getting it to a shop via a car is annoying. So, I have learned to just bleed and replace pads myself but it is a tedious task that needs to be done about every 600miles under my use.
- Price: The Tern GSD is pretty crazy expensive at ~$6k but was the only thing that checked the boxes of belt drive, integrated hub, and mid-drive assist for us.
Also, to share with friends and interested folks the ways we get around I started sharing recordings of my routes and rides with an overlay map: https://github.com/philips/bike-cam-map-overlay
For anyone unfamiliar, I just want to put in a good word for Brompton folding bikes which fold down to about the size of a carry on suitcase in about 15 seconds. They last decades and are extremely useful for urban cycling because they open up a whole world of milti-modal trips since they can be taken on any bus, taxi, train, ferry, etc. there’s also fantastic for shopping and can carry a surprising amount of cargo. I think this video sells it better than anyone else https://youtu.be/V6bmuJ98Zc8
They also have electric versions. They're a bit pricey but very high quality. Being from the UK, they are limited to electric assist up to 25km/h which is a bummer for Canadians who typically get to go up to 32km/h and Americans which are limited at 40km/h, but you can also buy a regular non-electric Brompton and add on a Swytch Kit (https://www.swytchbike.com/) which. We've done that and it's worked out really well.
My wife had a Swytch on her Brompton and found after a year of use it wouldn't hold enough charge for her commute (10 miles). Bit disappointing really.
Brompton is still excellent though. We know someone who cycles to the airport, takes it on the plane as hand luggage to Munich and then cycles to his mums house.
Yeah, our Swytch experience hasn't been completely seamless either, but it comes in at still like $1000 or more cheaper than an actual electric Brompton and with a higher speed limit so I still think it's better overall. I also found that getting rid of the cadence sensor and relying solely on the throttle made fore a more relaxing and confident experience. With the finicky pedal sensor you are always wondering if it will pick up your motion, which is a constant source of mild anxiety whereas the throttle is totally solid every time.
I would rather money to subsidize e-bikes go into creating safer bike lanes. Using a bike as a regular means of commuting is high risk. Motor vehicle drivers are inattentive, distracted, unaware, and sometimes intentionally vindictive.
It sounds great, but in America you'd need to have a revolution and install a brutal dictator to accomplish this, because most Americans would violently oppose this kind of legislation.
You are indirectly saying to tax farmers, the poor and other people who don't or can't live within bicycle distance of their work, or who have to do things like work on their own house. Not to mention families!
Taxes on cars can and should be proportional to weight, power, size, price, etc. It's quite easy to increase the taxes on Porsche Cayennes without making Honda Civics unaffordable.
Maybe if we stopped taxing the living crap out of everything else, we could afford them.
I'm very pro bike (writing this as I've walked in from a 35mi ride tonight). Ebikes allow people that are not in the best of shape to get moving. It's worked miracles for some people and is a gateway to better health.
If we haven't learned yet, subsidizing has a way of creating glut, waste and abuse. How do you think Comcast got entrenched? How do you think recreation.gov came to be? The thought behind "hey we should subsidize ebikes" is a good one. Unfortunately it's the wrong solution.
I don't really understand comcast or recreation.gov related to direct to consumer subsidies that likely actually create systemic savings on transportation infrastructure greater than the cost of the subsidy.
I do think that we should build infrastructure and penalize driving significantly which would encourage bike riding but subsidies don't seem like they will hurt nor create some weird monopoly like you suggest.
> If we haven't learned yet, subsidizing has a way of creating glut, waste and abuse.
looks over at the massive, entrenched, systemic subsidization of low-occupancy motor vehicles
"Use fees" don't cover the costs of just roadway maintenance and construction in any state in the US. They typically make up much less than half.
Then there's all the other costs we as a whole subsidize, like police/fire/ems resources used responding to dangerous drivers and crashes, which tend to be dominated by low-occupancy passenger vehicles. Professionally driven vehicles for cargo and people are involved in far, far fewer incidents.
Taxing someone $10k to give them back $500 as an incentive to buy an ebike, while keeping the rest isn’t a good plan. That’s my point. It’d be better to just leave them with their money for multiple reasons.
Comcast came to be entrenched because of the free market and lobbying, and recreation.gov came to be because the government admitted it sucks ass at IT and was willing to pay extra to avoid another boondoggle.
Love this idea! I've long thought that E-bikes are a gateway-drug to normal bikes and better health.
Years ago I had a bad knee injury and for a while I didn't have the range of motion to peddle a normal bike. So I bought an E-bike with a throttle (it's basically a motorcycle in every way except the regulation). But, when I was able to ride a regular road bike again, I opted for it instead.
Later, my mother in her 60s came to visit and we went on a 25 mile ride. She LOVED it. I gave it to her and she took it home. My dad liked it so much that he bought one too and now they go out on long 40 mile E-bike rides.
They love it. I joke that I saved their marriage. I'm not sure it's really a joke. They wouldn't be able to get out and get this much enjoyment on regular bikes.
E-bikes are accessible to nearly everyone. It's a fabulous way to cut down on our obsession in the USA!
If e-bikes are great then people will buy them. We really need to start cutting subsidies instead of creating more. Focus on the big problems in our economy such as fostering healthy competition, reducing M&A and anti-competitive behavior, supporting small business, etc... These subsidies will just go into the pockets of the big entrenched players making the wealthy even more so and reducing innovation.
One caution: Although I'm a hardcore e-bike enthusiast, the ultra-crappy Chinese battery chargers many of them come with need to be outlawed. They are a huge fire hazard and at best they shorten battery life.
Building good Li-Ion chargers that don't overcharge or overheat batteries is known technology. Those features might add $10 to the cost of the crappy chargers, and their use should be mandated by law.
There have been safety standards for e-bike batteries recently mandated by law in places like NYC, but there is still a lot of lacking enforcement and mandatory checks. Every other week, you hear an instance of a person's apartment or repair shop set on fire due to faulty e-bike batteries :(
Yeah, often it seems to be delivery drivers who are really hard on their batteries. There is a grey market to repair them when cells go bad and they often use low quality replacements or override some of the safety circuitry built into a lot of the batteries.
One thing about e-bikes is they are targeted by thieves due to their price. Don't expect to own it for too long. I'm good with my regular bike + bus. There are so many free bikes around, I found 3 free bikes this week. Two needed some oiling and tuning but works well. Third one has a heavily rusted chain but I can handle it.
It's also time to regulate ebikes to have standard and open interfaces to batteries and motors (you are welcome to have multiple standards and even create new ones if technology evolves). They are ridiculously expensive to replace for what they are - and how long they last, at least shimano motors.
The skeptic in me wonders how many of those low-income buyers used this to just make a quick buck by reselling the bike. Potentially to someone outside of Denver, which might mean the taxpayers of Denver got 0 benefit for their $1200. That’s probably always going to be a cost of a program like this though - some of the bikes are used extensively as intended and some are resold/stolen/wrecked in short order.
US bike infrastructure is not there. There's not enough places to park the bikes and it's not convenient to get around on them. Scooters are actually easier to get around on in cities, and a bike just can't replace a car in rural areas. Suburbs and small towns are set up for ebikes, but that's not gonna be transformative enough to justify the credit. You will end up with a generation deciding ebikes aren't worth it. The purchases will end up as a discount on toys that will end up in the garbage in 2 years.
We need a multi-phase, 30 year plan to eliminate the need for personal cars. It's a hard problem to solve in general, but moreso in the US which is built for cars. More protected bike lanes need to be rolled out, bike racks expanded tremendously, park-and-ride options expanded, increased public transit. There's plenty of mobility needs that a bike simply can't replace that need new solutions, so funding for experiments, new businesses, etc will be needed. It requires funding, construction, passing of contentious city and county ordinances.
It's a complex problem. There is no simple solution.
Most cities in the US have plans like this, they're often called things like Vision Zero plans. The core problem is that electeds don't care. They'll cut funding to these programs whenever they can, drag their feet on implementation, use a single public comment to justify auto centric development, etc. It really just comes down to the electeds and what they vote for and apportion.
Personally, I think it's hopeless, except maybe in certain localities within the US. Most Americans just like their cars too much and aren't interested in the lifestyle you're proposing, no matter how awful car-centric culture really is to live in. I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more pro-car comments here in this discussion, but it's the middle of the night in the US right now so maybe that's why.
Millenials and younger are usually a lot more open to non-car-centric development. The problem is that most of the electeds who have the power to actually apportion budget to these projects (so generally state level representatives) are older, wealthier, and generally live in car-centric neighborhoods themselves. It also helps that most electeds get safe (usually guarded by staff), convenient parking at their office even if the seat of State or City power is in a high-COL neighborhood.
For example, the recent efforts in the Bay to defund public transit were being pushed heavily by a State Rep based out of SF who lives in the wealthiest, most car-centric portion of the neighborhood. Despite his own constituents being against his position, there's nothing they can do but vote him out during the next election cycle.
Some people in those age ranges are more open, sure, but they're outvoted by everyone else, which is why those pro-car anti-public-transit "electeds" are there. At best, it'll be a generation or two until this changes and any significant progress is made in turning these places into walkable, bikeable areas (because you need to change all the zoning laws, and then knock stuff down and build more densely for walking and biking to actually be practical; no one's going to bike many miles every time they just want to go grocery shopping or whatever).
I support this idea! I also support the idea of non-e-bikes too, I mean: why not? I prefer just pushing the bike with my own muscles and I don't own a car. I wouldn't mind some help with a purchase of a commuter bike!
I'm always skeptical of subsidies on a mass scale. All you do is increase demand and thus increase prices that offset the subsidy. It also incentivizes manufacturers to float prices higher anyway.
The Denver program at least limited it to low-income individuals which I think is the correct approach to avoid significant pricing disruption.
We had the opposite effect in NZ. Putting an $8K subsidy on EVs sold for <= $80K caused manufacturers to drop their prices so as to be inside the subsidy range. It seems to have worked very well, looks like they got the numbers right.
I have moral issues with the wealthier members of society getting an $8K handout from the govt for buying a new car, but that's a different matter.
> All you do is increase demand and thus increase prices that offset the subsidy.
No, it's not. Production is elastic, it grows to accommodate price changes. For most things you get a minuscule increase in price with a large increase in usage.
By your logic the EV subsidy (or, tax cut relative to gasoline cars, but it should be the same effect) in Norway shouldn't have worked. Yet it has been wildly successful.
Yes, it may encourage manufacturers to increase price, but that gives them more money to do marketing, and incentivizes them to try to sell more of the product since the margins are now so good.
It was striking how fast all the car marketing in Norway changed towards pushing EVs. While in other countries the car makers still seem to be primarily pushing ICEVs. Considering that consumer awareness is an important aspect of transitioning to a new solution, this is a very good thing IMO.
I think it's also good that Norway didn't try to limit the subsidy to cheaper cars, to not fall for the temptation to exclude luxury cars. (Until very recently, now that the transition is already nearly complete). Making sure nobody feels excluded or singled out makes political support much easier and simplifies everything.
> Subsidies are, after all, a historically successful way for governments to help launch new industries into orbit.
Hard for me to not call this “survivorship bias.” You don’t hear about the times it didn’t work…
> Many new technologies are expensive early on. If they’re technologies that seem likely to offer big public benefits, governments often step in…
Holy smokes, what a great point. We should also subsidize electric cars for families where biking isn’t an option. We should also subsidize computers - who wants to grow up not knowing how to code? Heck, let’s subsidize free Master’s degrees, because an educated nation is a productive nation! Where’s the subsidy for poor families to go to theaters for cultural enrichment?
I’m kidding of course, but to be honest, the argument proves too much and is hardly original.
As the article mentions, the early computer industry was a product of the US military, so it was (indirectly) subsidised. Many Western countries offer free (or heavily subsidised) tertiary education, for exactly the reason you mention.
I think a key point here is that a subsidy might increase the speed of adoption; the climate change argument (which I think relatively weak in this instance) is one reason to speed up adoption.
Yes, and I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing either - rather that we could make a justification to subsidize anything if we tried hard enough under the logic.
biking absolutely is an option for families. I see a ton of kids in bike trailers (I'm in Boston). no they don't work for 100% of people or 100% of journeys, but a cargo bike with appropriate attachments can easily do the majority of trips.
I bought an e-bike some years ago, loved it completely, but the battery promptly failed.
The company that sold the bike (SF startup faraday) promptly went out of business.
—
I want so much to hop back in the saddle… but I’m thinking about e-waste. And feeling pretty shy about the whole thing.
If there is ever a national subsidy for e-bikes (I’m in favor of it), it would be a lost opportunity not to use it to create a battery standard to reduce e-waste.
>If you really start looking for companies that pledge to support battery replacements for 5 or 10 years after initial sale… well, I haven’t found any.
The batteries can usually be refurbished (if the BMS is not too clever / requiring special software to setup), and maybe only one or two cells of the whole pack have failed - this would mean replacing only these and thus low waste.
I’d love to get an e-bike, but I have no indoor garage to keep it in, and they get stolen at a fast clip in my area (Ballard in Seattle). If the police were more aggressive (or even just nit apathetic) to bike thefts, I would totally consider it.
GPS isn't itself useful. That lets the bike know where it is, which is meaningless without the ability to communicate that to the outside world. That requires a cell connection and active subscription, which costs money. Most bikes do not have this ability.
You can out an apple tag in them. Most of the theft recovery stories I’ve heard about involve the Apple tag. A GPS + cell networker transmitter would help, but the power requirements would probably make it infeasible. Apple tags work great, although thieves are getting iPhones of their own to figure out if the bike has one via the anti stalking feature.
Also, trying to re-get your bike from an encampment after you tracked it down is dangerous, and the police might not have time to help you get your property back (although I’ve heard a success story here as well).
I love riding e-scooters all around our downtown area. It’s fun, cheap, and way more convenient than driving or taking a cab/uber. But I do worry about the safety of it being around pedestrians and larger vehicles.
And out in the burbs, forget about it. No way I am taking a scooter or bike out on a busy road.
What we need is a serious conversation around zoning and building communities in such a way that walking, scooters, and bikes become viable for 50%+ of peoples daily commuting.
> What we need is a serious conversation around zoning and building communities in such a way that walking, scooters, and bikes become viable for 50%+ of peoples daily commuting.
Isn’t the problem that the “communities” are already built? I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals and can’t help but think that most people aren’t going to start walking, scootering, or biking no matter what. I’d think subsidies for additional WFH would make a far bigger difference (based on the minuscule commuting traffic I observed during early-ish Covid).
Things can change a lot in 10+ years; it's not going to happen quickly, but you can start incrementally making zoning changes, and as the buildings in the area turn over it'll slowly start approaching something better, which should hopefully result in people making different transportation choices.
Also, a number of places in the US are still growing and sprawling outwards; reversing that trend would have a positive effect even if none of the existing places change.
> I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals
This is sort of the problem though. Some people prefer to live that far away, and if you do that's great, but a lot of people end up moving away from cities for economic reasons. Building more housing closer to the employment centers would allow more people to live nearby, which reduces the number of people that need to commute that far.
I wish we were living in the world where politicians actively did listen to public and did some changes.
We need safe bike lanes. If my city has it, I’ll quickly jump the gun to make an investment. To add on top of it, let’s have some theft safety as well by building garages or having an airbnb equivalent of parking in private places. But as I think about these they feel like a child wishing for a gift on Christmas.
I had an e-scooter for over a year. Less exercise than an e-bike, but I loved that thing. So convenient, faster than a car in the city, fun to ride, cost next to nothing to operate, amazing for weekend trips into the countryside.
But I still sold it, just a week ago. Why? I live in a small apartment and I was getting increasingly paranoid about the possibility of it catching fire. Once a battery that big starts to burn, it just goes, there’s basically no way to put it out and given how cramped my apartment is, it’s game over for everything I own, even if my girlfriend and I get out. I’ve seen some news articles about e-scooter fires, even from the city I live in, and the photos were … haunting.
For those not yet in the know or those in need of a reminder, the US has been considering incorporating a federal tax credit for e-bike purchases. This proposal garnered considerable support from a prominent caucus, including President Biden himself. Last year's Inflation Reduction Act was initially set to encompass this provision (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/242...). However, the e-bike tax credit was ultimately omitted due to a decisive intervention by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), as reported here: (https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/9/23297209/ebike-tax-credit-...). Despite this, there have been efforts continue to reintroduce this credit, recognizing the ongoing relevance and significance of such initiatives.
Disclaimer: I have an e-bike and it's changed my life for the better.
I think the real indictment on establishment thinking is that we need to perform a postmortem on the Denver program before we can extoll the virtues of subsidizing ebikes and yet subsidizing electric cars seems to have been a quick default option with little reflection involved.
Cars are so deeply ingrained in American infrastructural thinking, it's ridiculous.
When it was announced that the repair of the collapsed bit of I-95 in Philadelphia was going to take just a couple weeks instead of the original estimate of six months, I almost had a rage blackout. It's not that we don't have the ability to build anymore; we clearly do! But while building anything which could actually help gets strangled to death in red tape and citizen meetings where J. Nimby asks what it will do to the historic heritage parking lot across the street, god forbid anything get in the way of the almighty automobile.
I lived in Beijing when they replaced a whole overpass bridge (三元桥) overnight. That was nuts. And ya, traffic would have been killed if they took more than a night to do it since you can only get from north to south on a ring road (so 3rd ring traffic would have been diverted to 2nd or 4th ring, that just wasn’t going to happen), leaving the subway as the only reasonable option.
But then china builds all of its projects out quickly.
Goods, groceries, e-bikes don’t magically transport to their final destinations.
Edit: there is this Captain Planet like view of cars as though most drivers are evil polluters. We are just trying to get on with our lives and aren’t privileged as folks who can afford to live car free.
Passenger vehicles is the vast majority, so the majority of infrastructure cost and especially land use is a direct result of car-centrism. But you still make an important point: even old cities in Europe rely on (usually a bit smaller) trucks, today, for deliveries of goods in the city. And blue light traffic is still dependent on roads and streets. Bikes and e-bikes use so little space it’s a rounding error.
I don’t think that’s a common opinion. I haven’t even met anyone that hate cars, but there are many that think car-centrism results in boring, isolated cities. That’s quite reasonable, since car centrism is, so far, a historical anomaly in terms of urbanism. Humans have been building cities for millennia. The US suburbia model is just objectively novel, an outlier in human civilization. Doesn’t mean it’s bad of itself, but it’s certainly not normative.
On average only 41% of US roads are funded by a gas tax and only 53% are funded by some form of user fee, gas tax inclusive [1]. This formula varies per state. Cyclists subsidize road usage for drivers who use them much more, both because cars are much heavier and lead to increased wear and because drivers drive more miles and therefore put more wear on more roadway.
It's a common myth that people believe US roads are solely or even mostly funded through user fees.
Lol come on. These fees are based on actual apportionments by the Federal government down to the states. DMV fees are probably made up in the "user fees" portion of the reference. These fees vary per state of course.
> Just repeating the same falsehood from biased sources doesn’t make it true.
"I don't believe you so your source is false." Okay so where are your alternate sources?
According to the CA Legislative Analyst's Office [1], 63% of California roads were funded through user fees in 2022-2023. My above source reads 60% as of 2019. This tracks. So unless you think the CA State Government's own Legislative Analyst office is a "biased source", then these figures are probably broadly accurate.
a bicycle doesn't wear the road like a car does. A bridge built for bicycles doesn't have to be built to carry so much weight and would be cheaper. Bicycle infrastructure is cheaper to build and maintain.
I would love an ebike and even though I work, could not afford to pay the price they are here in Finland. Scooters are much more affordable, but I don't feel safe riding them in the winter, even though we have the best cycling infrastructure in the world, here in Oulu or so I hear. We are also the bike theft capital, or so I hear again. So that would really sting as it's usually not a matter of if, but rather when your bike gets stolen.
Luckily I have the sisu and can endure the daily commute whole year on my single speed granny bike. It's so beaten up, no crack heads think they can get a good price for it on tori.fi
In Germany employers can offer the employees a bike leasing program through one of several providers (like Jobrad). This is tax exempt and allows people to pay the monthly rate from their gross salary. The contract lasts three years after which you can return the bike or buy it for a small price. This greatly accelerated e-bike prevalence in Germany.
The vast majority of e-bikes in Germany are pedelecs that offer electrical support for riders up to 250 watts and only up to a speed of 25km/h (15mph). Bikes that go faster or where one doesn’t need to pedal at all need a license plate and special insurance.
> Bikes that go faster or where one doesn’t need to pedal at all need a license plate and special insurance.
And, critically, they aren't allowed on bike lanes but have to be rode on the road instead, which makes them far less attractive for commuting in the city.
That's why the limited pedelecs are by far the most popular choice of E-Bike in Germany.
Even more important is subsidizing e-bike rental networks.
CitiBike in NYC is a huge success, and making part of the fleet electric was a big upgrade. But it costs a couple bucks for each electric ride on top of an expensive annual membership.
But the number of e-bikes needs to grow much more, and the cost needs to come down. Either electric rides should be included in the annual fee, or else they should be integrated with a subway/bus pass so you can subway+e-bike for the same price you can subway or bus or subway+bus now.
The problem with NYC's current rental network, and the reason I purchased a bike, is parking availability.
In NYC, bikes can only be parked in charging stations, and popular areas fill up quickly. On three occasions, I had to ride an additional 10 minutes to find an available station near my destination. That excludes the additional time to walk to my destination. Purchasing an ebike improved the predictability of my commutes in NYC -- even compared to trains and taxis.
In SF, you can park the standard electric bikes anywhere in their service zone for an extra charge. This means that while I often have to walk to get a bike, I can ensure there's parking at my destination if I'm in a hurry, and park for free at a station if I'm not.
I’ve seen this in some cities too, but me this just says that those cities have such a lack of cycling infrastructure that only reckless people are willing to ride bikes.
I don’t think there’s anything particular about e-bikes that attracts reckless people compared to trucks or motorcycles.
There is plenty of data on this topic and it all shows that people riding bikes break rules at the same or lower rate than people driving cars. And unlike cars, they aren't one of the leading causes of death in the US.
I break the law on my bike a lot more than my car, but I don't ride an ebike on the sidewalk where pedestrians are. That's what I'm talking about.
I run stop signs on my bike all the time (like at 4 way stops) - I don't think this is very dangerous if you do it properly. Obviously I slow down to like a few MPH and can stop quickly if I see a car/someone crossing the street/whatever.
I've noticed that rider behavior has gradually improved. Beginners tend to bring their car driving habits with them, such as "when in doubt, accelerate." And it takes time to master starting and stopping, especially on a heavy bike that's a bit ungainly at low speeds. They also figure out what speed is appropriate for their bike handling skills, which is often not the top speed of the bike.
There are a few people who ride balls out, but tend to be in control of their bikes.
No! Regular bike? Yes. Get your infrastructure in order. Stop wanting to be everywhere, all the time, asap. Cycling is twice the workout if it is a regular bike. Start getting your population healthy for once! Gah! It's like watching a good friend switching to light-cigarettes. "Because it is more healthy."
Why gatekeep cycling? As far as I am concerned, anything that gets people out of their cars and onto bicycles is a good thing. If they like it, they might still switch to a normal bicycle later. If not, they're still an a bicycle instead of clogging the roads in their car
time to subsidize 150cc petrol motorcycles. with modern ICE motor and emissions you can easily get 120mpg with near zero emissions (better than electric emissions )
you can build 20 small motorcycles using the materials of one tesla and 50 for 1 e hummer
set city speed limits to 45mph
typical quality e bike is about the same cost as a 150cc moto
Based on the numbers in the original comment, it seems like it uses about 1/4th of the fuel, which means it would emit 1/4th of the co2. A 75% reduction is definitely something to celebrate, but its not what I would call "near zero emissions (better than electric emissions )".
120 mpg is similar to an electric car (if you consider the electricity). Electric motorcycles/ebikes are still ~2x more efficient (small gas engines suck), but a gas motorcycle is still pretty good compared to a car (especially once you start taking into account the infrastructure/congestion/road wear).
Most Chinese cites have outlaws ICE bikes and have been e-bike only, some (like Beijing) for around 20 years now. The difference in air quality is significant, especially since China’s very cheap e-bikes get wide use among the masses. Compare to Southeast Asia where most cities are still filled with ICE mopeds, and the air quality is horrible.
One easy thing that should be a no-brainer is making bike share eligible for commuter benefits. In NYC people genuinely do commute by bikeshare, but it’s not eligible for pre-tax money. Meanwhile, if you commute by car, you can put pre-tax money aside for parking (and maybe gas?)
As an avid cyclist who does both mountain and road cycling, it’s pretty cool to see the conversations going on in this thread. Also kinda challenging to not be a know-it-all
In France you can get up to €500 from city, another €250 from department and another €250 from the region for brand new, or a little less for modified or occasion
They look perfect but the most I've ever spent on a car works out to be about $4.5K in USD. I guess the running costs would be lower but this is well over double the most expensive car I've ever owned.
Consistency? I don't quite understand. Automobiles have benefitted from the largest public subsidies in history, starting from the interstate highway system, to oil industry subsidies, all the way to the current subsidies for EV purchases. Comparing bicycling subsidies to automobile subsidies would be absurd since the value of automobile subsidies eclipses the others!
If it led to replacing bikes with ebikes, then you’d be correct… but not if it replaces cars with ebikes (which is what it actually does, as the article confirms).
E-bikes are neither commute vehicles (not confortable to sit on) nor sport equipments (whose utility is to improve public health). They're just hobbyist tech thingies that contribute to e-waste. Why subsidise them?
Electric motorbike is another story, but I don't think they're that common in the developed world.
As someone who has an e-bike that's pedal assist, I have commuted 20 miles on a regular basis to work _because_ I'm able to with my e-bike. They enable you to get exercise and travel to a location much more easily over a regular bike. What is the main advantage of an e-bike over a regular bike for me? I'm able to climb tough hills that I wouldn't be able to otherwise.
I commute on a conventional bike, but e-bikes have definitely expanded the acceptable distance for riding a bike to work, for a lot of people. Several of my work colleagues have gotten e-bikes for this purpose.
I think the reservation is that when you offer subsidies for electric cars you can be damn confident that it will displace a gas car. For e-bikes it's less clear and they might end up displacing bikes for recreation which is arguably a net-negative.
I think instead of a POS subsidy I would make it a fairly substantial tax credit if you had fewer registered vehicles in your household than adults and keep it rolling every year. And for e-bikes specifically you can do the same sort of thing in addition, if you commit to not having a registered ICE vehicle for 1 year you get say an up to $2000 rebate on the purchase of an e-bike you can claim every so often like maybe 5 years.
Eh I think there is scant hard evidence on the displacement effect of EVs. They are often bought as little-used second cars, which is shown by their much smaller share of VMT than their fleet share implies. And a recent WEF report said that ebikes already displace more oil demand globally than electric cars and are growing faster.
I in fact own one, it's very nice. It also did not displace my car because I live in a burb and most places of consequence are a highway journey away. I don't think I should get the tax credit because of that. My environmental footprint hasn't really been reduced.
I rode motorcycles for 10+ years and gave it up after I read articles about people getting killed in my area every day for 2 weeks straight. I also had a young child at the time. I'm more afraid of riding a bicycle in traffic than a motorcycle. Some people are straight up aggressive against bicycle riders.
I ride motorcycles, bicycles, and more recently e-bikes. The statistics for injury/fatality are worse than cars. However there's a few things you can do to significantly decrease risk of injury and the severity of the injury. The top three things are
1. Do not combine alcohol with the activity. A disproportionate ratio of fatalities involve the operator having some alcohol in the blood stream. I'll throw things like "being hydrated" and "not tired" into this bullet.
2. Using the correct safety gear. The amount of gear I wear is well above the minimum legal requirements. Specifically the DOT helmet certification is a joke compared to every other motorcycle helmet certification on the market.
3. Rider training. You get significant insurance deductions for taking a course every 2 years. That's because staying fresh on your training actually has a huge impact on accident likelihood.
> when you offer subsidies for electric cars you can be damn confident that it will displace a gas car. For e-bikes it's less clear
Is it? I could imagine someone saying: "Driving my new Model 3 is much cheaper than my old truck, and more comfortable, so I take more trips around the city. Congestion isn't so bad with autopilot and podcasts."
Or, someone in a dense city: "We got by without a car at all, but we thought about buying an EV and this subsidy made up our minds"
This is the same for e-scooter rideshare schemes. Much of the evidence points to escooter use replacing walking short distances, so environmentally it can be a net negative overall.
Honestly the fact that they all become trash is why scooters annoy me. Like sure fine on a long enough time scale pretty much everything becomes trash but man they are not built to last.
Are they not built to last, or are they just abused and neglected? I suspect that personally-owned scooters tend to be kept somewhere safe and taken care of. VC-owned rental scooters tend to get trashed, because no one suffers a personal loss if a particular scooter becomes trash.
It is not time to subsidize e-bikes. It would be time if they could be ridden safely. Do they belong in streets, along with cars? No, the rider is at great risk. Do they belong in bike lanes? Then there is likely to be a pretty large difference in speed between e-bikes and ordinary ones, so that's dangerous too.
As the article points out, there is already high demand for e-bikes. So build appropriate infrastructure, and then add subsidies to speed adoption and reduce reliance on automobiles.
My point is that ebikes do not fit into existing city infrastructure. Ecars do, because they were designed to fit in exactly. They are exactly like cars except for their energy source.
Ebikes, at least in the speed-limited form seen in most countries, are just as much "exactly like bikes except for their energy source". Indeed I'd say they fit far better into existing infrastructure than ecars do, because they don't need specialised chargers.
I don't have the statistics handy. I think the issue turns on average speed. Not maximum possible speed, but average speed in practice.
How do these averages compare? If the ebike is a lot faster, then I would expect the differences to cause problems, since both are traveling in the same lanes.
> I think the issue turns on average speed. Not maximum possible speed, but average speed in practice.
On what grounds?
Since most collisions happen at junctions, I would think the biggest source of potential conflict would be differences in acceleration from a dead stop - but again that's a problem that exists in the same form (if anything, a more severe form) for ecars.
Electric bikes are speed-limited by law so that they are actually usually slower than what I'd ride a manual bike when I'm in a hurry.
> Do they belong in streets, along with cars? No, the rider is at great risk.
You could equally ask do cars belong in the streets, along with pedestrians and regular cyclists? They put every other street user at great risk. Yet we subsidize new electric cars with up to $15,000. How many people die in car accidents every year? How many die from bicycles?
Cars very much took over streets, and not that long ago, so it's a fairer question than the current situation makes it feel like. My answer is no, they belong on roads. Streets are for people doing things, roads are for people going longer distances. We don't have a birthright to drive directly into a busy city and park next to the store we want, those streets should be for the people actually using the city areas. This is up to the cities to decide and implement, but any city area that prioritizes peds and other light transport gets a vote in my book.
I intentionally say city area not city, so it's understood I mean certain districts like downtowns and CBDs. Suburbia is what it is, you need a car there at this stage.
I agree with you, and with the commenter who discusses the distinction between streets and roads. Restrictions on where cars can go would be wonderful, for many reasons. But given the current design of cities and suburbs, ebikes are unsafe, and subsidizing them is therefore a mistake. Maybe the way to proceed is to subsidize ebikes in combination with turning over to ebikes some lanes or streets or roads that accommodate cars currently.
Not in an urban area. E-bikes fly through sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks in NYC. Threatening pets and people at all times. Bikes were already bad, now it’s just more and faster.
If we took bikes off the roads and gave them their own separated driving lane, they would be a lot safer.
To achieve this, take one lane from roads and streets with any number of lanes and dedicate it to bikes with a buffer between it and the car lanes. Two lane roads and streets would become one way.
> Then there is likely to be a pretty large difference in speed between e-bikes and ordinary ones, so that's dangerous too.
I disagree with that part. Most e-bikes are speed limited to 20mph, a speed plenty of unassisted bikes can achieve if the rider feels like it, and plenty do. Bike lanes already have a variation in speed.
While I absolutely condemn riding ebikes on sidewalks... I suspect that's still safer for pedestrians than cars. Especially cars driven by the kind of asshole that would ride an ebike on a sidewalk.
it depends on the sidewalk and the road it's on. If I need to take my ebike along a 4 lane road without a bike lane (and sometimes with (paint wont save you)), I might opt to use the sidewalk as long as its not packed full of people. I probably wont travel on it more than i have to and will keep the speed down if there re any people on it at all.
It’s a fun thing to ride, gets me a bit more activity (I don’t consider it a workout, but it is more of a workout than driving), and gets me more time outside.
I’m turning into an evangelist among my friends, and any sort of subsidy would definitely make that effort easier.
If you’re on the fence, give it a go! They’re pretty mature tech these days, with a wide range of available models and price ranges.