Trailerduck is a smart e-bike trailer
autoevolution.com
autoevolution.com
300 kg of cargo at 25 km/h is very close to the momentum of a moped riding at 50 km/h, which is something I definitely don't want to share a bike path with.
For what it's worth when I'm in the mood for racing and I have my good road bike I tend to avoid bike paths as a courtesy to other cyclists (and to avoid getting stuck behind someone slow).
It's not just e-bikes and their unexpected speed, everywhere now you can rent "e-choppers", with a wide steering bar and a relaxed attitude. However they are much faster and wider than normal bicycles and you can see the annoyance on the faces of people constantly overtaken by them. 25 KPH is really fast on a bike path, and then they are also silent so they pop out of nowhere. It's not a good combo. Many of these bike lanes are of limits to gasoline scooters ("Fietspad dus niet brommen") I'm guessing many of these things are going to forced onto the car-roads by law, like we did 20 years ago with scooters (max 45 kph, require helmet, they are partly forced on car-roads, here is an example where scooters leave the bike path to enter the road: [0]).
If your legislation allows for faster electric vehicles to share bike lanes, that's a big mistake IMO. Impact energy is proportional with the square of the speed, so crashing at 35 is already double the damage. 50kph is four times as bad, not to mention reaction times.
In Amsterdam it used to be possible to ride mopeds under a certain power on bike paths, and these bikes could be identified by their number plates. Additionally micro cars, that in theory are meant to be accessibility devices for those with physical impairments are still allowed.
But this is all slowly going away due to the exact issues you mention. The rise of cheap electric vehicles has meant that occasional fast vehicles sharing generous bike infrastructure has gone from acceptable to frustrating and soon to be dangerous.
I think these rules are handled at the city/municipality level. So the rules are different city-to-city in the Netherlands, with some cities changing the rules quicker than others. But the writing is on the wall, cycle lanes in cities will soon be bikes, e-bikes, and more strictly regulated micro cars only in the near future.
[0]: https://goo.gl/maps/yZXH4ggVQ6vXRcNy9
[1]: https://weekendtoerist.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/mooiste...
[2]: https://www.myfootprints.nl/nederland/fietsen-en-wandelen-in...
I think there are plenty of solutions for this, enough so we don't have to worry this early. Easiest is simply having a "no cargo" sign at the entrance of smaller bidirectional paths. But in practice, I think we'll see a mix of municipalities increasing lane size and producers coming up with smaller cargo vehicles.
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=bakfiets&iax=images&ia=imag...
Their cars don’t, but their bicycles sometimes do (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View#Data_captur... shows a trike. At the bottom of the page, there even is a photo of a pedestrian wearing a camera backpack)
- bicycle path (fietspad)
- bicycle + moped path (bromfietspad) (same as a bicycle path but a bit wider)
- the road
In terms of the vehicles, there's also a few categories:
- bicycles (i.e. unpowered)
- e-bike with pedal assistance that stops at 25km/h
- moped (max speed 25km/h, "snorfiets")
- high-speed e-bike ("speed-pedelec"), max speed 45km/h
- moped (max speed 45km/h, "bromfiets")
The first 3 types of vehicles can usually ride on both a bicycle path or a bicycle + moped path [1]. There is no explicit speed limit other than the 25km/h limit on the e-bike/moped itself. (I guess that on a non-electric bike you can ride faster than 25km/h, as fast as you can go)
The second 2 types of vehicles can ride on a bicycle + moped path, but must otherwise ride on the road. For the second 2 types of vehicles, you need a numberplate and a helmet, and a mirror. On a bike + moped path inside the city, you can ride 30km/h, outside the city 40km/h, and on the road, 45km/h (less if the road has an explicit speed limit).
A table illustrating this: https://www.catchlegal.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Afbeeld... (snelheid == speed, toegestaan == allowed).
[1] notable exception being inside the city of Amsterdam, where mopeds must ride on the road with a helmet (which is not normally required elsewhere), but e-bikes can remain on the bike path.
I could see braking being an issue if you're standing with both feet in parallel because it throws you onto and over the steering bar. But that's why you shouldn't stand that way. If you're sideways and you lose balance, you just jam your hip/thigh into the steering bar to stay stable, same as you do when driving one-handed.
edit: I just google image searched "how to ride a scooter" and holy shit, are people suicidal?! Practically everyone in those pictures would go flying over the handlebars in an emergency brake. If that's the norm, I can see why people think escooters are dangerous.
That's not a safe machine, in my view, if it requires an intense muscle reaction to save the rider.
And even if you can't take that, you can still hipbrace the steering bar, which gives you almost as good a line - and even if you go flying, you'll probably be rotating around your feet which means you'll frontal facecheck the ground.
Which is bad, but: if you're standing upright, then it's your terribly angled arms against the handlebars that have to take approximately half the deceleration force, which means you rapidly cross the point where your mass is above that line through the point of rotation, and then the steering bar basically flips your head against the ground with bonus rotational velocity. At which point you will take spinal damage, helmet or not.
Effectively, the easiest way to check is if someone's front foot is either set well forward, or at an inward angle. Either is fine. If it's set forward, you can brake with a line through your foot (best case, but an exhausting pose); if it's at an inward angle, you automatically end up braking with your thigh against the steering column (second best case). If it's straight and upright, then you're in danger.
Effectively, I'm not disagreeing, I'm saying I think scooters are primarily dangerous because on top of what you're saying, people also ride them in a horrifyingly unsafe way.
> I'm guessing many of these things are going to forced onto the car-roads by law, like we did 20 years ago with scooters
Maybe we should repurpose some older 'provinciale' roads (which often run parallel to some of the major highways) for these new types of compact electric hybrid vehicle-bikes (transportation without an 'inside' or car-like cabin, that leaves the driver exposed), since expecting them to go on car-roads is inconsiderate.
That way these new greener alternatives can take off, and their drivers are safe. We should never expect people with e-trailers (and similar) to compete for space with 35 ton lorries/semi trucks. I think this an infrastructural transition/move worth carefully tending to and designing for.
It feels too dangerous to be a couple feet from all our big SUVs and pickup trucks at 100 kph/55 mph unless you're also going an appreciable fraction of that speed.
I've had fun in SF on a bike, bombing around solo -- but it never felt safe.
Berlin is investing a lot into biking infrastructure and I feel like there are great bike lanes for almost everyone you want to go (at least in the neighborhoods I go around).
Of course, Amsterdam is another ball game :-)
This is quite the hasty generalization.
There are not a lot of upright riders going slowly.
It's definitely a generalization, it's anecdotal and specific to the streets I frequent in my Midwestern US city, but at least here it's a true generalization.
Most bike lanes are on city streets where motor vehicles are going anywhere from 0 to 35 mph (0 to 55 km/h). Most people on bikes are going 0 to 20 mph (0 to 30 km/h) which really isn't much slower, so bike lanes or separated paths really don't make sense.
Where traffic is moving faster, you rarely find bike lanes or separated paths.
Also at 25kph both the vehicle and the passengers have more time to react.
So yeah, fully loaded the driver/rider would have to pay more attention, but that's true for anything that's fully loaded. Given the shape of the problem, this solution is pretty damn good: green, quiet, small, good looking and reasonably safe. Possibly very safe, if its auto braking works well enough.
Pedantics aside, probably the most annoying thing about having this on a bike lane would be the 1 m width, especially considering that some two way bike lanes are just 2 m wide.
I'm big on having this kind of small e-vehicles on the roads, because I think they're the best chance we have on having truly nice, open, clean cities. Using a half-ton monstrosity to go buy a loaf of bread is a horrible waste of, not just resources, but commons. As you said, the worst thing is their size, and that is by necessity limited in urban areas.
So if we're going to have this kind of things replace cars, we'll have to be open to a larger ecology of e-vehicles, for various use cases. Including larger ones for cargo, and also the sick grandma that can't ride a bike.
Probably the biggest difference of opinion between us is that I see them as replacement for traffic, and so I want them scaled up and separate them from pedestrians as much as practically possible.
At 50kph your reaction distance is about 15 meters, at 25kph it’s half that at 7.5meters. (Assuming reaction time of 1 second, which seems to be a realist value).
7.5 meters is quite a bit of distance, and in a busy city will make a lot of difference.
I can't react to something coming straight at me on my six. And, the drivers of these motorcycles tend to be busy on their phones.
Also how are these people using their phones? Last I checked you need to keep your hands on bars to prevent you from falling over.
I’ve also been amusing myself imagining ways this grand piano tricycle could be prepared for certification as a self-contained vehicle in New Zealand (typically the domain of RVs and some vans). If you didn’t care about complying, the basics of camping would actually be fairly simple—sling a hammock underneath it!
(… if that’s you, email me.)
Legally they must be propelled by pedaling... However these ebikes really stretch that definition, the pedals do not directly drive anything, they just work as a throttle.
So, if the battery is discharged, the pedals are useless.
I've actually been thinking of a similar system, except the pedals drive a generator that charges the battery.
This way the bike is motor propelled, you can have a longer battery life by charging it as you ride and it's technically more of a cycle since you could cycle to provide power to the motor.
My main thought is that it would reduce/even the load on your knees since you wouldn't need to start/accelerate as often.
For reference this was in Paris more than 10 years ago.
Of course, these bike lanes are also home to a growing moped infestation, and law enforcement doesn't care about that, either, and they don't do much about the (privately operated) school buses that routinely park in the Vernon Boulevard bike lanes near the Department of Education facility at 44th Rd, either, so, I guess there's just an open invitation to abuse the commons.
Check out this massive permanent NYPD/FDNY parking-lot that starts on the freeway shoulder and goes along Tillary St / Gold St. These guys are here basically every day:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6970284,-73.9813054,3a,75y,3...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6962375,-73.9813369,3a,75y,6...
And that's not even a bad day; there's only one or two cars parked on the long narrow triangle where the onramp merges with the street.
And the ambulance drivers park in the bike lanes to take a nap or for their lunch break. And the Post Office parks wherever and they just doesn't care, because they're federal, and you can't fine them.
Ever tried a citizen's arrest?
(Last time the cops in NYC got angry at civilian oversight they kidnapped the Mayor's daughter and posted her mugshot on Twitter, and a Freudian slip of the SBA's announcement declared that they would "Win the war on New York City". The population should maybe do something about that.)
Charge large companies fees to use use their large delivery vechicles on any road.
Those fees, and taxes, could build more bike paths, and repair streets.
(I would like to see governments charging large companies to use our infrastructure. Only charge the large companies. They are the ones abusing the privilege usually.)
Meh. We can't even charge delivery trucks to use the commercial-loading-area parking meters. They just double-park in the street, and the cops have given up on all but the most convenient forms of enforcement.
Perhaps getting a larger coalition of users on board is exactly what we need to expand bike infrastructure. The scarcity of bike lanes is wholly artificial and easily fixed by transitioning more automobile infrastructure.
cars get too much of our shared space. we should consider repurposing most city streets, such as: one lane (each way) for cars, 1 lane for buses, and 1 protected lane for bikes. most lanes are about 10 feet wide, so we can take a foot away from the car lane and give it to the bus lane to promote traffic calming, while the protected (with curb or bollard) bike lane can be split in two to provide a passing lane.
I routinely drove about 27-30km/h without assist and was already getting worried about breaking speed and people entering the bike lane. Going so much faster would be terrifying to me
but that's also why we need double-wide lanes, so that faster micro-vehicles have space too. city streets should support a full gradient of travel speeds/vehicles, from walking to car, the normalization of which should reduce the incidence of people blindly entering bike lanes (just as we don't have people jumping in front of cars all the time).
At that speed, why not just use the road instead of the narrow bike lanes/paths?
VAT 1234 [1] only applies when going less than the normal speed of traffic, which isn't the case on an e-bike.
> people will be absolutely furious at you for doing it.
People do a lot of things that make other people furious. Riding on the road isnt anything special
> Also drivers rear-ending you.
It's far less likely than getting hit by a turning vehicle because the cyclist was in the motorist's blind spot.
How will intersections be managed for each lane? Will we have an exclusive traffic light signal phase for each lane? I imagine that would significantly reduce throughput.
The more steps there are, the more likely one will make a mistake and fail to yield because they failed to account for one of the steps necessary to successfully make a turn.
The traditional system where a right turning vehicle moves as far right as practical in advance of making a right turn reduces the number of step necessary to complete the turn. That is, they only need to account for yielding to pedestrians instead of 3 streams of traffic (bus, then cyclist, then pedestrian).
That's why I asked about having separate traffic light phases for each lane. That would ensure that only a single lane is allowed to enter the intersection and complete their turn without having to yield to any other traffic stream. But, doing that would reduce instersection throughput by a significant amount.
cars create some of the highest congestion/vehicle, as they demand more street area/time per person than other forms of transportation. so by displacing cars, viable mixed-mode transportation reduces congestion extralinearly, which in turn mitigates the extra right-turn burden for cars despite needing to navigate a more diverse traffic stream.
>> The more steps there are, the more likely one will make a mistake and fail to yield because they failed to account for one of the steps necessary to successfully make a turn.
> that's actually a traffic calming technique, to make car drivers more attentive and more purposeful/communicative, rather than driving on (human or machine) auto-pilot all the time. more obvious collision dangers make car drivers more mindful
I don't really know if this assumption holds. Collisions are more common complex intersections versus simple ones. For example, one is more likely to get into a collision when making a left turn from a side road because they have to check for pedestrians approaching from the left, pedestrians approaching from the right traffic approaching from the left, traffic approaching from the right, and possibly traffic entering the roadway directly across from them.
If you contrast that with a roundabout, when entering, one has to check for pedestrians approaching from the left, pedestrians approaching from the right, and traffic approaching from the left. Because there are fewer things to check for, the chance of getting into a collision is reduced.
The other part of it is when exiting the intersection. After one has started turning, one needs to check for any pedestrians who may be crossing before completing their turn, so that's another step that the left turning driver has to account for. With a roundabout, that check is postponed and actually can be thought of as a separate check once they get to the exit of the roundabout (checking for pedestrians). You could get a similar spacing between checks if, instead of making a left turn, make a right turn and then a u-turn.
In the case of the right turn crossing muliple lanes of traffic, the driver not only has to check for more things, but they don't have the time spacing to re-orient themselves to get ready for the next check. That increases the probability that the driver may fail to check before proceeding.
Wouldn't it just be easier to just have all vehicle types share the same infrastructure (roads)? They're already built out and can be used by any wheeled vehicle by following the rules of the road.
Roads are designed to be used by any type of vehicle, not just automobiles.
- High speed, high momentum vehicles are a larger danger to low speed, low momentum vehicles than they are to other high speed vehicles.
- Infrastructure that can be used by high speed vehicles must be designed for high speed vehicles, and that design often conflicts with design decisions that make a piece of infrastructure more useful to low speed vehicles. For instance, roundabouts can alleviate high speed vehicle traffic but pose issues for low speed vehicles.
- Humans aren't rational - segregated infrastructure is much more appealing to users of the low speed vehicles, even if we were to somehow mitigate the risks of desegregated infrastructure.
The danger is only relevant if a collision occurs. Motorcyclists also use the roads and they're signicantly lighter than the average passenger vehicle. The average passenger vehicle is signficantly less massive compared to a bus, dump truck, or tractor-trailer.
The key to avoiding collisions is to follow the rules of the road in terms of right-of-way rules, signaling in advance one's intention to change course, and positioning when preparing to make a turn at an intersection.
> Infrastructure that can be used by high speed vehicles must be designed for high speed vehicles
Except that typical surface streets are not designed for high speeds. There are numerous intersections, vehicles waiting to turn, traffic control devices that require one to slow or stop before proceeding, etc. The only infrastructure that meets the criterion you mention are limited access highways where exit and entry are via interchanges as opposed to at grade intersections.
> Humans aren't rational - segregated infrastructure is much more appealing to users of the low speed vehicles
While it is, it also encourages unsafe behaviors at intersections. Pedestrian rules of movement rely on the assumption that a pedestrian moving at 2 to 4 mph will be close enough to an intersection such that the driver of a vehicle has time to see them and yield to them. Someone on a bicycle moves much faster than a pedestrian. Even casual cyclists go between 6 to 12 mph which is at least twice to four times as fast as a typical walking pedestrian. This means they can be twice to four times as far from an intersection and out of the area a driver of a vehicle normally scans before exiting an intersection when turning. This increases the risk of a collision.
It's probably going to take someone plowing into a tour group of kids before anything changes, and then that change will be shrill and reactionary.
If so, it might be a useful addition for cyclists who want to drive in a car lane without getting run over.
A heavy cargo trailer towed by a cyclist (who thinks and acts like a cyclist, not a driver) definitely does not belong on a bike path.
Please share this advice with your fellow bike racing enthusiasts. I reside on Cape Cod, which has a rather famous and busy bike trail. My kids and I have been almost run over, and scolded by spandex wearing weekend Tour de France warriors several times. If you want to race, stay off bike trails.
My wife was almost hit by a cyclist that was thrown off course and had to perform an emergency stop because of two clueless fucks on hover boards.
I really have zero problem with ebikes making cycling and mobility possible for people but they are a flip of the wrist away from fucking up someone's life on an otherwise peaceful and very safe bike path.
Limiting power and top speed is futile. You can actually enforce speed limits with radar, but checking power output requires testing it on a dyno, which can easily be cheated with a switch or remote.
Half of ebikes for sale are technically street illegal anyway. Federal law limits them to 750w 28mph until pedal assisted... while some stick to this, they can do 2kw burst and cruise at 750w sustained. Some just flat out ignore it and pull 5-7kw off the shelf. Some conversions pull 15kw and do 80 mph.
Here's a regular looking SCOOTER that does 75mph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-IqhezeZw
But you can't take the thing in a bike lane. And it requires a motorcycle license.
Thank you. As a casual cyclist who enjoys a weekend ride along the bike paths in NYC I cant help but hold contempt for some of the entitled road hog racing cyclists.
Why does the mass or momentum of a particular vehicle driver combination matter in terms of sharing a particular resource? Drivers of motor vehicles like cars share the road with other motor vehicles that are significantly more massive, yet no one says that they shouldn't have to share the road with those heavier vehicles because of their mass and/or momentum.
> Because the specially-designed drawbar with which it attaches to the bike is packed with sensors, it takes its cues from the towing vehicle and performs all maneuvers (braking, acceleration and maintaining speed, and turning) on its own.
At least they were smart enough to not try and wing it with cameras only. Even if the graphics in the article suggest it.
Right from the article: Cargo bikes can't pull the weight, cars are going to be all but banned or be impeded by tolls from inner cities whereas this is supposed to be licensed as a bike trailer.
The prime target market will be tradespeople and couriers.
https://www.nijland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Bakfiets-...
They exist in electrified form, and also smaller ones which are much more commonly privately owned (Dutch soccer moms drive these instead of SUVs): https://dutchcargobike.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/bak...
Trailerduck does seem more ergonomic (lower floor) and suitable for a larger volume of cargo, but not sure you've then already crossed into cargovan territory.
https://www.velove.se/electric-cargo-bike https://www.velove.se/news/armadillo-40-german-newspapers-du... https://www.carlacargo.de/products/ecarla-ready/
Make 30kph the default speed limit in cities and let e-bikes drive with that speed on most roads, what's problematic with this approach? Are 5kph more really that more dangerous that you need to create a speed difference between even slow cars and bikes?
The limits there because these devices are just meant to be cycling assistance, not replacements. You don’t want to be mixing two distinct classes of transport together (this is whole reason why protected cycle ways are so important), because overtaking etc is inherently dangerous.
There’s nothing preventing people from just creating electric motorbikes etc and driving them on the road with other road traffic. But having vehicles like that mix in close proximity to pedestrians and un-assisted cyclists just moves the problem we already have with car-bike conflict on to cycle lanes and pedestrian spaces.
Also that extra 5kph is gonna have a pretty negligible impact on transit times, so is it really worth all the extra problems?
Wait, what? I bike commuted for a while in both Cleveland and Boston. I can pretty handily maintain 30kph, and regularly hit over that when either warranted by traffic conditions or on a slight downhill.
I do not consider myself a fast cyclist by any measure.
I am quite confident that even the most casual group ride of semi serious cyclists would drop me in 5 km on a good day.
Is my view of cycling speeds that skewed, or is the distribution very weird in some way?
As for the extra 5kph making a difference, no it's not a huge deal in time. It's immensely important to riding safely in faster traffic. I find that the closer you can ride to the speed of traffic, the fewer boneheaded things people do to get past you.
Being able to do 40kph for short stretches to basically match the speed of cars through a dodgy intersection is a huge improvement in safety. 30 isn't 40, but every little bit helps.
Yes
> It's immensely important to riding safely in faster traffic
This why it’s skewed.
I agree that riding close to the speed of traffic is important. But over here in Europe we have far better cycle infrastructure compared to North America. In many cities you don't ride with normal traffic, so you don’t need to go that fast. Instead your just cycling with with other bikes.
It sounds like you cycle in a fairly hostile area for bikes, so speed is needed just to be safe. Can totally understand why you would do 30kph+, and indeed I do the same in nastier parts of London.
But a consequence of the hostile environment is that you’ll only be cycling with people who have made an active choice to cycle and are more advanced cyclists who are happy to deal with shitty car drivers.
As you move towards proper cycle infrastructure the average cyclist becomes increasingly casual and amateur. Riding not for sport, fitness or to be green. But rather riding because it’s just easier that other public transport options or using a car. Cyclist in this category cycle slower, and more casually. They just wear normal clothes and cycle nice and slow so they don’t get sweaty.
If you wanna see more, I would recommend the YouTube channel “NotJustBikes”. It can be quite eye opening to see a world where everyone cycles because it’s just cheaper, easier and faster than every other option.
[0]: https://www.wheelerz.nl/fietsen/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2...
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=druk+fietspad+nederland&hl=e...
In fact the 25kph is so they are legally bicycles across europe, no questions asked.
Countries can allow faster or more powerful devices, but the european baseline is that a pedelec is a bicycle period.
Kph, mt, sec: are all widely used but wrong.
Additionally TfL have had the entire of central London (within the congestion zone) 20mph.
There are electric motorscoters and there are ebikes. Only the latter should, in my honest opinion, use the full bike infrastructure.
25kmph is about the max speed for a street cyclist but vehicles that sustain this speed for long periods and can achieve it with no effort on the part of the rider are qualitatively different from the bicycles whose shape they share.
Drivers of these vehicles also usually don't want to go on the road proper so I am not very sure where they will go at all. Removing pedal-assist is only going to make these things more anti-social and people won't put up with it for long.
> Drivers of these vehicles also usually don't want to go on the road proper so I am not very sure where they will go at all.
This is really great news - it will create a much stronger incentive for the government to put in proper cycle lanes.
The problem are those 0.5-1m wide "bike lanes" they squeeze in as an afterthought in cities. Overtaking on them is basically impossible without breaking some rules, so scooters and pedal-assisted vehicles make it worse than it already is.
> 25kmph is about the max speed for a street cyclist but vehicles that sustain this speed for long periods
I'd agree with you if that was 25mph. On my road bike I sustain 20 mph for most of the ride. 25mph would be sprinting.
Also, I'd bring up a different point about ebikes. It takes a while to get steering and quick reaction time skills for going that fast, ex. having your inside knee up and being comfortable banking a turn.
Also the market for ebikes : older/entry cyclists might not have the reaction time needed at those speeds. And a lot of ebikes have upright geometry not aggressive road bike geometry.
I built an ebike to commute around on, bafang conversion kit on a mtb. Ebikes have their place, and I'm excited to commute with it in the snow. I think the main issue is we need larger paths for bikes. Not these single track lanes that exist in cities. A lot of time the time in my area it makes sense to just ride on the road than deal with a bike lane when riding my road bike (pedal power).
And the product in the article is insane in a bike lane. I think it really highlights my point about the size of lanes. They need to be bigger if bikes are going to become a more viable form of commuting for everyone.
I don't think so, they mention that it's only 1m wide, which is 25cm wider than the average bike.
Here in NL, for example, it would fit pretty much perfectly in the existing bicycle infrastructure. (barring the occasional small bridge with poles/gates at the end to slow cyclists down)
And thinner than a Canta.
> On my road bike I sustain 20 mph for most of the ride.
A few people manage 32km/h in the Netherlands or Denmark, but only if they have a long commute through the suburbs or a rural area, often for recreation/leisure/exercise.
In towns, other people aren't expecting Lance Armstrong to appear, and can step/swerve into your path. You can see from [1] (at the linked point) that there's no way you'll be going fast through the centre of Amsterdam. The path isn't wide enough, there are far too many other cyclists and pedestrians, and the car drivers yielding at the junctions would be startled, at best. The same at 4m32s (a park). At 9m37s it looks like the kind of place you'd get some road/fast cyclists (in fact the narration says so).
People who want to go as fast as you would usually select a different route, where possible.
Also, you can't have an omelette without breaking eggs. Moving away from the big, polluting, dangerous cars will necessarily involve a transition path for those that can't or don't want to use muscle power. Having small, clean, relatively harmless electric vehicles is honestly by far the best transition path I can see. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing them with a roof in a few years.
There should be limitations, but they should well thought out. Speed capped at 25 is a big one. Separating them from pedestrians is a huge one.
But overall, please also think of the upside. Having a e-something in the streets ensures that at least half a car is staying home that day.
Why not put them on the road instead of the bike lane, then?
Sensible transport segregates vehicles by their performance characteristics. In order to travel in the cycle lane you need to be going at bicycle-level top speeds with bicycle-level acceleration. More or less. E-scooters have a much higher top speed than most normal cyclists actually accomplish in the real world and, much worse, have far steeper acceleration curves. If there were lots of vehicles of the kind you imagine in cycle lanes they would be going much faster than real cyclists actually do and consequently overtaking constantly.
This doesn't really happen much in practice for a couple of reasons. Firstly, e-scooter's wheels are too small and their wheelbases too short to comfortably travel in the cycle lane (or on the road) so they travel on the pavement and drive pedestrians barking mad. Secondly, partly because they are made of chocolate and partly for inherent design reasons, they don't last long (shortish MTBF, near infinite MTTR) - this does a lot to keep them off the roads - except when operated at a loss by venture-backed startups from California.
And your idea that if people weren't on e-scooters that they would be in cars or something - not really. In my area they would be on public transport.
In any case, in cities something which can go over 25kph without pedaling is likely safe enough to drive like a vehicle.
Why force normal cyclists and pedestrians to deal with these much faster vehicles in cycle lanes and pavements when we already have roads, and conflicts between road users today is already problematic.
I’m certainly not advocating that e-bike should mix with cars. I’m saying the than an e-bike that assists beyond 25kph, or doesn’t require peddling, isn’t an e-bike. It’s just an unlicensed motorbike pretending to be an e-bike.
Though the problem is actually: "I have some stuff, and I want it to get somewhere"
It's cute that a little car can follow my bike home from the hardware store with my stuff, but I don't actually care about the following. Just let me summon a trailer, put my stuff in it, and tell it to meet me at home in 20 mins. That way I don't have to pick it up somewhere, or drive it back when I'm done.
Of course the issue is that self-driving isn't a thing yet, in which case I may as well drive the thing. Just give me some kind of cargo pickup scooter like a Stint (https://stintum.com/pickup/).
Bike infrastructure is underdeveloped. Car infrastructure is not, and cars are good at cargo. Shifting cargo-hauling duty onto bike infrastructure is a great way to put bike infrastructure overcapacity, but not a great way to haul cargo. We should reserve bike infrastructure for people, because getting people out of cars and onto bikes is where the magic happens. Turning bikes into small cars -- which is where this idea is clearly headed -- is gross.
On top of this they may be wishing to get stuff to/from places that aren't very accessible by car, and additionally rental car prices are heavily determined by the price of the vehicle, the operating costs, and maintenance. The numbers on something like this are much lower than on a van.
I see this statement all the time (that legal issues are holding AI back) but I'm pretty sure the legal issues could be fixed pretty quickly if there actually were self driving things.
In this case, if you look at the videos it doesn't look like this trailer is doing anything smart at all, it just accelerates/breaks when you pull/push on the draw bar.
Seems like a smart solution to the problem "I want to transport stuff, but bike trailers are too heavy"
The bike has a 10-inch-wide ATV tire on front to give float. The company touts you can “easily glide over soft beach sand as well as deep snow, mud, high grass, gravel, and anywhere else that regular bikes can’t go.”
It has a 4.6-inch rear tire and a 500-watt motor for pedal-assist. A special fork lets you swap the massive rubber up front for a normal fat tire when less float is required.
That there is no physical coupling feels dubious though.
cost of compliance
I guess that's the next step and we can call it bikeless trailer or something.
The fundamental driving force of this change is that electric vehicles scale much better than fossil fuel power vehicles. A 500watt ebike is perfectly quiet, clean and reliable whereas a gas engine of similar power and weight is messy, polluting and loud.
Start with bike paths. In North America, the standard is becoming 20mph/32kph. I ride an ebike often and I find this is more than fast enough and probably equal to about an automobile's 40mph with traffic lights.
Vehicles allowed on these paths should have a limited width and the allowed speed should depend upon its weight. It's not necessary to restrict motor power since speed is regulated by weight. So yes, if you're on a pedal bike you still have to follow the speed limits even if it's down hill. Some jurisdictions already follow this scheme with police and speed guns (Calgary is one as I recall).
The next step is to transition fossil fuel traffic to electric traffic in the city core. The most effective approach here is to initially allocate an entire lane on say, every fourth road, to electric (but not pedal only), vehicles of all sorts. The reason for excluding pedal only, ie normal bikes, is that their acceleration is too slow when starting from a dead stop at intersections. Whereas electric bikes have excellent acceleration, even better than cars from a dead stop.
Allocating a full lane to electric traffic (even Teslas) will be a big incentive for commuters to switch to electric transport. Another benefit is that it's much cheaper to do it this way than to create bespoke bike lanes. Just the low concrete dividers on top of the lane lines is enough and they can be laid down or removed very easily and cheaply for flexibility. As more commuters adopt electric transport more lanes can be allocated to them. Before you know it the city core will be all electric excepting delivery trucks.
This is why ever larger SUVs are popular. That's not to say that they can't be electric, but the future is more with the frigthteningly large cybertruk clad with bulletproof glass that provides someone comfort driving through a dystopia of riots, assaults, and protection from other cybetruck drivers running into them, rather than a version of happy milk-maids bicycling through meadows of flowers.
This vision of bike riders, while certainly very pretty, is lost in the Julie Andrews past, and will remain a dream as long as we continue to live distrustful, isolated lives. Unfortunately nothing I've seen has made me believe the west is even capable of turning that around, and whether it turns around or not has nothing to do with urban planning or technological advances.
But one interesting idea is some kind of electronic kill switch and GPS tracker, particularly on the electric bikes that have juice. I think that would be the direction I'd like to take anti-theft defences for bikes. But as you start adding more valuable components to bikes like batteries and motors, you will start getting bike chop shops like you have with cars.
When I bike in town now I have to navigate around these heavy trafficked sections, favoring roundabout residential roads that usually take me longer than the direct path on stroads (bad in traffic for above, bad when they are clear since people go 60mph if no one is ahead of them).
It's just not pleasant riding out on these congested streets or open stroads after you've had a number of close calls. I used to do it a lot but I've lost my appetite for that unfortunately, and my city is not building bike lanes at any decent pace in my neighborhood which is depressing. I support transit and bikes but at this point I'm taking a car out for everything because its three times as fast as the bus, and I'm not worrying about getting my head smashed by someone texting in a G wagon like on my bike.
To make these sustainable they either have to be cheap cheap, like less than $100 cheap because for some people that's over a days wages, so that when they are stolen they can be replaced rather than alternatives sought, or we have to invest heavily in securing these bikes and going after theft. I'm not sure if the latter can actually be done considering I've had my own bike stolen in my city from my underground, gated, surveilled apartment parking garage, and I'm not sure what's left to prevent that from happening to anyone again short of a guard standing watch 24/7, and you can't practically have that on every corner of the city.
In fact if you know the gross mass of the trailer you can get pretty close with just an accelerometer, but I don’t know of a commercial product that does this.
Cool idea, but keep these off bike paths. Too wide and heavy to safely share that space.
As a German, hats off to them and good luck, they will need it.
Not to be offensive, I have yet to see a truly 'smart' device of any kind.
But in the end everything is just hardware, and some of it runs some software. If "just running a program" is your yardstick I'm not sure what could satisfy your definition of "smart"?
I suppose a space like HN is a place to be honest about what our technology can and cannot do. I think of this as a place where its okay to question ill-defined marketing terms and even do away with them when they don't apply.