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Comment by prmoustache | Hacker News Reader

I have been contemplating buying a bullit cargo bike for years but on all but one place I lived I would have had the storage required to store it inside. Can't see leaving a 5 to 8K€ bike in the streets.

I am using a trailer and some front and back panniers instead. It is not entirely as practical as a cargo bike when you need the cargo but it is impressive the amount of shit you can still carry and the trailer is stored when unused.

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Almost all e-bikes and cargo bikes have removable batteries. The bike is usually not worth stealing if you take the battery out (a battery replacement will cost more than the thief could sell an used bike for and it is not that easy to flip parts)

My e-bike is pretty expensive, but removing the battery, a good lock and insurance let me sleep easily with my bike outside

Although I would say the main reason to NOT leave it outside is rain and snow, it damages the gearbox and chain. If you oil regularly it alleviates the problem a bit

> The bike is usually not worth stealing if you take the battery out

E-Bikes without batteries are worth less (to thieves) than normal bikes? Because regular bikes, even very basic models, get stolen all the time.

Regular bikes are lower risk to steal and easier to sell: The owner is less likely to go after you, and the purchaser also less likely to ask for proof of ownership.

Stealing a bakfiets is pretty much like stealing a car: you need to have operate in a network to make a profit. Otherwise you are stuck with an expensive stolen bicycle, with the owner very likely trying to track you, and nobody willing to buy it without you proving that you own it.

That makes sense, thank you.

How is it that we have normalized leaving the car out at night, but not the bicycle? What would it take to normalize the bicycle as well? Proper parking spots with locks, not simply ad-hoc sidewalk space?

Cars have just as many, if not more, parts to steal without moving the vehicle.

Grand Theft Auto is prosecuted as a felony and gets you sent to jail. Bike theft even of a $5k bike gets zero prosecution and lots of ridicule of the victim by police.

My idea to reduce theft is that the city should provide not just the bike racks, but also the bike locks with those racks. Which means thieves have the option of either cutting the bike frame, or destroying city property which the police would probably have to actually pursue more seriously and which might be treated as a felony.

The best idea to reduce theft is make selling stolen items more difficults. Most bike thieves don't keep the bikes for themselves.

Which means global mamdatory ownership registration.

Having said that it is very easy to steal only a handful of parts with mostly basic tools but I guess we could also have a tool to associate parts with ownership using serial numbers.

The rest is just bandaid.

  > Which means global mamdatory ownership registration.

As a private citizen, this sounds like an excuse for a surveillance state.

This is done for real estate or cars, do we talk about surveillance state?

It can be done after the theft.

The shop writes the serial number of the bike (stamped on the frame) on the receipt.

If the bike is stolen, the owner reports the number to the police. The police can check any bike in their database of stolen bikes [1].

People purchasing second hand bikes will be wary if the seller doesn't have the original receipt. They can also check the frame numbers in the police database [1].

[1] https://politi.dk/cykler-og-koeretoejer/tjek-om-en-cykel-ell...

> How is it that we have normalized leaving the car out at night, but not the bicycle?

In addition to the legal framework mentioned in a previous comment, cars are insured. Most bicycles are not.

I'm not sure about the availability of bicycle insurance worldwide, but in the Netherlands you will typically also buy an insurance plan if your bicycle costs more than a few hundreds of €.

Same in France, you have to chain the bike to a 'fixed point' which can be a bit of a pain to find sometimes. I put small fixed 'unremovable' anchors in the ground, but still, theft is a worry and a pita...

Bicycle insurance in NL is much simpler: You just need to deliver 4 keys to the insurance company (2 for the frame lock and 2 for the chain lock) to prove that you indeed locked your bicycle. Of course, this leaves room for scamming the insurance company once or twice, but the risks of doing so outweigh the profit you will make.

Oh that's good, thanks! except for the family member that regularly loses keys... Hum. I'll check whether it has evolved next time I renew my insurance contract.

A number of reasons:

- bikes aren't registered, very few are marked and second hand buyers never ask for papers and proof of purchase - Locks that can defeat battery power tools for more than a few seconds weight like boat anchors and you wouldn't want them on your bike. - market is such that you can steal a bike and swap it bike for money the same day - it is easy to steal 10-15 bikes, load them into a van and sell them in a city 500km away.

I wish people would stop buying bikes without asking for a proof of purchase. It should be mandatory that any purchase of a bicycle should include a paper with a copy of ID/Passeport and addresses of buyer/seller and the serial number of the frame.

I'd wager it has more to do with portability than anything else.

Stealing a car is an order of magnitude more difficult than stealing a bike. A bike can be stolen in seconds (even with the best locks). Stealing a locked car with modern anti-theft protection will likely take minutes for even the most skilled thief.

But the cars have expensive components that can be taken in seconds - fuel door broken and fuel siphoned, hood latch broken and battery or alternator stolen, valuables in cabin and boot. No need to move the vehicle to profit off it.

And indeed in my city where bicycle theft is very common, so are smash and grabs and catalytic converter theft against cars with high-value catalytic converters (anything that meets CARB's poorly named Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standard, so all hybrids, Subarus, and some others).

Those things happen at scales too.

Maybe it's because I grew up outside the city but I've never had a locked bike stolen or anything. At some point I forgot to lock my bike in the train station bike park and that got taken over the weekend but I've been so careless before so it's hardly a given.

I'm not sure what you mean by locks at bike parking spaces, the lock comes with the bicycle, doesn't it? All you need is something to attach it to. I've parked my bike in the more criminal neighbourhoods by locking the in-frame lock to make sure the back wheel doesn't go and by snaking my chain lock through the frame and my front wheel so they can't take the rest.

There are places (notably train stations) here where you can pay a small fee or a subscription to store your bike in a locker. Seems like a decent idea to me it you live in an area where simple bike locks aren't an option.

I've lived in various cities of The Netherlands for most of my life. Almost every bike I've ever had was stolen. I'm pretty sure leaving my bike unlocked for over half an hour has been a 90% loss rate for me.

I've never lost a bike that was locked. Even the crappiest lock has protected me in the center of Amsterdam. I've used a lock that you could probably cut with paper scissors to protect my retro racing bike. Often not even attached to a pole or anything.

I'd almost blame my lost bikes on myself because the thieves are so consistently preying on my negligence. But F them, it hurt everytime, it's not my fault my head's in the clouds so often.

Bike thieves are the worst part about our bike centered culture. Perhaps even worse is the police doing very little to prevent bike theft even though everyone has a bike. I bet they'll laugh at you and send you away the second you admit that you didn't lock your bike; it's as if stealing unlocked bikes is normal in some places to the point where people make jokes about buying €5 bikes from hobos near the train station.

Maybe we need some kind of smart lock situation, pinging your phone if you leave your bike unlocked when you park it somewhere not near to your home and forget to lock it. No interaction with the lock itself, just a quick notification. You can probably use Google's location stalking API to detect biking and then have an app listen for a lock ping over Bluetooth LE or whatever so the lock doesn't even need to track state or contain location hardware.

It's getting more and more common in Paris, in some places. Remove the battery, one or two chains, sometimes even with the thin cover :-).

it damages the gearbox and chain

Especially on electric bikes there's a shift towards 'integrated' gearing (either traditional in the back wheel or the new-ish Pinion systems), plus belt drive, which shouldn't have any problem with weather. That plus all bearings being properly sealed these days should make this a whole lot better than it used to. Still using the word 'should' because I don't have any experience myself apart from just riding through rain; I just cannot get over leaving any of my bikes outside, having been raised with strict 'no metal outside' policies :)

What do you do with the battery once you've removed it? Doesn't it weigh 15 pounds or more? Do you just carry it with you while you do your grocery shopping?

For short trips (like shopping or even sitting at work) you lock the bike outside. Removing the battery is for overnight.

(In Denmark; might not apply everywhere.)

The Tern GSD can be stood upright, on its end, with the handlebars folded over, to reduce storage space. Not cheap but outstandingly good bikes.

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