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ars

> When you can't get electricity for your e-bike, it's a large, heavy, but still functional bicycle.

Not mine. It has pedals but they are not enough to actually make it move, except downhill. It has a fixed gear ratio.

And there are plenty of e-bikes with no pedals at all.

> I've also never heard of having no choice but buying into a predatory 20% APR loan to buy a bicycle.

You are not required to do that with a car either.

> Collapse those supply chains, and modern America would be uninhabitable without the automobile.

The automobile is the least of your issue. There would be no food or water either.

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> And there are plenty of e-bikes with no pedals at all.

That's a moped, not an ebike.

I agree with your points about car loans and supply chains, though.

Mopeds have pedals, hence the ped part of moped. Scooters do not have pedals.

Perhaps it's region dependent, but mopeds in the US typically don't have pedals.

This source is from the UK but applies similarly

https://www.thebikeinsurer.co.uk/learner-guides/scooter-vs-m...

This isn’t true in practice for any country that uses English as a first language, where moped simply means an underpowered scooter.

Hmm for some reason I always thought it was a shortening of "motorised pedestrian" haha.

On the other hand, I have seen models with holes next to the transmission that can accept a pair of removable pedals stowed under the seat. Completely worthless for locomotion, but sufficient to be classified as a bicycle for legal reasons.

E-bikes have pedals. If it does not have pedals, it's a different type of vehicle.

I am finding the number of people definitively defining terms with exceptionally high regional variance on this thread to be a little disturbing. Bike, scooter, e-scooter, moped, e-bike all mean different things in different contexts, different places, and different regions.

In the US, at least, there are generally 3 classes of ebikes, and they definitionally have pedals. Some (class 2/3) bikes might also have throttles.

Globally, ebikes are generally broken into two classifications based on whether they are pedal assisted or throttled, with some additional classifications for high speed throttled ebikes.

There do exist low power, throttle only ebikes but they are comparatively rare, and typically classified as a electric motorbike or electric motorcycles depending on jurisdiction. Ontario, for instance, classifies these as "Nopeds". (haha).

In general, broadly, an ebike has pedals and either pedal assistance or a throttle (or both) and can be ridden without the motor. Regional language of course exists, much like how parts of the US call all soda "coke", even sodas like Mountain Dew. They aren't wrong, per se, because regionally they are understood, but they are hardly standard.

in plenty of jurisdictions, you could not call it an e-bike without it being electric assist rather than primarily electric.

It doesn't sound like you have an e-bike, and an e-bike definitionally then has pedals

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