The electric vehicles we need now are e-bikes (2022)

At first, I don't live in Canada. Most days are not either freezing winter with snow or 50C, but a compromise.

Now, I suggest you find freetime2's comment in this post, who correctly summarized that you can put intelligence into choosing how to commute each morning.

If it’s really cold out I just dress as I would for a normal walk in that weather, just dial up the assist to avoid overheating.

Also let’s you commute in work clothes without worrying about sweating.

"I'm tired of replying to this" lmao what kind of response is that

Isn't it possible to increase the pain of stealing a bike to similar levels as stealing a car?

Maybe GPS or mandatory registration? Both?

It's fine.

The police never found the dudes that got it.

In a car, you know you might find street parking and you know that there are multiple paid parking garages. It might be expensive but you'll find parking.

Outside of home, work, and maybe friends, there's nowhere you can go by bike, because there's nowhere you can leave it without it being stolen.

If you believe this you live in a massive bubble.

It is INSANE. These places are made for year-round biking. In Houston, you have the state legislature forbidding mass transit funding for Houston and tons of other sharply own-the-libs political grandstanding that has real impacts to the cities in Texas.

I've worked in Minneapolis which is a dream for biking... in the summer. I've visited Washington DC and its bikeshare program was perfect for seeing all the sights distributed around the city, and showed what ebikes and good urban infrastructure can do for city livability. Bikes shrink a city by a factor of 5 for doing anything.

Every city should be falling over themselves, ESPECIALLY with the covid-fuelled distributed work culture, to do this because it makes cities FAR BETTER than living in rural or suburban areas. It will increase property values, people living in the cities, increase exchange of goods and services.

The writing is on the wall for the ICE, the oil companies, and even the republicans in Texas. Hopefully the writing isn't on the wall for the human race in the process.

How so? People who are physically unable to are a vanishingly small number - maybe single-digit percentages.

That's not true.

Sure, in some areas the population is very unfit. But that's a problem that bikes can help with.

If you look at areas that are very bike friendly, most of the population will bike. Even the elderly.

For comparison, far less than 94% of American adults have a license as of 2018[2].

And certainly, teenagers should count too -- having a bike opened up my world as a kid.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-dont...

[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/18682/percentage-of-the-us-po...

I’ve been struggling with obesity throughout my whole life (BMI of 46 at my high point which is damn high) and never been particularly fit, strong, or into sports.

I don’t have a car (though I could afford one) and go nearly everywhere by bike. Non-electric bike. My hometown (Dresden, Germany) is relatively – but not totally – flat in all the places you might want to get to. That certainly helps. (Though the nearly non-existent biking infrastructure – except for painted lines – certainly doesn’t. But Dresden is not terminally car-centric, so it’s alright to drive there by bike.)

I mean, just for moving around the city (usually around ten kilometer roundtrips, maybe the odd twenty kilometer roundtrip on the odd day where a more distant destination is where I want to get to) that just works for me without any problems, no matter how heavy I was. That doesn’t mean I go places at 30 km/h, in fact I might only go 15 km/h – but that’s still several times faster than walking and actually pretty competitive with cars and public transport.

And while walking got harder as I got heavier (mainly just in terms of causing pain after relatively short distances), while climbing stairs got much harder as I got heavier, biking (and swimming!) honestly never felt that way to me, at least not for normal roundtrip distances around ten kilometers or so.

I use bikes to get to places, to move throughout the world, not for sports. And for that you don’t need to that fit. And with an e-bike? That required fitness drops even lower. (Unfit seniors getting stuck somewhere in the alps with their rented e-bikes is a real classic …)

The US has the needed infrastructure, converting to an elite bike lane network is incredibly cheap. In fact it saves a huge amount of money.

Far less costly accidents, healthier people, better business in the city, higher property rights and so on.

This has been proven over and over again. Its just in the US where even liberals seem to just buy the car industry marketing hook, line, and sinker.

It has been proven also, that once there is safe bicycle infrastructure, people will bike. And most people can bike just fine. In fact, because children can actually bike, its actually more accessible to the population then cars. There are even these people, they are called poor people, that also might have a bike but not a car.

At some point people have to break out of it and think about these things with logic and consider the last 30 years of evidence, rather then 1960s propaganda.

And this sort of comment shows demographic ignorance. Do you know what percentage of the US population lives in rural areas?

Fourteen percent. Not even 1/5th of the US population. The rest live in urbanized areas.

The percentage of the population over 60? About 17%.

Pre-pandemic, in the Boston area, the regional transit system handled around 2 million trips a day.

> Cars may be environmentally awful, but they’re great in basically every other way, so let’s just electrify them and build lots of new clean energy and stop trying to make everyone ride a bike.

60% of all car trips in the US are less than three miles, electric cars don't solve congestion and land use waste nor all the injuries and deaths, and last but not least:

nobody is "trying to make everyone ride a bike." Stop straw-manning.

Also, there has to be some sort of health risk/reward ratio where riding a bike increases your health enough to offset the risk of falling. Sure anyone can die on a bike, but active exercise can also extend life.

I’m in my late 50’s and ride 15 miles to work most days in the Pacific Northwest, rain or shine. I’d think that the vast majority of people of working age could ride a bike safely. But I’m lucky to live in an area that has a separated bike path for 90% of my commute. My commute would only be 12 miles if I stuck to the most direct path on roads, but the bike path is safer and much more relaxing, I look forward to my commute.

When I was young and living in San Francisco, I commuted by bus most of the time since it was super convenient - walk 2 blocks from my apartment to the bus stop and the bus stopped literally at the front door to my office. For about a year I did bike commute over the bridge to Sausalito, that was by far my favorite bike commute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGx3HSjKDo

> There is a large group of people in the Netherlands who also benefit from the well-designed cycling infrastructure: people with disabilities. They can use hand-operated bicycles or tricycles or mobility scooters to get from A to B. The cycle tracks offer them good protection from motorized traffic and thus a freedom to independently move around.

Also kids. Look how much freedom this infrastructure provides to Dutch kids.

Car dependency is NOT good for the disabled. Not every disabled parson is even capable of safely driving a car.

Are we to take your word that 75% of the people won't use it? Countries like the Netherlands and Denmark show that if you build bike infrastructure, people will use it. And the health and environmental benefits are enormous.

And even if only 25% of the people use it, shouldn't they get 25% of the spend?

> Sure if you are young and live in San Francisco or New York City, this might seem reasonable. But for the other 80% of America, who are old enough that simply falling off of a bike could cause real injuries, or live somewhere not dense enough to really get anywhere this way, or don’t want to ride a bike in the snow, especially in a city that may not be particularly great at removing it (which is almost all but the biggest of them)

80% of the population in the US lives in cities. The median age is 39. So, no way 80% of the population fit your description. In cycling countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, even 80-year-olds cycle.

> or don’t want to ride a bike in the snow, especially in a city that may not be particularly great at removing it

Ask the Finnish how they do. They have no problem to cycle in the snow. You can change the way your city manages the snow.

> Cars may be environmentally awful, but they’re great in basically every other way,

1.3 million people get killed worldwide by cars every year. A multiple of that get maimed. I wouldn't call that basically great. If you count the time spent in traffic, you are wasting millions of lives more each year.

Electrifying has huge environmental costs. E.g. the Polestar 2 has a lifecycle cost (over 200.000kms) of 50 tons of CO2e compared to 58 tons for a Volvo XC40 ICE [1].

[1] https://www.polestar.com/dato-assets/11286/1630409045-polest...

Nothing is going to get build and everyday life is not possible without real roads that accomadate vehicles doing real work. And if you have that already why not use then for real personal vehicles that can be used by everyone and not just young, healthy hacker news subscribers.

Improving infrastructure for bikes in a serious, not-just-paint-on-a-road kind of way would result in higher density, which is also better for walking, scooters, public transport - basically _all_ forms of transport aside from cars. It would likely _reduce_ costs on infra in the long run, by virtue of having less paved area that has to be maintained.

> But for the other 80% of America, who are old enough that simply falling off of a bike could cause real injuries,

Encouraging greater mobility through walking or biking would likely result is lower obesity and better health for people in general. I have two uncles that bike heavily, both 65+. Neither has ever mentioned serious injuries from biking, but both have had incidents due to having to share the road with large personal vehicles.

> live somewhere not dense enough to really get anywhere this way

That's... the issue in a nutshell and the reason to make serious adjustments to infrastructure?

> or don’t want to ride a bike in the snow, especially in a city that may not be particularly great at removing it (which is almost all but the biggest of them) we’ll still take our cars thank you.

Does investing in biking infra mean people are going to be required to bike year-around or something? Is snow even a serious consideration for the majority of the country? I'm not really understanding your point here. (Heck, I did some googling and the nordic countries do 10% of trips by bike to the US at 1%, so it seems like even countries with a lot of snow can make this work.)

> Cars may be environmentally awful, but they’re great in basically every other way, so let’s just electrify them and build lots of new clean energy and stop trying to make everyone ride a bike.

No, they aren't great in every other way. They encourage terrible urban design that works against every other common mode of transportation. They require parking, which has always been a tremendous waste of space, especially in urban cores or downtown areas. They are safer only for the people inside them, and more dangerous for everyone around that chooses to bike, walk, etc., and this goes double for the ever-larger designs rolled out in the US. Human-powered transport effectively requires reasonable limits on distance - no one is going to be making a 3 or 4 hour commute walking or biking, and yet this isn't even uncommon for places people can get to by car. Cars may be great on the individual scale, taken in isolation; their effects in volume are bad at best.

They're not - they take up an inordinate amount of space.

Your suggest of making part of the grid bike only is also a good one, but its more radical.

People will not even consider that unless there are already many bikers using these roads. You need to first have a bike lane and then you can make the argument it should be expanded.

> would need much less repaving work

Bike lanes shouldn't be paved at all. Its much better to use tiling methods, better for water and repeatability. You never basically need to repave them if cars don't destroy them.

This is happening already in Massachusetts. Basically the only way for a city or town to get any state funding for non-highway roadwork is to sign onto the DOT's "Complete Streets" project [1]. Often this ends up turning a 4 lane (2x2) road into a 3 lane (1x1x1 center turn lane), and then uses the width from the lost 4th lane for a bike lane on either side of the road, with a rumble strip or barrier separating the bike lane from the car lane. Occasionally substitute for a widened pedestrian sidewalk on one side of the road, and a two lane bike lane replacing the sidewalk on the other side.

Since this is the game municipalities have to play to get funding for the same sorts of roadwork they're used to getting funding for, it's lead to, for example, a 1 mile stretch of road with bike lanes separated by a few miles of 4 lane road on one end, and terminating about 100 yards before a dangerous intersection into a mega Walmart parking lot on the other end.[2]

The intention is that gradually as roads need to be repaved, everything will connect. I'm generally for that, but it's made for some hilariously impractical bike lane placement in the interim.

edit: typo

[1] https://www.mass.gov/complete-streets-funding-program

[2] https://goo.gl/maps/UifMDXmK4aa79ij47 *the satellite imagery here is out of date, but you can see where this road gets split by a center median and goes back to 2x2, which is also where the bike lane ends, just a few hundred feet before a stoplight/intersection with poor visibility.

This is... not entirely true, there's heaps of standardized components in both industries. Think batteries, brake pads / brakes, springs, all the nuts and bolts, the OBD port, tires/wheels, airbags / seatbelts, and on the bike side, think cables, saddles (saddle pins), tires/wheels again, gears, pedals, etc etc.

While you probably can't fully repair one car with the other, there's plenty that has been standardized by the industry and legislation.

Are Bafang kits still a good deal for bike conversions?

Companies like Bafang and Tongsheng (not just these) sell motors that can go on any normal frame or in any normal (sufficiently strong) wheel and are compatible with standard drivetrain components. They accept and 36V or 48V (or anything 24-56V with some software tweaking and possibly lower power) power source.

It is not too late to have standards here, we just have to stop buying the shimano, bosch and yamaha nonsense (even if they are technically a little better right now).

I've rode bikes for transportation in the US for over a decade now, and I can't agree. My average speed is around 12 mph. That's a bit faster than what you say your speed is in another comment. But it's still much slower than typical motorized vehicle speeds. I don't need to keep up with traffic, just make sure that they drive safely around me.

> Or if you are going uphill and you are concious you arr holding up all trafic

That's not your problem. In most jurisdictions (in the US, at least), the roads are first come, first served. Don't slow people down more than necessary, of course, but don't worry about it if it's unavoidable. I personally avoid these situations by taking longer routes that have less traffic, and not riding when traffic is heavy or waiting if there's a temporary increase in traffic.

> If you are going slowly on narrow UK road you get overtaken by double-decker bus with 2 inches of clearence. It's a harrowing experience.

If the lane's not wide enough to share, don't share. Taking the lane as appropriate has greatly improved my safety on the road. I usually ride to the right, but I'll take the lane when necessary for my safety and refuse to apologize for it.

https://www.costco.com/jetson-haze-electric-bike.product.400...

Around here bike theft is a sport. If they can't get the entire bike, they'll strip every single part off the frame in under 5 minutes.

On top of that, I have quite the emotional attachment to my bike. It means something to me. A cash payout doesn't replace what was lost if it were to be stolen.

Bike insurance is a nice consolation prize if you get ripped off, but it's absolutely in no way a viable solution to the problem of widespread, organized bike theft.

I agree, but was responding to a quote from the article saying that e-cargo bikes are “car replacers”.

> It still saves money, fuel, and the environment, in the end.

Only if you actually use it, though. Sadly I see a lot of people buy bikes with aspirations to ride them every day, but they end up not being used.

If you want the aviation comparison to work, the e-bike would be an ultralight.

Finland gets significantly less snowfall than we do here in winter (Oulu gets like 1/6 the snow that we get less in January, for example), and it is much colder and drier there which makes for better cycling conditions.

> “Sure, it is easier here than in the south," he said. "-15℃ is much better to cycle in than sleet.” From November to the beginning of April, temperatures usually stay below freezing, with average temperatures in January and February below -10℃.“ This makes for pretty good circumstances,” Vaarala noted, adding that salt is not used on Oulu's streets. Instead, ploughs only clear away the uppermost layer of snow. “The thin layer of remaining snow on the ground gets packed when people cycle on it, and thanks to the snow, you will get a quite good grip.” Simola, who cycles daily, agreed, saying that pedalling on the snow can be even more comfortable than on the bare asphalt.[1]

They also spend a sigificant amount to keep bike lanes clear of snow, which my city does not (they spend a significant portion of their budget already just trying to keep roads passable for cars/trucks). And even then, cycling rates in Finland drop significantly in the winter (from 20% of all trips to 10%), so a lot of people must be choosing not to cycle in the winter.

Basically Finland benefits from a rather unique set of geographical and cultural circumstances, and I don't think what works for them would work everywhere.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/01/22/meet-the-bike-...

(insert obligatory Nokia reference here)

Sure, some people might. And every little bit helps.

But car ownership rates in the US are actually increasing in recent years, despite the fact that cars are getting more expensive to own. And cars keep getting bigger, too. I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect large numbers of Americans to trade in their SUVs and pickup trucks for tiny little e-bikes.

The only people spending $10K/year on their car want to. The kind of folks who would be most swayed by a financial argument manage to spend much less. On top of that, your analysis is one-sided. What would be the going rate for additional daylight hours if I could sell them on the open market?

Let me explain: they were early to introduce a cheap e-bike with a nice design (the S3 came in at €2o00 + €400 3 year service). Cheap is of course relative,but at the time most reputable brand ugly as hell bikes sold for €3000+.

Where they went wrong is that they took minimalism too far. The combination of automatic shifting (and there are no buttons), absence of a pedalling force sensor (cause cheap) and an internal gear hub (can't really shift under load) is basically a recipe for disaster. Combine that with general lack of QA and all of a sudden you have a company burdened by it's repair costs almost to the level of bankruptcy...

Of course, it is the same with scooters and bikes, but there are a lot of bikes (and almost no scooters) with removable packs, so yeah. But compared to the unicycle, bike takes up half of a small apartment.

Sure, I'm lucky to be having a relative short commute (by choice by the way). But on that commute I come across the following (Netherlands btw):

- Teenagers on e-bikes, all of them have a short commute. 20 minutes max.

- Old people on e-bikes going high speeds with balancing issues.

- Big differences in speeds on bicycle paths. 5-10kmh small kids on bikes, 10-18kmh regulare bikes, 24kmh+ ebikes & small motorbikes.

- Bicycle shops that carry 95% ebikes since they are high margin products

- Bicycle shops declining service on regular bikes

- Obesity and lack of energy for people in general

Disclaimer:

- I worked in an e-bike servicing company before, seen how quickly the products go bad

- I've tried e-bikes and found the lack of energy spent by myself a big issue. It brought me from A to B, but it didn't feel like I had been spending energy. Which I think is an essential part of using any product.

2) "Sittable" EUC models do exist. Though usually they are higher end models and there are some caveats with riding EUC in such way.

Yeah, but that's not what the headline says.

So I don't understand why you're telling it to me.

E-bikes are not replacing cars, they are replacing bikes, for people who already used bikes, so only e-bikes sellers and manufacturers "need" them.

Meanwhile there are over 400 thousand two wheeled vehicles with an ice engine, albeit small, but still..., running in Rome everyday that could be easily replaced by e-mopeds and e-motorbikes that would actually make a difference air quality wise.

Bikes are not making a dent in it, believe me.

> The blocking of scooters in Europe is often dumb and motivated by argument that somehow don't apply to equally apply to cars.

Are you saying people from Paris don't know what they want?

Cars at at least are useful for something.

And pay a lot of taxes, billions of euros every year.

> The reality is all these things are better then cars

So why people still prefer cars and are making electric cars?

It's funny that "THE MARKET" is right only when it bothers someone else.

> For a city like Rome with lots of tight spaces it makes some more sense,

It is clear that you don't know Rome, tight spaces in Rome are the minority, maybe you've been to Trastevere one time and believe that's how Rome is built (spoiler: it's not), and don't know what people are complaining about.

You'd be better off by asking when you don't understand something (even though a lot of the reasons are highlighted in the article I posted about Paris)

Scooters are used mainly by American tourists to try'n'kill themselves because they don't understand that other people actually live in Rome and it's not a theme park, like Disneyland. And that there are holes in our streets and you shouldn't run on them at night, drunk, you and your drunk girlfriend, they are for one person only, where the lane for buses is, in the wrong direction. And then abandon them in front of the door of a house, an hotel or a shop or even better throwing them on a sidewalk blocking disabled people.

e-mopeds have plates, you can fine people using them the wrong way.

it is a fundamental part of trying to keep other road users safe.

Including me, that walk all the time in Rome, because I love its very wide spaces.

Not everyone can walk, for one thing. What percentage? I dunno. Should we ask the ADA to stop pestering us about those damn people who keep complaining about not being able to go up stairs?

There's a lot of overweight people in this country. Over 40% are obese. Should we just not give a shit if they can get around? Again, it seems that, unfortunately, the government actually does care, a bit.

There's the elderly. Your grandma may be racing around town in her 90s, but my grandma cannot use a bike.

And there's families / single mothers who don't have child care and can't go run errands without bringing their kids with them. There are bike-things that sort of work for bringing kids on bikes, but many find it dangerous, they're expensive, bulky, and just not convenient when you need to also bring home groceries.

These are real people with real problems that should be considered when we're building the future of cities.

"Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

> Where are people supposed to park their bikes for work, or going into a grocery store?

You are joking right? American cities are full of car parking. Like literally absurdly full, to a point where most American cities are like 30% parking. Removing a single car parking space allows like 20 bikes. And even without that, finding 1 parking space worth of space to put up bikes isn't really much of an issue.

If any fucking place in the world shouldn't ask 'where will people park' its the US.