Electric recumbent bikes are 80 more efficient than EV (2018)
lowtechmagazine.com
lowtechmagazine.com
Normal recumbents are also bloody dangerous. I'm a pretty experienced cyclist, have taken many experimental bikes out for a spin. Finally, a recumbent got me, a simple traffic obstacle took the front wheel off the ground and that was that. Ambulance ride, complex double fracture and a 7 hour operation later I can walk so I got very lucky. This was 6 years ago. There isn't a day that I think 'why did I have to try that particular bike, it felt dangerous from the first moment'. Recumbents are not stable like normal bikes are. Anything goes wrong, you fall, there is no recovery. If the circumstances are bad enough that will do you in, if you're lucky, like me, you end up with a daily reminder. Don't ride recumbents in traffic, even if it feels like a great idea, they're fast as can be and you have next to no wind resistance. The failure modes are inherent in the way the bike works and there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it (leg suck, balancing by steering) and they're invisible from inside a car.
Another problem with these is that they have a bad turning radius and don't mix well with other traffic on a bike path because of their width.
Regular e-bikes are also 80% (or even more) efficient than electric cars and don't have the disadvantages.
(seen in the USA on a bumper sticker a long time ago).
> they are quite similar to the packs of racing bikes that always appear in the summer
Yes! I have to point this out every time people complain about e-bikes on the local path. It's not the type of bike, it's the mindset and the behavior that is the real problem. Regardless, the police here would never bother doing any enforcement on the path anyway so debates about rules or proposed rules is moot.
I don't own an e-bike but I'd love to see more e-bikes around. It's more support for bike infrastructure, parking, etc.
SUVs too - I'm 3x more likely to die in the same crash if I'm hit by one rather than by a passenger sedan.
Of course, the real people hurt are the pedestrians and cyclists who can't participate in the arms race at all. Not to mention that leading everyone to use heavy cars for safety every time they leave the house is catastrophically bad for the environment.
It's worse, but hardly "catastrophically bad".
>According to Consumer Reports, the three top-selling crossovers in the US in 2018 (Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue) return an average of 10% less fuel economy than the top three selling sedan equivalents in the mid-size segment (Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima), but provide almost 1.5 times the cargo space.
I get hit by a sedan, I break my legs, it sucks. I get hit by a crossover, I'm thrown forward from my center of mass and likely under the vehicle. I get hit by an F-150, the hood is at head height and I die.
Bikes simply are not safe when occupying the same space as a vehicle. The solution is not 'make vehicles that can't kill cyclists', the solution is to prevent these two modes of transportation from operating in the same space. Banning bikes from roadways for the safety of cyclists is entirely logical. Building cycle paths separate from roadways is entirely logical. Anything outside of that is an experiment we already have data for, and it means more dead cyclists regardless of how you go about it which to any reasonable person is not an acceptable outcome.
And while we can't build thousands of miles of new bike lanes overnight, we can definitely start the process of making new vehicles more safe to other road users today. Both are necessary, IMO.
re: injury, sure getting hit is not great, but the SUV is substantially more likely to injure or kill the pedestrian in the same collision. There's lots of data to show this.
For me it's zero, or at least very, very close to it. We're never going to get to zero by complaining that cars are too heavy. It's an ideological dead end. I mean, hell, a tesla, not commonly seen as a large car, weighs over 2 tons. Chassis alone is close to 2 tons by itself. How are you going to make that not kill someone on a bike? Or take, say, the world's lightest production car, the absolutely tiny Caterham Seven 170, which weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000lbs. You and an absurdly heavy bike, a real value brand steel frame special, is like a quarter of that, and, it's not really feasible to say that everyone should drive a small, two seat open cockpit, open wheel roadster.
F=MA is unavoidable, you should stop pretending it is, you'll live longer. Then write your local government, or better, show up to the public forums they hold, and lobby for bike paths. Partner with bike shops, get in with the mom groups, have them make donations to pro-bike path politicians. That's how the world works now.
The sales data doesn't really show such an arms race is taking place. Eyeballing this chart, SUV sales actually shrank, presumably being cannibalized by crossovers. Pickup sales inched higher but they're still not back to early 2000s levels.
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2019...
The only reasonable solution is to mandate the only vehicle allowed to be sold in the USA is the Canyonero.
Every time I hear someone say they like their SUV or mondo pickup truck because it feels safer, I usually reply, "I know what you mean. That is why I stand up when watching movies in the theater -- the view is so much better."
Maybe something similar will happen again, ie energy will become expensive.
I have kids and I don't care how my SUV makes you feel. Riding a bike is a cool hobby, and my family and I own tons of bikes that we take on the awesome bike paths they have all over our town. Bikes are also a great way to exercise.
But they don't really belong on roads. Taking a bike a place it isn't mean to go, then complaining about how unfit for the bike that place is, is absurd.
You aren't supposed to stand up in a movie theater. You are supposed to drive your car on the streets that we build specifically for driving cars.
Okay, but you should be aware that everyone with an SUV increases the danger to everyone else's kids.
> But they don't really belong on roads. Taking a bike a place it isn't mean to go, then complaining about how unfit for the bike that place is, is absurd.
Bikes have to share roads almost everywhere, and big cars are also bad at pedestrian safety.
> You aren't supposed to stand up in a movie theater. You are supposed to drive your car on the streets that we build specifically for driving cars.
You're supposed to have a car, you're not supposed to have an oversized one.
These types of statements illustrate the lack of cognition the average person employees versus parroting words. This superficial and attempted tautological sounding argument just speaks about how we have not gotten critical thinking education right.
And roads built for cars just so happen to be the legally mandated place to ride bikes in many locals.
Of course roads build with only considering car travel and no secondary effects are optimized for cars over bikes. That’s exactly the problem, not a point in the favor of cars or for driving cars.
You realize how stupid you sound, right?
If roads are for cars, then you will have no problems with abolishing people being inside of them while they drive on your sacred car only roads?
> Add more walking and cycling paths and bikes/pedestrians won't have to use the roads.
Add them where? Because in your scenario it's either cars or pedestrians and guess who have better lobbyists?
However: If you’re buying the biggest SUV you can so as to win the arms race, none of my sympathy applies to you. Stop it already. How do you even park?
You're right, I have no idea. But a lot of people in Europe have three young kids as well and seem to get by perfectly fine without SUVs.
> no individual parent is going to solve that problem
This is how social change dies. "I can't do change things on my own, so why inconvenience myself?" Having an SUV increases your chances of KILLING PEOPLE. How does not having one not change anything?? And cars are big, high-margin purchases, of course you putting +1 in the minivan instead of SUV purchases column at your local dealer is going to have some impact on what they stock and a push more of. And your neighbours will see how convenient your non-insane car is and that will slightly away them towards buying that instead.
Why are people in this thread jumping to these absolutely absurd ideas about the motivations somebody would have for the car they drive? Do some of you seriously have this idea of a deranged murderous psychopath gassing up their giant child squishing machine and going out into the world looking for children to run over or something?
> Why are people in this thread jumping to these absolutely absurd ideas about the motivations somebody would have for the car they drive? Do some of you seriously have this idea of a deranged murderous psychopath gassing up their giant child squishing machine and going out into the world looking for children to run over or something?
It doesn't matter what your justification is for owning SUV, statistically you are more likely to hit pedestrians because SUV have bad visibility. And when you hit pedestrian it's more likely that injuries they suffer will be fatal. SUVs are higher than normal cars so when hit by it pedestrian will more likely have head and torso injuries, with more often are fatal. Also SUVs have bigger clearance under it, so hit pedestrian will more likely be also squished by wheels and dragged under the car for no one knows how long. This is even more dangerous for kids(you might not know that but on average they are smaller than average adult).
SUVs are not safer than normal cars. Poor visibility, higher center of gravity, stiff undercarriage all contribute to higher possibility of rollover. They have worse crumple zone, car might be ok but driver not so much. Worse fuel efficiency (car exhausts are not healthy). And many other things.
In the end your motivation doesn't matter, you are a bigger danger to pedestrians(not to mention other drivers) than if you owned normal car or bicycle.
You really should come and visit NL for a bit. I'll borrow you a bike so you can experience first hand what it's like when bikes are 'first class citizens'.
You will lend them a bike, and they will borrow it from you.
(I still don’t know how English ended up with separate verbs for both actions whereas Germanic languages only have one.)
Yay for bike paths! Especially if it keeps bikes out of the street.
This reflects more on you than the person you're replying to.
Proposal: special compact car paths where people can safely drive smaller cars that don't belong on the road.
And either way, the intent of my "counter-proposal" is to point out that the normal size cars shouldn't be considered not suitable for road use just because there are bigger badder cars out there and that, if anything, the big and dangerous cars are the ones that should be segregated to protect everyone else, not the other way around.
If you want to participate in these kinds of discussions and have them turn into anything but shouting matches, you might want to consider that "specifically for driving cars" is very much the problem for many people. They don't share your axiom that it should be that way, or even that it's OK. Think for a moment. In an ideal world, how much space would you devote to cars and parking vs. bikes and pedestrians? Now go see how much is devoted to that. A lot of people don't even realize how big those numbers are, and you might find that the percentage is greater than even you just determined it should be. Cyclists drive in the road because they feel they're already being denied their fair share of that space, and what space is nominally given them is unfit for purpose (especially with regard to safety and freedom from obstruction). You might agree with them and you might not, but simply stating your (probably unexamined) axiom as fact isn't going to get anyone anywhere.
BTW it feels weird to me, taking the side of the cyclists. More often I'm at odds with them; I even recognize some of the names here from past encounters. As a "high speed pedestrian" (i.e. runner) I am absolutely sick and tired of cyclists trying to push me aside where I have every right to be and in fact 100% have right of way when there's contention. Especially when I know 99% of them are not commuters whose riding does anything whatsoever for the environment. The parking lot between the local bike path and where my daughter used to do karate is always full of cyclists unloading their bikes from their cars for what is clearly a recreational ride. They drove there (and back) to indulge in their hobby. I won't accept any self-righteous bullshit from them, but I do recognize that the actual bike commuters have every right to use paths and roads, and they're helping the (natural and human) environment by doing so.
Roads belonged to bikes before they belonged to cars.
This a real case of 'check your privilege'.
This is IMHO not true. In majority of the western world, roads belonged to horses and carts before the automobile.
Bicycles were not very popular in most cities and towns in the 1800s, even in Europe. Cobblestone, brick, dirt and gravel roads of the 1800s were often impassible on the bicycles of that time.
Asia likely had a historically different bicycle:car ratio though.
In the UK at least they are less common, I think it's partly a cultural thing, but I suspect road size and layout is also a significant factor, which negatively affects the practicality of actually driving and parking a big SUV over here. I'm pretty sure that's why they will always remain uncommon, and haven't kicked off a chain reaction like in the US.
I think that's the only way you can prevent this kind of arms race in a society, by designing aspects into the system that reduce socially undesirable properties by making those same properties less desirable to the individual, intrinsically - i.e I don't want an SUV, because it's going to be so damn annoying to drive and park in so many places (note how that affects all individuals regardless of wealth). The same works with speed, using intrinsic speed limitations due to road size and layout instead of extrinsic punishment which doesn't effectively prevent injury or death. If the appropriate speed is 30mph, don't build a 6 lane style highway and be surprised when people find it hard to stay under 80. I think so many of the societal issues caused by cars can be all but eliminated through road design.
I'm not sure how you fix it, considering that pretty much every proposal to narrow a road, add a bike lane, add a bus lane, increase registration fees etc around here is treated like you're trying to bring back Hitler. It's so frustrating.
Best example I guess is Ford who discontinued its Ford Ka and Fiesta because "they wanted to focus on EVs" - on the other hand they introduced the F150 to Germany. Not the most honest move.
I'd argue 80% of customers are sheeple following whatever is advertised on TV / parked in the neighbours driveway. I used to enjoy cars but with the climate crisis and just by how automotive attempts to innovate these days, I cancelled this entire industry.
Gonna get a Bullitt Cargobike soon
It's an arms race that just leaves everyone worse off than at the start.
Gun ownership has always been common. I didn't say more or less common than any point to compare to.
We're lucky it's more common now than in previous points in history. You just don't know it yet.
Secondly, I have no interest in schooling you. You're an American, right? No free education for you. Pay for it!
Thirdly, I was being serious. Do you actually know what the data look like or are you guessing?
Honestly it doesn’t matter if the car weighs 2000lbs or 6000lbs, a recumbent bike is getting crushed either way. I don’t know why you’d bring SUVs up specifically. The same problem exists in any country where bikes and cars occupy the same spaces. US isn’t unique.
Of course, the right answer would be to regulate car size, not have everyone buy increasingly large cars because they feel unsafe. Those large SUVs are absolute killers for cyclists and pedestrians, not to mention that they are actually less safe than a sedan due to the high center of mass creating a rollover problem.
But far more have/will compared to those driving normal cars (including comfortable ones that fit car seats and plenty of junk).
A lack of thinking and planning seems to be the root cause of most of the world’s problems. It’s not active malice - it’s just thoughtlessness in the service of convenience and comfort.
Sure, but actually own that choice. Say your convenience is worth someone else's safety.
We fit into a Ford Focus station wagon what my sister-in-law in Texas perceived herself to need a Tahoe for (instead of her “little” Mazda CX-5). Our neighbors with two kids tend to be station wagon owners, too. Another has a Toyota Proace, which is an amazing amount of cargo capacity but still plays nicer with regular cars and non-car traffic because it’s originally a sedan underneath (the Peugeot 306, I believe).
I sometimes have to waste 15 minutes or so organizing the car when some new piece comes into the puzzle, true. We’re also a bit more deliberate about when we actually use the car - keeping another set of kid stuff at Oma and Opa’s makes the train a lot easier, and is far less expensive than owning a larger vehicle.
But this all requires a bit of planning and deprioritizing our immediate convenience.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
That's a big part of the problem right there. You want to separate them, as they did in the Netherlands and Paris appears to be doing.
This is false. Bigger does not equate to safer.
Mass is an important factor because in an inelastic collision, the lighter object will experience greater G-forces.
I doubt this, there is a huge range of people traveling at different speeds, from road bike users, to ebike users, to kids and parents. Why pretend everyone is doing the same speed?
In Europe e-bikes are separated into two categories. My country has a "regular" e-bike which provides assistance up to 25 km/h, and is treated like any other bike. A "speed pedelec", on the other hand, goes up to 45 km/h and is treated like a moped. It often isn't allowed on bike paths due to the danger the speed difference poses, and it is even required to have a license plate!
So no, just because they are all bicycles doesn't mean they can safely be mixed - just like having a tractor going 40 km/h on a motorway where the rest of the traffic goes 120 km/h is not a great idea.
How's that even possible?
Simply putting up a speed sign doesn't work, we have known that for decades - you need to actually design the road for the speed you want people to drive. You're not going to drive 200 km/h down a narrow alleyway, for example, you're going to drive through there at walking pace.
That's fast for sustained uphill. I wouldn't have been able to match that in my best days. Consider going pro, that's not just 'any athletic person' that's insane. TDF riders average at about 20 kph (12-14 mph or so) uphill...
I've normally been saying the opposite. Been riding a (2 wheel) recumbent for 15 years or so. I'm pretty much never going to endo. My biggest risk is falling sideways and I'm low enough to the ground that it is natural to just put my leg down and catch myself. I even surprised myself when I caught myself when sliding on a sharp turn going fast. I can only think of one time I hit pavement (went into a slide with just minor scrapes to show). It had rained recently and my back tire slid out from underneath me during a turn.
I don't think either is inherently safer, it's just the diamond frame is the qwerty of push bikes because the UCI said so 100 years ago.
I've probably ridden dozens of recumbents. Some have an excellent turning circle but they tend not to be as fun bombing down a hill. Some (LWB with USS) can't u-turn on a US 2 lane road but would be the ideal bike to collide with something (wheel->fork->frame->feet taking the impact.)
I've also let dozens of people try my bike and no disrespect but "experienced cyclists" are the ones that scare me. Strong, fast, confident, they are definitely the run-before-you-walk folks. Recumbents, tricycles, bmxes etc. all handle differently, especially at speed. They are all just as easy to get up to speed but most people won't try that first.
I ride both and don't pretend the extra visibility of the upright makes me any safer. You have to ride like you are invisible because to cars you just are.
Of course I'm not going to convince you, just like nobody would have been able to convince me prior to my accident. That's fine. I hope that if and when you do fall you end up with just a scare so you'll realize I wasn't kidding: the illusion of safety and control is just that, you have neither.
The differences in dynamics of the two designs are not just different but equivalent. There are countless ways in which a standard diamond frame is practical and handles a given situation that a recumbent can't.
And I love recumbents because I love weird things. I have both 2 wheel and tadpole trike recumbents. They are the only bikes I ever ride given any choice.
But they are actually quite unsafe for both myself and everyone else, and quite, even ridiculously, comically impractical.
You can't do the simplest thing like just hop a curb or a tree root, because you can't pull up on the front wheel. There is no amount of life long 'grew up used to it' that magics that away, nor about 100 other similar typical situations.
Climbing hills is ridiculously difficult, even with highly practiced spinning technique, because simply standing up on the pedals one at a time is just far simpler, and preserves your momentum better,with no special expert technique.
The simple fact that you are already upright makes crashing on a DF infinitely more navigable. There is no such thing as just hopping off a crashing recumbent and landing on your feet. That happens all the time on a df.
There is just not even remotely a comparison, not even in the same universe when it comes to either safety or practicality all day every day in all the infinite random situations from parking, storing, threading through narrow pathways and gaps anywhere a pedestrian could go, bringing on a train/bus, up the stairs to your appartment or office, wearing a backpack and not needing any other on-bike cargo space...
Recumbents are great in a few particular ways, but they are neither safe nor practical.
They will by far beat any diamondframe, on a perfectly smooth, wide, flat, clean, dry, level, closed track, with unidirectional and homogeneous traffic.
Outside of that artificial environment, it's not merely ergonomics it's plain utility.
It's like rolling luggage with tiny castors on 4 corners. They are great, on clean flat marble floors.
Setting aside the fact that sometimes a rider simply requires the reclined sitting position, the same way a handcycle is severly limited, but some riders simply need it. It's still limited like a wheelchair, it's just better that than nothing.
And of course if you can change the equation by changing the goal. You can ride across the country towing a trailer and enough camping stuff to live indefinitely on a recumbent. But then you're just trading some of what's useful about a bike for some of what's useful about a car, not actually a better bike.
Very few people have the stamina to stand on the pedals for more than a short hill. A friend and I rode a recumbent and a regular touring bike from Oregon to San Francisco with camping gear in panniers. We would switch bikes and I don't remember either being particularly worse or better when climbing inland to campsites. When we got to San Francisco we used a bike path map to find and ride all the 25+ % gradient streets and alleys.
For a short hill any upright will be faster. Longer hills, equal weight (recumbents are usually heavier) and the answer becomes "meh."
The extra visibility of an upright makes you safer because you can see farther and proactively avoid hazards.
As a rider of a regular e-bike I won't be getting into one of these; compared to an upright bike, the rider can't see or be seen well at all.
They're distinctly not better than a regular e-bike:
* Where do you park this monstrosity? Are you really gonna hop the curb chain it a post? If you're a cyclist, why would give up the amazing parking opportunities that regular bikes provide?
* Protected from the rain, sure, but hot as hell inside. Every cyclist knows that rain gear is just bad as the rain. You're either soaked from your own sweat or nature.
* Visibility, both for you and of you, is nil. Covered by nearly every other comment here.
* Maintenance looks like hell. Bike shop people will hate you because it won't even fit through the door. Or you could DIY at home, regularly removing the fairing for trivial jobs like brake pads or chain cleaning.
* The speeds mentioned in the article, 40-50kph, aren't even particularly notable for e-motorcycles (class III e-bikes). Long ago, recumbents had an advantage over acoustic bikes but times have very much changed.
[0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobiles...
"As quick and comfortable as cars"
Yeah. Sure. About the "comfortable" part by looking at that picture about 99% of all the cars on earth want to have a word with you. That's plain bullshit.
That show has a lot of other cool (but old school) "modern" technologies.
Otherwise every single cyclist in races today would be using recumbents. They're that much more efficient.
My (aging, limited mobility) mom often uses her recumbent electric bike for grocery grabbing (bike score of 75, ymmv).
[1] https://daily.jstor.org/who-killed-the-recumbent-bicycle/
Yes, in absolute terms a smaller, lighter vehicle that only needs to produce a maybe 1kW to move will be more efficient.
Let's say I want to do something actually useful, like grocery shop, and I need 30kg of groceries taking up something like .3 m2 space. Where does this vehicle fit into that use case? Also, I want to not die if I impact anything more substantial then a tumbleweed.
It's pretty annoying when people put forward a totally unpractical solution then throw their hands up with a "well we had the solution that could save the world but nobody listened!"
> does it just count human calories as free
Are we really also gonna include the fact that exercising reduce medical bills in long run?
> Are we really also gonna include the fact that exercising reduce medical bills in long run?
Are you really going to suggest that riding a death trap tin can is an intelligent way to reduce medical bills? Thanks, I'll just do my calisthenics and cardio at home, 100% death-free.