It’s not an electric bike craze. You’re looking at the future of transportation | Hacker News Reader

It’s not an electric bike craze. You’re looking at the future of transportation

electrek.co

36 pointsharambae60 comments

I had a positive impression of this article all the way until I came to the quote "Studies have shown that a mere 10% shift from car drivers to bike riders has resulted in a 40% reduction in traffic congestion" which links to another article on the same website(!) - which has a quote "In one such study, a shift of just 10% of commuters from cars to motorcycles resulted in a 40% reduction in traffic congestion", which has a link to some other blog post that has the quote "if 10% of all private cars were replaced by motorcycles, it would reduce traffic congestion by 40%" but no link at all to any study.

Doing some searching I found a link to the study, but couldn't read it because about half a second after loading it uses some Javascript or something to completely blank the page.

But I did find a page that does link to the study (that you can't read) and has this quote "The results came from a case study for a stretch of highway between Leuven and Brussels in Belgium and may not translate directly to other road scenarios, as the report states quite clearly that the effects of a modal shift are dependent on the local traffic situation."

So basically this study has no applicability to bikes, was done on the only kind of road you wouldn't ride a bike on, and the authors cautioned that you shouldn't extrapolate to other kinds of roads.

Man, what a disappointment.

> the quote ... which links to another article on the same website(!) ... which has a link to some other blog post that has the quote ...

This is the norm everywhere nowadays, including the most respected newspapers. I think it deserves a name- maybe something like "pretend citation" or "Chinese links". I think its popularity is due to the impression it gives of factual accuracy coupled with nonchalant confidence; someone who simply turns a sentence into a blue link has done his homework and dares you to doubt him. In fact usually the links point to other articles- often from the same publications and author- wherein one can find, buried somewhere, a similar but different statement, which in turn can be either totally unsupported or again link somewhere else, to even more remotely related factoids.

> Throttle enabled e-bikes are even easier to use as they don’t even require pedaling – they can basically be used as 20 mph (32 km/h) mopeds. At that speed, they’re fast enough for people to cruise through a city easily yet don’t come with the same power and speed concerns that have traditionally turned most commuters away from motorcycles.

Hard disagree. In my opinion throttle enabled bicycles should be classed (and taxed) as mopeds with license plates and all.

At 32 Km/h you are already hauling ass to be a danger for other cyclists and pedestrians. Throttle enabled e-bikes are very much part of the problem in the reputation around e-bikes.

The fact that you have to put human effort into accelerating in a pedal assist e-bike absolutely curbs your behaviour, reduces your average speed, and makes you much less reckless.

> The fact that you have to put human effort into accelerating in a pedal assist e-bike absolutely curbs your behaviour, reduces your average speed, and makes you much less reckless.

We have a 40 mile bike trail near me, on which I would frequently bike or walk with my kids and wife. Before e-bikes, 100% of the "closes calls" and rude/reckless behavior experienced on this bike trail were from "road/racing bike" operators, clad in full spandex and very upset that I'm "in their way" and slowing them down from their ideal speed of 15-25+ MPH

Since the proliferation of e-bikes I've yet to have a single negative encounter with an e-bike operator, and continue to have potentially dangerous situations with high speed road/race bikers.

I chatted with one of these road bikers yesterday and he confessed he "hated" e-bikes because of their speed and reckless operators. I told him my experience and he was genuinely surprised, like he had never even considered it.

It's the people, not the bikes.

> It's the people, not the bikes.

1000%. In over 5000 miles of riding e-bikes to work daily in SF, the ONLY times I've been accosted was from the full spandex "road/racing bike" groups.

I've never seen a popular MUP (without delineated lanes for modes) in the US that is anything more than a compromise between each of the modes. I live along a fantastic, popular MUP that turns into an on-street protected bike lane. During evening commute hours the on-street protected bike lane becomes filled with dog walkers and joggers who don't want to use the sidewalk. The US culturally treats public spaces too poorly to be respectful on an MUP; we need to offer more safe space to alternate transportation modes on streets instead of dedicating all that space for cars.

What is a MUP? Not familiar at all with that acronym, believe others might have the same issue as me.

multi-use path, full of walkers, runners, and cyclists. Contrast to "bike path", where the expectation is that it is used by human-powered, wheeled vehicles moving at 10-20mph...and not used by dog walkers.

I'd guess multi-use path?

^ Yup multi-use path

I’m staying in a French seaside town at the moment, where a new MUP has been installed from sea front back through the town within the last year. It’s fucking crazy dangerous. I’ve had to yank my 6yo out of the way of some asshole riders a couple of times this week. It’s taken the place of the footpath that was here before…

I’m all in favour of new cycling infrastructure, but I reckon we need to go full Netherlands and put it on both sides of the road and have directional lanes, leaving the footpaths intact.

Guess it's not just an American thing then. I agree, we need more space devoted to separating out modes. Group them by speeds. "Pedestrian" paths would be 0-6 mph, "biking" paths from 10-20 mph, and high speed vehicles 20+ mph. A beginner cyclist just learning can go on the pedestrian path, an electric moped user that wants to go fast can go in the high speed vehicle lane.

It's always the people. They suck.

I have a road bike and an e-bike (though I don't go "full spandex"). On the road bike, I both go faster on level ground and it's more of a pain to slow down, so I often will time passing more closely.

That being said, the most reckless riders I see are invariably teenagers on e-bikes (often illegally modified to go over 20MPH). Teenagers being reckless is nothing new I suppose.

Agreed. Have a friend who remembers going for a walk on a walking path. Woke up in the hospital. Nobody reported seeing the incident but police believe based on some debris left behind at the scene that someone on an electric bike hit them at a very high rate of speed. They are home now and generally functional, but it's been a couple months and they're in for a long road to recovery.

I'm all for electric bikes but some are amazingly fast and equally dangerous.

Yep, and it's illegal in europe afaik, it has to be capped to 25kph and only when the user pedals: https://www.gadgetreview.com/ebike-regulation-in-the-eu-and-....

There are 45km/h ones (speed pedelec), but then they’re classed as mopeds and you need a license.

Pedal assisted e-bikes are a more complex design that leads to more cost. This is fine in the west where everyone is rich, yet they are rare in the developing world (especially china where cheap e-bikes are popular) where people are less rich. Putting so many restrictions on a cheaper to produce product could be seen as anti-poor.

Aren't you confusing hub vs mid motors ? There is no reason for pedal assist to be more expensive, some of them are as dumb as "is pedal turning > assist". I've even seen people remove the chain of their bike and still get the electric assist while providing next to zero effort

https://wheretheroadforks.com/mid-drive-vs-hub-motor-e-bike-...

Even the pedal/chain setup is an extra cost that doesn’t make sense in a cheap e-bike. We are talking $2-300, there isn’t a lot of margin for superfluous features.

But then again it wouldn't be a bicycle, and according to a lot of western countries you'd need a license, insurance, plate, helmet, &c.

> We are talking $2-300

Nah, you can get a basic setup for < 100, maybe lower fi you're mass manufacturing, most are fixies, plus you have a backup when the battery dies

I would say $100 was possible 5 years ago, now I’m sure inflation has made the market a bit more dear.

Arguably you could say the same for many costly safety features...

Have you lived this before? In a city like Beijing there are tens of thousands of people commuting via cheap e-bikes, they are slightly faster bikes, that’s it. Just speed limit them if anything and be done with it (and really, how fast do you think a 2000 kuai e-bike can go anyways?).

I’m not opposed to a speed limit if that’s what you’re asking.

A speed limiter is a much cheaper, more direct way to add safety without mandating anything else about the bike.

I’d be fine with a limit.

In my experience not a lot of human effort is required to operate a modern pedal "assist" ebike. Unless I'm going up a very steep hill the vast majority of the time I find myself "ghost pedaling" just to keep the motor going.

I actually vastly prefer throttle-control as I consider it much safer. You can ask for the exact amount of speed you need as well as cut the motor instantly any time and there's no "herky-jerky" feeling like you get from some pedelecs.

I've had pedelec-controlled ebikes shoot away from me when I am trying to walk them somewhere or dismount, or just trying to adjust the peddle position at a stop, but this has never happened to me on a throttle-controlled ebike.

I disagree a bit on both the classification and taxation fronts.

Classification should not be based on motorized/unmotorized, but rather on sustained kinetic energy as that would be correlated to damage caused in a crash. A small folding electric commuter bike may belong on a pedestrian path, but a tandem road bike might not. This is largely an edge case, but would play a larger role in separating EBikes from electric motorcycles.

Taxation should be based on infrastructure costs IMO. Unless we are building separate ebike lanes or repaving bike paths significantly more often I don't think it's fair to tax EBikes at a higher rate.

I weigh over 100kg and can trivially get my e-bike to 32km/h to 20mph pedaling on flat ground on the "standard" assist level. FWIW, I usually have it on the "eco" setting because I like getting a light workout.

You can easily go 30km/h with a regular bike. You simply adjust the speed based on the situation. I see electric bikes all the time and they are never unreasonably fast. I normally pass them.

Not sure if you are saying 32 Km/h is too fast or too slow.

It's both imho. Too slow for the street, too fast for anywhere where other bikes are

When ginger was released (you know, the segway) it was advertised it would transform urban environments.

But the actual revolution is probably ebikes / escooters. The EV drivetrain is so easily scaled up and down and applied to so many form factors. You can shove the batteries in lots of different places, the actual drive motor is so cheap and small.

It is so much easier than having to do driveshafts / exhaust / fuel tank / engine / oil for an ICE drivetrain.

And battery tech will likely double or triple in power density in the next 10 years, and probably drop by 50-70% or more in cost.

Eh, we'll see. I'd really like to see some quantification of this "skyrocketing." I supposed it depends on where you are. I've seen e-scooters reappear in my city, but not bikes so far, and these were popular 5-7 years ago before disappearing and they didn't stay popular that first time. The claim that they can go faster than regular bikes is not true. Six states already require a driver's license to operate them no matter what, and states that do not typically predicate that on a rule that anything capped at 20 MPH doesn't count as a motor vehicle that requires registration or a driver's license. A non-electronic bicyclist who has any reasonable level of aerobic fitness and isn't a hundred pounds overweight can pretty easily go faster than that.

I get the appeal. I didn't own a car when I was in college 20 years ago and got everywhere in my city by bicycle. It was more enough given my personal tranportation needs. But a car offers a lot more than just "not having to exert physical effort" for the people who use them. Protection from the elements. Space for passengers. Space for cargo. They're legal to operate on highways.

People using these things need to stay off the sidewalks, too. That's going to cause a crackdown at some point.

Fully agree with the article's content but the headline reminds me of the hype preceding the launch of It/Segway.

I still kind of think of them as Segways. Neat and all but eventually people will go back to what is easier.

What is easier than an ebike?

For a regular bike, I could get "less complicated", "less expensive", and potentially even "more fulfilling". But "easier"? Not really.

A car...

A car is expensive. You have to look for parking. Then walk far from your parking to wherever you're really going. You're often stuck in traffic.

I vastly prefer to use my bike.

The question was "what easier than a bike" and that is a car.

And that's my point. It's not. How can looking for parking be easier than locking my bike next to the door of a store?

Yeah, that's why we're changing cities so that nice things like bicycles are the easy thing.

I never understand those articles. I have been doing everything with a normal bike my whole life, including shopping and bringing the kids to school and kindergarden, and I see no reason to let my body atrophy by pointlessly buying an expensive bike with a motor. Then I probably need to spend even more money and time on a bike machine in a fitness studio and more money on doctors after suffering from weight related illnesses. Those articles always assume that car is the god given default state. It's great for the elderly and for my colleague who is suffering from long covid but everyone else I know is doing perfectly fine with a bike without motor including my grandpa until he got around 85 years old.

I have never riden an e-bike and like you I add an additional 55kg to my bicycle with two kids school round, having said that you are being pedantic in your idea of 'proper' cycling.

Here are a few examples where e-bikes make a lot of sense:

- Terrain, try a cycling commute in San Francisco US or Granada Spain. E-bikes bring the Netherlands to everywhere else that is not pancake flat.

- Range increase, a lot of people will not leap into a cycling commute because it may not be a reasonable cycling distance for an everyday commute. E-bikes extend what is reasonable.

- Sweat free commute, cyclist love their gear but most people can't be assed to put on spandex to get to work. An e-bike means that you can be wearing office clothes because you are not going to be breaking a sweat.

> Sweat free commute

I always wonder if people aren't confusing racing with bicycling. Granted I live in moderate climate but we have our hot days too, generally it's not that hot yet early in the morning, but in that case I could dress appropriately with shorts for the bike ride and change into work clothing after.

According to my phone I generally do a pretty leisurely 12-13 km/h (7.5-8 mph) on my upright (ie. normal) bike and could keep that up for hours without breaking a sweat. Bicycling is really very efficient.

Looking at the way bicycling is experienced in London, and I think many US cities too, I see people dressed in full racing gear and doing 25+ km/h (15 mph+) on race bikes, which makes no sense to me for a city like that: you're sharing the street with dense car traffic, meaning any miscommunication easily turns into a nasty accident at those speeds; on race bikes you're hunched over and have less information about what's happening around you, just due to being lower and the anatomy of how your body turns to look around; and yes your body has to actually work to keep those speeds up.

In the US South for multiple months it can be too hot to bike or e-bike due to heatstroke regardless of how much effort it put in. You'd need a lot of water and end up drenched in sweat if you try.

I have never ever heard of someone cycling to work in spandex (as a Dutch person).

Spandex and fancy bikes are the territory of wielrenners (lit. ‘wheel-runners’), the rest of us use simple city bikes, and you’re not really going to break a sweat on those.

American cycling culture is very different from Dutch cycling culture. To the point where me and many of my friends do not consider ourselves cyclists, despite:

- Owning bicycles - Using bicycles for recreation and practical uses - Repairing our own bicycles

Because we do not wear spandex or own racing/mountain bikes.

See Casually Explained's video about this: https://youtu.be/5EE8m8mmq1k

It’s unfortunate that English only has the one word meaning ‘cyclist’. It sounds like over here you would be an average fietser (as opposed to a wielrenner).

End up sharing a lane with a car that wants to go 48kph and you'll break a sweat on a city bike really fast.

Problem exists in road design, not in bicycle.

I can change my bicycle, I can't change the road design

Well, sure, but then it becomes more like a sociopolitical problem... I respect cycling in those conditions, but personally I would feel unsafe.

The US system for development is adversarial, which makes any change that even a small number of people don't want very hard to make. Recently my city was going to put in separated bike lanes, which would have involved removing some on-street parking. The residents of the area that would have lost parking threatened to sue the government (which would have delayed building for up to a decade), so the city council had to change their plans.

My understanding is that this could not have happened in Europe. The (ostensible) reason for the suits were on access for disabled people[1], which (if I understand correctly) is typically not solved through adversarial means in Europe.

1: Another favorite is for environmental reasons. The government's environmental review board can approve a project, but then a concerned citizen can sue claiming they didn't do it correctly. This can delay a construction project for years.

One reason I usually take the train to work over biking, even when it's nice out, is that the train gets me to work a bit faster, and I'm not going to be sweaty if it's hot out. An e-bike would for the same level of effort, get me to work a lot faster, I imagine, so I'm considering getting one.

A year ago I would have agreed with you, but these days I love my electric mountain bike for a number of reasons. Biggest reason is it let's me choose how much effort to put in. On easy days I can do the same loop as harder days and just use a little more battery. If I'm running errands in the heat I don't have to be sweaty. It was also really useful when a friend crashed in the woods, enabling them to ride several miles back to the car (albeit slowly) without pedalling/walking.

For me it's the only thing I'm able to ride. I have arthritis and having a bike with a motor lets me ride more than 10 minutes. I would imagine for many older folks it means the same.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019821...

> Physical activity gains from active travel are similar in e-bikers and cyclists.

In my personal life I exert myself equally on both my pedal bike and ebike- but on the ebike I take longer trips or carry more stuff, like groceries.

Don't forget the base line is fat people who walk under 5000 steps a day (average westerner)

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