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Comment by kirdiekirdie | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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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