Over here teenagers are driving electric downhill bicycles among and between pedestrians as if they were driving a downhill route. Asshole parent can you buy a simple city bicycle to your kid? Hopefully the battery will deteriorate quickly or the kid will hurt itself without hurting anyone else.
I can see this is a problem but I see teenagers (and adult for that matter) doing similar things in cars (and larger trucks and SUVs). I do not know how to stop them either.
Combined with good infrastructure, ebikes are wonderful. It's an effortless ride, minus the traffic and the hunt for a parking space.
The downside to ebikes, especially the cargo bike variant, is their high speed combined with their large size.
But I don't see how that can be changed, having them ride on the street along with cars is not a good solution.
That's the downside to others. The downside to owning an e-bike, especially a cargo bike, is that they're very attractive to steal. Thieves will go to great lengths to grab an e-bike, especially expensive ones like the cargo variants.
It’s really a shame and prevents me from using my e-bike instead of my car even in some situations when the bike would otherwise be the perfect mode of transportation.
How are the rental ones (and scooters). I do not have a smart phone (and live in a rural area). I go into Austin now and then for a day or two and am reluctant to use sisters e-bike because of the hassle of taking care of it (when going inside a building). Rentals can just be left on the sidewalk.
Kind of, many places rather go for electric motorbikes, due to comfort and being on similar price range, for the 50cc like models.