Japan cracks down on use of rideable electric suitcases amid tourist boom
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/kotsu/jikoboshi/elec...
Is that the rule for normal ebikes? That's very restrictive!
A bike with a motor which propels itself is called: a motor bike.
Japan has had bicycles with electric assist motors for 10+ years. They are popular with moms who need to carry kids but where a car is too cumbersome.
Japan has also had motor bikes for a century. They are popular with lower class workers who want to skip traffic jams and commute cheaper.
Japan is not confused by the shape of a motor bike. Making it look like luggage does not make it luggage (with a motor) but rather a luggage shaped motor bike. Japan appears to handle this Nominative determinism issue quite well.
I think equal power part is not too complicated to implement, with a load-bearing "just" you just sync synchronous motor driver to the rotor phase and limit current upstream. I believe a prototype also has to be brought to some office to get certified. Frankly it's all par for the course for a Japanese regulation; engineering cost is considered free and everything is supposed to be approved by someone official-ish.
Then the motor is only assisting your foot power, which makes it an ebike.
I own a Brompton, which fits through the baggage X-ray and can be checked like a stroller at the gate. I've flown with it more than 12 times, and you had better believe I've ridden it in the terminal
I only do this during late arrivals when the airport is almost empty, travel at a reasonable speed, and otherwise conduct myself like a civilized human being. On a bike. In the airport. It's great actually.
I'll be riding my bike in a designated a bike lane (which is sometimes shared with pedestrians, dogs, etc.) with clearly marked speed limit signs of 15mph. That's plenty fast in general, but even more so in busy spots. And suddenly a near-silent e-bike will go flying past me (no "On your left," by the way) at speeds close to 30mph. Happens all of the time and is bafflingly reckless and arrogant.
The way folks ride class 3 e-bikes they really should be treated as mopeds: put them on the roads like other motorized vehicles and licensed and (hopefully) forced to obey the rules of the road. Just my opinion, but they seem to break the spirit of being in the bike lane. The touristy day-cruiser eBikes like Lime bikes are fine.
With an aging population, drivers who mistakingly hit the accel when they meant to brake, thus running full missile mode into shops and sidewalks make the news almost every day("Prius missile")
The last things people want is additional vehicles plowing forward at the push of a button, this time indoors and/or on the sidewalk from the start.
> drivers who mistakingly hit the accel when they meant to brake, thus running full missile mode into shops and sidewalks make the news almost every day
While I'm at it, here's the most famous Prius case in Japan, where a 87-year-old geriatric senior bureaucrat ran over and killed a mother and her child, but was treated with kid gloves until the husband whipped up enough public outrage to force the police to do something about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higashi-Ikebukuro_runaway_car_...
https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+fast+motorized+wheel...
No idea if this is real but it was one of the results
That's because they require a license to rent and operate. That's because they are a self powered mobile vehicle. An automobile if you will.
Automobiles in Japan require a license to drive.
Plus you must drive them on the road, with the other automobiles.
> you’ll have to pass a quick traffic test and submit proof of identification on the app in order to begin renting.https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/kotsu/jikoboshi/elec...
Edit: Also I now remember laughing as the panels started gasping at tourists jaywalking which I regularly see where I live.
There are many companies that either have such devices in Japan that they can't sell, or companies that want to sell there but can't, because there are laws against riding electric devices on the sidewalk, and it's too dangerous to ride those on the street.
I saw someone using a Honda Motocompacto as intended yesterday. She rode it into the Redwood City train station, quickly folded it, and easily carried it onto the train.
This article is talking about motorized, ridable luggage.
Examples: https://airwheelfactory.com/collections/riding-suitcase-for-...
It does have a principled argument to make, in which locals would ask if it's fair for owners of this kind of luggage to continue without a license in a place where electric scooters and mopeds are common, and require a license to use.
I also wonder how much useful space is left in them after the slide-out steering mechanism, batteries and motors.
I'd be more worried about tons of lithium batteries made to the cheapest price going inside the cargo hold.
looking at the image in TFA, that looks about the size of a carry on which is much smaller than I was imagining. to counter, there's a Visa commercial running as part of the Olympics with Simone Biles next to her suitcase which is as big as she is. It is disturbingly large. Like, it can't be real, can it? Or she is just that little. Either way, I'm remembering the wrong parts of their commercial, but I could see a suitcase of that size being something Transformer-ish into something you and your family could ride
She is 4 ft 8 in (142 cm). She's almost carry-on sized herself.
They weight about 10kg though. It means if the airline imposes a limit on the weight of a carry-on, you probably won't be ably to put anything inside of it. But because the battery is removable, you can still check it in and keep the battery with you.
However, what would be an e-bike in some other country would be classified as a moped in Japan, requiring a driver's license. In particular, the amount of assistance an e-bike can provide is limited, some power has to come from the rider to be classified as an e-bike. So it is possible that because of some quirks of the Japanese regulations, an electric suitcase would be classified as a moped, therefore requiring a license.
The other problem here is that with ever-increasing electric motor technology, old standards like engine displacement, or even power supply (gas vs electric) are not great indicators of the maximum speed of these things. As it stands, while 13 km/h is not that fast (its a reasonable jogging pace), it is very fast if the user is zoned out on their phone, which happens all too often in e.g. airports or tourist zones.
None of this is enforced.
In general I understand moped as anything with limited speed/engine size.
If the user can easily switch to backup-pedal power to traverse e.g. Millenium Park in Chicago, then I don't really see the problem. Certainly, failure to use that function is a problem, but I don't think its good for society if we allow police to stop actual bicyclists on suspicion of riding a pedal assist vehicle. These things are pretty obvious when in use: bikes don't coast, unassisted, uphill at the speeds these things frequently achieve.
Interesting. Just wondering - what does "pedal" mean to you. Explicitly spinning and explicitly with feets?
Are any of those not considered bicycles to you?
-Elliptical bicycle -Treadmill bicycle -Handcycle
They're probably talking about e.g. an elliptigo, which does go somewhere. Although I can't imagine it ever making sense to motorise one.
On the literal sense every dictionary definition of "bicycle" is going to include some variation of "pedal driven". In the practical sense whatever functions enough like a bicycle is going to count, typically alluded to by being called a ${thing} bicycle, but "it moves on wheels and you go on it" isn't going to clear that bar on its own in this "electric suitcase".
You can certainly put a motorcycle into neutral and sort of scoot it around, but to make it usable in that configuration, you'd have to mess with the overall geometry to the point that its not comfortable to ride as a motorcycle.
Even the pedal assist ones can be a hazard by giving a rider false confidence or letting him ride faster than his capabilities. It takes a pretty experienced bike rider to sustain 25+ mph, but with electric assist, a lot more people can go that fast or faster for long periods without having developed the skills to do so safely.
You're not mad at ebikes, you're mad at people with unregistered vehicles, and potentially drivers driving motorcycles without motorcycle licenses.
Yeah, but the problem is that they all look the same, many legal bikes even come with easily removed speed limiters.
I'm ok with throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- regulate them all if it's impossible to tell which one is which until they get into an accident.
This is not the first example of there being an easily-abused commons of some sort, where we all benefit from using something within reason but a few bad actors can make things radically worse for everyone.
Radio comes to mind. It's very easy for anyone to prevent their neighbors from using their wifi, by trying to boost their own signal strength beyond legal limits.
But people don't, despite the equally easily removed power limiters. Because the FCC will come down hard on them.
Let's add more enforcement. Speed cameras everywhere, for cars and bicycles.
How do speed cameras help stop speeding bikes when they don't require a license plate?
And that, dear reader, is where the plan falls apart entirely.
But for real, regulation exists because large groups of people generally can't be expected to act rationally.
Especially tourists, who are the main users of these electric suitcases.
No, the point is in crowded places like airports you don't want people zipping around on electric scooters, suitcases or otherwise, running into people - esp elderly.
You've got to have "police" everywhere who need to be trained to identify when someone is going too fast. Who does enforcement? Actual police? You need a lot more police than normal. Airport staff? They're not enforcers. They keep the carts in the right location and bathrooms tidy. But, let's say you can have enforcers. So enforcer says slow down, kid says okayyyyyyy and then goes fast again right out of eye sight. But speed limits on the luggage! No way, so add an on/off button to comply because no one wants to buy only a slow luggage, but you've still got that person who "won't airplane mode".
Repeat offenders? Now you've just confiscated their luggage. That's gonna be good.
In this scenario, electric luggage == actual scooter. You don't ride actual scooters through an airport, but I've seen so many electric luggage scooters.
I admit they're cool af and everytime I see someone on one I'm jelly. They're their own advertising. But they're at an airpot and it's crowded for the speed. I'm already stressed enough - I don't need your kid running into me at speed.
That's pretty manageable when we're walking, but basically impossible when riding a vehicle (at best we stop within the machine's braking distance, including our reaction time until pushing the right button).
Then when a collision occurs, it will be the luggage's hard surface hitting first, compounded with the weight of the rider on it. Compared to person vs person collision, that probably hurts a lot more. Same way it's worse to get hit by a cart than by bumping into someone.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/SE3S-Airwheel-Smart-Rideable-Suit...
Scooters have no such performance restrictions and as such require licensing, age limits, insurance and all that jazz.
So TL;DR it's just a convenient demarcation between two classes of vehicle performance, that doesn't also limit human only powered bicycles or full scooters.