I bought a regular city bike (Townie) and then found a shop that converted it with a generic kit. The price of the Li-Ion battery has dropped quite a bit since I last checked [1], might be time for a backup to extend my ride. I don't seem to bother the non-electric riders in the bike lane since I mostly go with the flow. Sometimes I'll pass them going uphill, but that doesn't happen too often.
Interesting topic. However, the contents of the article have nearly nothing to do with the title unfortunately. The article is about one dude who uses an e-bike on a bike path - which I agree should not be allowed if it exceeds some speed limit. The article should have been about replacing mopeds with e-bikes, or the title should have been "What is the correct speed limit for e-bikes on bike paths?"
Ideally, the law would set that speed limit to ~20mph since that is what a person pedaling can readily achieve.
Not exactly - your summary misses a few of the points they brought up on how e-bikes make fair replacements for cars in a lot of commuting situations. The article leads off with how the excessive commute made an employee more irritable until he switched to using an e-bike, then how a growing number of Dutchmen are switching to e-bikes and how a growing number of companies are helping with the purchase of e-bikes.
The entire thing is pretty much exactly as the title is asking, though perhaps a little less glorious than "revolutionizing", and more just talking about the practical concerns of more people using e-bikes and how governments are responding.
To weigh in, I think it's a cool initiative with a lot of questions to consider, since I'd largely agree that an electric vehicle is probably a hazard to those with non-electric transportation. Though, at least in the US, I can't imagine normal traffic responding well to the inclusion of e-bikes, even if it would solve transportation needs for a lot of people. I am curious how the insurance looks for it as many years back (8ish maybe?) I looked into getting an e-bike but the insurance increase was prohibitively much.
20mph is slow - Fit cyclists would be able to keep up with him.
My cycle to work this morning had a top speed of 40kmph (24mph). I was feeling particularly slow this morning and am only just getting back into cycling. I expect that soon I'll be quite a bit faster.
40kmph is actually very fast compared to the average cyclist. Fast enough that I would consider it reckless if done in heavy (cycling) traffic.
But you highlight the issue nicely; bikes are not self-powered, it depends on the human. Even with e-bikes this is true, most of them will only support the rider and have been made not to power the bike all by itself. So how to regulate that? Perhaps a good old speed limit is all that is really needed.
> Ideally, the law would set that speed limit to ~20mph since that is what a person pedaling can readily achieve.
Federal law already does that (in the USA, at least). E-Bikes sold in the US can't go faster than 20mph.
You're also right in that e-bikes aren't going to revolutionize commuting anywhere but in crowded cities. It does solve the last mile problem, though. Trains can get you from the country to the city and the ebike can get you through the city faster than anything other than a motorcycle.
I would say if I had to choose between an electric scooter and an electric bike for _commuting_ I'd choose the electric scooter. It's more comfortable, can attain higher speeds and can also have a cargo basket (due to scooter weight, the basket doesn't upset the balance as much) and can carry a passenger too.
Another convenience in the form factor, to add, stopping and starting do not involve dismounting and remounting, just leg down, leg back up --this means fewer riders running lights or stop signs.
So, if something two wheeled would take over, I'd say the electric scooter rather than the electric bicycle. Now, if you are looking to get a workout during your commute, ok, a pedal bike is better, you have not choice but to pedal.
With a big enough increase in bike paths, this calculation may differ: going slow enough to be allowed on a bike path, while still being able to split lanes when needed, could be a huge advantage. Additionally, if you live somewhere that is space constrained (like a small apartment without parking) an electric bike is significantly easier to find space for.
It basically boils down to: do you have the storage space for a small car, and just want faster highway and street commutes? A scooter makes sense. Do you have to bring it up an elevator or want to use rail trails? E-bike all the way.
I think you hit it. It depends on _how_ we adapt to these modes. In some places around the world bikes _and_ scooters, electric or otherwise, have access to the same separated lane. In many of these places, scooter parking is pervasive and is allowed to park on sidewalks, etc., so it depends on how we acculturate to these modes of transportation, for sure. For exercise, traditional bikes win out.
As a car commuter who's seen a lot of accidents, quite a few are (probably newbie) motorcyclists who don't know how to split lanes (3 of the 6 I've seen in the past 4 years).
Also, sharing the road with cars means breathing their exhaust. Count me in for the e-bike takeover.
The bike path I'm using to commute every day is shared with scooters. I'd rather take car exhaust, to be honest (although I'm not suicidal enough to take up with cars going 100 km/h on the road next to it). Every time I'm overtaken by a scooter I'm coughing the next minute or so while having to slow down to about 10 km/h.
On the other hand, people are probably much more likely to switch from a scooter to an e-bike than from a car, simply because the convenience factor is very similar. And winter is coming right now, which luckily takes scooters away too, for some reason :)
Biggest problem with bike commuting is that bikes don't balance when stopped like cars do. This means you either have to idly stand around at traffic lights (which pedestrians never do, they just go for it), or you have to illegally run the light (which is what everyone except cars do, but you can still get a ticket for it).
Of course, trikes are goofy and don't corner, so there is no real solution here except bike paths designed like interstate highways. One can dream.
As someone who commutes by bike (short-distance, non-electric), I'm not sure what the perceived problem is when stopping at a traffic light. I understood it as “pedestrians never stop at red lights, so I'd like to not do it either on a bike” which doesn't really make sense to me. As a cyclist on the road I'm bound to the exact same rules as cars, even though motorists frequently seem to have a problem with me having the right of way in certain circumstances. The latter is something bike paths separate from roads fix, but that's already the case here outside cities for the most part, it's just not feasible within them. Ideally you'd want to completely separate all modes of transport from each other, but again, not feasible.
> As a cyclist on the road I'm bound to the exact same rules as cars, even though motorists frequently seem to have a problem with me having the right of way in certain circumstances.
I wish more cyclists and drivers actually believed that. As a driver, I'm willing to give a full lane to a biker if they ask for it. (If they're going "too slow", you can always pass in the adjoining lane.) As a biker, sometimes I need that lane; having a several ton car buzzing me on the side is not my idea of fun.
The way I see it is that people are — in general — sloppy, both in their driving and their biking. They think that "cutting corners" is okay.
> which pedestrians never do, they just go for it
(note: grandparent's comment) the problem with this is on a bike is that you're apt to hit a pedestrian. I've seen plenty of bikers on the Embarcadero in SF nearly collide with pedestrians, because the road is a T, and they're on the through road, and mistakenly believe they have no conflicts (they have both the aforementioned pedestrians, as well as any left-turning bikers).
Being on a bike doesn't have the same risk "feeling" AFAICT as a car. A quick glance around to determine "will a car probably hit me if I do this technically illegal thing?" seems to be all it takes.
(Car drivers are just as sloppy, too, just in different ways. I spend about equal time biking and driving, and the number of illegal maneuvers I see in a car on a daily basis is appalling too.)
There's also slowing down to a crawl when approaching the light and learning how to balance on a stopped bike. The later is something I've never mastered.
Good point. I actually found that the same lessons I got while driving regarding efficiency (i.e. slowing down earlier for red lights, rolling longer at lower speeds, and avoiding coming to a complete stop before it turns green again to avoid having to accelerate from a standstill) work just as well on a bike. And when stopping I'd rather use my feet to stand than trying to wobble only to fall over into accelerating traffic ;-)
There are a couple of techniques, but both actually require a small amount of forward movement so if it's a long delay then you do creep closer to the car ahead.
But neither is actually necessary; I generally prefer to declip one foot and stick it on the ground as that is quicker and safer particularly when wearing a backpack or conveying a child-seat, since that puts the CoG quite high. But the fact that I had to come to a halt indicates that I didn't correctly manage the approach and I thereby wasted energy.
And please change-down gears as you approach the light. As a fellow cyclist it's frustrating to be stuck behind other cyclists moving-off slowly as they "pedal through molasses" because they're still in a high gear. It annoys drivers, too.
There are literally tens of millions of people in Asia who commute on scooters every day who have no problem stopping at a red light and balancing their scooter.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. You don't need to balance the bike when you're stopped - you put your foot on the floor and wait. I know it's different in every country but pedestrians and cyclists frequently wait at lights. Are you more concerned about wasting time by not having right of way or do you find bikes fall over when you stop?
Issues that are probably bigger than "balancing" when you're commuting by bike are: access to safe cycle paths, getting sweaty before work and the weather.
How often have you gotten a ticket for treating a signal like a stop sign?
Personally I've never gotten that where I use it judiciously (ie, no traffic that could possibly get confused by my running the red).
I just looked up the laws around speed in California bike lanes and it looks like as long as you wear a helmet you can go 28MPH in Class II bike lines (the kind that are marked on the street, not a "bike path," which is class 1). I would have guessed much slower. 28MPH is pretty fast between train stations if you have none of the congestion associated with automobile traffic. It's really not a bad idea.
As a regular old cyclist I could imagine thinking e-bikers were assholes for using my class II bike lines if there were many more of them on the road, though. I guess if ebikes ever catch on, there will be some growing pains.
There's a continuum of two wheeled vehicles from a kid's BMX bike to a Harley. There has to be an arbitrary cutoff on how much vehicle you can use on a bike path.
Here's what the top end in electric bikes looks like.[1] Out-accelerates a motorcycle. Suitable for dirt-biking. $8000. That has far more performance than a 50cc moped from Wal-Mart for $249.
That one's 2 years old now (just over), and the power system is now onto it's second cheapo mountain bike (that one had the chain slip off the rear sprockets when the gears were badly adjusted, which damaged the spokes, which later broke. It ended up being less hassle buying a new bike than repairing the wheel). I do a 16km round trip on it 3 times a week or so (less during winter, it's fun to ride, but _way_ less fun in the rain).
I guess I should mention you'll also need a charger capable of charging your chosen battery (I already had two, so I don't factor in the cost of that - you'd be looking at ~$50 or so at the bottom end there...)
E-bike fires from bad lithium batteries or bad chargers are a problem. Same problem as hoverboards. Boosted Skateboards went with LiFePO4 batteries, which have lower energy density and cost more, but don't catch fire or blow up, even if punctured with a nail. Some e-bikes use LiFeP04 chemistry, some use LiPo, some use Li-ion. Go with LiFePO4 and look for UL approval on the charger.
Pedego had to recall 5,000 e-bikes after battery fires.[1] There have been some major fires at e-bike shops.
Sure - I've flown these kinds of batteries into the ground from great heights doing dumb stuff with drones/quadcopters/modelaircraft - and abused them pretty badly while charging. I've occasionally had Galaxy Tab 7 style "incidents", and take suitable precautions given my experience with the risks.
The 7 cell 5800mAHr batteries I use on the bike are the biggest and most dangerous ones I use - and I do treat them with respect. I charge them in the middle of the concrete floor of my garage, inside a besser block, at least 1.5m from anything valuable or flammable. I dispose of them if they go puffy (I've sent two off the the e-waste/battery-recycling in two years - one of them I knew I'd let run down way too far when using it elsewhere, down under 19V which the bike's controller wouldn't ever do (it cuts out at 22V) and it never managed a good charge again, the other I'd been quick charging occasionally (although not really fast enough to explain the shortened lifespan - I can only _just_ hit 2C charge rates with my charger, the battery _should_ be good up to 5C really...))
If you don't know (or want to learn) the risks, or if you're less risk averse (or less able to mitigate the risks due to not having suitable space to let a lipo fire burn itself out) LiFePO4 is a slightly heavier but much safer battery chemistry. I _almost_ got hold of a bunch of cells from a crashed Tesla's battery pack a while back - they'd make a nice ebike power supply. If I can get my hands of enough of them at a reasonable price, I'm planning on electrifying one of my motorcycles with 30+KW of electric power...
Yes, if you take hazardous-material precautions you can handle hazardous materials. I do machine shop work; I get that. But people are going to bring their e-bikes to the office and charge them indoors. "Occasionally catches on fire" is unacceptable for that usage.
I think 'Propella' is a compelling e-bike, it looks normal which I think is important because something fancier attracts thieves. In my dream world I would buy a 'Vintage Electric', but I know it would get stolen in five seconds.
There are dual class ebikes available where you just flip a switch to go from a moped that can keep up with traffic down to one that's legal on bike paths. Sorry, I don't recall the company that makes them.
Daily bike commuter here. It's not a technological breakthrough that I'm waiting for. We really need infrastructure to catch up to bicycles.
It's still very dangerous to bike in Silicon Valley. Cars are generally bike-hostile and sharing the roads with them is dangerous. Not only that, but bike lanes are often just a symbol painted on the road. We need infrastructure that separates bikers from the cars.
Also, people just simply need to stop driving so dangerously.
Yeah, I feel the same. Also commutes get a lot longer due to the infrastructure not being there and bikes being second class citizens. I try to commute by bike, but it feels longer and scarier than it should.
To build on your point, though not as bad in SFBay as elsewhere - there are neighborhoods that are only car-friendly, and don't have accessible walk/bike paths between buildings/houses that would make it efficient to bike.
The entire basis of city planning in the US has been based on cars for the last 60+ years. I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.
Cars are also designed (except for hybrids and maybe some electrics) to have jackrabbit-starts which make it intolerable at high speeds. You don't realize this until you drive a hybrid or electric, but it affects your attitude towards not only other cars but bikes and pedestrians as well.
SUVs have specific problems with their high center of gravity and visibility. I used to joke to my friends that, while renting an SUV for a week, I got flipped off about 3 times. Never happened with other rentals or my daily.
In London they have built some amazing cycle super highways which are great to cycle on, however you can go incredibly fast and some people do - I've seen three ambulances in a week along there (Embankment) recently scraping up people off the road. It's safer than being with cars and lorries but pedestrians seem to not look and walk into the cycle lane because bikes are pretty silent... anyway I do agree with cycle lanes but maybe we need to think through pedestrians and speed as well...
Pedestrians need to learn to expect bikes on those lanes. I don't know what they look like but they should stand out as bicycle lanes to anyone on the road. Also, cyclists should be careful just like regular drivers and adjust their speed to their environment. If you were raised in The Netherlands you would know very well to check for both cars and bicycles when crossing anything.
The pedestrians along Embankment in London are usually tourists so it's difficult to train them :-D I think the signage needs to be better - or I would rather the curb on the pedestrians was raised to make them think a bit.
The best bicycle lanes I've seen are painted in green with bicycle symbols here and there. I would think it's pretty universal. I don't know how costly this solution is though.
Exactly. I chose both photos carefully; the first one does look okay indeed, but note the location of the bus stop. Unfortunately pedestrians (especially tourists; we're talking about central London here) often don't realise there are fast moving vehicles on that blue strip.
> It's still very dangerous to bike in Silicon Valley.
How much does this depend on where you are in SV?
When I lived and worked in Cupertino, for instance, my job was in a small office park on De Anza near Bollinger. My apartment was near Homestead and Stelling. The layout of Cupertino was basically mostly residential neighborhoods on roughly a grid, with islands of office parks and strip malls, except for a few main streets like De Anza and Stevens Creek that had mostly businesses.
It was pretty easy to bike in such a way as to have most of the trip be on the residential streets, which were generally pretty low traffic, and since things were mostly on a grid that didn't add distance.
That was 25 years ago, but looking at aerial/satellite maps of today's Cupertino, it looks like it is still basically the same.
The license is not a problem (in the Netherlands)if you already have your drivers license for a car. You simply already have it for the moped type vehicles.
Bike commuter here. Hope I never find one of these in my bike lane. If I'm pedaling hard, I go a little over 30km/h, my body is alert, full of adrenaline, and I'll get tired 20min latter. In an electric bike, you can go at this speed talking in your phone and eating something. Your heavy battery also will increase your inertia. It is really dangerous.
If you want to increase bike use, build more showers at the workplaces.
And secure bike storage that is secure and doesn't suck.
The building housing a former sf employer required bikers to use the (slow, smelly, frequently occupied with very slow users) service elevator and store their bikes in a crappy room in the corner of the basement. In what was obviously a hastily converted area. A coworker was locked in the bike storage for 4+ hours. He left at around 2am after putting out some fire, the door to the bike room in the basement was set to lock behind him (yes, this is almost certainly wildly out of code), and the building was solid enough that his cell didn't work from the basement. There were frantic calls to police by his wife. He was found when the basement was opened the next morning.
In lieu of suing everyone in sight we got permission to ride the normal elevators with bikes and to keep them in our office.
Living in China, the electric bikes were always scary. They were fast, heavy, and silent. Still, there should be a way to make it work with more infrastructure. Maybe self driving electric bikes will be a thing?
As a bicycle commuter, I would love to see more people doing anything that isn't cars and would glad share bicycle infrastructure with these guys. The more drivers see us, the more they look. Their speed differential is no more than what you or I have with a lot of casual cyclists, and the electric battery doesn't weigh more than a fully loaded backpack.
Is the real issue that they aren't 'real' cyclists and didn't earn it?
FWIW, my "cheater bike" tops out at right on 25kmh under power - it'll go faster than that if you pedal hard, but the electrics aren't helping any more.
It still makes it really easy to go fast tho, even in jeans and a tshirt, with a backpack full of laptop (and 20+kg too much paunch) - it's pretty easy to out-accelerate most lycra-clad commuters if they don't notice you coming. It's pretty easy to out pace lots of fit looking bicycle riders on long up hill inclines - but if they care, they'll mostly blow past me again doing 40kmh on the downslope on the other side while I'm just rolling along at not much over 25kmh where my assist tops out.
(Safety-wise, my battery weights 850g. The motor and controller add up to maybe 1kg. I'm pretty sure I've seen lycra-louts with more weight in their bidons than my electric assist adds!)
Lot's of e-bikes in Japan. The only problem, from a powered-commute perspective is that they have a graded assist limit. I think between 12 and 20 kph, the assist gradually decreases. At 12 kph you have 100% assist and you don't have to pedal. It then declines until at 20 kph it's all you. (I don't really remember the actual numbers, but those are pretty close).
The problem is that 20 kph is really slow. Even into the steady headwinds we have on the coast here, I never travel below this speed, so an e-bike just means a heavy bike for me :-) However, they have revolutionised transportation for the elderly in the countryside. In my town, almost everybody has one. It's really great because it gets people outside and going to shops, etc.
There are now a few electric scooters (classed differently in Japan than bikes). These have a 30 kmh legal speed limit, but they are not physically limited (many, many people drive over the speed limit on these). You need a drivers license to drive these (there is also a special scooter license you can apply for which is easier to get than a general purpose drivers license).
The last category is motorcycle and I haven't seen any electric ones on the road yet, but I'm sure it's a matter of time. Honestly I'd love something like this for going places I wouldn't want to go on my bicycle.
As much as I find it annoying, the categorisation makes a lot of sense to me. Limit unlicensed transport to minor assist only. Put a speed limit on full assist and require a license. Require a full motorcycle license on general transportation that is intended to travel at highway speeds. It's a bit strange to legally be allowed to ride my bike at 40+ kph just because I'm able to do so, though... I just hope nobody changes that law ;-)
I looked at ebikes a few months ago and it's still too expensive. Even the kits for converting a regular bike was almost the price of an ebike. Is it this expensive in the rest of thr world? If not, why is it so expensive here, why isn't someone just importing it and selling it for much cheaper?
Where is here for you? In The Netherlands, an e-bike costs you about 1300 EUR. Not cheap for a bike but not overly expensive either, there are more expensive non-e-bikes that are regularly bought.
Here's a pricelist in the U.S. for those interested [1] (I'm not associated with anyone selling bikes) A word of caution: make sure you get back tire spokes the can take your weight, the expected bumpiness of the trails in your area, and the power of the motor on the back wheel hub driving you forward. I blew out all the spokes on my back tire and had to get extra heavy-duty replacements.
If ebikes aren't of the same mass / kinetic energy as a moped, they shouldn't be classified the same.
Ebikes have the potential to revolutionize transportation in a positive way. Less infrastructure, more dense movement, opens biking to more people with less developed cardiovascular ability.
If I could do 22-25 mph / 35-40kph sustained with a rain suit on, I can beat lots of rush hour car routes, with an output of 10-15mph done by myself, and towing/carrying 20 pounds of stuff, a LOT of car trips become unnecessary.
The main advantage of an e-bike is that it gives the rider confidence to go further than they typically would. I have been cycling to work a lot more often after buying a pedal-assist e-bike, because I no longer dread struggling up a large hill at the end of the day. Increased acceleration also means you're also less likely to hold up cars when stopping and starting at traffic lights - making you feel like someone who should be on the road, rather than a slow nuisance. You can also choose how much of an assist you want depending on how lazy you're feeling.
E-bikes are a bit too expensive for general adoption, but I wouldn't be surprised if they become much more common over the next few years.
Another article focusing on Dutch cycling as some kind of trend indicator, but not really applicable anywhere else. Holland is flat with mild weather. Bikes are already popular and a good infrastructure and legal system in place to support it before ebikes came along. Even with Ebikes, a cold climate and a hilly landscape will put a lot of people off.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread[1] http://www.batteryspace.com/custom-li-ion-18650-battery-29-6...
Ideally, the law would set that speed limit to ~20mph since that is what a person pedaling can readily achieve.
The entire thing is pretty much exactly as the title is asking, though perhaps a little less glorious than "revolutionizing", and more just talking about the practical concerns of more people using e-bikes and how governments are responding.
To weigh in, I think it's a cool initiative with a lot of questions to consider, since I'd largely agree that an electric vehicle is probably a hazard to those with non-electric transportation. Though, at least in the US, I can't imagine normal traffic responding well to the inclusion of e-bikes, even if it would solve transportation needs for a lot of people. I am curious how the insurance looks for it as many years back (8ish maybe?) I looked into getting an e-bike but the insurance increase was prohibitively much.
Except he's not replacing a car in the car lane. He's replacing a bike in the bike lane. I maintain my title-article mismatch opinion.
My cycle to work this morning had a top speed of 40kmph (24mph). I was feeling particularly slow this morning and am only just getting back into cycling. I expect that soon I'll be quite a bit faster.
But you highlight the issue nicely; bikes are not self-powered, it depends on the human. Even with e-bikes this is true, most of them will only support the rider and have been made not to power the bike all by itself. So how to regulate that? Perhaps a good old speed limit is all that is really needed.
If you want to bike at over 40 km/h then more power to you, but perhaps bike lanes with other, often slower, bikers, aren't the place to it.
Federal law already does that (in the USA, at least). E-Bikes sold in the US can't go faster than 20mph.
You're also right in that e-bikes aren't going to revolutionize commuting anywhere but in crowded cities. It does solve the last mile problem, though. Trains can get you from the country to the city and the ebike can get you through the city faster than anything other than a motorcycle.
They're also fun as hell to ride. :)
Another convenience in the form factor, to add, stopping and starting do not involve dismounting and remounting, just leg down, leg back up --this means fewer riders running lights or stop signs.
So, if something two wheeled would take over, I'd say the electric scooter rather than the electric bicycle. Now, if you are looking to get a workout during your commute, ok, a pedal bike is better, you have not choice but to pedal.
It basically boils down to: do you have the storage space for a small car, and just want faster highway and street commutes? A scooter makes sense. Do you have to bring it up an elevator or want to use rail trails? E-bike all the way.
Also, sharing the road with cars means breathing their exhaust. Count me in for the e-bike takeover.
On the other hand, people are probably much more likely to switch from a scooter to an e-bike than from a car, simply because the convenience factor is very similar. And winter is coming right now, which luckily takes scooters away too, for some reason :)
Of course, trikes are goofy and don't corner, so there is no real solution here except bike paths designed like interstate highways. One can dream.
I wish more cyclists and drivers actually believed that. As a driver, I'm willing to give a full lane to a biker if they ask for it. (If they're going "too slow", you can always pass in the adjoining lane.) As a biker, sometimes I need that lane; having a several ton car buzzing me on the side is not my idea of fun.
The way I see it is that people are — in general — sloppy, both in their driving and their biking. They think that "cutting corners" is okay.
> which pedestrians never do, they just go for it
(note: grandparent's comment) the problem with this is on a bike is that you're apt to hit a pedestrian. I've seen plenty of bikers on the Embarcadero in SF nearly collide with pedestrians, because the road is a T, and they're on the through road, and mistakenly believe they have no conflicts (they have both the aforementioned pedestrians, as well as any left-turning bikers).
Being on a bike doesn't have the same risk "feeling" AFAICT as a car. A quick glance around to determine "will a car probably hit me if I do this technically illegal thing?" seems to be all it takes.
(Car drivers are just as sloppy, too, just in different ways. I spend about equal time biking and driving, and the number of illegal maneuvers I see in a car on a daily basis is appalling too.)
Most people seem to exemplify Louis C.K.'s "My Favorite Way" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VAsiC5a02U)
There are a couple of techniques, but both actually require a small amount of forward movement so if it's a long delay then you do creep closer to the car ahead.
But neither is actually necessary; I generally prefer to declip one foot and stick it on the ground as that is quicker and safer particularly when wearing a backpack or conveying a child-seat, since that puts the CoG quite high. But the fact that I had to come to a halt indicates that I didn't correctly manage the approach and I thereby wasted energy.
And please change-down gears as you approach the light. As a fellow cyclist it's frustrating to be stuck behind other cyclists moving-off slowly as they "pedal through molasses" because they're still in a high gear. It annoys drivers, too.
Issues that are probably bigger than "balancing" when you're commuting by bike are: access to safe cycle paths, getting sweaty before work and the weather.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRR4paQnUsQ
As a regular old cyclist I could imagine thinking e-bikers were assholes for using my class II bike lines if there were many more of them on the road, though. I guess if ebikes ever catch on, there will be some growing pains.
There's a continuum of two wheeled vehicles from a kid's BMX bike to a Harley. There has to be an arbitrary cutoff on how much vehicle you can use on a bike path.
Here's what the top end in electric bikes looks like.[1] Out-accelerates a motorcycle. Suitable for dirt-biking. $8000. That has far more performance than a 50cc moped from Wal-Mart for $249.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A65dt-zLdSw
[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fusion-high-performance-e...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/24V-36V-500W-26-Rear-Wheel-E...
Plus an hour or so with some spanners and zipties, gets you one of these:
https://flic.kr/p/MjzMDN
For well under $500. (I think including the battery and the bike, that one owes me under $300.)
I guess I should mention you'll also need a charger capable of charging your chosen battery (I already had two, so I don't factor in the cost of that - you'd be looking at ~$50 or so at the bottom end there...)
Pedego had to recall 5,000 e-bikes after battery fires.[1] There have been some major fires at e-bike shops.
[1] http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2015/Pedego-Recalls-Electric-...
The 7 cell 5800mAHr batteries I use on the bike are the biggest and most dangerous ones I use - and I do treat them with respect. I charge them in the middle of the concrete floor of my garage, inside a besser block, at least 1.5m from anything valuable or flammable. I dispose of them if they go puffy (I've sent two off the the e-waste/battery-recycling in two years - one of them I knew I'd let run down way too far when using it elsewhere, down under 19V which the bike's controller wouldn't ever do (it cuts out at 22V) and it never managed a good charge again, the other I'd been quick charging occasionally (although not really fast enough to explain the shortened lifespan - I can only _just_ hit 2C charge rates with my charger, the battery _should_ be good up to 5C really...))
If you don't know (or want to learn) the risks, or if you're less risk averse (or less able to mitigate the risks due to not having suitable space to let a lipo fire burn itself out) LiFePO4 is a slightly heavier but much safer battery chemistry. I _almost_ got hold of a bunch of cells from a crashed Tesla's battery pack a while back - they'd make a nice ebike power supply. If I can get my hands of enough of them at a reasonable price, I'm planning on electrifying one of my motorcycles with 30+KW of electric power...
http://gosondors.com/
(Although you actually get quite a bit for $500, but there's no way to hit that price point without cutting corners)
It's still very dangerous to bike in Silicon Valley. Cars are generally bike-hostile and sharing the roads with them is dangerous. Not only that, but bike lanes are often just a symbol painted on the road. We need infrastructure that separates bikers from the cars.
Also, people just simply need to stop driving so dangerously.
The entire basis of city planning in the US has been based on cars for the last 60+ years. I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.
Cars are also designed (except for hybrids and maybe some electrics) to have jackrabbit-starts which make it intolerable at high speeds. You don't realize this until you drive a hybrid or electric, but it affects your attitude towards not only other cars but bikes and pedestrians as well.
SUVs have specific problems with their high center of gravity and visibility. I used to joke to my friends that, while renting an SUV for a week, I got flipped off about 3 times. Never happened with other rentals or my daily.
Ideally like http://s3.amazonaws.com/lcc_production_bucket/files/8920/in_... but in many places they're more like http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/304/media/images/48375000/jpg...
That second shot shows nicely why that particular solution doesn't work; cyclists take to the sidewalk as the road is too crowded and dangerous.
How much does this depend on where you are in SV?
When I lived and worked in Cupertino, for instance, my job was in a small office park on De Anza near Bollinger. My apartment was near Homestead and Stelling. The layout of Cupertino was basically mostly residential neighborhoods on roughly a grid, with islands of office parks and strip malls, except for a few main streets like De Anza and Stevens Creek that had mostly businesses.
It was pretty easy to bike in such a way as to have most of the trip be on the residential streets, which were generally pretty low traffic, and since things were mostly on a grid that didn't add distance.
That was 25 years ago, but looking at aerial/satellite maps of today's Cupertino, it looks like it is still basically the same.
If you want to increase bike use, build more showers at the workplaces.
The building housing a former sf employer required bikers to use the (slow, smelly, frequently occupied with very slow users) service elevator and store their bikes in a crappy room in the corner of the basement. In what was obviously a hastily converted area. A coworker was locked in the bike storage for 4+ hours. He left at around 2am after putting out some fire, the door to the bike room in the basement was set to lock behind him (yes, this is almost certainly wildly out of code), and the building was solid enough that his cell didn't work from the basement. There were frantic calls to police by his wife. He was found when the basement was opened the next morning.
In lieu of suing everyone in sight we got permission to ride the normal elevators with bikes and to keep them in our office.
Is the real issue that they aren't 'real' cyclists and didn't earn it?
It still makes it really easy to go fast tho, even in jeans and a tshirt, with a backpack full of laptop (and 20+kg too much paunch) - it's pretty easy to out-accelerate most lycra-clad commuters if they don't notice you coming. It's pretty easy to out pace lots of fit looking bicycle riders on long up hill inclines - but if they care, they'll mostly blow past me again doing 40kmh on the downslope on the other side while I'm just rolling along at not much over 25kmh where my assist tops out.
(Safety-wise, my battery weights 850g. The motor and controller add up to maybe 1kg. I'm pretty sure I've seen lycra-louts with more weight in their bidons than my electric assist adds!)
The problem is that 20 kph is really slow. Even into the steady headwinds we have on the coast here, I never travel below this speed, so an e-bike just means a heavy bike for me :-) However, they have revolutionised transportation for the elderly in the countryside. In my town, almost everybody has one. It's really great because it gets people outside and going to shops, etc.
There are now a few electric scooters (classed differently in Japan than bikes). These have a 30 kmh legal speed limit, but they are not physically limited (many, many people drive over the speed limit on these). You need a drivers license to drive these (there is also a special scooter license you can apply for which is easier to get than a general purpose drivers license).
The last category is motorcycle and I haven't seen any electric ones on the road yet, but I'm sure it's a matter of time. Honestly I'd love something like this for going places I wouldn't want to go on my bicycle.
As much as I find it annoying, the categorisation makes a lot of sense to me. Limit unlicensed transport to minor assist only. Put a speed limit on full assist and require a license. Require a full motorcycle license on general transportation that is intended to travel at highway speeds. It's a bit strange to legally be allowed to ride my bike at 40+ kph just because I'm able to do so, though... I just hope nobody changes that law ;-)
http://www.electric-bikes.com/bikes/index.html
Ebikes have the potential to revolutionize transportation in a positive way. Less infrastructure, more dense movement, opens biking to more people with less developed cardiovascular ability.
If I could do 22-25 mph / 35-40kph sustained with a rain suit on, I can beat lots of rush hour car routes, with an output of 10-15mph done by myself, and towing/carrying 20 pounds of stuff, a LOT of car trips become unnecessary.
E-bikes are a bit too expensive for general adoption, but I wouldn't be surprised if they become much more common over the next few years.