161–170 of 188 posts
Ultimately, law enforcement need to start paying attention to bike thefts (ie, we need a "grand theft auto" type infraction). Not sure how this happens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversion kits start at around £150 and can be fitted to that £50 bike. The biggest issue I see for higher priced bikes is secure parking (as mentioned in the article). No one provides secure/supervised parking and its tricky to get insurance. You can't really lock any nice bike outside the supermarket and always expect it to be there when you get back.
If you want 250 watts or less for a bit of assistance with pedaling and ~20 miles of range, a conversion kit is fine. But if you have to deal with serious hills or want to use throttle-only, 250W won't be enough. IMO 750W is the bare minimum for that, and it requires a bigger motor, bigger battery, and disc brakes.* That costs a lot more and it's easier (and probably cheaper) to just buy the whole bike than convert w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ve put your finger on a real problem for me. I live in the UK countryside, and we get a lot of serious cyclists visiting here. The most dangerous pattern I see is occupying the middle of the road - which is fine when they’re doing 25mph in a 30mph road. But they stay there in 60mph sections, causing drivers to accelerate and veer round them. If we had more riders doing the same thing on ebikes, I imagine there’d…
E-bikes are limited to 25kmh in Europe (and that also applies to the UK - for now). If you are seeing e-bikers doing 25mph (are you really?), then those are illegally modified. They exist, but are a distinct minority. Also, e-bikes are typically ridden by people who would never think of riding a bicycle in the middle of an A-road, so no need to worry.
In any case, it's relatively easy to do 25mph without a motor which is probably who he's seeing.
The thing about ebikes is they sit in a speed niche that hasn't really been seen before, and it's going to cause lots of problems. Before ebikes, you either rode a bicycle, or moved up to a motorscooter or motorcycle, which are much more regulated. The problem is, ebikes are stealth motorscooters . They go really, really fast, for sustained periods of time, and yet are as thin and quiet as a pedal bike. I just starte…
> They go really, really fast, for sustained periods of time, and yet are as thin and quiet as a pedal bike. Not really? Class 1 and 2 ebikes in the US top out at 20 mph. Ebikes in Europe usually top out at 25 km/h (15.5 mph). Even 20 mph is achievable by a moderately fit person on a road bike for a sustained period of time.
Call it whatever you want, these are motorcycles.
> Previously, you had to be a serious cyclist to access this speed (and corresponding ability to simply exist on car-dominated roads), but now almost everyone can. Wow, interesting that they frame this as a positive. I'm a general advocate for e-bikes but this has been the absolute biggest drawback I've noticed with them: e-bike riders suddenly get all of the speed of a very fit cyclist but absolutely none of the roa…
IMO, the number one hurdle for ebikes is theft. The things cost a decent chunk of money and there is basically no way to secure them properly. I have owned an ebike and it's such a fun way to get around, but I quickly sold it because I was in constant fear of it being stolen. And shortly after, one of my cheap non ebikes was stolen while locked inside my apartments bike storage area. I think electric scooters might h…
There is clearly a pain point in need of an innovative solution, might be a sizeable market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They go really, really fast, for sustained periods of time, and yet are as thin and quiet as a pedal bike. Not really? Class 1 and 2 ebikes in the US top out at 20 mph. Ebikes in Europe usually top out at 25 km/h (15.5 mph). Even 20 mph is achievable by a moderately fit person on a road bike for a sustained period of time.
People can are are modifying them. 80 mph Sur Ron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udAVx85IFs Call it whatever you want, these are motorcycles.
I know because I've done it.
And it scared me so much, I had both myself and my 19yo son go take a motorcycle course this summer to get our M1s before we ended up wrapped around a tree or under a truck.
Bike paths would have been a great thing to put in the infrastructure bill instead of all the special interests and pork. What a missed opportunity.
More funding for bike paths would have been great, but what would you have cut to get it? I kind of like things like water I can drink and bridges that don't fall down. This bill was hard enough to pass as it is. Trying to add funding for bike paths would have been difficult because (a) right-of-way issues tend to make them hideously expensive relative to the constituencies they serve and (b) that constituency tends…
In Sydney it’s just too treacherous to cycle, and the risk of injury is too high to me to make it worth it. In addition there are places where bikes are massively inconvenienced vs cars. The classic example is the (I’d guess) 6 story flight of stairs to walk your bike up to use the harbour bridge. There are other examples like this, around bridges. These add a lot of time and sweat to a commute making it more conveni…
We will be moving to a house in the suburbs next year, and then we probably will get a cargo bike, as there we will have space to safely store it and the roads are better for cycling than the city centre. Bikes also need a good amount of infrastructure, and most cities do not have that right now. Given its usually car drivers that pay taxes for roads (either a direct road tax or through fuel) it not really a suprise…