Where Are All The Cheap E-Bikes? - Jalopnik
Where Are All The Cheap E-Bikes? - Jalopnik
In the sort of urban environments that encourage the short trips at which e-bikes excel, the cost of reputable and safe brands is often a nonstarter.
The speed, too, is a safety issue. Studies show that differences in speed between vehicles sharing a road are a statistical cause of crashes, and many of New York's streets are shared between bikes and cars. A bike that can do the 25-mph speed limit is safer than one that can't.
The future of personal mobility shouldn't be autonomous EVs, it should be e-bikes. E-bikes that are lightweight, that don't spew tire microplastics into the environment, that require little power to move a person from point A to point B.
This is the sort of safe, common-sense stuff that should be a boilerplate on every article.
Actual infrastructure dedicated for bicycles and other mobility options would nearly eliminate the "speed difference" issue in most cases.
A nearby city is ripping up one side of their main street and finally putting a physical barrier between the cars and the bikes.
Before it was just a painted line that got completely ignored, then it was the occasional traffic cone which kept getting stolen, then they tried those plastic bollards that are just hollow plastic, which just got run over.
It only took 3 deaths that I know of and countless children being injured.
It's great for cities that have the budget and manpower to build protected bike lanes everywhere. But even the North American cities that are at the forefront of bike infrastructure are still decades away from having a system competent enough to remove 50% or more of cars and car roads from their cities. :/
Until the time when most cities and small towns are safely bikable, I see class III speeds being the only rapid bandaid on a complex and unfortunately, quite political problem in both Canadian and American cities.
In the meantime, we will fight NIMBYS tooth and nail for every square meter of bike lane, boneheaded decisions from city governments, and federal governments complete resistance to funding major continental projects like HSR, or anything that doesn't remotely rely on cars. I just wish we had the time, but we really don't, with climate deadlines getting awfully close.
The article is not correct. Tires wear off on ebikes just the same.
Spew is probably the qualifier there, referring to how the amount of particles is tied to vehicle weight (similar to road wear). A heavy e-bike probably sheds more than other bikes, but also probably still significantly less than even the average truck (to the point bike vs ebike is probably negligible in most cases).
Well, also even a fat-tire ebike has a significantly smaller contact patch than most cars (edit: perhaps even smaller when compared to one car tire).
$1,000 gets you a Lectric XPress e-bike, possibly the cheapest option that meets all my city criteria. If you want a more established brand
I'm pretty sure Lectric is one of the biggest e-bike brands in the US by number of sales. How much more "established" can you get?
Funny thing is I've been thinking $1,500 isn't a bad price for an alterative mode is transportation that isn't a second car. I've even seen options that go over 750 watts of power, but those are classified as mopeds in my area, need to be licensed, and cannot use bike paths. An actual, classifiable electric bicycle does seem weirdly hard to find.
This article is spot on.
Agree wholeheartedly.