Getting the video game generation outside and on a bike is a big enough challenge.
Asking them to pedal and get exercise? 
Nah, they want an electric.
You do get an exercise riding an electric bike. See post 3 for cite.
There are two separate things: Pedal assist e-bikes (no throttle), and fully electric bikes that also happen to have pedals (they have a throttle). You can get an extremely good workout using the first. You can also also get an extremely good workout with the latter if the battery runs out.
I think there’s a legitimate worry that people with electric bikes will go faster than they ought to and potentially present a danger. Without electric bikes, you can count on the climb weeding out the novices.
Of course, some of it is just that ebikes will make the trails more accessible and the die-hards would rather not share with a crowd of newcomers.
I think there’s room for many kinds of trails. Like, there should be hiking trails that don’t allow cycling, so you can go for a walk and not have to get out of the way. And there should be cycling trails that don’t allow horses, so you don’t have to ride through horse poop. And there should be trails that allow ebikes, and those that don’t.
We just bought an electric assist cargo bike. My wife and I have loved cycling for years, but we now have two little ones. Too small to ride along with us yet, and a bike that can fit two car seats is heavy. Getting an electric one means that it can legitimately replace more car trips.
There should be room for many kinds of trails, and obviously there is in principle in (esp in a country as big as the US), but I bet there is a ton of user conflict and access issues in the National Parks and Wilderness areas. The issue here in the UK with pedal-assist e-bikes is that it starts to blur the boundaries between us (the cyclists) and off road motorcyclists who are the pariahs of the countryside. They have seen their access rights massively eroded over time (there’s a long history of green-laning, motorcross and that sort of thing in the UK) and there are plenty of hikers and equestrians who would be happy to see mountain bikers join them.
As posters have alluded to above - the gap between getting your first mountain bike and messing round outside your house, to hitting hard trails out in the proper wilderness, is huge. It’s an incremental journey where you get stronger, more skilled, braver, more adventurous, and more organised. For the majority of people that journey also includes an appreciation of where the sport fits in to wider outdoor life and land access, and the responsibilites that come with it. e-biking short circuits all that so the negative implications are clear.
I think we can expect some legislation in relatively short order here - whether it’s panic policy on the hoof, or something more sensible and long term remains to be seen. As far as the former scenario - Pedal-assist e-bikes are capped here to (I think) cut out above 15 mph. Obv this is easy to de-restrict and many people do - wouldn’t take too many serious collisions out on the bridleways for the hiking and equestrian lobbies to get e-bikers in their sights.
It has a TON of merit. Trails around here are very delicate. They can get torn up in a heartbeat if they’re too moist, and require tons of work to repair. It’s bad enough that people on regular bikes still get on them when they’re wet and cause a problem; it’ll be even worse when yahoos who have no idea what they’re doing decide to go out and plow through the mud.
One of my favorite trails does have a “people power only” sign that forbids powered bikes, but there’s no way to enforce that. I can only hope that the same people who are too lazy to actually pedal a bike and buy an electric one because it’s easier, are the same people who will bore of them quickly and go back to their Playstations.
Don’t get me started on horses.
I met somebody back around 2012. He was an American working in China as an economics professor.
He saw this potential boom for ebikes and set up a company to design and sell them, with the manufacturing done in China. He predicted that improved battery technology and bike manufacturing, combined with lowered costs would create a huge market.
It sounded interesting, but he was flaky enough that I didn’t join his company.
What got me about ebikes is the number I saw doing the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. Traditionally one walked, biking is allowed as a alternative and people are using the ebikes now.
Nothing to do with recreation, but around here LimeBikes has pulled hundreds of their bicycles off the streets here and replaced them with little motorized scooters. The bikes are currently broken up (and unrepairable unless you’re a welder) and piled up in a junkyard. And now dozens and dozens of drivers prowl the streets every night competing with each other to collect the scooters to take them home and recharge them overnight. I believe they get about $3-$4 per scooter.
OP… did you see Wall-E? Electric bikes are just one step closer to the future as depicted in Wall-E where people never had to walk or exercise any. They got around by moving chairs on conveyor belts, etc.
Nope, I never did. But fear not, I have found more to be depressed about - this just in:
"*More than 1m bicycles were sold last year in the Netherlands, up 5.7% on 2017, and at the same time Dutch consumers appear willing to spend big on their bicycles, particularly on e-bikes, statistics show.
E-bikes accounted for €823m of €1.2bn in bicycle sales in 2018. It was the first year that overall sales past €1bn and the first time more e-bikes were sold than standard bicycles. In terms of units, 409,400 e-bikes were sold, up 40% on 2017.*"
'Bike country No 1': Dutch go electric in record numbers | Netherlands | The Guardian - published 20 hours ago as I write.
Makes you wonder - what in the hell is Amsterdam going to be like? For those that don’t know it, the city is jam packed with bikes, flying alongside and over canals. It’s a great skill to ride like that and quite a skill to avoid being flattened by them if you’re on foot. Fortunately, we’re talking about really skilled riders who will somehow avoid you with nothing more than a tut and a worldweary glance* - but add a few tens of thousands of electric bike riders into the mix…heavier bikes, potentially higher speeds, and I suspect less experienced and skilled riders. I shudder to think.
j
*Side note - the potential dangers are so great that last time I was there, 2 years ago, the normally super relaxed and libertarian Dutch had a poster campaign protesting against any plan to hire bikes out to tourists. You don’t know how cycling in Amsterdam works? Then you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.
Does one typically charge these things by plugging them in, or are they more like (non-plug) hybrid cars? I could see value in something that used regenerative braking, and let you pedal for added charge while stopped at a light, or on an easy stretch of road, but which then added extra power for acceleration and hills. You’d still be providing all of the energy yourself, but you could distribute it better.
On the other hand, it also means that many more things that can go wrong, which is (in a nutshell) why I don’t even use a folding bike any more.
EDIT: Treppenwitz, the key to safety as a pedestrian is just to be consistent and predictable. If you start crossing a street, keep walking at the same speed, and don’t make sudden movements. It’s not actually all that hard, on a bike, to avoid predictable pedestrians.
Hi Chronos
As my weekly target mileage is 140 miles, in a mix of urban, rural and off-road environments (168 this week) I think I’m mostly OK for avoiding pedestrians.
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the mixed car/bike/pedestrian bridges and canal sides of Amsterdam? At pinchpoints and crossings, it really is the bike/pedestrian interface that you need to watch out for. Faster than you would imagine bikes, lots of them, many jostling tourists, on cobbles, and often with poor demarcation.
j
Don’t you realize that cars have already done that to us, long before electric bikes became popular? Wall-E is not a prediction, it’s satire.
And at least in America, e-assist bikes and e-bikes aren’t replacing walking. If anything, they are replacing cars for short-distance commuting.
My e-bike has a detachable battery which I recharge in my own apartment. AFAIK that’s the norm since it is far more convenient than trying to get the whole bike to a recharging point. There’s no regenerative braking or recharging while pedaling - those would probably add a lot of weight to the bike and be almost useless as well. I can’t see any scenario where I would like to make pedaling harder on level ground just so going uphill later on would be a bit easier.
Once you have a motor and batteries already installed, how would enabling regenerative braking on the controller add any additional weight?
And it’s not useless: it saves some energy that would otherwise be wasted. You could use it to maintain a steady pace downhill instead of wearing out your brake pads. You could use it to slow down and stop. And you could use it in combination with/ instead of gear shifts to maintain a steady pace while pedalling, whether you are riding uphill or down.
ebikes are the modern equivalent of scooters. They’re transportation and not exercise machines.
See my reply in 23. There are two types of ebikes. You can get an extremely good work out using a pedal assist bike and if you don’t believe that is true, you’ve never ridden one.
Yes but a mountain bike does that anyway. You wouldn’t buy one for just for transport. An ebike has more potential as an alternative to a scooter.
Actually thinking quite seriously about an e-bike for the commute - was following someone in this morning on one that got me thinking. Being able to ride in wearing your work clothes, at minimal exertion, quite fast, would be significant for me. That combination is not available on a normal bike. Not sure what the state of play is with respect to the street e-bikes available at the mo, if there are any non-horrible options, but might have a peruse.