Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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It's a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
Sounds like the issue is that the metric people should be using is maximum speed, because that's the main thing that makes it unsafe, but this is not clear to them
Those parents are awesome, lol! -kids who think they are invincible
A few routes near me have banned e-bikes, which is frustrating because I'm sure the real problem is the 15 year olds on illegal electric motorbikes. Not e-bikes.
My state changed their max power from 750w continuous to 750w peak, which turned my bicycle into a motorcycle.
If I’d known I was going to be breaking the law, I’d have bought something more powerful, damn it.
What's really stupid about limiting e-bikes by wattage is that it discriminates against cargo bikes. Limiting by capping assisted top speed makes much more sense.
Nuanced I know, but it also bothers me that the term 'ebike' is applicable to both pedal assisted and throttle controlled bicycles.
As you point out, a kilowatt would do quite differently for a cargo bike than a commuter bike. More severe still is the difference between acceleration on a pedal assisted cargo and a commuter with the throttle wide open.
It's startling how fast some of these bikes can achieve car like speeds.
I'm of two minds on the whole throttle thing. I agree that tooling around on a high-power vehicle without bothering to pedal at all makes a mockery of the notion of it being a 'bicycle.' However, I appreciate that my Class 2 cargo e-bike has a throttle because I often blip it when setting off from a stop because it can otherwise be hard to get going before the cadence sensor (on my old bike) or torque sensor (on my new one) has a chance to kick in.
On a related note, I really appreciate that my new bike modulates the power output somewhat based on how hard I'm pedaling rather than treating the cadence sensor as a glorified on/off switch. On the old bike, if you were pedaling, you were accelerating all the way up to the speed cut-off unless you were on a steep hill. With the new one, I can pedal with light or moderate effort in assist level 3 and actually go slower than 20 mph, but still faster than the level 2 cutoff of 8 mph.
Frankly, I would almost be inclined to say that a torque sensor should be a harder requirement for a thing to count as an e-bike than the presence or absence of a throttle (as long as said throttle cuts off at a decently-low speed).
I agree, and think that's probably the solution to speed demons on ebikes. Modulate the power output on some curve to assist more at lower speeds (not doubling the riders efforts or anything like that) and level off at whatever point is deemed 'fast enough'. If the rider wants to go faster, no problem, but have it be muscle power, not battery power.
Cargo bikes are certainly a different power curve. Sometimes I get so loaded up on mine it takes halfway to the next light before I can get it out of granny gear. I understand your use case for the throttle here, either getting to a cruising speed, or even just enough so you're balanced and not wobbling. I'm sure this could be resolved with higher sensitivity on a torque sensor or having a great-granny gear, so to speak.
I had the pleasure of riding a fancy front bucket style ebike for a few hours last year and it had no trouble getting going from a full stop. Damn thing cost more than my car though haha.
What you describe with your old ebike reminds me of the Reevo. It was designed so poorly if you were walking it, the pedals could still turn and activate the power assist and produce a feedback loop that saw the bike take off away from you and into the sunset.
Acceleration and top speed both need to be controlled if they are to be bikes. Watts puts too much incentive to cheat.
As with everything, parents refuse to do any research and just buy whatever for their children. Next steps will be attempting to ban them.
Right? How fucking hard is it to just fucking google something like this, in this day and age? It's not like the 80s and 90s where you had to call around to find information about something your kid wants. You can just look it up online, easily. Epitome of shit parents.
Googling anything in this day and age can be pretty monotonous, with AI results and SEO garbage filling every page.
At a certain point it should be reasonable to expect things that are sold to be safe without the responsibility of investigating every purchase like an archeological dig.
I have to imagine it's easier than starting a coalition to ban things, but I've been wrong about that before
I know tech nerds scoff about this for video games and, in this case, e-bikes; but I imagine when you’re buying so many categories of item for kids, there’s always something you don’t think about enough - especially if, being a parent, your time is at a premium.
I’m not trying to shoulder blame 100% on manufacturers, just describing why it’s an understandable mistake to me.
Ban parents? Only sensible take.
Any parents reading this who've found themselves with an unwanted electric motorcycle, I'd be happy to take it off your hands.
Me 2nd
Personally I don't understand why anyone would need even 750W for an electric bike, let alone multiple kilowatts.
Mine is an EU-regulation 250W and I never even use the top power level. In fact sometimes I forget to turn on the battery and (on the flat) don't even notice.
This really looks like the same story of macho horsepower inflation that's been at work with combustion motorbikes for a century. Look at those giant BMWs with 1.4-litre engines that are enough to power a sedan. Completely unnecessary and irrational (and non-existent just a few decades ago) but the biker-dude owners will always find a reason that they "need" it. And let's face it, this really is a story about dudes.
I live somewhere mountainous. 
By road, it’s 4km to the grocery store, which is 150m lower in elevation. My nominally 750w middrive claims 140nm of torque, and shows a ~1300w pull when climbing. This level of power is only sufficient to make climbing feel like I’m riding flat ground unassisted. Cutout is 32kph, but flat ground is so rare I don’t hit it, I’m mostly climbing at <25kph or coasting downhill.
There are people with limited mobility. There are places with lots of hills. There are people who need to carry cargo like kids and groceries on there bikes.
There are people who live in places with lots of hills who have mobility issues and need to be able to carry lots of heavy cargo on their bikes.
Sounds like they need a motorcycle with side car than a bike?
Uh... They're not the same thing? 🤔
Got two wheels? Electrically powered? That's an electronic bicycle. 🤷♂️
Everything sounds the same if you strip it down to such a basic description, yeah?
In that sense, this is a bus.
This is a dog
And this is a crocodile
Fundamentally, what different an ebike make is really just their power output and the maximum speed it capable of, and it's defined different from country to country. Some place in US made everything as an ebike if they have pedal, but in some other country, they define it via the power output, the speed it's able to go, and the existence of a throttle, and if anything that goes beyond that limit it's either defined as a class 3 ebike, s-pedelec, or a moped. It's kinda like how scientist trying to define what is what, even though some animal look more closely than what it supposed to be(like shark and dolphin?)
one is 160w, the other is 900w.
one goes 15-20mph, the other goes 50-55mph.
big difference when you're giving one to your kid.
"Just go easy on the throttle, you'll be 'aight."
Conventionally, bicycles require the rider to provide the power through leg movement, whereas motorcycles require the rider to twist a handle.
Ebikes have blurred the line here with some having pedal assist and others having throttle control. It's not as cut and dry as everything with two wheels and an electric motor being the same thing.
with some having pedal assist and others having throttle control.
Some have both. Like Onyx bikes. They have vestigial pedals and a throttle. Tried peddling one without the throttle and it was like peddling a bike underwater
I'm uncertain if you tried pedalling an Onyx ebike that had a throttle you didn't use while riding it, or if you tried peddling some other ebike that had power assist but no throttle control.
Either way, something with pedal assist shouldn't feel like riding underwater even if the battery is dead. Similar to an escalator becoming stairs in a power failure, an ebike should just become a bike. Though it would be noticeably heavier.
I suppose how well it does unpowered is more an indication of build quality though. Certainly some ebikes are so shoddy they are practically unrideable when the battery is depleted.
I think this is my biggest issue with ebikes.
People will be riding down the mixed use pedestrian/bike pathway on what looks like a bike, going 45mph next to the road with a 35mph speedlimit without peddaling.
I think there needs to be some regulation that makes it more visually apparent what is an electric bike and what is an electric motorcycle.
riding down the mixed use pedestrian/bike pathway on what looks like a bike, going 45mph
Much as I hate to say it, problems like this have a way of solving themselves. The unfortunate thing is they usually take some innocent bystander down with them.
Call me crazy, but maybe we should try to solve obvious problems before people are injured/maimed/killed.
The weird thing for me is that where I live, lots of these middle school kids ride them on the sidewalks that run along the greenbelt area and absolutely refuse to ride them in the grass even to go around people. If I were riding something like a pseudo dirt bike you couldn't keep me off the grass.
Legally they're supposed to ride in the street. Not the grass, or the sidewalk.
Shit, I ride my folding bicycle on grass and the tires are only 1.75".