E-Bikes are ubiquitous New York City

[Tom@WashDC]

FYI - I just got back from a two day trip in New York City. Took my wife to see Phantom of The Opera in the Theater District. I could not believe the number of e-bikes zipping around everywhere. New York City has an extensive network of Bike Lanes, and the lanes are heavily populated with ebikes mostly. The City-Bike rental fleet seems to be comprised of about 40% ebikes, but most of the ebikes I saw were used by food delivery drivers and they were zooming about everywhere.

A few observations

• Every street corner has a few ebikers hanging out, apparently waiting for a delivery call.
• About 70% of all of the delivery drivers were using Pogies (bar mitts) to keep their hands warm.
• About 10% were pulling trailers.
• 90% of the bikes where of the kind that had a large battery mounted in the vertical position behind the seat post.
• Less than 30% of the riders were wearing helmets!
• Almost none had any kind of running lights or rear reflectors lights of any kind.
• Almost all of the delivery bikers had wrapped their frames with old inner tubes. One guy said it was to prevent wires/cables from being snagged or cut.
• I didn't have to dodge car traffic as a pedestrian, but I definitely had to dodge a ebikes.
• Oh, and while I was walking the streets, there never was a time where I did not smell weed.

 

[mschwett]

good observations.

this is what the many people on this forum who are quite convinced about various aspects of e-bike regulations and usage seem unaware of. the majority of e-bikes are ridden in a handful of urban areas which a) are dense enough that you can get from place to place quickly on them and b) have a reasonable amount of bike infrastructure so you don’t get killed doing so.

on a 6 hour ride through small towns and the countryside, i may see a couple e-bikes. on my 15 minute ride to drop off my littlest kid and ride to work, i see a dozen. and san francisco has half the density of new york, with a downtown that’s still quite empty relative to pre-pandemic levels.

think about this. on an e-bike, you can ride from one end of new york city (excluding SI, apologies to my aunts and cousins there) to the other in perhaps an hour and a half. your short trip would take you from end to end of the equivalent population of the entire red area in the map below.

 

[chunk]

It all sounds pretty good to me. I like people and bustling cities, so other than the cold winters I think I'd fit right in.

 

[cayacoa]

I don't have a car because I have an ebike nonetheless the whole fire talk is getting to regular new yorkers and I'm afraid some day my land lord will ban them in the building. I'll park mine outside if I have to but I refuse and refuse to go back to using regular public transportation.

 

[Dewey]

The estimated 65,000 NYC delivery workers face difficult conditions as described in a report by Cornell on a survey of 500 delivery workers that highlighted:

• Only 55 (11%) reported having been told by the food apps (their employers) to take NYC’s commercial bicyclist safety course.
• 18% reported receiving required safety equipment.
• 4 out of 5 riders reported they were denied the use of restaurant bathrooms while waiting to pick up an order.
• More than half had a bike stolen with a third physically assaulted during the theft..

The charging infrastructure is ramshackle. If the delivery rider hubs promised by Mayor Adams and Sen Schumer are properly equipped with fireproof charging cabinets and toilets it will be money well spent.

The bikes are branded Arrow or Fly or Hao Jian Tou, with large 20ah 48v Chinese market batteries, 35a controllers, and full power throttles, that deliver moped performance that exceeds the peculiar NY specific Class 3 ebike regulated 25mph.

 

[Tom@WashDC]

This company (GoGoro) is serving Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and India with an excellent solution to battery charging/swapping as it applies to electric mopeds/motorcycles. I industry groups and government can help to promote standardization of batteries. This is where we are probably headed for electric bikes, motorcycles, and cars.

 

[Asher]

This company (GoGoro) is serving Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and India with an excellent solution to battery charging/swapping as it applies to electric mopeds/motorcycles. I industry groups and government can help to promote standardization of batteries. This is where we are probably headed for electric bikes, motorcycles, and cars.

We are not headed toward standardized shared batteries for ebikes or cars. In fact, we're further away from it than we were a decade ago when a startup, Better Place, attempted this for cars and failed dramatically.

For ebikes, range is already far greater than what you'd travel in a day 95%+ of the time, for non-commercial use. Sharing batteries is just going to inject another layer of costly logistics and bad incentives for little benefit.

Standardizing charging interfaces poses a lot fewer issues.

But in either case, the big brand ebike industry is too hooked on the fat profits from proprietary standards and none of them are going to give that up short of the EU emasculating them like it did with Apple and it's charging ports, and there's no indication that will occur.

In NYC, there is already a de facto standard around those arrow batteries. But if you're not a delivery guy, there's little need for battery swapping, and too many headaches.