Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
The speed is limited to 25 km/h in the EU. What e-bike are you riding?
Future Innovation, Where Are We Going
- Thread starter Djangodog
- Start date
It depends on the type of bike. With speed bikes it's 45 km/h. Also, many people buy an e-bike with the 25 km/h limit, update the motor illegally and ride at 45 km/h.
I'm all for batteries with higher energy density and less inclination to catch fire, also lighter bikes (which includes batteries). But what would make my cycling life easier and safer would be major and extensive upgrades to infrastructure.
Bellingham has some nice trails (the rail trail that carries you over Alabama hill is my favorite) and some decent bike lanes. But recent work (that took many months to do) incorporated zero bike lanes on a route I would like to be able to use. It's my only way to East McCloud, which would be my access to Home Depot, for example. The pavement extends about 4 inches beyond the fog line (James St., I'm looking at you). And there are some where the bike lane is generous for a while, then peters out leaving you no choice but to join the general traffic stream.
We have some routes (Meridian St being the worst) that I will never risk my life on--yet they are almost the only way to access businesses or services I might like to patronize. Roads like this are probably not fixable, due to cost and real estate constraints. But parallel paths set a block or two to either side might be feasible.
Often when I am planning a route that will be reasonably efficient and not so dangerous, I have to pour over the available bike maps, and sometimes that almost forces me to heave a big sigh and resort to our beater of a Subaru.
Ideally, we'd separate bike traffic from autos. A paved bike lane doesn't need to support 20,000 lbs of dump truck, so should be much cheaper to construct. But packed gravel multi use paths are okay too.
Oh, one more thing Bellingham: Too many business have no bike rack, or one that is poorly placed, or badly designed, or one that is inappropriately used. Fred Meyer likes to park their stacked shopping carts right in front of theirs, while Costco has a tiny one that requires you to shove the big cargo wagons out of the way.
Okay, I'm done venting for today.
Bellingham has some nice trails (the rail trail that carries you over Alabama hill is my favorite) and some decent bike lanes. But recent work (that took many months to do) incorporated zero bike lanes on a route I would like to be able to use. It's my only way to East McCloud, which would be my access to Home Depot, for example. The pavement extends about 4 inches beyond the fog line (James St., I'm looking at you). And there are some where the bike lane is generous for a while, then peters out leaving you no choice but to join the general traffic stream.
We have some routes (Meridian St being the worst) that I will never risk my life on--yet they are almost the only way to access businesses or services I might like to patronize. Roads like this are probably not fixable, due to cost and real estate constraints. But parallel paths set a block or two to either side might be feasible.
Often when I am planning a route that will be reasonably efficient and not so dangerous, I have to pour over the available bike maps, and sometimes that almost forces me to heave a big sigh and resort to our beater of a Subaru.
Ideally, we'd separate bike traffic from autos. A paved bike lane doesn't need to support 20,000 lbs of dump truck, so should be much cheaper to construct. But packed gravel multi use paths are okay too.
Oh, one more thing Bellingham: Too many business have no bike rack, or one that is poorly placed, or badly designed, or one that is inappropriately used. Fred Meyer likes to park their stacked shopping carts right in front of theirs, while Costco has a tiny one that requires you to shove the big cargo wagons out of the way.
Okay, I'm done venting for today.
Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
The e-bike speed is limited to 25 km/h. The legal speed e-bikes are considered mopeds and are not allowed on bike paths.
I should know it as I own one. Can you see the number plate?
I agree with you many people derestrict their e-bikes; as you said yourself, it is illegal. The riders of illegal "Frankenstein e-bikes" are far worse. I take it you don't want "the speed to be limited" but rather you want the "speed restriction were enforced", as they did in France? Or, do you want a speed limit on bike paths for all bikes? The latter would be rather hard to enforce.
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mschwett
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
looking at street view, that's a truly horrible road to ride a bike on - pretty much as bad as it gets with essentially no shoulder between the rightmost lane and an actual curb. if there wasn't a sidewalk, it would be better because there wouldn't be a curb, if there was parking, it would be better because of the buffer for door width, if there was a bike lane, well, obviously that would be better.
that said, the right of way is wide enough to accommodate a lame planting strip between the sidewalk and the roadway on one side, there is occasionally a median, and it's a very wide right of way. it could be fixed, but it would be difficult, and roads like this that double as state routes tend to be very complicated to change.
your bike plan kicked the can down the road with a "further study needed" and "... Finding a viable solution to accommodate bicyclists in this location will be extremely difficult." lol.
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Solarcabin
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
Only you are wrong and unlimited may be illegal where you live but not all countries are like yours and the US forest service allows unlimited ebikes on off road motor vehicle trails and so does a lot of state and county lands.
You can also get a scooter license here for just a small fee and no insurance required easy and that lets you ride an unlimited ebike many places and have the best of both worlds.
Has your ebike won any ebike reviewer awards?
My "Frankenstein e-bike" has.
It is a monster though and not for kids or wimpy riders and it eats little ebikes for lunch.
Have a great day!
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Solarcabin
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
Back on topic, I think the future of ebikes will be very bright and will require states and the Fed to fund more bike and ebike infrastructure.
It could usher in a change to how city planners design cities so that people using an ebike can get to major shopping, parks and entertainment without having to ride on roads and have charging available for ebikes.
Ebikes will change and probably have longer range and hopefully they will address the battery fire issue by requiring all batteries to be UL and fire rated.
California plans to ban sales of all gas vehicles by 2035 and that will influence a lot more states to do the same and that will drive a whole new generation of ebikes and ebike riders.
It could usher in a change to how city planners design cities so that people using an ebike can get to major shopping, parks and entertainment without having to ride on roads and have charging available for ebikes.
Ebikes will change and probably have longer range and hopefully they will address the battery fire issue by requiring all batteries to be UL and fire rated.
California plans to ban sales of all gas vehicles by 2035 and that will influence a lot more states to do the same and that will drive a whole new generation of ebikes and ebike riders.
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fooferdoggie
Well-Known Member
fooferdoggie
Well-Known Member
well no peddling that has to be you.
Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
Djangodog
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Claremont, NH
Some relevant news from Yamaha. Not a “giant leap”, but a “small step” in the right direction.
electrek.co
Yamaha launches new mid-drive electric bike motor with more power in smaller package
Yamaha has just launched a new mid-drive e-bike motor known as the PW-S2, which delivers more power, and is a smaller and lighter package.
electrek.co
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kevinmccune
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
Good news , totally irrelevant for the poor builder.Some relevant news from Yamaha. Not a “giant leap”, but a “small step” in the right direction.
Yamaha launches new mid-drive electric bike motor with more power in smaller package
Yamaha has just launched a new mid-drive e-bike motor known as the PW-S2, which delivers more power, and is a smaller and lighter package.
I agree with the derailleur and tire puncture comment but I think 25kph is too slow for ebikes to become legit urban transportation solutions. I think an assist limit that slow actually puts riders at more risk when riding on road side bike lanes where other vehicles are going much faster and are much heavier. I have never actually seen an ebiker riding on a sidewalk with pedestrians going at a dangerously fast speed because they are just as much at risk of injury as the pedestrians if they impact each other. I rode over 6,000 miles on an ebike one year and the few close calls I had with pedestrians is because they were not paying attention at all and one of them literally went out of their way to block the sidewalk after I rang the bell on my bike and told me that bikes did not belong on the sidewalk even though that was a MUP sidewalk at that time.
JedidiahStolzfus
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Lancaster, PA
I can agree with this. Rad's default controller has the starting torque set dangerously low so that it's difficult to cross busy intersections from a dead stop. Even goosing the throttle to get rolling is still too slow. The 35A controller I replaced it with solved that problem. Those types of issues need to be seriously looked at.
Around here, there really aren't any bike lanes that are of any use, and it's rare that I encounter another bike that I need to pass. Horse and Buggies though, I do have to pass them, since their average speed is around 8mph.
Avg_Joe
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- RDU, NC
Maybe not the first, but a recent example of what's to come: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/09/what-do-you-get-when-you-combine-an-ipad-and-an-e-bike/
Mr. Coffee
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- A Demented Corner of the North Cascades
I hope not.
The lesson seems to be that if you fuse high-tech gadgetry with a pretty lame e-bike, you still have a pretty lame e-bike at the end.
Having the in-built handlebars and seat post is perhaps interesting, until you want/need to upgrade or replace them. Similarly, I have my doubts about single-speed belt-drive e-bikes unless you are talking about a bike for very short distances in a very flat place.
On the techno-gadgetry side, I'd observe that good high-quality TFT and LCD displays are insanely cheap these days, and there is no real justification for the weird display thing they did -- except that somebody was showing they went to Design School. Similarly, integrated cellular and GPS chips are about $15, so I don't see any reason for not using cellular right out of the box, which would make the whole system simpler (but require the purchaser to pay airtime costs to ride their bike -- I'd argue the theft protection win is probably worth it, though).
Also weird to me that what appears to be a cool high-tech city bike has no way to carry a laptop or iPad and even weirder that it doesn't include a kickstand or cafe lock. No eyelets for racks or fenders? That will work great in San Diego but won't work anyplace where it rains.
jabberwocky
Well-Known Member
I feel like a lot of startups in the e-mobility space try to do "normal e-thing, but connected!" as a way to pull in a bunch of VC money. Happens with scooters, esk8s, ebikes, you name it. Bike startups also love doing something weird with the frame (this one they deleted the seat tube between the seatstay and bottom bracket, which serves zero purpose but sure looks cool!). I don't really buy that "connected ebikes" are anything other than a way to excite venture capitalists and their dollars though. Most of those connected features are IMO pointless.
BigBoyEbike
New Member
I don’t know that I can envision the future, but I do know what I don’t want: I don’t want this to become some elitist cluster f*ck with all the offerings being more and more expensive. I cringe when I see some of the price tags I may be showing my ignorance here, but, even using the absolute best materials I just don’t know how bicycle, electric or otherwise should cost more than $5000. And that’s like the top of the range. Remember we’re not talking about racing bikes or boutique offerings. We’re talking about a modest well-established mode of transportation That gets us around and answers the internal question of how to travel that last half mile to our destination it’s sort of falls in the category of you could do it, that is build an electric bicycle that cost $20,000, but why in the name of God, would you want to? I was an early adopter and a crowd funder for Superpedestrian’s Copenhagen wheel. It was invented in Cambridge, Massachusetts at MIT. I was really excited to get my bike or should I say my wheel. Because that’s all it was, you could have your own bicycle get the Copenhagen wheel and you were all set. I’ve written a fair amount, but as I grew older and battled disease, I began to feel that the Copenhagen wheel was just a little bit too heavy it was designed, for those of you who don’t remember, to have all sorts of bells and whistles inside the engine itself. Accord value of the technology was to be able to collect data across any given urban environment and then share it in a peer to peer like way quality of air how the traffic was moving things like that every once in a while, I would have a problem getting the wheel to recognize , the app it was in my phone and that’s really the only thing I didn’t care for being trapped and having to use an app in my phone but it never broke down. I never ran out of power it charged fairly quickly. well guess what happened? The company began to make scooters, skateboards, rather electric skateboards, and when I contacted them to see if they needed me to do any beta testing and so forth they said they were all set that’s fine I said, where can I buy one? You can’t I was told, they only sold fleets of 500 units or more! Holy cow I thought to myself that’s crazy. One of the main reasons I bought in to this company was that they’re about a mile and a half from my house. I thought to myself well if they go crazy honest, then at least I know how to find them , so once again, I have technology that I had really no concern that I would outgrow or it would become obsolete except have a company makes skateboards. So here’s a question for everybody what in the world kind of organization exist in the world where they need 500 or thousand or 3000 skateboards . Skateboards! I have visions of stockbrokers in downtown Manhattan reverting back to their teenage years, wearing their baseball caps backwards, and all that kind of good stuff I don’t know it’s a crazy world and a crazy business.
BigBoyEbike
New Member
Absolutely!
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