and for those who still prefer the upright comfy ride position, and using your ebike to run errands, you will still likely have an option like this ...
the very best part about electric assist that the industry (sadly) has barely tapped into at all, is the form factors you can implement when you have the power available. All sorts of prior limitations of weight and design are obliterated and we can get away from the stone age in bike design if we really want to. Tons of ways to conceal batteries, electronics, and still keep the bike's functionality and practicality.
Real Innovation died in this country decades ago, and much of it has to do with our patent system. It seriously STIFLES innovation. Greedy morons essentially sit on their stuff for 17 years, barely doing a damn thing to improve it. Its bogus as all get out, (for anyone who knows by experience how the system actually works and has applied for patents) and its so obviously designed purely to protect 'the corporation' that can become behemoth profit hogs.' Corporations use patents as their brow beating battering ram. If so called 'innovators' would worry less about $$$, and others copying, REAL innovation would actually skyrocket. Its about sharing of ideas, not concealing them. The collective power of human minds working together. That does not happen in our US uglyfied patent system, unless you enjoy giving everything you create to the company you work for, or can easily go out on your own, and have the independent wealth to persist no matter whether someone else copies you, and then goes and patents it themselves and takes all the credit and profits.
Sadly, everyone likely thinks that's backwards, but you don't have to look too far back in history to see phenomenal beauty, craftsmanship, and real innovation far ahead of its time when it was created. (Long before our stinking patent system was created - of which lawyers have bilked billions out of the productive part of our society, not exactly GDP growing or socially redeeming activity.) We've been so brainwashed into this corporate BS, its maddening to think how much further we could have been, and be progressing much more healthily and sustainably as a society. In one minor, but relevant example to biking, our overall roads and entire transportation modes are absolutely archaic, and meanwhile we have morons who are pretend 'innovators' conceptualizing gloomy dark tunnels to ride in, with morale crushing petri-dished virus breeding bullet cones for 'vehicles.' (Ooops, didn't mean to get on another tangent there for a moment. Sorry.
)
Let's do, foster, and witness some
real innovation !
www.theguardian.com
www.bike-eu.com
