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and sort of ignores the fact that there are you know derailleur gears to cope with hills

...which works, but can be incompatible with getting where you're going in a reasonable amount of time, if there's significant distance between points A and B.

Switching from a car to an electric bike did my health a huge amount of good commuting from Austin to Round Rock -- a 30-minute drive was a 50 minute assisted bike ride (acceptable), or a 90 minute unassisted bike ride each way (not always acceptable). Getting that 100 minutes of pedaling in each day (both directions) improved my health enough that in six months I was able to do the same commute on an unassisted bike on those days when I had three hours to spare. I don't see how that's anything but win.

As an aside -- my strongly preferred variety of e-bike is mid-drive, with the motor's power going through the chain, so you're still shifting. A really well-designed system such as that from Optibike is tuned such that the motor is only in its optimal efficiency band if you're pedalling alongside it -- one gets more assistance from an Opti if maintaining a constant 80-100rpm cadence, which is a good place to be in from a cardio perspective regardless.

I wouldn't expect this bike to be good for that, no. Some electric bikes can be, though. I used to own an Optibike with a Rohloff on it. Their design puts the motor in the bottom bracket, so both the motor's 700W effective output and my own ~200W were going through the 11-speed internally geared hub... that thing could climb.

When did profitability as a consumer and profitability as a producer have anything in the world to do with each other, particularly when the producer in question is a 1st-world company with a very good (and expensive) engineering staff that could be on projects where they're not dealing with heavy Chinese competition?

(I'd love to see Bosch build a version of their mid-drive e-bike motor for export to the US market; they're quite popular in Europe, but underpowered compared to what's legal here. I've yet to hear of a Chinese mid-drive ebike motor that wasn't crap; the only US importer I know of that carried them, R Martin, recently discontinued that line, and the lone US manufacturer of mid-drive ebikes focuses only on the very, very high end of the market).

If by "leading the way" you mean "stigmatizing bike riders as too poor to own a car", then you're right.

Uhh... huh.

Me and my $3500 American-made custom-frame folder (a step down in price -- last US-made custom-frame bike was $12k before aftermarket tweaks) will just continue to boggle at your attitude there.

And we think batteries are the answer. We'll look back on this era and either laugh or cry. Or both.

Or, at that point in the future, we'll actually have decent batteries (supercapacitors, whatever); my money's on that one.

Granted, though, that while current-gen batteries are great for LEVs (my last electric bicycle had 100mi range with both batteries charged), the case for heavier vehicles isn't so strong. Yet.

Frankly, I'd much rather work in a field where I can make enough money to afford MORE than a bicycle as my main form of transportation.

People don't necessarily ride bikes because they're cheap. I'm pretty sure my nice one is worth more than my car right now (no question it's worth more than the motorcycle I'm getting ready to sell), and until I got hooked on one of these I frickin' loved that car. Hell, my bicycle cargo trailer cost more than twice what my first car did... but if it gives me an excuse to go out for a ride with my wife every week, that's money well spent. (Yes, there are lots of cheaper ones... but this one's American-made, has a no-questions-asked lifetime warranty, uses full-sized wheels so the trailer and bikes can share spare tires and tubes... and nobody else has brakes).

I ride because it keeps me in shape both physically and mentally, and (with the electric assist making me faster while still letting me offset time at the gym) doesn't take me away from other things. I turn into a serious grouch when I'm driving, whereas when I'm cycling I show up where I'm going alert and with a sense of accomplishment. Also, I tend to eventually get lazy and fall off a gym regimen, but short of working from home it's harder to stop commuting.

I don't doubt the main point that's being made in this thread, that not everyone's life is set up to make cycling convenient -- but the "cyclists are a bunch of cheapskates" meme is one I've gotten a bit tired of hearing lately; it's part of what some local businesses here are using to fight designation of a bicycle boulevard downtown, though similar projects elsewhere have resulted in massive increases in land value for residential and retail use (and pretty much break even on non-retail commercial values).

Unless your battery is dead (in which case you're pulling some dead weight along with you -- but nothing horrid), there's nothing making a leg-based sprint any harder on an e-bike than it is on any other pedal-powered vehicle; to the contrary, it's much, much easier to keep up a sprint when there's an extra 650W added to the output from your legs. :)

Where I live, having an engine over 200 watts makes your bike a motorbike. I have never seen a power assisted bicycle with decent pedals so I doubt they are going to keep up in a sprint. I see a few converted bicycles and a few electric motor scooters in the sub 200W category. All of them are very slow.

Indeed, local laws do matter. Here in tx.us, the cutoff is going faster than 20mph on flat ground with a 180lb rider without pedaling, or a vehicle weight of over 100lb. Unlike several other US states, wattage isn't a factor in legality here -- but in those states where it is a critical factor, the law is ambiguous enough to allow a measure based on the entire system's real-world output at the wheels rather than the motor's nominal output.

Anyhow -- the (US-made) bike I own games these rules a little by being designed to run at peak efficiency when the user is keeping the cadence up -- so while it's capable of only 20mph without pedaling, 27-28mph is easy to sustain on flat ground. Serious cyclists (in better shape than I) and folks with Rohloff hubs fitted (which are now available from the factory with this year's models) have posted much higher sustained speeds; more to the point, unlike a sprint on a conventional bike, high speeds with the electric assist can actually be sustained over time.

With respect to pedals -- my preference is for the Crank Brothers Mallets (which are cleat-compatible with the Eggbeaters on my unassisted bike). Opti just started offering a wider range of pedals with their new bikes, and I'm very disappointed that their only clipless option is Shimano. To each their own, I suppose.

Let me follow up taking a different perspective on the argument...

$2300 is considerably less than what an unmotorized high-end bicycle costs. The local custom framebuilder I recently got a quote from has longtail cargo bikes starting at $3500, plus $1700 to add a motor. Keep in mind, these are vehicles custom-built to the driver's dimensions and specifications, from the frame up, and with capacity to haul a passenger, a load of groceries from Costco, or whatever else you might want -- considerably more cargo capacity than the Honda motor scooter you compare them against. Someone who buys these might be getting a lower top speed, but in other respects they're getting considerably more for their purchase.

The top of the line in US-made electrics is Optibike. They're expensive toys -- but when you take into account that many of the individual components (just the regular bicycle components that folks might put on a high-end mountain bike, mind you) retail for more than half the cost of your $2000 Honda motor scooter (and some of the individual parts they use on their more expensive bikes, like the Rohloff speedhub, cost more than that scooter as a whole)... they're entirely fairly priced for the market segment they're aimed at.

There are kits for electrifying your existing bike for $400-600. Perhaps one of those is what's right for you -- but if a $10K conventional bike makes sense for someone (and lots of them do sell!), there are plenty of market niches and price points for ebikes as well.

If it's too far or too long of a commute to ride a conventional bike, get an electric bike that makes you pedal. I recently started commuting with an Optibike, made by a company in Colorado -- it's electric-assist, sure, but I still have a heart rate in the 170-180 range (and maintain a 75-85 cadence on the flats and uphill sections, which I hope to get higher) for my 20-mile round-trip commute... while getting each way in only about twice the time it took me to drive. The Opti is geared such that the motor isn't running efficiently unless you're maintaining a pretty quick cadence, so you can't just sit back and coast without pedaling if you want to go fast -- so there's plenty of motivation to get your exercise.

So -- it's good exercise and low-impact on your time; the only place where it's higher-impact is the wallet... but if you're working so many hours you can't find time to exercise anywhere, you ought to be bringing home some good dough, right?

Ok mister rich American dude, let's work together. Let's all start using bicycles to go to work from now on ...

Funny you mention it -- this particular rich American dude is doing just that.

"Fun to drive" doesn't have to mean fast. I drive a 4 cylinder convertible with great road feel and handling, and also forgiving enough to make anyone feel they are a great driver. Trying to keep up with a typical SUV is a losing proposition, but driving canyon roads to the mountains with the top down is a sublime experience.

If you don't get that (or feel you have to suffer for the environment) that's fine. Our goals don't have to be the same.

My convertible gets 33 actual highway MPG - not too bad as far as I am concerned. If that won't help my green Karma, I have a 2000 MPG (equivalent) human-electric power hybrid vehicle on order.