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China's New Craze: E-bikes
lawrencekhoo writes "I was in Shanghai recently, and found to my surprise that bicycle crazy China is now electric bicycle crazy. Electric bikes were everywhere, and outnumbered normal bikes on the road. You could even buy them in the department stores.
Basic
models sell for about 1200 Yuan (about US$150), and more
elaborate
scooter-like
models
for up to 5000 Yuan. Apparently, this craze has been
building up for a few years.
Something like it is even
happening in parts of the US.
According to one user, electric bikes are popular because they're cheap, and can take you all around town on one charge. Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?"
Nice language at the site.
Breakes:
Yes! Hit them hard enough and they just might.
Sure the bike doesn't produce much in the way of pollutants, but how about the electricity source used to charge the bike's batteries? This type of "green" transportation is nothing more than passing the buck due to most power stations burning fossil fuels.
Unless you tell me they are ALL using portable solar power generators to do it.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Mirror
In Finland you need to have a license to drive one. You drive them on the same roads as cars drive, so you're required to pass theory exams and a test that shows that you can handle the bike. Ofcourse they also have a max speed set to them, and you are not allowed to take them onto freeways.
It was great.
The e-bike has pedals so the rider can add power. Scooters do not have pedals, be they for children with roller blade wheels, or electric/gas models. The definition of moped: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=mopeda ys it has pedals and is powered by a gas engine.
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So they're either electric bikes or electric mopeds. I think the design and appearance would be the deciding factor of what to call them.
Giant LaFree. Does exactly what you want.
I test rode one, and personally, I don't like them, except if you really need it.
They're heavy (80lbs), slow, expensive.
I can go farther, faster on a regular bike.
Electric assist bikes or add-on's aren't uncommon.
Google for more if you're interested . . .
I got a Thinkmobility several years ago. With Gas hitting near $2/gallon in my area its looking to be a decent investment.
However thinkmobility has tanked their bike lines after Ford went back to regular electic vehicles.
Me, I think they took the incentive money for low emmission vehicles and ran.
Lee Iococca also started an entire new company for his bikes.
I think the biggest hold backs to Western adoption of such vehicles
1) Former use of SLA batteries; NextGen LION has just arrived
2) Lack of adequate storage -- dont get a folder buy/rent a shed! Typical bike sheds (home & work) are needed as electric bikes are too big an investment to have someone huck it in the back of the F350 truck. They are much lighter than vespas but still heavy enough to deter most thieves given most come with a key ignition
3) Lack of common components; Battery sets and chargers need to somehow standardize
I can get to work, in an hour, 15mi, with a fully loaded briefcase and work clothes at a mild peddle speed without breaking a sweat. My spandex wearing 21 speeder co-workers have no such luggage ability and must undergo daily scrotum scrunch.
I have to stay off highway and take a bit longer course as my top burst speed is 18mph which kills the battery. I live in a very hilly area and use them to my advantage as I can use the peddle assist on the light hills and use big hills and gravity elsewhere.
The best part is the company is unknowninly paying to charge my battery as it charges under my desk!
Who needs cubical lights?
You're right about a lot of your points... all of it, in fact, but the question is always, not where does it begin, but, where does it end?
I used to live in Beijing, eons ago by Beijing's standards, in the late 80's and early 90's. Beijing's growth might have very well outpaced the Internet's. But when I was there, we had a lot of white furnature, and a housekeeper to keep it clean... one day she was sick following her weekend... the white furnature was BLACK with soot. I honestly don't know if things have gotten better or worse, but I'd suspect that they've gotten worse. China's economy is still coal powered.
The interesting question is who's buying these bikes, why, and what cultural impact they'll have. As pointed out before, its probalby people that are jsut starting to see wage growth, meaning that they're getting e-bikes to replace the human-powered variety, and that these require more electricity, which requires more coal, etc.
But bikes had long been part of Chinese culture. More than just being a mode of cheap, fast transportation, they were handy. They're easy to secure, they can fit in small places to store. it means that building planners didn't need to accommodate big garages and parking spaces, useful when you've got such density as there is along the coastal regions of China and inland to Beijing, where most economic growth is taking place (and therefore, where people are more likely to have money for e-bikes).
in this context, the shift from bikes to e-bikes is a small one, as they meet all of the conveniences of bikes without any major new hastles. (Most consumers, anywhere, have yet to make the 'big picture' association of energy usage == pollution == hastle for everyone, including me.) Now, this means that it postpones the growth of large numbers of cars for a while as people get these instead, perhaps delaying any shift to (as many) big garages, parking lots, etc.
That way, it could be a good thing. RIGHT NOW, its true that it looks like these e-bikes are just a stepping stone to bigger cars... but what if the 'e-bike' phase lasts 20-30 years, as it very well might? By this time, perhaps cars won't seem as desirable, or at the very least, will be less polluting. Additionally, coal plants can be MUCH less polluting with proper design/retrofitting than you'd expect. There was SOME evidence, of which there has been a partial refutation, that its possible to reduce CO2 emissions to almost nothing with a highly efficient deisgn and a method (using some sort of ceramic device??? can anyone inform?). In this way, perhaps China could be one of the first nations to benefit from economic growth without all of the eventual environmenal hastle. If China were to pollute at say, North America's levels, the planet'd get baked like a garage band on a lazy Saturday night, and that'd hurt the Chinese economy both directly and indirectly. I'd say that within the next 10-15 years, China will start retrofitting existing plants to pollute less. This is especially true as they start to get a skilled labour force that hates pollution and is costly to replace when they die young from inhaling half a kilo of coal dust every day. Not that the massive growth of Chinese cigarette sales is helping that any.
This *might* turn out to be an indicental step that prevents it, by postponing the onset of cars and keeping the 'bicycle culture', even if its currently powered by polluting coal plants.
Sometimes, we get lucky, unintended breaks. This could be one.
People in China are under tight authority, but they are not "enslaved." As a fellow Chinese (thought from Taiwan) I deeply resent your biased comment, even it only shows how simple-minded you are. While the cost and benefits of the dam is still unclear, it is very irreponsible for a westerner to talk about how bad it is without even knowing all the detail analysis and the society's big picture. It is well awared that there are going huge chages. In fact this is one of the few issues the members in "the people's congress" have very significant difference in opionions. I'm not commenting on whether the decision is right or wrong. I am saying we need to look deeper before we open our mouth and make a fool of ourself.
I dont know how well those sites are going to take it, so I slammed up a couple of mirrors- hk.com/scooters/elbike.html v ersal.com.hk/other/scooter/scooter13.htm a .com.hk/ebike2.htm c le.com/e-bicycle.htm a deleads92504.php
TDC (sixth link) at ttp://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.tdctrade.com /imn/03062704/auto016.htm
And I didnt bother with the greenbay press-gazette because I think it can handle its own.
I have mirrored the millinium scooters (first link) at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.millennium
Skycity (second link) at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.skycityuni
Grand-China (third link) at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.grand-chin
Promax (fourth link) at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.promaxbicy
B2S (fifth link) at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_436/www.b2s.com/tr
literally enslave hundreds of thousands of people
Back this statement up, please. Links?
The 2 main reason 3 Gorges is being built are thus:
1. It will generate vast quantities of electricity, and pull millions of people out of poverty/3rd world conditions.
2. It will control the annual flood/drought cycles that are responsible for the worst natural disasters in china, every year.
I'm not saying it's the ideal solution, but at least i make an effort to understand the problems.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
You can get such a bike in your town.
If you have an independant dealer of "Giant" Bicycles - they can special order it and hand it to you assembled.
If you live within 10 miles of work - you can get your excerisize and arrive at work less wasted than a standard bicycle. - I do.
Highly recommended.
AIK
I don't think that you can make that claim without further analysis. A typical human riding a bike produces ~0.3 HP (~250 W). An electrically powered bike going the same speed would use a similar amount of energy. (Compare this to a car that might use 20 HP to sustain highway speeds; the bike would be more than 60X more efficient.)
At any rate, the electric bike indirectly uses coal, which is bad, but at only a tiny fraction of the rate that a car uses petroleum. On the other hand, the human demands extremely high-grade fuel: food. The environmental impact of creating a given amount of energy in the form of edible food can be significantly higher than mining that same energy in fossil fuels. In fact, depending on the type of food (especially if it's meat), producing food with one joule of chemical energy can consume many joules of fossil fuels (for fertilizer, transportation, processing, etc.). Deforestation, soil erosion, and pesticide pollution are other issues to consider.
Although riding bicycles is clearly more "green" than driving a car, human powered vs. electric may be more of a complex tradeoff than it would seem at first glance.
You have to consider the MARGINAL food requirements of a human, since the basal metabolic rate will be burned regardless of whether you're on a bike.
Since the BMR for an adult male is approximately 2000 Kcal and riding a bike around at a comfortable pace for 2 hours a day on flat ground costs maybe 250 Kcal according to the data quoted above, what we're talking about is a 13% increase in food consumption. Since healthier people are generally lighter weight and happier, and therefore do not overeat as much, it's possible that a person who bikes for transportation eats less total food than a person who doesn't depending on the rate of overweight people in the relevent populations.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
Check out this concept car for a euro-interpretation of your vision. They're hoping for fuel consumption rate of 188 miles per gallon. They are also calling it the C.L.E.V.E.R. car (to cash in on the Smart car's advertising budget I assume). A nice idea but a dumb name.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
After World War II, the German aircraft company Messerschmidt toyed with this very idea! They developed and marketed a tiny car, more like an enclosed motorcycle with 3 wheels. Pictures here
Their easier to make with smaller wheels, both cheaper and lighter, plus the small engines tend to produce their horse power with RPM not torque so the smaller wheels are easier to gear for since the engine is already reving rather fast with little force. Smaller wheels can also easier to drive because there's less gyroscopic effect to overcome when turning. This is the same reason Japanese cars have little wheels.
I was able to ride a Swiss Flyer on a fair for special bikes.
And personally, I liked it a lot. You just turn on the power
assistance and ride it. There are no other controls.
When you accelerate or climb a slope, the drive kicks in.
You're hardly aware of it. Instead it feels like you're uber-
fit. And when you're up to speed, it just behaves like a
normal bike.
The model I rode was a city bike. I could imagine to buy
one for my mother when she doesn't feel fit enough to ride
a normal one anymore.
A more sportsy version would be attractive to me.
(I'm normally riding a good racing bike.)
Here's the link (swiss/german text only.)