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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?"
Those look really good, especially for older people with reduced mobility (which seems to be one of their major target demographics). But what I would love to be able to buy would be some kind of hybrid model. The motor would reduce the exertion required, while being able to pedal would extend the distance you could go on a single charge.
I didn't see anything in the posted links that said whether they were electric-only bikes or hybrid, but it does look like you can already get electric hybrid bikes: Electric Bikes Northwest. I would happily buy something like that over a car, assuming I could afford either, which isn't the case anyway...
Of course China is paving the way for green transportation. Having enormous populations in congested cities with low average incomes is a great motivation to produce cheap transportation.
in China it's RED transportation.
Generating electricity is not green. Once again this is a demonstration of euphoric environmentalists not knowing how things work.
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?"
Trading in pedal bikes for motor bikes, regardless of power source is not as green as a regular pedal bike. Also, since this is "green" I guess, I would imagine countries like China would adopt them first as there isn't any room for American style SUV's, right?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Unlike most places in the US, many Chinese cities do not have streets made for large amounts of vehicular traffic, so bicycles have become important to them. Then, when you consider the cost of gasoline compared to the average Chinese person's salary, what's so bad about electric bikes? Besides, in a country of a billion people, if only 10% of people use this technology, that's more electric bikes sold than all the cars sold in the US. (Plus no required age to use one).
Green transportation? These things definitly aren't designed to replace cars. Look at the min/max speeds! And the comparison was made with bikes, not cars.
What's greener, a bike powered by human-power, or a bike powered by electricity (which has to come from somewhere....fossil fuels, anyone)? I vote human-powered bikes.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
When I first came across this technology years ago I wondered why it didn't seem to very popular. I soon realized that here in America nobody would ride one of these because of the social implications. Your either such a lazy fat bastard that you need a motor on your bike or your too weak and pathetic to just ride a normal bike or your a broke looser who can't afford a motorcycle or car. Who is gonna ride even a good electric bike (which even now there are few of) with these sort of implications attached.
vampirical
Unless most of the electricity comes from non-polluting sources, recharging electric bikes is going to produce more pollution than exhaling some carbon dioxide and using muscle power.
Yes, finally China is making strides towards more pollutive transportation.
After many long years of primarily using bikes, they are now charging these bikes with power from coal power plants. Once a billion or so people have these, our green goals will finally be completed and mother nature will be thoroughly defeated.
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Not surprising. Now I would have definitely been surprised if the United States were the one leading the way in green transportation.
As electric bicycles aren't exactly what China needs at the moment, seeing as they need, you know, electricity. Most of China's electrical power is generated from coal in factories which have pollution controls making the U.S. coal factories look impeccably clean. Along with this the Chinese are becoming just as car crazy as us wacky Americans only once again to fuel their 8% annual economic increase they have instituted almost zero pollution control laws. Those shiny cars they drive may look modern but most are 20+ years behind when it comes to emissions; just take a look at the haze over Shanghai, it's like Los Angeles circa 1990. At their current rate China will overtake the U.S. as the World's leading emitter of greenhouse gases in a relatively short amount of time.
So like I said, not exactly leading the green revolution.
It's funny to see how this craze is taking off in China only now... since these things have existed for ages. Also interesting to think about why these bikes haven't become popular in the Netherlands, another bike-loving country.Sparta has been selling powered bikes for years, with either an electric motor or a small gasoline-powered one.
Then again, I can understand why they aren't popular here. Firstly, there's the price tag of EUR 1750 (Look on the site under "Collectie / Electrische fiets"). Secondly... crime statistics teach us that every bike owner has his bike stolen, on average, once a year in this country. And this bike would make a particularly juicy target for thieves.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Electric vehicles are all fine and good, except that until we have a good clean source of electricity, a proliferation of electric-powered vehicles will actually increase air polution. For example, in Alberta Canada, a study was done to determine the effects on the environment of government-mandated electric cars. The study found the air pollution would increase dramatically as all of Alberta's power plants (well most of them) are coal-fire plants.
This is not to say it's not a good thing but it's certainly not a panacea at this point. Something else to remember is that internal combustion does not necessarily equal bad since practically all energy generation involves combustion in some form or another. For example, burning natural oils (vegatable oil) is environmentally neutral, since there is no net-increase of carbon in the atmosphere (which means no green-house effects).
The problem is that most alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methane come from burning fossil fuels. Although they burn clean in our engines, they've already caused pollution before we even get them in our cars! This fact combined with the fact that alternative fuels simply don't have as many joules of energy per unit as conventional fuels makes alternative fuels less attractive.
If we can get a cleans supply of electricity (from the sun, for example), then all of my points become moot.
i don't think the electric bike is driven by a desire for green transportation, but it just happens that the particular form of transportation is desireable compared to a standard bicycle, and considerably cheaper than alternative forms of "private" transportation in that country. The average motor vehicle is still considerably expensive for the average chinese urbanite. (let's not even consider the rural economy here). Besides, as a person pointed out in an earlier post, the electric bikes are only as effective as the power plants that produce the electricity. In china, a large portion of air pollution is still sourced from coal burning used for power production. china needs to improve the efficency and conditions of it's plants before the use of electricity is considered green.
Has anyone else seen a hug increase in gas powered scooters around their neighborhood? They seem to be getting more popular than skateboards for kids now.
:)
I'm a little worried about kids without licenses driving motorized vehicles around on sidewalks, though they could be safer than those segways that would just tip over if the battery ran out going up a hill
A friend of mine who works for a city transportation planning organization and I were discussing tha they are scrambling to draw up some regulation on these things.
Find Boba / bubble tea in your zipcode.
When I saw the article link I was just imagining something like a portable battery charger; I am actually a little underwhelmed at what it turned out to be. I ride my bike to get places, but the exercise aspect of it is important to me; it would be cool if I could plug my iPod into the bike while i'm riding, though. What other devices would be useful on a bike with a renewable power supply?
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
is ranked in 2003:
1. Japan
2. China
3. Europe
Gross rank is:
1. China (incl. Taiwan?) (500,000)
2. Japan (200,000)
3. Europe (10,000 and over)
according to this US dealer.
That electricity has to come from someplace... in China, that means mostly oil and coal powerplants with none of the pollution controls found in the west, or hydroelectric dams, like Three Gorges, that displace and literally enslave hundreds of thousands of people while destroying archaeological and historical sites. The most lethal dam disaster in history was a Chinese hydoelectric project gone wrong.
Electric vehicles by themselves are not enviornmentally friendly. In conjunction with strict pollution controls and smart energy infrastructures, they can be. That's not the case in China. They'd be better off with a reliable fleet of diesel busses and subways.
SoupIsGood Food
When I run my window AC unit in the summer, my electricity bill goes up 3 times what I pay in the winter. If that electric bike has to be charged 6 or 8 hours for a 25 mile trip, what kind of cost per mile are we getting? Granted, gas just hit $2.25 a gallon where I live, but my car gets 25 miles to the gallon. Plus, I can drive my car in the rain.
What we need are better cheaper cars, perhaps cars that have solar panels to add energy so a car is not 100% gas driven. And maybe a cheaper source of power, as it seems those who control oil production can put us over the barrel.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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?"
Power from the outlet requires a generator or plant of some kind, as well. If theym like the US, generate much of their electricity from fossil fuels, all they've done is move their pollution problem to a different sector.
China was leading the green revolution for a long time .... With a lot of traditional bycicles....
It's hardly green transportation, not when the source of the electricity is coal and gas burning plants. All you've done is relocate the pollution out to wherever the power plant is.
It seems as if many self-styled environmentalists (who wear their badge in the form of an all-electric vehicle) are the personification of shortsighted NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). They either don't understand that electricity comes from SOMEWHERE, or they don't care about the pollution, only that it doesn't happen where they live.
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.
s
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.
Shanghai is (as of Dec 2003) restricting bikes on its major streets.
"Bicycles have gone from carrying more than 70 percent of travelers in Shanghai as recently as 1990 to from 15 to 17 percent now, according to the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau."
Upward mobility indeed.
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?
Don't these little motorcycles we have now get 60+mpg? And they are tuned for speed/acceleration, not fuel economy. So we should be able to get even more than that if tuned properly. The extra weight would drop it down some, but the addition of better aerodynamics and lower resistance tires will up it some as well.
I can't see how this would be anymore dangerous to the driver than a motorcycle is, and those are allowed everywhere. Plus you could drive it in the rain, and feasibly have some storage space inside.
I've been envisioning this for about a year now, and would buy one if it were under $6000, went at least 65mph getting 55-60mpg, were legal on the highway, and had a 7-9 gallon tank (400-550 miles per tank).
My question is if there is anything like this out there, of if I should go ahead and start building one?
This is kinda on the topic, so please don't mod me down to hard!
That electricity has to come from someplace... in China, that means mostly oil and coal powerplants with none of the pollution controls found in the west
Stationary power plants produce more energy and less pollution than a sea of small movable engines consuming the same amount of fuel. Chinese power plants may pollute more than American power plants, but they both pollute less than mini power plants (automobile/motorcycle engines) designed for size and weight instead of efficiency.
You can eliminate more pollution with $1,000,000 worth of pollution control equipment on one power plant, then you can with a $100 worth of pollution control equipment on each of ten thousand automobiles.
BANISHED BICYCLES
"It as a milestone of sorts when Shanghai, China's biggest city, banned bicycles on its largest avenues last month, but also a belated acknowledgment of a change that has already transformed many large cities in China."
"Automobile sales in China, which reached two million last year, are growing at an annual rate of more than 50 percent. The growth of private car ownership has brought with it a car culture that increasingly resembles the American one, but with even worse traffic jams, especially in Beijing. Downtown parking spaces have become precious."
How did YOU get to work yesterday, my little AC troll?
Yes, the view I had was that the bicycle had an almost Mao-ist appeal for at least most of the old guard there. An e-bike, therefore, is probably just the sort of post-modernist identity symbol that a contemporary Chinese would be interested in.
More than mere navel gazing.
does anyone else find it hillarious that everyone is chiming in, "oh, green transportation! no surprise it's not the US doing it!"? what bullshit.
Hello! These a) are electric bikes, b) are replacing non-powered bikes, and c) would not even be viable in an industrialized country where the infrastructure is dependent on massive transportation systems.
So please just stop. This isn't even "green", when you compare it to the human-powered bikes that they're replacing, ffs. There's no need to be so zealotrously anti-American; you're simply illustrating your ignorance.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
All of you are proclaiming that this isn't leading the green movement. Well lets just take a scanario out into time and see what you think then.
Now.
we have Oil.
America makes gas using cars, and gas using moped.
China makes electric bikes. that run off of coal power plants.
years into the future.
We no longer have Oil.
millions of useless chunks of metal, formerly known as SUV's appear in junk yards in America. We have a transportation crisis because gas prices are insanely high.
China, running on its electric bikes, and possibly vehicles, loses its coal power plants. However these are replaced by hydro- and solar-electric ones.
So, ultimately having electric vehicles [bikes cars] eases the passage into utilizing sources of power that are green.
And China is leading.
face the world with eyes of fire.
That meme, that these bikes aren't green because they aren't as good for the environment as regular bikes, is really screwed up coming from this crowd. The Athlon or P4 you're writing these comments on probably use as much electricity as these e-bikes do. Not to mention that being mostly westerners we almost all drive cars. But everyone complains that these e-bikes are a bad developement because they aren't as green as regular bikes! What should the chinese do? Never advance? Live in the dark because any electricity they use has to come from somewhere? Why are we slamming them for their comparitivly small energy use instead of slamming ourselves for writting these comments on energy guzzling computers?
--HC
So I'm jump'n up and down screaming show me the money.
Don't assume that these electric bikes are gaining ground because of environmental or even traffic concerns. They're cheap, and the vast majority of Chinese people cannot afford a car. I'd bet that once they can afford them, they will happily trade in their e-bike for a big, emissions-producing vehicle. The growing middle class is already doing this, contributing to the world-wide upsurge in oil demand and price hikes at the pumps.
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Greener != green
What about the lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries commonly used in these? How many one-armed, 3-eyed Chinese babies will be born as a result of pollution of these terribly toxic metals?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
While an electric bike may not be as green as a pedal bike it's sure better than a car.
In light of reports that China is the fastest growing automobile market in the world, electric bikes look pretty good.
I drive an e-bike to work.
I'm quite happy with it.
I find it to be a marked improvement on the pedal only model - appropriate for my less energetic mid-life self.
Proper paths in which biking were safe combined with access to mass transportation would i think may transportation a community event (think train station as the quientessential town hall of the industrial revolution)
Details - Good bike in the States will set you back $1100. Giant Lite is (a) leader stateside.
There are two modes (Throttle and Pedal assist)
Throttled is less appropriate for kids and pedestrian places.
Pedal Assist is impossibly easy to control since it only amplifies the pedal movements.
Mine is the latter.
Here's wishing for a little more speed allowance - not for me - butto reduce the impatience of the cars behind me on narrow roads.
At this gas crunch time - we should encourage our local law to embrace this option by:
1. Granting higher speeds (-30 MPH perhaps) -
2. special rights of way -
3. efforts to keep the roadside clear of glass, potholes, manhole covers, and gravel from gravel drives.
I suggest we name them Vbikes as a means of resisting the influence of the middle east crowd.
AIK
By charging the bike up at home,you are only transfering the location of which the poluting chemical reaction takes place.
Now, if the bike was charged up like a hybrid car, charging the battery as the bike was being pedalled, or such, this technology would be wonderous. But there is the matter of having to create the bike itself, or atleast the battery, which isn't so good for the environment.
Place something witty here
These bikes can carry a rider weighing up to 75-100 kg (about 200 lbs.) Thus, majority of potential users here will be excluded. They would simply break the bike :-)
When are you people at Slashdot going to realize that electric vehicles do not stop air pollution, they only move the place it gets made?
You have to charge up the battery. That takes electricity from the wall. Which comes from a power plant. Which BURNS something, usually coal in China. Really gawdawful brown coal too, not the nice hard stuff we get in the USA and Canada.
Smokestack or exhaust pipe, take your pick. You want to be green, you better pedal it yourself. True, you will be burning sugar and making CO2 while you pedal, but unless you plan on going "back to the land" by stopping breathing on a permanent basis, you'll be doing that anyway.
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.
No one said China should 'never advance'. The point being made is that these electric bikes are decidedly not 'greener' than the mechanical ones the country is known for.
This isn't just a swipe at the editors. China has, what? 4 times the population of the US? The large increase in oil imports to that country is partly responsible for the current ~$40/Barrel oil prices (because reserves are tight). Like the US, they also burn *a lot* of coal. Unlike the US, the Chinese economy is raging right now. It is, to a large degree, propping up the economies of many others.
There are about 30 golf courses built, or planned for, in and around Beijing alone. This is the boom many economists and traders have been talking about for years. The rest of Asia, including India, will follow. It'll be interesting, to say the least, how the Chinese deal with all that comes with a bustling commerce. Think of the shear waste that the 'first world nations' have already generated. Hopefully, the popularity of electric bikes is a sign that the path they take won't be so littered. One can hope.
btw, I don't drive, i cycle. And i'm not typing this on a P4, either.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
They're replacing regular bicycles. And regular bicycles run on a good meal, and there's no avoiding the pollution that causes, whether or not you have the bicycle. China needs to get better electric production before trying to replace everybody's legs.
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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.)