Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Bloomberg Green advocating voluntary poverty and a return to 19th century transport solutions, to solve the great climate crisis.
It’s Time to Treat E-Bikes Like Vehicles
As gas prices surge, electric bikes — especially cargo models that can carry kids and groceries — could be replacing car trips and saving fuel. Why won’t federal officials promote them?
By David Zipper 15 March 2022, 22:00 GMT+10
With gasoline prices surging following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. elected officials are trying everything from gas tax “holidays” to dipping into the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves to placate drivers worried about overstretched budgets. The Biden administration has suggested that long-term salvation lies in dumping gas-powered vehicles entirely: “When we have electric cars powered by clean energy, we will never have to worry about gas prices again,” the White House recently tweeted. “And autocrats like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations.”
In the meantime, Americans are rediscovering classic fuel-saving habits, like opting for smaller vehicles or taking transit. But one promising approach is all but absent from policy discussions: shifting car trips toward increasingly popular e-bikes and e-cargo bikes, which run on pedal power augmented by rechargeable batteries. It’s an omission that speaks volumes about how underappreciated battery-boosted bicycles remain in Washington, even among the most climate-friendly politicians.
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Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/the-electric-vehicles-we-need-now-are-e-bikes
What a sad, small minded vision of the future – the United States of America withering into a nation of energy impoverished peasants.
What happened to reaching for the stars, flying automobiles, a life a leisure and luxury that even the emperors of old could never have aspired to?
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with people choosing to ride an e-Bike. I used to ride bikes for leisure, until an injury stopped me. But riding a bike should be a choice, one of many options, it should not be a choice which is forced on us because we cannot afford anything better.
Wealth is choices. You can choose to ride your e-Bike. But if you are wealthy, you can also choose to drive your automobile, without worrying about the cost of fuel.
Poverty, the opposite of wealth, is having your choices limited by cost, feeling constrained by fuel and energy you can no longer afford, living small lives with a limited outlook, like a bunch of medieval peasants tilling the land for our betters. Or like 19th century wage slaves working like battery hens in their warehouses, packaging or producing the products which make them wealthy.
Going by the number of private jets which clutter our airports during climate conferences, our “betters” have no intention of giving up any of their privileges. There is no reason any of us should fall for their climate falsehoods and give up any of our privileges, while they laugh in our faces.
The current sky high price of fuel and energy is totally fixable. All our politicians have to do is get out of the way, and let our entrepreneurs drill for the oil we so badly need at this time. Supply and demand. Up the supply, and the price will drop, as it did under President Trump.
If and when some technical genius comes up with a better solution than fossil fuel, we’ll listen. My only loyalty to fossil fuel is convenience. But living small lives and accepting substandard solutions because we can’t afford better is not a vision of the future I want to embrace.
Until that day something better is available, start drilling, and stop messing with our lives and stop inflicting needless misery on ordinary people like ourselves.
Get the billionaires and the do-gooders to set an example during a 24 month pilot. None of them use anything but horses, cycles or on foot. The rest of us fly as normal.
Bloomberg doesn’t ride e-bikes because he wouldn’t be able to reach the peddles.
““When we have electric cars powered by clean energy, we will never have to worry about gas prices again,”
““When we have electric cars powered by clean energy, we may never have to worry about gas prices again but, Whoa Nelly, your electric bill is going to kill you.”
There, fixed it.
Memo to Bloomberg: You first.
That was my first thought.
I recently built an eBike and I have to say it’s great fun! Fortunately I have a cycle path near to where I live that takes me close to work and it’s a great way to commute. The bike with essentially no pedal assist gets maybe 50km range which is plenty.
Tim, ebikes look like fun and have their place, but it seems Bloomberg wants to get rid of all other forms of transport. Serfs can walk or bike, eh?
My problem is how to tow a 16,000 pound trailer with an ebike.
Horses for courses.
At the moment (where I live) eBikes dont need to be registered and dont represent an ongoing drain on one’s finance. While thats true’s its viable to have both a car and eBike and choose whether to use it per trip.
I think e-bikes are a scourge of the city.
About 3 years ago I was driving downtown in a city. The speed limit was 25 MPH and I was going about 28 in the far right lane. From the sidewalk comes some hipster doofus on a rental e-bike onto the main road without even bothering to look if a vehicle was in the road. I had to press on my brakes to avoid hitting this doofus. In the road, he was swerving really bad, couldn’t drive straight. Eventually the obvious soy boy notices that I was behind him, and then he swerves hard back onto the sidewalk, almost hitting a walking pedestrian.
How many people are injured by reckless e-bike riders?
The problem is with the people not the eBikes though. How many people are killed by morons on their phones in much more dangerous cars?
POTUS: “I may be Irish but I am not stupid.”
Could be this an insut to the Irish, or to the stupid, or both?
An Irish friend of mine once told me a joke.
“Why did God invent whiskey?
So the Irish wouldn’t take over the World!”
If Biden really is Irish, no more need for whiskey.
When Obama heard Biden was putting his name in the hat, he is rumoured to have said “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up”. Only hearsay, but I believe it.
Uh, yeah, those e-bikes are a great solution here in the Phoenix, Arizona area! From May through September it’s often over 100f, and riding anything–bikes, e-bikes, motorcycles, scooters–is like riding through hell, and you can bet not a lot of businesspeople are going to pedal or even coast from the suburbs into downtown in those temperatures. And in fall, I can already see those poor riders when they get off work and see one of our gigantic dust storms coming their way, and they have twenty e-miles to ride to get home.
YES! Here in Minnesota, we can’t wait to take our kids to school, go grocery shopping, and travel to work (not on a farm, of course) in the winter on a e-bike!
Because we all live in urban centers where e-bikes might be practical? Because we can all stay home in bad weather? Because cold weather doesn’t drain batteries?
Makes sense, yay.
Why do the greens promote electric vehicles before there are RELIABLE green sources of electricity?
(Cart before the horse?)
Why are Governments supporting AND subsidizing such nonsense to make it appear affordable to “Go Green”?
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is … er … Climate Change is not our “Existential Threat”.
The “solutions” to the nonexistent threat are.
Must not live where there is weather. Bikes are not for most people to commute to work. Not safe on snow or extreme cold or places with lots of rain. I saw Eastern try riding their bikes to work in alaska. They did not last.
You must cut down… Us? There are so few of us, it doesn’t matter.
There are so many of you… You must cut down.
Four legs good, two legs better.
Our jets, our black suv’s, our mansions. our yachts’
We are so few, you are so many…
“You will own nothing and be happy.”
I love riding my bike. My wife loves riding her eBike. We like loading our bikes on the back of the SUV and driving out to our bike ride and then driving back home.
Steady, there – you’ll make the greenies blow a gasket.
As I understand it, it was the collective west that decided to stop buying oil from Russia, not Russia refusing to sell oil to the west. This is further evidence (if it were needed) of the insanity running through western societies.
I own an ebike. I use it for leisure – exercise and fresh air. I do 10 mile rides on the weekends, at sunrise to avoid all the idiots on the roads. It’s downright dangerous to ride with all the idiots behind the wheels of cars these days.
It is nice in that I get to go fast and get some exercise by using the lowest pedal assist from the motor/battery. I average about 15 mph. And have some hard acceleration available to cross streets or get moving after a red light or stop sign (again to stay clear of idiots in cars).
I still get about as much exercise as without the electric assist, except then I would only be able to do about 3 miles at a snail’s pace of maybe 7 mph average. My battery holds 550 watt-hours, and at modest assist levels and not too much acceleration I can go 30 miles on a charge.
Ebikes cannot get your groceries, nor take the kids to school, not even tricycle cargo versions. And you cannot leave it out in heavy rain, nor drive in anything more than a slight mist – the controls are “water resistant” but not water proof! (operates at 50 volts so even slightly conductive water will cause shorts)
It’s fun and useful for leisure, but not as primary means of transportation.
Some perspective against the elites flying private jets to Climate Cult Conferences:
1 conference, with 50 private jets, each consuming an average of 20,000 lbs of Jet A fuel. (one way from N America to Europe eats 30k lbs, and the shorter legs from within Europe consumes 10-15k lbs so average of 20k lbs one way)
Jet A has 35 MJ/Liter, so 62.1 MJ/lb. Turbofan engines are about 35% efficient so knock down that figure to 21.73 MJ/lb useful energy.
A watt-hour is 0.0036 MJ. So each pound of Jet A has 6037 watt-hours of useful energy stored. 50 jets with 20,000 lbs of fuel burned, is then equivalent to nearly 11 million of my ebike batteries fully charged!
So for one Climate Cult Conference – the elites consume as much energy as 11 million of us peasants charging our ebike batteries. Hypocrisy manifest by the elites telling everyone to ride ebikes instead of hydrocarbon fueled cars!
“Let them ride e-bikes” …
Least expensive e-bike at Dick’s is $1,100. Everyone’s good with that, right?
If I lived in an urbanized area I might consider it. Of course, it’s hard enough walking around someplace like NYC, much less a bike
I can’t wait to be transported to my doctor’s appointment on a E bike as an smartphone serf and elderly and decrepit senior. If an e -bike is not good enough for an oligarch, it’s not good enough for me. But it might be fun to own one if it had a GOOD BATTERY and didn’t cost as much as a running and inspected used car.
A used bike with converted to a motor bike using the two stroke engine converter kit would be far cheaper and more readily available. An e-bike E-bike costs 1-8 grand. I can get a good bike off the side of the road for zero and convert by buying a two stoke engine kit at Walmart for 85 bucks or less. Why would I buy an e-bike…. it would be stupid. Serfs don’t need status symbols…. we have HSA, 401K and IRA’s to constantly feed dough into.
You’re being silly. I own an ebike, one I converted from a used bike at a pawn shop I got for $100. You are delusional if you think you can convert any bike to gas powered with a 2 stroke engine for $85. What about the engine mount? What about the adapter for the engine output shaft to bike sprocket? What about a cable actuated throttle? And now that you can go 2-3x faster, you need very substantial brakes. And you cannot have a stiff bike with no suspension – as the first time you hit bumps at speed, you are going to bend rims and break your backside. You can’t use skinny tires – again due to speed and terrain – etc etc. By the time you are done, you’ve spent as much as I did with the ebike which has no stink, no noise and much more convenient.
All told I spent around $1300. I got a bike with the right kind of frame, front suspension, the right rear gear system and wheel size for $100 at a pawn shop. Then the conversion kit was $750 – including a 1,000 watt direct drive motor and custom heavy duty rear rim, 550 Whr battery, charger motor controller, LCD display, switch assembly, thumb throttle, and brake switches (to kill motor when applying brakes), and a rotary sensor to provide pedal assist signal.
then you need tires – again you must use like 2-2.3″ tires that are heavy – as it weighs more and goes faster. and better tubes – there is another $150. Then I needed a sprung seat, and fenders – and I also got a carrier and saddle bags. I needed to install a disc brake on front again because of speed. I needed a new derailer for the rear, and new pedals and crank, and a chain guard – also needed new handle bars and grips – for comfort and to mount everything.
All told I spent $1300 and my custom ebike is superior to factory models costing about $2500 to $4000. I’ve put 4000 miles on it since I got it in 2018, and I really enjoy it. But as this article points out, it is NOT suitable for primary mode of transportation – it’s for fun and leisure – I even did a year of taking it to work as my employ is only 1.3 miles from home, and car/truck does not even get to operating temp with such a short run, so the ebike made sense. But negotiating rush hour traffic on any bike makes commuting a no go in the end here.
Electric propulsion is at its most advantageous when it replaces a power source with low energy density. I am of course talking about a human being. Humans can with suitable acclimatisation maintain 100+W for some hours. A battery of reasonably compact size will deliver 400W-hr, with a combined weight penalty of about 6kg.
Thus rider + bike have nearly doubled their power:weight and can travel, in my case for up to 70 miles on a charge of 0.37kw-hr. You’ll have to refer to your provider to translate that into an actual cost, but it’s going to be pennies.
The equation rapidly flips into the negative when considering cars or even electric motorcycles because it’s difficult to achieve a practical range when lugging additional weight about. To restore a reasonable range:speed the batteries become overwhelmingly large and heavy, along with the necessarily larger and heavier motor.
Richard makes a good point in general terms, but specifics are off. I own an ebike. It has a 1000 watt direct drive rear wheel motor. I have a 550 Whr lithium battery (same cells as used in a Tesla). I have a thumb throttle and pedal assist. (crank sensor and electronics to have 5 levels of pedal assist).
The average human cannot deliver a continuous 100 watts of pedaling power! On my 10 mile runs I can maintain about 60 watts of pedal power. I can do bursts of 100 to maybe 150 watts for perhaps a minute or three – but on a long run, it’s about 60 watts. (with my bike’s electronics I can determine what power my pedaling is providing)
The weight penalty for having an ebike is not just the battery, but the frame, rims and tires have to be beefier than a plain bike, or one meant for touring. It goes much faster, so you must have suspension, and you must use wider tires, for both grip and suspension, and they must be heavier as hitting bumps at double or triple the normal speed demands. The drive motor and rim are substantial weight penalty too.
Then the wider tires entail considerably more rolling resistance than skinny ones too. My ebike is at least double if not triple the weight of a high end touring bike.
My battery has a capacity of 550 Whr. However you cannot use all of that or you will rapidly destroy the battery. I can discharge mine to the tune of about 450 Whr max, and even that is too much. I typically go 30 miles with a pedal assist of about 130 watts, and about 20 – 10 second bursts of acceleration using 750 to 900 watts. So generally I discharge about 350 Whr.
Surely if you have a geared drive motor of smaller size (350 to 500 watts) you will get more mileage than my behemoth 1 kW direct drive motor – but you cannot get 370 Whr from a 400 Whr battery! (unless you want to kill it fast)
However your main point that the economics of an ebike are favorable, compared to cars or trucks is correct. The weight penalty for the ebike compared to a normal bike is far outweighed by the increase in power, range etc. Whereas the weight penalty for a car is not so good, and the energy density comes into play for cars vs hydrocarbon energy storage.
There is a down side to the ebike – a touring bike you can fix flats on the road if you are equipped. But the ebike – if you get a flat on the rear, drive wheel – you are screwed. and because you can go so much further from home, it’s a long walk half carrying your ebike so as not damage that expensive custom rim! Happened to me not long ago, fortunately only 1.5 miles from home, not at my furthest extent. (the sidewall blew out so there was no pumping it up for a few hundred yards at a time)
Bloomberg should show us all here in the west just how that will work, when the average travel distances for most are much higher than most places in the city centers. This is still the USA and if Bloomberg wants to ride a e bike, then go right ahead. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us want to, or would it make any sense. I don’t subscribe or believe in his climAte religion. Besides, how or where do all the people pushing these e vehicles think they will get the amount of electricity to power all the cars and bikes, trains, and planes? Solar and wind? We will be waiting a week to charge one car. The truth is we aren’t ready for prime time on many of these technologies and won’t be in any time soon. So fossil fuels coal and hydro are going to be the main source. Besides, have any of these people seen a strip mine or pit mine? Do they understand the processes it takes to process and extract the metals and rare earth materials? It’s ugly and very dirty. So just continue to push for your unicorn farts and pixy dust and it won’t be long before we’re all sitting in the dark starving to death. Dummies!