My electric cargo bike gets across town (with multiple passengers) as fast as driving, always gets the best parking, and can do the Home Depot run. You inspired me to post some photos: https://twitter.com/jchris/status/1275588731353722882?s=21
That's the part I don't get; carrier bikes (bakfietsen) have been around since forever, used by tradesmen and the people alike. Motorized variants as well, I mean it can be botched together with an old lawnmower engine if need be.
It wasn't a problem that needed solving, but it was a solution that rich people rediscovered. I guess two-stroke engines were beneath them?
> Why doens't an E-bike doesn't need annual inspection while something like ... does require annual inspection?
Emission testing as a moped, which is inapplicable to e-bikes.
(Probably also some bureaucracy, but that's separate.)
> lightweight bike with an ICE
That's an oxymoron. You can, however, get lightweight and entirely stealthy e-bike.
That gives you much more for much less, saves you the terrible noise of a small ICE with improper exhaust dampening, saves you a lot of maintenance, and probably also saves you and those around you some lung cancer while we're at it.
Bringing a gasoline vehicle into the MTA would get you ticketed real quick. Oil/gas smells, potential leaks, hot exhaust - lots of things you don't want on an underground shoulder to shoulder transit vehicle.
At that price people could afford multiple electric scooters by established brands like Kymco. Scooters[1] are easier to manoeuver than regular bike frames.
[1] By scooter I mean the Vespa variety not the children’s toy.
Why is a mid-motor preferable?
Doesn't it introduce an other point of failure at the chain because of the additional torque, which is not present when having the motor at the rear?
I always thought, that having the motor where the force is needed would be better, because there isn't any conversion necessary.
Wow, that's expensive. At that price I could buy a used 2012 Chevrolet Volt, a car that can do both short trips (up to 35 miles) on electricity, and long trips (on premium gas).
Or, of course, I could buy a cheaper regular gas car. One main benefit of a car is resale value. I'm pretty much guaranteed that it'll sell for not a lot less than what I bought it for, especially if I buy it several years used.
The Volt requires premium gas? That seems unlikely... It's basically a generator for the car, so I wouldn't expect the compression to be terribly high.
Prior to the 2016 model year, the Volt required premium gasoline of (R+M)/2 octane rating of 91 or higher because the higher octane permitted the 10.5:1 compression ratio engine to use more ignition timing advance to maximize fuel efficiency by 5 to 10% compared to regular gasoline. For users who drive mostly in electric mode, and to avoid maintenance problems caused by storing the same gasoline in the tank for months, the 2011 Volt has a sealed and pressurized fuel tank to avoid evaporation. As a result, the fuel filler must be depressurized before opening the tank. Also, the engine management system monitors the time since the engine last ran, and prompts the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) all-electric range before recharging to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system automatically runs the maintenance mode, which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate fluids within the engine.
Premium gas will maximize the fuel economy when the engine is used, GM powertrain spokesman Tom Read said. In an emergency, regular gas can be used on the Volt, but fuel economy will be compromised, and the engine may become noisier. The Chevy Volt’s engine computer will detect the octane change and retard ignition timing. Still, Read highly recommends refilling the Volt’s tank with premium fuel as soon as possible to avoid damaging the engine.
Premium gas has a much longer shelf life and even though the gas tank is pressure sealed, lower grades of gas can chemically degrade over time (ethanol can oxidize into acetic acid in certain conditions). Not sure how the gen 2 volts deal with that but maybe the pressure sealing works better than expected. Besides that you will get worse gas mileage as the timing is adjusted for a smaller compression ratio (higher compression = more efficient otto cycle) and carbon build up could occur on the exhaust manifold with reduced exhaust gas temps, but who knows. I don't think you'll see a real impact in engine life if you burn all the gas in the tank always and you run premium occasionally.
My e-bike, which was a little on the pricey side, cost me ~1000 USD new. 8000 USD is absurd, and over 1000 USD more than I originally paid for my current car (a 2010 VW). Hell, whenever they're on sale, VW UPs are pretty close to that price brand new.
There's nothing in this bike that makes it reasonable to price it like a small car.
If you're going to start comparing prices you have to take into account ongoing costs for maintenance, taxes, insurance and fuel. After 3-5 years of ownership those probably exceed the initial purchase cost of a car like that.
Comparing cars and bikes like this is pretty worthless, they're not meant to replace each other but to supplement each other. You don't go on a family road trip by bike, and you don't need to go shopping for toothpaste by car. And you certainly shouldn't use the bike to carry furniture hanging out like that.
On the other hand an $8000 bike, while it may work just fine for OP, is absolutely insane for most people out there. You can get the same functionality out of a <$2000 bike. Regardless, the way OP is using it is neither safe, not legal. I hope it was done just for the photo op and some Twitter likes but I would hate to be around that bike when one of those chairs fall off, or a gust of wind catches the payload like a sail, or simply ride past it and be forced to move further into the traffic or pedestrian lanes to go around Oversized Load here...
Of course. But a car is much more difficult to steal than an ebike and in the EU bike theft is so rampant that police doesn't even bother with them but take car theft a lot more seriously, not that anyone would bother stealing my 2014 Camry but if I would leave my ebike chained in the city overnight there's no guarantee I would still find it in the morning.
Bike theft is rampant here in the US too. My brother got his bike stolen after leaving it chained up in a city park for 15 minutes, and another one stolen after leaving it overnight in a bike garage. One of my old coworkers who bikes a lot said he has had 3 bikes stolen. That has really put me off to getting a bike to use in any big city.
>Love your ride so much you want to display it in the living room? Can't do that with a car :-D
You've clearly never seen houses of millionaires.
And anyway, I like my bike but since it's always full of dust from the streets or brake pads and even worse when it's raining why would I bring it in the living room, that's just crazy. My bike is tool to get me from A to B, not a hobby to spend my time tinkering with or cleaning every day.
I live in the Netherlands and we have an Urban Arrow electric cargo bike. We frequently use it to ferry around three kids or heavy objects. It's got a range of about 40km and we have a spare battery so we can double that. We've used to to travel to the coast with the kids carrying everything we need for a couple of days away. I love this thing!
Funny thing is, when I first saw cargo bikes when I moved here I thought they were super goofy, but after trying one I was blown away at how functional they are. I can just imagine people in my hometown being very confused if we ever take it back to the UK.
I do not know where you live but in the BeNeLux, as far as I know, getting a new car for less than 10k € is not gonna to happen. Used cars is another story and can be more "competitive" in pricing with e-bikes.
Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here. You can get a modern car with safety, speed and reach that is hundred if not thousand times ahead of this electric bike. It's purely a high-class fashion vehicle and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you don't pretend it's something more.
Value is always relative to your intended use case.
I own a similar sized and prized cargo bike. It replaces all my urban transportation needs, carrying me and my 3yo kid and all the cargo we need. It’s cargo capacity is in line with a small car. My average speed in the city is about 20km/h which is very much in line with a cars average speed in an urban setting. On many of our daily commutes it’s even faster than a car. For us, it entirely replaces a car. It’s cheaper to maintain. I can largely fix it myself.
I ride it for about 3000-4000 km per year, which is a definite indicator that it’s not a toy device.
(1) bikes are priced disproportionally high compared to cars, (2) e-bike even more so, (3) this is a top of the line model from a fancy brand, (4) cost of ownership of a bike is a very small fraction of a car, with a bike when you've paid for it you're done, maintenance is cheap and DIY. Cars: insurance, expensive maintenance, road tax, fuel etc.
Personally I almost always buy my bikes second hand, there are always deals to be had where bikes are only a few months old and are sold with a 50% or more discount.
In Belgium, second hand bikes tend to be overpriced, because many sellers aren't aware of the disproportionately high cost of local labor compared to the cost of producing a new bike. The price of local labor should be taken into account because you need it to maintain the second hand bike. I used to buy my bikes second hand, but I've switched to buying a new one every three years, and it requires little maintenance since I choose a higher end one.
I agree with you comparison to cars. In the last five years prices have significantly gone down thanks to big players like Decathlon or online brands, but they're still quite high. 500 euros can buy you 1000 kg of second hand metal, or an entry-level bicycle. I know there's more to it, but I still don't understand why good quality bicycles cost so much to produce.
Yes and no, at least for Brussels than I know. Yes, fancy road bike and so on tends to be expensive for second hand. No because, if you look at more "old" bike and you reach to a lot of bike association, often you have kind of repair shops managed by non-profit were you can learn to repair your bike only paying for the pieces your need with someone. Not the best gear will be available but you can easily transfer that knowledge after to maintain your bike on your own.
Brussels and cities in Wallonia can be very hilly and valley-y and require either a good enough bike and/or physical condition. Outside of the cities, Ravel are a good way to travel and avoiding small roads when cars are going way to fast because of habits. An e-bike in those cities is really a nice tools to navigate. The bike infrastructure is not as much there than in Flanders but it will finally come to the same level, I hope. I see way less cargo bike than in the Netherlands too but that will come with the bike infrastructure because riding the city is still tough IMO.
Another angle: or why cars are so incredibly cheap for what they offer. Do keep in mind that car manufacturers make a lot more on the after-sales track than bike manufacturers ever will and some might be willing to reduce the sticker price a bit but raise the price of parts and maintenance to counterbalance that.
I think it's just the difference that car industry is much bigger and much more efficient with its labor. It's also widely different markets so clearly markup is very different. Where automobile markup is often not more than few percent hipster urban ebike market can easily justify 500% markup.
I expect bike and component prices to go down with wider adoption. Especially e-bikes. I was for example surprised to see that on my kids-towing e-bike in a hilly city I have to change front-disc-brakes pads approximately every 1'000km which, at 20€ a pair of disc-brakes pads in Switzerland, translates to approximately 0.02€ per km just for braking. Which at the end of the day is not an issue for me but seems SO expensive in comparison with a car.
I believe it might have to do with the near-monopolies of bike component producers, like Shimano or SRAM. It might also be related to the antiquated model of distribution with local bike shops that have little freedom about how they can sell within the exclusive contracts they have with big brands.
There's also the mix of leisure practice of cycling that clashes with a more practical use. In the first case, bikes are almost a Veblen good. People are happy to spend crazy amounts of money to save what is in the end very little weight.
For instance I recently looked SRAM Eagle groupset prices. The cheapest version is $380, and the most expensive one is $1,381. The weights are 2032 g and 1,502 g respectively. Almost 4 times the price for saving 25% of the weight!
Consumers that are ready to spend that amount of money get a lot of attention from the industry, that has little incentive to cater to the needs of daily cycling commuters, who're looking for cheap, reliable and durable bikes.
Bikes could not possible get 'wider adoption' where I live and yet prices are what they are. Switzerland is probably one of the worst countries for bike brake maintenance, here I got for many years between pads/discs and I cycle a lot, as much as most people would drive their car.
A lot of those 50% off used bikes are probably stolen which is why they are so cheap. Bike theft is rampant in a lot of cities and it is trivial to export them to other places to sell them.
Not a chance. Frame # check is an easy thing to do here and if someone's new bike gets stolen it is a sure thing that will get reported to insurance / police.
But new bikes get stolen to be chopped up for parts regularly. Joke on the subject: The bike theft report form for the Netherlands contains a field labelled: "Where did you steal the bike yourself?"
> Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here
If you want a car, the value is not comparable, and you should get a car.
If you do not want a car (for any reason), it doesn't make any sense to "compare value".
I do not understand why so many people react with "you could get a car for this much" when looking at expensive E-bikes. Well, perhaps you could, but so what? A car is not equivalent to an E-bike, except that they are both options for transportation. But so is public transport, an airplane, an 18-wheel truck and a cargo ship.
In my case, while I would probably not want an $8000 cargo bike, I do not have a problem paying around $2000 for a good quality E-bike — and I would not compare it to a car, nor would I compare it to an 18-wheel truck. It's a different mode of transport.
With car share schemes, the value of buying a car when you only use it occasionally is greatly diminished while a cargo bike can be used daily for the school run.
But it depends where you are. American towns and cities are largely built for cars. Many European cities are built for walking and are pedestrianizing their city centers. Depending on your situation there's no need for a car aside from really occasional use. Calling a cargo bike "purely a high-class fashion vehicle" is not correct.
I don't agree about the way you assess value, and I don't think it's so much about fashion as you pretend.
Mobility choices are lifestyle choices. Buying a bicycle means getting rid of parking issue and exercising everyday by default, without the cost of having to decide to do it. Despite road violence coming from car drivers, it's less stressful because it keeps you connected to your environment. The value of a bike compared to a car is like the value of a lower paying job that has less pressure, in a lower cost of living area, a shorter commute, and better offices and colleagues. You can't compare them easily.
> Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here.
Agreed, but for opposite reasons. As someone living in a city I drive a few times a year. I bike 200kms a week, though. So the value of a bicycle is vastly better.
Do I need to know how to pilot a helicopter to know that's its a complex and expensive machine?
The response is quite mind boggling. Are you really implying a vehicle with engine, safety systems that have been refined for a century and probably has markup in single digit percents is less valuable than a niche product that produced for the high-class with a 1000 percent markup?
I know many tech people are spoiled high class citizens but this thread is just ridiculous. There's nothing wrong you liking the bike just don't judge the rest of the world's peasants claiming that it could equate and replace whatever poor people are using.
> Are you really implying a vehicle with engine, safety systems that have been refined for a century
The ignorance displayed here is astounding. Appealing to the length of cars' history, when bikes have been around for even longer? Really?
> produced for the high-class with a 1000 percent markup?
Even more absurdity. I'm sure the markup is higher than for cars, but a thousand percent just reveals how little you know in a subject you're nevertheless overwhelmingly confident on.
You complain about the actual knowledgeable people being "spoiled high class citizens", even as you advertise your ignorance on the subject with nearly every sentence.
Oof, it's almost like the concept of hyperbole is alien to you. Sure it's not 1000 percent markup but it's much much higher than middle class automobile.
It's a niche product for upper class urban citizen, of course markup is high here. You can't serisouly be thinking that a electric bicycle has actually worth 8000$ of parts right? Not even 4000$, right?
As much as I don't agree with the aggressive tone of the grand-parent post, I tend to find it less a problem outside the urban areas due to the bike roads in the "countryside" more available either in Belgium or the Netherlands. It is also the part of the countries when the need of a car is enhanced due the need to travel way longer distances to reach day-to-day facilities (supermarket, shops, etc.).
And yes, different countries, different prices, requirements etc. Comparison is fallacious but taking inspiration of something done in another part of the world and applying it with the constraints of your own environment is always useful.
The question of mobility is much centred around the mobility in urban areas of various sizes. I may project here because I used to live in urban areas most of my life.
that's because you get to use bike infrastructure and play by bicycle rules but not ride a bicycle. As soon as a large enough group of people did the same everyone on a bike-style coveyance would be stuck in traffic with no place to park.
Bikes are considerably more space efficient, especially since drivers have been opting for considerably larger vehicles. The same space a single SUV requires can fit 5+ bicycles, even if they’re larger cargo bikes like the one he’s riding.
These electric cargo bikes are a hazard. They have a lot of mass and drive really fast, using infrastructure intended for human-powered vehicles.
Getting hit by one of these would be not much different than getting hit by a small car, yet they race along narrow bicycle lanes, next to little children learning to drive their bicycles. I hope these get banned soon.
I ride those paths regularly. There is not some epidemic of cargo ebikes plowing into people. Seriously, the whole HN thing of "if I imagine it that must be true" needs some reality checks.
One of the few dangerous bike accidents I had involved a eBike. They should require a license to operate, their acceleration and breaking is far less predictable than normal bicycles and 15 year old kids should not be allowed to operate them.
The bike is a Packster 80. The new ones since I bought mine have more power. https://www.splendidcycles.com/products/riese-and-muller/rie...