What you won’t find much of are the stories of the people who ride those electric bicycles.   Who are they?  Why do they ride, and what kind of riding do they do?  You might not want to post your full name and address on the web, but wouldn’t it be nice if other electric cyclists could see themselves – and you – as a part of a rich and varied community?

This link sends you to a discussion on ElectricCyclist.com where you can read my story and share yours.  If enough of us belly up to the bar, we’ll gain a picture of our community that we may not have had before.  And maybe some friends to help entice ebike business folks to better meet our needs.  Maybe even some help in educating regulators and others about what we’re really doing on those electric bikes of ours.

Please join the conversation and be sure your voice is heard.

It also says:

But there may be a greater challenge for companies like Sanyo and other e-bike makers. People tend to think of their transportation, like their clothes or cellphones, as an expression of their identity.

In China, riding an electric bike conveys professional achievement, even a certain degree of wealth. People in the United States, said Ed Benjamin, an independent consultant in the bike business, don’t quite know whether these bikes are fashionable. The e-bike is “an ambiguous statement,” Mr. Benjamin said.

Ed is a pretty smart guy and goes back a while with electric bicycles. (Among other things he’s a board member of the Light Electric Vehicle Association, of which I’m a member.)

He is completely correct. Riding a hybrid electric bicycle in the U.S. today is indeed an “ambiguous statement”. Does it mean you’re green, or that you’re not a fully able cyclist? Does it mean that you’re working hard do get one more car off the road, or that you’re not willing to do the work of pedalling your bike like every other cyclist? Does it make you cool and trendy or really, really nerdy?

China has recently been considering tighter regulations on electric bicycles, at least in part because of fears that it will make riders fat. (Their standard of comparison is the regular bicycle, a key part of the Chinese transportation system.) Our situation in the U.S. is very different. Our primary goal should be to get more commuters out of their cars — we’d be lucky if bicycling for transportation was so entrenched in our culture that we were concerned about the fitness impacts of electrically-assisted bicycles.

We need to help frame the choice of riding an electrically-assisted bicycle in the U.S. differently. (Indeed, this applies equally to commuting on sturdy european-style commuting bicycles with fenders, lights, and comfortable geometries — not what usually sells in U.S. bicycle shops.) We need to cast the choice to commute on an electrically-assisted bicycle as a worthy alternative to commuting by car, as a way to encourage exercise by getting people out of their cars, and as a way to reduce environmental footprints by using the same expensive lithium batteries that would power a single hybrid or all-electric car to assist a much larger number of electric cyclists.

Got any ideas on how we can help encourage changing attitudes toward electrically-assisted cycling? Please join our community and help share them at http://ElectricCyclist.com/forum.

We bought our lovely blue Prius hybrid because it’s environmentally green. If the recently-announced plug-in version had been available we’d have considered that too, but we already have a great plug-in hybrid vehicle. It’s enormously greener than any Prius will ever be, and it’s greener than all-electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt as well.

My preferred commuting vehicle has a 355 Watt-hour battery, but the primary engine is me because it’s an electrically-assisted bicycle. Some question the environmental sensibilities of cyclists who commute with electric batteries and motors on their bicycles. Many of those doing the questioning commute via Prius themselves; many more commute in vehicles that are a lot less green. Good-quality electric bicycles typically use the same kinds of batteries as hybrid-electric and all-electric cars, so let’s compare the environmental burdens posed by the batteries in each kind of vehicle.

My electric bicycle uses a lithium-based battery similar to the one planned for the plug-in Prius. It has a reasonably typical 355 Watt-hour capacity. The older-style nickel metal hydride battery in today’s hybrid Prius has capacity of 1,310 Watt-hours, enough for some 3.7 electric bicycles. (Some cyclists use cells from salvaged Prius battery packs to power their electric bikes today — they’re pretty good.) Most auto trips still carry a single occupant, and the same batteries that can help move one car and driver could help move more than three times as many cyclists. Bicycles take up much less room on our public roads than cars and require vastly less energy and materials to manufacture. They consume much less energy overall, and unlike sitting in a car bicycle riding actually contributes to public health. I use approximately $0.03 worth of electricity on a relatively long 28-mile round trip electrically-assisted bicycle commute.

But consider the plug-in version of the Prius. Toyota has announced that its lithium-based battery pack will have a 5,200 Watt-hour capacity, enough to power about 15 reasonably typical electrically-assisted bicycles. 15! If folks who are willing to pay the added costs of plug-in hybrid cars are considered environmentally virtuous, what shall we say for folks who are willing to pay the added costs of expanding the range and versatility of their bicycles by adding 1/15^th the battery capacity of a plug-in Prius to their own hybrid-electric rides? Surely the public infrastructure costs of a few extra bicycle racks and improved bike lanes pale before the costs of expanded electric power transmission capacity and dedicated charging facilities for electric cars. And surely the impact of increased electric bicycle demands for the lithium batteries and the resources used to create them will be trivial compared to the impacts of increased demands from plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars.

For comparison, the forthcoming all-electric Nissan Leaf will have a 24,000 Watt-hour lithium battery pack. It’ll be a real step forward for reducing auto tailpipe emissions, but that same battery pack would power 68 electric bicycles! (At 16,000 Watt-hours, a Chevy Volt would power 45.) Wouldn’t it be good public policy to ensure that a significant share of those lithium battery cells are used on efficient, compact, light-weight electric bicycles instead?

We’re not ready to sell our Prius, but these comparisons put the environmental footprint of electric bicycles in a whole new light. If even a tiny fraction of cyclists use electrically-assisted bicycles as alternatives to cars the public benefits can be very real. It’s past time for nationally-consistent guidance encouraging the use of electrically-assisted bicycles in the U.S. Let’s help get a few more people out of their cars – hybrid, plug-in, or otherwise — and on to their bicyles!

Please join us in our forums at http://electriccyclist/forum to carry on this conversation and encourage support for the expansion of the electric cycling community in the U.S. (Alternatively, come and see how many electric bikes you could power with the battery pack from a single Tesla Roadster.)

Along with a book signing for David Byrne’s recent book Bicycle Diaries, this event launched Cities for Cycling, a National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) project aimed at fostering bicycle-friendly street design.

The discussion took place in a glass-walled 7^th floor conference room in Washington DC’s Newseum with a fabulous view of the Capitol.  The room was packed.  (It’s hard to say if it would have been quite as packed without Mr. Byrne.)

Each member of the panel made a short presentation.  Mr. Byrne’s focused on urban design and how it can work well or poorly for bikes.  Congressman Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus spoke of cycling-friendly  provisions in the next highway bill, and asked his essential cycling question: How many people are stuck in traffic right now on their way to the gym so they can ride their stationary bicycles?  Commissioner Sadik-Khan highlighted cycling-friendly improvements she has helped push through in New York City as well as her work with NACTO and Cities for Cycling.

My principal comment for the panel was that they were preaching to the choir in that room full of transportation planners.  Well less than half of American adults actually cycle, and fewer still actually cycle for transportation from point A to point B.  In addition to improving our physical infrastructure, we need to look for strategies to get more people cycling.  A quarter of all bikes now sold in Holland are electric-assist bikes.  For aging baby-boomers and others an electric assist may make the difference and help get folks out of their cars and on to their bikes.

The most interesting response was from Commissioner Sadik-Khan.  She emphasized the need for safe routes for cycling in the first place, but also expressed support for electric cycling.  That gave me an opportunity to point out that electric cycling is currently illegal on public streets in New York, and that we really need national guidance to ensure that electrically-assisted cycling can be part of the solution nationwide.  (We spoke afterwards.  She understands the issue and expects it to be resolved in New York “very soon”.)

I was glad to be able to get the words “electric bicycle” into this national conversation.  We’ll clearly need to do more, but it’s a start. Please share your own thoughts on this in our discussion forums at http://ElectricCyclist.com/forum.

Charlie

“That’s cheating.”  “It’s not a bicycle if it’s got a motor.”  “Why not buy a real motorcycle – or (giggle) a Vespa?

Sigh.  Electric cyclists seem to need the same pep talk as a lot of other misunderstood minorities.  Yes, our bikes are different.  (Some of us are, too.)  But different doesn’t mean bad, and it doesn’t mean “not real”.  It just means different.

“Real” cyclists have always distrusted newfangled technologies – pneumatic tires, shift levers on handlebars instead of on the frame, indexed shifting, disc brakes, or (Lord help us) recumbent bikes.

Cycling fashion has long been dominated by what works in the racing world, not what works for real people using bikes for transportation.  (When I came of age in the 70s everyone had 10-speed bikes with road handlebars and hard, skinny seats.  Everyone.  My butt hurt while I was still sitting on my new bike in the store.)

Bicycle marketing focuses on things that are easy to spot, like weight.  How many not-so-athletic folks on trendy bikes today are grinding up hills on single-speed bikes because those bikes are elegant, light and trendy – when they and their knees would be so much happier with the addition of a cheap and highly functional rear cassette, derailleur, and shifter?   Time and again the experts have shown us that lighter bikes accelerate quicker (good for racers) but don’t really go much faster on the average at all.

Motors and batteries surely make electric bikes heavier, but we needn’t obsess about it.  As the good folks at Rivendell Bicycle Works put it, “frame weight is 1/4 as important as bike weight, and bike weight is 1/10 as important as body weight.”  By the time a typical cycling commuter rolls onto the street, they’re pushing a good couple of hundred pounds (body weight, bike weight, clothes, bags/racks, water, and stuff.)   The twenty or so pounds that a light-weight electric system adds is typically less than a ten percent increase in overall rolling weight.  Even the bigger systems don’t change that equation much.  Unless you’re climbing a lot of hills with dead batteries, the weight difference of an electric bike just isn’t going to amount to much.

Until you turn on the juice.  For some of us, electric cycling brings work and home within two-wheeled range of one another.  For others, it shortens the time enough to make a cycling commute practical or gets us where we’re going a bit more presentably.  Some among us couldn’t enjoy cycling without a bit of an electric assist.  And still others just love the whole idea of electricy cycling because it’s just so much fun.

Most of us love our electric bikes, but the electric cycling community as a whole does a terrible job of raising its voice and demanding to be recognized as a legitimate part of the cycling world. .  We are not (typically) riding kids toys.  We are not (typically) menaces to be kept off the roads.  We need the recognition and the support of our peers to ensure that our needs are respected and our rights protected.

Let’s start now.

Register on our forums at http://ElectricCyclist.com/forum, join in the conversation, and we’ll be happy to send you the bumper sticker you ought to be sporting on your 4-wheeled ride.  For free.  Just send me a private message via our forums with your name and address after you’ve become part of the ElectricCyclist community by participating on our forums.

This isn’t a cheesy print-on-demand sticker, it’s a good-quality silk-screened product that says Electric Cyclists should get noticed.  We’re giving a limited number away over the next couple of months or so to help build awareness of this site.  In the future we’ll likely be seeking modest donations for them to help cover the costs of running the place.  Mostly, we’re trying to build a community to include the full range of electric cyclists.

Let’s carry on the conversation at http://ElectricCyclist.com/forum.  Hope to see you there.

Charlie