Today’s New York Times has an electric bicycle story inspired by Sanyo’s recent push to promote their Eneloop hybrid-electric bicycles at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It quotes a number of industry sources and makes a number of the usual points in favor of electric bikes. (Most trips are short, modern designs work well and have plenty of power, lithium-based batteries are very effective, industry is gearing up, etc.)
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.