Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chardok | Hacker News Reader

Its a conundrum right now, for sure, but I am all for getting more people on bikes, electric or not.

The main issue with e-bikes in the bike lane is obviously the speed and pacing are not going to match your average bicycle commuter. The same effect would result from a professional cyclist carving through the streets at speeds no one could match.

I think the issue would solve itself as they become more popular. If they can hit speeds of 20-40MPH, then they should be using a full car lane, and can benefit from each other's presence. Professional and highly trained amateur cyclists do this already.

View on HN

Power on demand vs pedal assist. I think pedal assist bikes are ok in the bike lanes, but power on demand bikes (meaning, bikes that have an explicit throttle control mechanism) are essentially electric scooters.

I'm plenty capable of going dangerously fast on a regular bike but if I'm in a congested bike lane or passing pedestrians on a multi-use trail I slow down. I don't see how having a motor would suddenly cause common sense to fly out the window.

And of course, when riding in traffic, keeping pace with the cars is better and not everyone has the fitness to pull it off.

> If they can hit speeds of 20-40MPH.

They cannot. At least, not with electric assist. The motors are programmed to power you up to 20MPH only, by federal law, but many limit it to 18MPH, to be on the safe side. If anyone is going faster than that, they are doing it by their own power, not with the motor.

Don't you have different levels in the US? In Sweden and EU normal electric bikes can only assist up to 25 km/h (15,5 mph) but the next level can go up to 45 km/h (28 mph). They are still allowed in bike lanes but has a requirement on helmet and insurance.

IANAL, but I think once you get past the low-speed electric bicycle category, you are just treated as a motorcycle.

In most European countries you aren't allowed in bike lanes with 45km/h ebikes.

Is that a recent law? I have a few friends, one of who used to work for an electric bike manufacturer, and they can get up to 35mph on their electric bikes. But that was from a few years ago.

Not very recent, no. But it is an easy hack to bypass the limits... just tell your controller you have a different wheel size. So it could very well be that your friends are simply speeding.

The main problem I've seen is that they have a different acceleration curve than a road bike -- they take off from a dead stop faster than a road bike, but for some reason most top out a few mph lower than a slow road bike (15-18mph?).

The result is that they rudely pass all the bikes at each stop light, repeatedly forcing the bikes to pass them in car lanes once everyone gets back up to speed.

Same problem with scooters in cities where they cut the lane to go up to the traffic light and then they accelerate up to 30mph and the cars soon have to pass them.

They often stop there because they're speed capped by law.

20mph in the US. Slightly lower in most of the EU.

I have a pedal assist wheel, and it will bring me to 20 fairly quickly on flat ground, but all assist cuts out there and the rest is up to me. Usually I hover around 25, but it depends on how I'm feeling that day. You're not really going to pass me at 25 though... Even if you do think it's a problem, it just means we need better bike lanes and bike planning. Speeds vary all the time.

That said... I bike to work pretty much all the time now because of the electric bike.

The end result is dramatically and unquestionably good.

The article can be summed up by their own quote:

>And yet, for all our shared sense that something was wrong

>with electric bikes, we agreed that, by any rational

>measure, they are a force for good.

This nostalgia fluff piece is fluff. It's basically attempting to explain a soft form of gatekeeping around people who do or don't qualify as cyclists.

If you're hovering around 25mph, then you're not causing trouble for anyone. It's good to know the ebikes don't somehow limit you once you're up to speed.

I guess the problem I see is inexperienced cyclists stuck at 20mph. Presumably that problem will fix itself after they log a few hundred miles and get a bit faster.

This is how electrical motors operate: they accelerate very fast from a stop due to having high torque at low speeds, then as they catch on to speed they're operated at constant power until they reach nominal rpm. In order to achieve greater speeds, you need to operate them in the flux weakening region. E-bikes normally have engine cutoff at 25 kph so you're basically on your own legs over that threshold. No need to operate an e-bike drive with flux weakening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com