Electric bikes?

Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

An electric bike is completely emission free can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."

--
World Carfree Network
http://www.worldcarfree.net/
Help for your car-addicted friends in the U.K.

On 9 Sep, 07:07, Doug wrote:
Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

An electric bike is completely emission free can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."

--
World Carfree Networkhttp://www.worldcarfree.net/
Help for your car-addicted friends in the U.K.

Why on earth would I want to exchange my comfortable car habit to get
soaking wet and freezing cold on a bike, electric or not? If I want
two wheels (ie sun shining, no possibility of rain, reasonably warm)
then I use the scooter locally or the motor bike for longer trips.
Cycles are for those who enjoy the sport/exercise or for the
impoverished to get to and from work.

"NM" wrote
Why on earth would I want to exchange my comfortable car habit to get
soaking wet and freezing cold on a bike, electric or not?

What, are you made of sugar? A bit of rain and cold isn't going to kill
you, avoidance of all activities that might entail a bit of discomfort will
probably knock years off your life.

I don't get this idea of forever striving for the path of least effort. The
most fun things in life, those that make life worth living, those that you
will remember and talk about down the pub in years to come, involve getting
sweaty and overcoming adversity.

NM wrote:

Cycles are for those who enjoy the sport/exercise or for the
impoverished to get to and from work.

Data point.

I enjoy being in the open air, in silence.
I do not want the whine of an electric motor,
or the louder blurting of an exhaust.

I think that makes me a counter-example
to your claim.

BugBear

Doug wrote:
Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

An electric bike is completely emission free can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."



Nah, total marketing ********.

What was the carbon footprint for the concrete base for big wind
turbines? (not to mention the trucks, the cable, the electronics, the
plastics etc.)

Questions from next year's exams:

How many ordinary people can afford a leccy bike that has a range of
more than 15 miles?
If Davey 'Eton' Cameron gets a leccy bike (to be nicked five minutes
later) to be powered by his ikkle useless roof-top turbine?
How many weeks will it take to charge the battery?
How ****ing smug would he look?
How many 'greens' would crawl up his arse?


--

Come to Dave & Boris - your cycle security experts.

On 9 Sep, 06:07, Doug wrote:
Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

In and around a densely built-up city centre a bike can be faster than
a car up to about 3 to 5 miles, depending on the city that you talk
about and the time of the day. Problem is that more and more people
live in suburbia or even further out in (what they believe is) the
countryside and... increasingly work in some business park or
industrial estate in suburbia. For these periphery-to-periphery
commutes it's very difficult to beat the car.

An electric bike is completely emission free

Nothing is emission free - and a bicycle supported by an electric
motor certainly has a higher environmental footprint than a simple
steel-framed commuter bike.

can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."

I would agree that the environmental footprint of for example a
Pedelec is massively lower than that of a car - even an eco-posh
Prius.
The good thing about Pedelecs (bicycles supported up to 25 km/h by a
small electric motor) is that their energy consumption is really very
low. The electric motor has a power of up to 250 Watt, which is much
less than a car.
I tried one last week - and it's really a great innovation, though
I'll personally stick to my purely muscle driven bicycle.

Andreas

On 9 Sep, 08:28, Keitht KeithT wrote:
How many ordinary people can afford a leccy bike that has a range of
more than 15 miles?

You can get bikes like the Giant Twist from about £1000, not a lot
compared to what you spend on a cheapy car. This offers you a range of
up to 60 miles in flat terrain.

If Davey 'Eton' Cameron gets a leccy bike (to be nicked five minutes
later) to be powered by his ikkle useless roof-top turbine?
How many weeks will it take to charge the battery?

roof-top turbines are rather inefficient, better in bulk in the form
of wind parks.

Andreas

On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 00:31:52 -0700 (PDT), NM
wrote:

Cycles are for those who enjoy the sport/exercise or for the
impoverished to get to and from work.

So why do you keep posting to a cycling newsgroup then?

On 9 Sep, 06:07, Doug wrote:
Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

An electric bike is completely emission free can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."

--
World Carfree Networkhttp://www.worldcarfree.net/
Help for your car-addicted friends in the U.K.

Still incapable of seeing the larger picture then Doug...

"Doug" wrote in message
...
Do you believe this?

"Using an electric bike is the best way there is to break the car
habit. The average car journey in Britain is 5 to 8 miles and every
day people in Britain make millions of small journeys to work or the
shops and back that could easily be non-polluting bike rides - during
rush-hour, a bike is twice as fast as a car - great if you hate jams!

An electric bike is completely emission free can be made genuinely
sustainable by purchasing electricity from a ‘green’ supplier, or
generating it via a roof-mounted windmill or solar panel. This will
enable the vehicles’ fossil fuel consumption to be zero."


+++++++++++++

Electric bikes are a good thing in the right circumstances - here in
Felixstowe a lot of (relatively) elderly people use them for trips of a mile
or so into the shops and back.
Also some not so elderly but not very fit looking.
These people are generally not up to raw pedal power, and the electric bike
provides them with a quick and easy way to get around without using a car.
So fundamentally a good thing.

The throw away lines about roof mounted windmill (very rarely mechanically
effective in urban areas) and roof mounted solar panels (very rarely cost
effective) is just pseudo-environmentalist ********.

Most electric bikes do need some pedalling so there is a health benefit as
well.

Commuting by electric bike, preferably using dedicated roads, would reduce
the traffic load on many towns and the general level of pollution.
London is, as ever, a special case with often much longer commutes.
Even restricting travel on some routes to cycles, motor cycles, and those
dinky three wheeled motor scooters would allow more effective use of the
available roads and ease congestion.
This does not, of course, help local residents who need a car for things
other than commuting.
None of this is rocket science or new - there are plenty of options but no
real will to do anything but support the car as the main form of transport.
This could be, of course, because the majority of voters are car owners and
users.

Nothing major is going to happen until there is investment in infrastructure
to allow easy travel by 'alternative' transport means.
Designating pavements as 'dual use' may meet govenment tick list targets but
does nothing to help commuting cyclists.

Ho hum.

Dave R