<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/17/how-the-other-ev-transition-to-e-bikes-is-changing-the-world/>
"One of the most important transitions taking place today in technology is the
shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Most attention is focused on electric cars.
That’s in part because they are big glamorous items, and they have high-profile
cheerleaders like Elon Musk. But there is another side to this transition to
electric power, less glamorous but arguably more important, at least in some
parts of the world. This is the shift to electric bicycles — e-bikes.
According to a recent article in
Bloomberg, battery-powered ebikes now
outsell pedal-only models in several European countries. You might think that
would be great for the local environment. But Philippe Crist, a micromobility
researcher at the Paris-based International Transport Forum, the transportation
arm of the OECD, points out why that might not be the case. Asked by
Bloomberg whether e-bikes have demonstrably reduced emissions from
transportation, he replied:
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it has not. Again, most e-bike buyers
[in Europe] — not all, but most of them — are replacing a bicycle, so they
were biking already. Of course, lifecycle emissions from bikes of all kinds
are far lower than from cars.
By contrast, the uptake of e-bikes in the US has real benefits:
Compared to Europe, in North America you have a greater population of people
who’ve never cycled for everyday travel. For that reason there are more
people in North America who are buying an e-bike as their first adult
bicycle, or using the e-bike to get places or do chores that they’ve not
used a bike for before. So the benefits of e-bike adoption in North America
may be greater than in Europe, because more car trips could be replaced.
That’s good news for US cities. But in other parts of the world, the shift to
ebikes has a more direct positive impact on the lives of people. For example,
in Bangladesh e-rickshaws are widely used, but were illegal until a couple of
months ago. An article on the
Rest of the World site explains:
There are between 2 million and 4 million e-rickshaws in the country, which
have operated without any regulations or monitoring. Once the new
regulations come, e-rickshaws will rule Bangladesh’s roads, according to
experts who have studied the vehicle’s usage.
Rickshaws powered by electric motors not only make the physically demanding job
of a rickshaw driver easier. They open up the profession to women, with
important knock-on benefits for their independence."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
