by Carlton Reid
Thursday, January 12th 2012
Ed Benjamin of the Light Electric Vehicle Association responds to the BikeBiz.com quotes from ExtraEnergy's Hannes Neupert.
Ed Benjamin is the president and founder of the Light Electric Vehicle Association. He has written to BikeBiz.com to take to task our article featuring an interview with Hannes Neupert, founder of Germany's ExtraEnergy e-vehicle consultancy. Neupert has now said he's not opposed to ETRA's lobbying to get e-bike rules in Europe changed, a measure soon to be voted upon by the EU.
Neupert's original statement had said: ""The tendency of [ETRA] to ask for more and more power is not the real future. [And] when adding a power on demand throttle this will mean that you drop the pedals next and become a pure motorcycle. I have published in the latest ExtraEnergy magazine a proposal for future laws opposing to the current trend in the EU. Here I ask again for a combination of motor assist allowance in relationship to the muscle power input and a correlation between max assist speed supported by the electric enhancer and the muscle power input which is a new item."
Organisations opposed to ETRA's e-bike wattage increase lobbying include Sustrans, CTC, the Bicycle Association of Great Britain, and European organisations Colibi, Coliped and the European Cyclists Federation.
Benjamin owned bicycle shops from 1969 to 1995 but since the mid-1990s has championed electric bicycles. He’s also the managing director of an e-bike consultancy business.
In April 2011, Benjamin wrote that e-bikes were "larger ticket" products perfect for selling to "customers [who are] old, fat..."
"I was a bike racer, then a bike shop owner, then owner of 4 stores. Now I call myself a recovering retailer, and pay respects to those still in the fray. I have grandkids, a pickup truck, gray hair, and a belly. I am one of the old fat guys that I used to deride. You may not be seeing us in your bike shop. We still enjoy cycling, except that gravity went up and our wind went away. And our shoelaces are hard to see now.
"But there are some bikes that are particularly attractive to our situation. Most consumers regard the electric bike as more useful, and valuable than a pedal bike. Note that I said “most consumers.” Most consumers do not shop in bike shops. And that is a problem. And it is an opportunity – for electric bikes are attractive to a lot of people you don’t attract now."
Hannes Neupert has claimed that pedal bicycles will die, replaced by battery-powered bicycles. Benjamin agrees on this point, but he said he disagrees over Neupert's criticism of ETRA's wattage increase lobbying. In an open letter he responds to Neupert. The full text of this open letter is published below and there's also a response to this response from Neupert, with the ExtraEnergy boss saying he's all in favour of increased wattage and the quote above has been misinterpreted.
======
ED BENJAMIN
Carlton,
I have been impressed with the quality of your work, and read your articles with interest. The recent one, in which I see an American style “gotcha” directed at Hannes Neupert, has caused me to give some thought to several points raised.
First, I would like to recognize Hannes Neupert for his contributions to our industry. He has relentlessly worked to promote electric bicycles, and is responsible for much of the EU pedelec success. And I would like to note that I have many times found that Hannes has great insight into the ebike world, and frankly, can be brilliant. (And I should balance that statement by saying that, like all of us, he has moments when he frustrates and annoys me as well. I am certain that I frustrate and annoy him. )
When Hannes compared the manual bicycle to the manual typewriter, and predicted that in a few years, the manual bicycle would be as rare and unappealing as the manual typewriter is today (I have used my own words), he had a point. When you caught him out saying that manual bicycles have a future, forever, he also had a valid point.
As a former bicycle racer, triathlete, and shop owner, I think that I understand the complex role that the manual bicycle plays in transportation, sport, fitness, and culture. As a keen observer who has traveled widely – mostly to study the use of bicycles and motorized two wheelers about the world – I think I see something that may have eluded many, and was seen but not clearly articulated by Hannes.
Manual bicycles are transportation tools, sport equipment, fitness equipment, objects of art, and integral to history in many places. There is a culture of cycling, with traditions. And they are glorious gadgets in themselves.
But electric bicycles are transportation tools, virtually without exceptions.
When you ask electric bike users why they chose electric, the answers are all about function. Getting to their destination more easily, quicker, or more comfortably.
Sports, fitness, art, and culture all have roles for manual devices that are not as functional as the powered version. An easy comparison is sailboats. While I love the elegance of sail, and note that millions of sail boats are in use, they are not the choice of anyone who needs to get from A to B efficiently, repetitively, and comfortably. (And similar debates, resistance, and conflicts occurred in the early days of powered watercraft!)
But tools are quickly, ruthlessly, replaced with better tools, as technology advances. Despite my fond memories of learning to type on a manual typewriter, I moved to an electric one as soon as possible, and wrote this on a computer – of course. As nearly all of us do.
Since an electric bike is a tool used for transportation that is more comfortable, more convenient, and more useful for most people, most of the time, I suggest that the Hannes was correct. The human race will replace the manual bicycle in it’s transportation role, with electric bikes.
But like sail boats, manual bikes will live on as cherished and beloved for their elegance, beauty, simplicity and history. They will survive in sport, and for fitness.
A comment on Hannes’s observations about motor power: 250 watts is a good choice in many ways, for many places. But ETRA has been listening to the dealers (after all, that is ETRA’s job) and those dealers have been saying something very simple: “We want to climb hills comfortably.”
When seen in the light of “Transportation tool” rather than “fitness or sport” this comment is very important.
The world (and even Europe) has a wide variety of people, in a wide variety of health, age, size, and conditions, and a wide variety of terrains.
The idea that 250 watts is the right power range for all markets and all users is simplistic and erroneous. There are places and users who desire, and should have access to more power.
But I note that humans resist change, and this plays into this entire message. The cycling industry is the primary distribution channel – today – for electric bikes. And we are all invested in and lovers of the manual bike. Change to electric is inevitable, but uncomfortable on an emotional level. It is interesting that some people and some companies – promoters of the change to electric – now resist the change in power and paradigm that a more powerful motor might mean. Are we already set in our ways?
+++++
HANNES NEUPERT
Ed,
I like your part of the discussion - and as I stated on Facebook I love Carlton's article since I have a lot of fun at many dealer trainings to pull the trigger with bike dealers by saying that manual bicycles are over soon! This can help in a afternoon session to wake up the last dealer in the audience and let them wake up quickly.
But in one thing you are not correct - I never asked to stay with the 250 W - this rule is shit and I always said that and you probably remember my statements about it 2010 and 2011 at Eurobike at the discussions I said that power is not correlated with safety! Only final speed and acceleration has an influence on safety.
So I claim for me with this radical approach to be even maybe the one giving ETRA the direction to ask for the complete cancelation of the max power thing.
I am now with something different - I am asking for a flexible final speed which correlates to the average human power.
This is something which was formulated in the last [ExtraEnergy] magazine but unfortunately I did not have the 5000 Euro left for the translation and PDF processing - so this only exists in German now...
So my direction is quite different to what some people did read out of my comments as well as you did.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Obesity Could be Industry’s Calling Card
BY Doug McClellan
James Moore sees it most starkly after the holidays, when parents bring the big-box bikes they bought for their children to his bike shop.
“It’s very startling, the number of parents who come in after Christmas,” said Moore, the owner of Moore’s Bike Shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. “Most of them went to a department store to buy an inexpensive 20-inch bike for their kids.”
They come in asking Moore’s staff to put heavy-duty training wheels on the bikes. Their kids are so fat they’ve flattened the original training wheels.
“We’re seeing 6-year-old kids who are 130 pounds, and we just can’t put training wheels on a bike that won’t collapse under their weight,” Moore said. “It’s a scary situation when you see 6 and 7-year-olds who weigh what I did when I was in high school.”
Staggering Statistics
Americans are fat. Bicycling can help them lose weight. No one would argue with either assertion. But the challenge for the industry is helping people put the two together.
One third of Americans today are obese, and more than two-thirds—68 percent—are overweight. This makes the United States one of the world’s fattest countries, according to World Health Organization. The problem has mushroomed in the past two decades, and isn’t going away:
• In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent, according to the Robert Wood Johnson foundation.
• By 2010, only one state—Colorado—had an obesity rate below 20 percent. More than one third of the residents of Mississippi, the fattest state, were obese.
(According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you’re overweight if your body mass index is at least 25, and obese if it’s at least 30. That means someone who is 5 feet 9 inches tall is considered overweight at 169 pounds and obese at 203 pounds.)
The numbers are no less frightening for children. Since 1970, the number of obese children ages 6-11 has quadrupled, while the number of obese adolescents has tripled, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
More than 18 percent of adolescents and nearly 20 percent of kids were obese in 2007 and 2008. Add in the kids who are “merely” overweight but not obese, and the percentage of chunky children grows to 35 percent.
Obesity and overweight have a plus-sized impact on our nation’s health care costs. The Society of Actuaries has estimated that overweight and obesity cost the United States and Canada a gut-busting $300 billion a year in additional medical costs and excess death and disability.
Obesity and overweight contribute to a number of unpleasant medical conditions including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and strokes, the actuaries concluded.
“Overweight and obesity have shown to increase the rate of several common adverse medical conditions, resulting in this extraordinary economic cost to society,” said actuary Don Behan. “We can’t stand back and ignore the fact that overweight and obesity are drivers of cost increases and detrimental economic effects.”
Shrinking Class Sizes
There are a slew of reasons why American kids are fatter, ranging from the birth of the Game Boy to the supersize-me culture of fast food.
But a decline in cycling has certainly played its part. In 1969, nearly half of all kids ages 5 to 15 walked or biked to school, according to the National Household Travel Survey. By 2009, the number had fallen to 13 percent.
“The corresponding increase in childhood obesity parallels the decline in walking or bicycling to school,” said Deb Hubsmith, director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.
Safe Routes is one of the programs that receives federal funding and promotes cycling at least in part as a solution to childhood obesity. But it is struggling to stay ahead in these challenging economic times.
Funding for Safe Routes to School helps underwrite infrastructure and educational programs for students in elementary and middle schools.
“The fact that childhood obesity has more than tripled over the last 30 years is a huge selling card for bicycling and Safe Routes to School,” Hubsmith said.
While Safe Routes programs address only schools, infrastructure improvements can benefit an entire community, supporters say.
“If a community is walkable and bikable for an 8-year-old, it’s going to be walkable and bikable for everybody,” said Jill Chamberlain with the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. “Targeting the kids is a great way to go, not to mention the bonus of a lifelong behavior.”
Congress has authorized $183 million a year in funding for Safe Routes as part of the national highway and transportation bill. Renewal of the five-year measure is one of many spending bills that have been stalled in Congress—especially because it represents such a big chunk of money.
The bleak financial mood in Congress has affected Safe Routes as it has so many other federally funded programs.
Last year, Hubsmith said, a bipartisan coalition in Washington, D.C., had proposed tripling funding for Safe Routes to $600 million a year.
Now, she said, in the new fiscally conservative Congress, Safe Routes is hoping mostly to avoid getting cut.
Supporters in the House are expected to introduce stand-alone legislation that would continue funding for Safe Routes at its current annual level of $183 million, Hubsmith said.
The House bill will seek some minor changes, such as expanding Safe Routes to some high schools (it now stops at 8th grade) and increasing research on the program’s effectiveness.
In the Senate, Hubsmith said, Safe Routes may ask for $250 million. She said supporters are seeking “a bill that’s slightly higher than the House bill, but lower than $600 million, because you want to get a lot of co-sponsors in the Senate.”
Supporting Everyday Cycling
Safe Routes and other cycling initiatives have garnered support from a number of health advocacy organizations.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, for example, last month announced it would work to publicize the Safe Routes program throughout the state.
As a health insurer, Blue Cross has a vested interested in combating obesity, said Dr. Marc Manley, vice president and chief prevention officer. A Blue Cross Blue Shield study estimated that obesity would cost Minnesotans an extra $3 billion by the end of the decade if the growth rate continues unchecked.
“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on trying to build physical activity for people’s everyday lives. So we’ve been less about having people ride 100-mile bike rides,” Manley said. “It’s more about how we get more normal people, regular people, out doing their commuting or running their errands or getting their kids to school on bikes.”
While the amount it’s spending on Safe Routes is relatively small, Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota is a significant underwriter of Nice Ride Minnesota, the bike share program that launched last year in Minneapolis.
Cycling, Manley said, “has so many advantages. It’s smart from a health point of view, it’s smart from an environmental point of view. It just has a lot of things going for it.”
James Moore sees it most starkly after the holidays, when parents bring the big-box bikes they bought for their children to his bike shop.
“It’s very startling, the number of parents who come in after Christmas,” said Moore, the owner of Moore’s Bike Shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. “Most of them went to a department store to buy an inexpensive 20-inch bike for their kids.”
They come in asking Moore’s staff to put heavy-duty training wheels on the bikes. Their kids are so fat they’ve flattened the original training wheels.
“We’re seeing 6-year-old kids who are 130 pounds, and we just can’t put training wheels on a bike that won’t collapse under their weight,” Moore said. “It’s a scary situation when you see 6 and 7-year-olds who weigh what I did when I was in high school.”
Staggering Statistics
Americans are fat. Bicycling can help them lose weight. No one would argue with either assertion. But the challenge for the industry is helping people put the two together.
One third of Americans today are obese, and more than two-thirds—68 percent—are overweight. This makes the United States one of the world’s fattest countries, according to World Health Organization. The problem has mushroomed in the past two decades, and isn’t going away:
• In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent, according to the Robert Wood Johnson foundation.
• By 2010, only one state—Colorado—had an obesity rate below 20 percent. More than one third of the residents of Mississippi, the fattest state, were obese.
(According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you’re overweight if your body mass index is at least 25, and obese if it’s at least 30. That means someone who is 5 feet 9 inches tall is considered overweight at 169 pounds and obese at 203 pounds.)
The numbers are no less frightening for children. Since 1970, the number of obese children ages 6-11 has quadrupled, while the number of obese adolescents has tripled, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
More than 18 percent of adolescents and nearly 20 percent of kids were obese in 2007 and 2008. Add in the kids who are “merely” overweight but not obese, and the percentage of chunky children grows to 35 percent.
Obesity and overweight have a plus-sized impact on our nation’s health care costs. The Society of Actuaries has estimated that overweight and obesity cost the United States and Canada a gut-busting $300 billion a year in additional medical costs and excess death and disability.
Obesity and overweight contribute to a number of unpleasant medical conditions including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and strokes, the actuaries concluded.
“Overweight and obesity have shown to increase the rate of several common adverse medical conditions, resulting in this extraordinary economic cost to society,” said actuary Don Behan. “We can’t stand back and ignore the fact that overweight and obesity are drivers of cost increases and detrimental economic effects.”
Shrinking Class Sizes
There are a slew of reasons why American kids are fatter, ranging from the birth of the Game Boy to the supersize-me culture of fast food.
But a decline in cycling has certainly played its part. In 1969, nearly half of all kids ages 5 to 15 walked or biked to school, according to the National Household Travel Survey. By 2009, the number had fallen to 13 percent.
“The corresponding increase in childhood obesity parallels the decline in walking or bicycling to school,” said Deb Hubsmith, director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.
Safe Routes is one of the programs that receives federal funding and promotes cycling at least in part as a solution to childhood obesity. But it is struggling to stay ahead in these challenging economic times.
Funding for Safe Routes to School helps underwrite infrastructure and educational programs for students in elementary and middle schools.
“The fact that childhood obesity has more than tripled over the last 30 years is a huge selling card for bicycling and Safe Routes to School,” Hubsmith said.
While Safe Routes programs address only schools, infrastructure improvements can benefit an entire community, supporters say.
“If a community is walkable and bikable for an 8-year-old, it’s going to be walkable and bikable for everybody,” said Jill Chamberlain with the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. “Targeting the kids is a great way to go, not to mention the bonus of a lifelong behavior.”
Congress has authorized $183 million a year in funding for Safe Routes as part of the national highway and transportation bill. Renewal of the five-year measure is one of many spending bills that have been stalled in Congress—especially because it represents such a big chunk of money.
The bleak financial mood in Congress has affected Safe Routes as it has so many other federally funded programs.
Last year, Hubsmith said, a bipartisan coalition in Washington, D.C., had proposed tripling funding for Safe Routes to $600 million a year.
Now, she said, in the new fiscally conservative Congress, Safe Routes is hoping mostly to avoid getting cut.
Supporters in the House are expected to introduce stand-alone legislation that would continue funding for Safe Routes at its current annual level of $183 million, Hubsmith said.
The House bill will seek some minor changes, such as expanding Safe Routes to some high schools (it now stops at 8th grade) and increasing research on the program’s effectiveness.
In the Senate, Hubsmith said, Safe Routes may ask for $250 million. She said supporters are seeking “a bill that’s slightly higher than the House bill, but lower than $600 million, because you want to get a lot of co-sponsors in the Senate.”
Supporting Everyday Cycling
Safe Routes and other cycling initiatives have garnered support from a number of health advocacy organizations.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, for example, last month announced it would work to publicize the Safe Routes program throughout the state.
As a health insurer, Blue Cross has a vested interested in combating obesity, said Dr. Marc Manley, vice president and chief prevention officer. A Blue Cross Blue Shield study estimated that obesity would cost Minnesotans an extra $3 billion by the end of the decade if the growth rate continues unchecked.
“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on trying to build physical activity for people’s everyday lives. So we’ve been less about having people ride 100-mile bike rides,” Manley said. “It’s more about how we get more normal people, regular people, out doing their commuting or running their errands or getting their kids to school on bikes.”
While the amount it’s spending on Safe Routes is relatively small, Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota is a significant underwriter of Nice Ride Minnesota, the bike share program that launched last year in Minneapolis.
Cycling, Manley said, “has so many advantages. It’s smart from a health point of view, it’s smart from an environmental point of view. It just has a lot of things going for it.”
Thursday, September 22, 2011
CEO pedals into record books
COAST CEO Allan Lear had to endure more than 1600 kilometres of rough conditions on his custom built electric bike to break a Guinness World Record, but break it he has.
Mr Lear and his support team set out from his waste-to-energy firm Hahn Environmental base at Landsborough on August 25.
His record attempt set by Guinness officials required a minimum of 1200 kilometres be travelled during a seven-day continuous time frame.
He not only reached Birdsville within the time limit, but exceeded the distance by 429km, achieving a total of 1629km.
The official record will be the Longest Distance Travelled by Electric Bicycle in One Week, and will be verified by Guinness officials in the UK in coming weeks by submission of evidence and records taken en route.
Mr Lear's custom built electric bike offered 200 watts of power and ran an average of 80km per battery. With solid peddling and a tail wind, Mr Lear could reach speeds of over 40km an hour.
Bike batteries were quickly interchanged on the road side, having been recharged en-route by a specially converted Mini Cooper designed to harness wind power via two roof-mounted wind turbines.
"The wind turbines charged everything including the bike batteries, our CB radios, even our mobile phones. It was a very efficient system, and the mini certainly brought us a lot of attention along the way," Mr Lear said.
"It was the opportunity of a lifetime, but I'm sore in places I didn't even know existed. We travelled some very rough terrain and had our share of challenges with flat tyres, bad weather, road trains, wild animals and met some interesting characters.
"The last few days were really tough. I've swallowed that much hot red dust, and the team's food rations were running low so we were living on two-minute noodles and canned tuna as we camped in our swags on the roadside.
"Our last creek crossing before reaching Birdsville nearly ended the mini, slashing two of its tyres on the sharp creek rocks. We had to be a little inventive in our patch job, but it was enough to get us to Birdsville."
The team timed the ride perfectly, with their celebrations coinciding with the famous Birdsville Races before the journey home.
"I've now set the challenge to my boys when they're old enough to break their dad's record!"
As CEO of Hahn Environmental Services, an environmental based organisation focused on alternative fuels and promoting alternative transport, Mr Lear hopes to promote the use of alternative transport to lessen our reliance on traditional fossil fuels.
Mr Lear and his support team set out from his waste-to-energy firm Hahn Environmental base at Landsborough on August 25.
His record attempt set by Guinness officials required a minimum of 1200 kilometres be travelled during a seven-day continuous time frame.
He not only reached Birdsville within the time limit, but exceeded the distance by 429km, achieving a total of 1629km.
The official record will be the Longest Distance Travelled by Electric Bicycle in One Week, and will be verified by Guinness officials in the UK in coming weeks by submission of evidence and records taken en route.
Mr Lear's custom built electric bike offered 200 watts of power and ran an average of 80km per battery. With solid peddling and a tail wind, Mr Lear could reach speeds of over 40km an hour.
Bike batteries were quickly interchanged on the road side, having been recharged en-route by a specially converted Mini Cooper designed to harness wind power via two roof-mounted wind turbines.
"The wind turbines charged everything including the bike batteries, our CB radios, even our mobile phones. It was a very efficient system, and the mini certainly brought us a lot of attention along the way," Mr Lear said.
"It was the opportunity of a lifetime, but I'm sore in places I didn't even know existed. We travelled some very rough terrain and had our share of challenges with flat tyres, bad weather, road trains, wild animals and met some interesting characters.
"The last few days were really tough. I've swallowed that much hot red dust, and the team's food rations were running low so we were living on two-minute noodles and canned tuna as we camped in our swags on the roadside.
"Our last creek crossing before reaching Birdsville nearly ended the mini, slashing two of its tyres on the sharp creek rocks. We had to be a little inventive in our patch job, but it was enough to get us to Birdsville."
The team timed the ride perfectly, with their celebrations coinciding with the famous Birdsville Races before the journey home.
"I've now set the challenge to my boys when they're old enough to break their dad's record!"
As CEO of Hahn Environmental Services, an environmental based organisation focused on alternative fuels and promoting alternative transport, Mr Lear hopes to promote the use of alternative transport to lessen our reliance on traditional fossil fuels.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Arthritis Slowing Down Your Biking? Hop Aboard an Ebike
This story, although written about a shop on the east coast, is typical of what we see here at Green Wheelin'. We love helping our customers get the correct e-bike for their needs. Yes, we are a business and need to make a profit in order to stay in business, but we work very hard to be fair so we can foster a long term relationship and be there for our customers for years to come.
By Gregory A. Scibelli - Staff Writer
Statewide - posted Fri., Jun. 17, 2011
Mike Wolf shows one of his many electric bikes for sale at Bloomfield Bicycle. Photos by Gregory A. Scibelli.
Every now and then a new product will come along that is fun, practical and has the potential to save you money. The electric bike is one of those inventions, and one area business has been booming as a result of this latest trend.
John Ouelette said he has been riding his bicycle for more than 25 years. But injuries and arthritis threatened to curtail his bike-riding plans.
“I was planning on hanging up my bike shoes, until I visited my brother," said Ouelette. “He is suffering from chronic Lyme disease,” he said of his brother. “I road his new electric bike and was hooked. It was comfortable and easy to ride. It made bike riding fun and pleasurable for me again.”
Ouelette then purchased his first hybrid electric bicycle, last year, from Bloomfield Bicycle for an annual summer bike ride from Connecticut to Vermont with friends.
"It was great fun," Ouelette said. "I craved more power, but I still wanted to get a good workout on those hills. The electric bike has allowed me to commute the 10-mile round trip to work. I'm losing weight and feeling more energetic."
Mike Wolf, owner and operator of Bloomfield Bicycle, said he could have retired many years ago and been enjoying life, but the emergence of the electric bike has revitalized his energy level and has made his successful business even more successful.
“I just love what I am doing, and I love putting people on these bicycles,” said Wolf. “It’s such a great product and there are not a lot of places that are out there selling them.”
In fact, only six or seven bicycle business in the state of Connecticut are selling these bikes, Wolf said. Wolf also notes that those shops sell limited amounts of the bikes, carrying just two or three at a time.
At Bloomfield Bicycle, riders can access to a wide variety of electric bicycles ranging in price from $600 to about $3,000. A good bike averages around $2,000, Wolf said.
The average electric bike has a strong lithium-ion battery that takes approximately three to four hours to charge. That charge will get you from 15 to 40 miles of power on the bike. And that’s just the part you don’t pedal. The energy cost for those 40 miles? Definitely not $4 per gallon. It’s a mere 8 cents on your electric bill.
On average, a person can get about 1,000 charges out of the battery, making the product well worth its value, Wolf said.
But the value of a bike goes beyond energy costs and environmental considerations. There are social, emotional and moral changes.
Wolf recalled one of his greatest experiences in selling a bike was to a young girl who suffered from Down syndrome.
“She and her mother came into our shop, and this young lady was very physically limited,” said Wolf. “She was looking for a bike that would help her be able to keep up with her friends and take part in everything they do.”
Wolf showed the girl the electric bike. She took a crash course in how to operate the bike, and then began to ride around the parking lot of the Geissler’s Plaza in Bloomfield.
“She came around the corner and yelled to her mom, ‘I can keep up with my friends now,’” said Wolf. “Her mother and I both had tears in our eyes. I would have given her the bike if I could at that moment, that’s how good it made me feel to do something that made such a difference for that little girl.”
Wolf said the bike’s advanced technology has also helped overweight people be able to bike around successful.
“One couple I had were overweight, and they were afraid they would not be to climb hills on the bike,” said Wolf. “After I let them test one out on a steep hill, they found that the bike had a lot of power.”
The bicycle has three different settings to ensure it is being utilized to its fullest potential. The bike can be turned off for normal bicycle pedaling. A power pedal assist function can be turned on, as well, where the rider will get a boost of energy from the battery to accelerate them while pedaling.
“And then there’s what happens when you get through with work and you’re really tired,” said Wolf. “You can just turn on the power and it will ride you right down the road.”
Wolf hopes getting the word out will help further expand the electric bike trend, and hopes more residents from northern Connecticut will make their way to the shop and check out the bikes.
Barbara Courtney, of Granby, said she began using an electric bike just three weeks ago. She has noticed the difference in her ability to get around to more difficult terrains.
"Now I'm able to get up hills I normally have difficulty with," she said.
She said she likes to ride as much as she can and enjoys the energy efficiency the bike has to offer.
"It's good for ecology and it's good for my health," Courtney said. "I can use it for so many things. My husband uses it to run to the grocery store."
By Gregory A. Scibelli - Staff Writer
Statewide - posted Fri., Jun. 17, 2011
Every now and then a new product will come along that is fun, practical and has the potential to save you money. The electric bike is one of those inventions, and one area business has been booming as a result of this latest trend.
John Ouelette said he has been riding his bicycle for more than 25 years. But injuries and arthritis threatened to curtail his bike-riding plans.
“I was planning on hanging up my bike shoes, until I visited my brother," said Ouelette. “He is suffering from chronic Lyme disease,” he said of his brother. “I road his new electric bike and was hooked. It was comfortable and easy to ride. It made bike riding fun and pleasurable for me again.”
Ouelette then purchased his first hybrid electric bicycle, last year, from Bloomfield Bicycle for an annual summer bike ride from Connecticut to Vermont with friends.
"It was great fun," Ouelette said. "I craved more power, but I still wanted to get a good workout on those hills. The electric bike has allowed me to commute the 10-mile round trip to work. I'm losing weight and feeling more energetic."
Mike Wolf, owner and operator of Bloomfield Bicycle, said he could have retired many years ago and been enjoying life, but the emergence of the electric bike has revitalized his energy level and has made his successful business even more successful.
“I just love what I am doing, and I love putting people on these bicycles,” said Wolf. “It’s such a great product and there are not a lot of places that are out there selling them.”
In fact, only six or seven bicycle business in the state of Connecticut are selling these bikes, Wolf said. Wolf also notes that those shops sell limited amounts of the bikes, carrying just two or three at a time.
At Bloomfield Bicycle, riders can access to a wide variety of electric bicycles ranging in price from $600 to about $3,000. A good bike averages around $2,000, Wolf said.
The average electric bike has a strong lithium-ion battery that takes approximately three to four hours to charge. That charge will get you from 15 to 40 miles of power on the bike. And that’s just the part you don’t pedal. The energy cost for those 40 miles? Definitely not $4 per gallon. It’s a mere 8 cents on your electric bill.
On average, a person can get about 1,000 charges out of the battery, making the product well worth its value, Wolf said.
But the value of a bike goes beyond energy costs and environmental considerations. There are social, emotional and moral changes.
Wolf recalled one of his greatest experiences in selling a bike was to a young girl who suffered from Down syndrome.
“She and her mother came into our shop, and this young lady was very physically limited,” said Wolf. “She was looking for a bike that would help her be able to keep up with her friends and take part in everything they do.”
Wolf showed the girl the electric bike. She took a crash course in how to operate the bike, and then began to ride around the parking lot of the Geissler’s Plaza in Bloomfield.
“She came around the corner and yelled to her mom, ‘I can keep up with my friends now,’” said Wolf. “Her mother and I both had tears in our eyes. I would have given her the bike if I could at that moment, that’s how good it made me feel to do something that made such a difference for that little girl.”
Wolf said the bike’s advanced technology has also helped overweight people be able to bike around successful.
“One couple I had were overweight, and they were afraid they would not be to climb hills on the bike,” said Wolf. “After I let them test one out on a steep hill, they found that the bike had a lot of power.”
The bicycle has three different settings to ensure it is being utilized to its fullest potential. The bike can be turned off for normal bicycle pedaling. A power pedal assist function can be turned on, as well, where the rider will get a boost of energy from the battery to accelerate them while pedaling.
“And then there’s what happens when you get through with work and you’re really tired,” said Wolf. “You can just turn on the power and it will ride you right down the road.”
Wolf hopes getting the word out will help further expand the electric bike trend, and hopes more residents from northern Connecticut will make their way to the shop and check out the bikes.
Barbara Courtney, of Granby, said she began using an electric bike just three weeks ago. She has noticed the difference in her ability to get around to more difficult terrains.
"Now I'm able to get up hills I normally have difficulty with," she said.
She said she likes to ride as much as she can and enjoys the energy efficiency the bike has to offer.
"It's good for ecology and it's good for my health," Courtney said. "I can use it for so many things. My husband uses it to run to the grocery store."
Monday, April 25, 2011
How the bicycle economy can help us beat the energy crisis
by Elly Blue
Libya. Bahrain. Iraq. Afghanistan. Canada. Fukushima. North Dakota. Fukushima. North Dakota. The Gulf Coast. Pennsylvania.
Each of these stories stands alone as an urgent parable about our increasingly fragile reliance on affordable, plentiful energy.
Take them together, and the myth of abundant fuel that our economy relies on falls to pieces all at once.
What if there were some source of energy that could replace a substantial part of our current consumption?
One that didn't rely on coal, or on corn, or on fast-track investment in renewables? One with negligible direct costs, that paid us back, equitably and many times over the more we used it?
I mean the bicycle, of course.
The idea doesn't seem so absurd when you realize how much of our energy crisis is a transportation crisis.
Consider this: close to half of U.S. oil use today is in the form of gasoline. Most of this gasoline goes directly towards fueling automobiles.
We're talking about 377 million gallons every single day. That's a bit more than a gallon per U.S. resident per day, including the 1/3 of us who don't have driver's licenses. That's more than the daily amount of water most of us drink.
With gas now rising towards $5 a gallon across the country -- and still going -- it's becoming very clear that we can't afford it any more. At least not so much of it.
What's more, we cannot afford the trillions of dollars we spend every year protecting our energy sources abroad.
We can't afford to maintain the highways that car transportation depends on to make any sense.
We are increasingly unable to carry the economic burden of the sprawl that results from our reliance on the long-distance motor travel all this energy makes possible.
And the human costs of war -- and, increasingly, of car dependence -- are something we've never been able to truly afford.
And that's the crux of it. As much as rising gas prices are straining and angering us, we are already paying prices much higher than the famously high costs in, say, Europe, where drivers currently shell out between $7 to $10 per gallon. By a 2003 analysis that considered all the factors that go into each gallon of gas, we paid as much as $15 per gallon, all told. And that was nearly a decade ago.
We already pay far more than we think, even if we never get in a car. We just don't see it -- even though the bill comes around every April.
The trillion dollar question is: can all this energy possibly be worth it?
For a brazen few, it's a bonanza.
But for the rest of us, the fog is clearing and the true costs are starting to come into view. Over the last 60 years we've variously fallen, leaped, and been pushed headlong into daily dependence on something we will never really be able to pay for -- always with some of us struggling more than others.
There's no easy way out at this point. But if we approach energy as a transportation issue rather than a geopolitical one, we can at least start to see a way through it.
Instead of pushing gas prices back to even more artificial lows, we need to invest that money that is normally all tied up in oil into bikes ... and places to ride them.
Bicycling makes a lot of sense in a landscape built for cars. Bikes are fast and flexible enough to fill the gap between transforming spread-out driving destinations to walkable, accessible communities. With 40 percent of our driving trips spanning less than two miles, the distances are feasible -- so long as the roads aren't designed to be terrifying.
It takes minimal investments, mostly in mitigating the effects of sharing space with motor vehicles, for bicycling to almost overnight become a convenient and attractive choice for many, many people.
Even so, the most powerful US transportation organization, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, has just made a move to curtail bike infrastructure spending. The outcry from advocates and states has stalled but not thwarted this effort. Clearly the political pressure is powerful to keep throwing money into increasing rather than decreasing our demand for and daily reliance on not-so-cheap energy.
Fortunately, once enough of us are out there riding, the streets become safer and there's less of a need to wait around for bike lanes to show up. One blogger in Dallas, Tex. ran the numbers and found that the $500 he would spend on six tanks of $4 gas would quickly subsidize the purchase of a sweet city bike. As gas prices climb, we'll undoubtedly see a surge in people acting on similar calculations, just as we did in 2008, when gas hit $4 for the first time.
The oil economy is vast, opaque, expensive, and sublimely beyond most of our ability to comprehend, much less control or escape.
The bicycle economy exists, meanwhile, on a human, mostly local scale. It's something each of us can concretely take hold of, in our own way and for our own reasons. It offers real freedom and also the opportunity to make real connections.
Bicycling can't save us from our energy crisis. At this point, nothing can. But it does point us toward a way to get through it with grace and possibly even build ourselves lives, communities, and a transportation system that we can truly afford.
Libya. Bahrain. Iraq. Afghanistan. Canada. Fukushima. North Dakota. Fukushima. North Dakota. The Gulf Coast. Pennsylvania.
Each of these stories stands alone as an urgent parable about our increasingly fragile reliance on affordable, plentiful energy.
Take them together, and the myth of abundant fuel that our economy relies on falls to pieces all at once.
What if there were some source of energy that could replace a substantial part of our current consumption?
One that didn't rely on coal, or on corn, or on fast-track investment in renewables? One with negligible direct costs, that paid us back, equitably and many times over the more we used it?
I mean the bicycle, of course.
The idea doesn't seem so absurd when you realize how much of our energy crisis is a transportation crisis.
Consider this: close to half of U.S. oil use today is in the form of gasoline. Most of this gasoline goes directly towards fueling automobiles.
We're talking about 377 million gallons every single day. That's a bit more than a gallon per U.S. resident per day, including the 1/3 of us who don't have driver's licenses. That's more than the daily amount of water most of us drink.
With gas now rising towards $5 a gallon across the country -- and still going -- it's becoming very clear that we can't afford it any more. At least not so much of it.
What's more, we cannot afford the trillions of dollars we spend every year protecting our energy sources abroad.
We can't afford to maintain the highways that car transportation depends on to make any sense.
We are increasingly unable to carry the economic burden of the sprawl that results from our reliance on the long-distance motor travel all this energy makes possible.
And the human costs of war -- and, increasingly, of car dependence -- are something we've never been able to truly afford.
And that's the crux of it. As much as rising gas prices are straining and angering us, we are already paying prices much higher than the famously high costs in, say, Europe, where drivers currently shell out between $7 to $10 per gallon. By a 2003 analysis that considered all the factors that go into each gallon of gas, we paid as much as $15 per gallon, all told. And that was nearly a decade ago.
We already pay far more than we think, even if we never get in a car. We just don't see it -- even though the bill comes around every April.
The trillion dollar question is: can all this energy possibly be worth it?
For a brazen few, it's a bonanza.
But for the rest of us, the fog is clearing and the true costs are starting to come into view. Over the last 60 years we've variously fallen, leaped, and been pushed headlong into daily dependence on something we will never really be able to pay for -- always with some of us struggling more than others.
There's no easy way out at this point. But if we approach energy as a transportation issue rather than a geopolitical one, we can at least start to see a way through it.
Instead of pushing gas prices back to even more artificial lows, we need to invest that money that is normally all tied up in oil into bikes ... and places to ride them.
Bicycling makes a lot of sense in a landscape built for cars. Bikes are fast and flexible enough to fill the gap between transforming spread-out driving destinations to walkable, accessible communities. With 40 percent of our driving trips spanning less than two miles, the distances are feasible -- so long as the roads aren't designed to be terrifying.
It takes minimal investments, mostly in mitigating the effects of sharing space with motor vehicles, for bicycling to almost overnight become a convenient and attractive choice for many, many people.
Even so, the most powerful US transportation organization, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, has just made a move to curtail bike infrastructure spending. The outcry from advocates and states has stalled but not thwarted this effort. Clearly the political pressure is powerful to keep throwing money into increasing rather than decreasing our demand for and daily reliance on not-so-cheap energy.
Fortunately, once enough of us are out there riding, the streets become safer and there's less of a need to wait around for bike lanes to show up. One blogger in Dallas, Tex. ran the numbers and found that the $500 he would spend on six tanks of $4 gas would quickly subsidize the purchase of a sweet city bike. As gas prices climb, we'll undoubtedly see a surge in people acting on similar calculations, just as we did in 2008, when gas hit $4 for the first time.
The oil economy is vast, opaque, expensive, and sublimely beyond most of our ability to comprehend, much less control or escape.
The bicycle economy exists, meanwhile, on a human, mostly local scale. It's something each of us can concretely take hold of, in our own way and for our own reasons. It offers real freedom and also the opportunity to make real connections.
Bicycling can't save us from our energy crisis. At this point, nothing can. But it does point us toward a way to get through it with grace and possibly even build ourselves lives, communities, and a transportation system that we can truly afford.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Electric mountain biking the newest extreme sport?
by Allison Reilly
Electric bikes are progressing from a commuter vehicle to a recreational one, as the sport of electric mountain biking becomes more popular in the United States, and around the world.
“[The bikes] cross barriers between the older and younger generations,” said Darin Brin, Managing Director of Stealth Electric Bikes USA. “They are brand new in the US.”
Stealth Electric Bikes USA is a distributor for Stealth Electric Bikes, based in Australia. So far, there are only two models of electric mountain bikes: the Bomber and the Fighter. Both models have a top speed of 80 kilometers an hour (or about 50 miles per hour) without the noise and vibration that comes with a gas-powered mountain bike. The motors can also be switched on and off, so users can still pedal as if on a standard bicycle.
“It’s a natural progression [for the mountain bike],” Brin said. “It’s a cross between a bike and a motorcycle.”
Pete Prebus, who’s been mountain biking for over 20 years and is the president of ElectricBikeReport.com, is keeping a close eye on this emerging trend.
Residing in Sedona, Arizona, Prebus has noticed their increased popularity in the trails and said that he’s both excited and concerned about the prospect of electric mountain bikes.
“They’re lightweight, and can be used in even more remote places,” Prebus said. “But I’m concerned that there may be another point of friction for traditional mountain bikers.”
John Adamo, owner of Plugbike.com and a Chicago resident, echoed that same sentiment. He said that traditional mountain bike riders often refer to the electric bikes as “cheating”, although Adamo disagrees.
“[Electric bikes] are their own genre of two-wheeled transportation.”
Adamo also said that the higher speeds of the electric mountain bikes could lead to more erosion and more crashes, causing hikers, equestrians and landowners to complain.
“The way they’re used could cause problems,” he said. “But, I also see opportunities in areas where no one is riding.”
Although the bikes have yet to be used in any tournaments, Prebus said all it would take would be a few sponsors to see their use in traditional mountain biking competitions, or even e-bike specific tournaments.
“[The bikes] are gaining a lot of traction,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll see events coming up.”
Darin Brin of Stealth Electric Bikes USA is aware of the future potential of electric mountain bikes as well. The company is taking advantage of every opportunity to introduce the brand, such as Interbike in September, the largest bicycle trade show in North America.
“We’re looking forward to the introducing of other models, “ Brin said. “Our engineers are working to keep them at their latest and greatest.”
If considering an electric mountain bike, then Prebus’ guide to the different models (including the Bomber and the Fighter) will provide valuable insight.
Electric bikes are progressing from a commuter vehicle to a recreational one, as the sport of electric mountain biking becomes more popular in the United States, and around the world.
“[The bikes] cross barriers between the older and younger generations,” said Darin Brin, Managing Director of Stealth Electric Bikes USA. “They are brand new in the US.”
Stealth Electric Bikes USA is a distributor for Stealth Electric Bikes, based in Australia. So far, there are only two models of electric mountain bikes: the Bomber and the Fighter. Both models have a top speed of 80 kilometers an hour (or about 50 miles per hour) without the noise and vibration that comes with a gas-powered mountain bike. The motors can also be switched on and off, so users can still pedal as if on a standard bicycle.
“It’s a natural progression [for the mountain bike],” Brin said. “It’s a cross between a bike and a motorcycle.”
Pete Prebus, who’s been mountain biking for over 20 years and is the president of ElectricBikeReport.com, is keeping a close eye on this emerging trend.
Residing in Sedona, Arizona, Prebus has noticed their increased popularity in the trails and said that he’s both excited and concerned about the prospect of electric mountain bikes.
“They’re lightweight, and can be used in even more remote places,” Prebus said. “But I’m concerned that there may be another point of friction for traditional mountain bikers.”
John Adamo, owner of Plugbike.com and a Chicago resident, echoed that same sentiment. He said that traditional mountain bike riders often refer to the electric bikes as “cheating”, although Adamo disagrees.
“[Electric bikes] are their own genre of two-wheeled transportation.”
Adamo also said that the higher speeds of the electric mountain bikes could lead to more erosion and more crashes, causing hikers, equestrians and landowners to complain.
“The way they’re used could cause problems,” he said. “But, I also see opportunities in areas where no one is riding.”
Although the bikes have yet to be used in any tournaments, Prebus said all it would take would be a few sponsors to see their use in traditional mountain biking competitions, or even e-bike specific tournaments.
“[The bikes] are gaining a lot of traction,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll see events coming up.”
Darin Brin of Stealth Electric Bikes USA is aware of the future potential of electric mountain bikes as well. The company is taking advantage of every opportunity to introduce the brand, such as Interbike in September, the largest bicycle trade show in North America.
“We’re looking forward to the introducing of other models, “ Brin said. “Our engineers are working to keep them at their latest and greatest.”
If considering an electric mountain bike, then Prebus’ guide to the different models (including the Bomber and the Fighter) will provide valuable insight.
Monday, April 4, 2011
3D Nanostructure for Cathodes in Batteries Could Mean EV's that Charge in Minutes
This story, written by Dexter Johnson, was originally posted on IEEE Spectrum
No sooner do I discuss University of Illinois researchers who have created 3D antennas for mobile phones using nanotechnology than another group of researchers at the University of Illinois (this time at Urbana-Champaign) have developed 3D material for batteries that combines the qualities of supercapacitors with those of batteries and could change the entire battery paradigm.
Professor Paul Braun and his colleagues just published in the March 20th edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology their results that showed ultra fast charge and discharge rates by "using cathodes made from a self-assembled three-dimensional bicontinuous nanoarchitecture consisting of an electrolytically active material sandwiched between rapid ion and electron transport pathways."
What this could mean, according to the excited science and technology press, are electric cars that could be charged in five minutes, a laptop in just a couple of minutes and a cell phone in seconds.
While thin film technology has allowed faster charging capabilities than seen in your typical li-ion batteries but it can't store the energy well, meaning that a mobile device would run out of power in mere seconds.
What Braun and his team have done essentially is to take the thin film technology but built it up through self-assembly into a three-dimensional structure thereby increasing its surface area and its ability to store energy.
The actual structure apparently resembles a lattice of tightly packed spheres. Metal is used to fill in the spaces around the spheres and then it is all melted leaving a 3D scaffold that appears like a sponge. Then the structure is electropolished that increases the size of the pores.
The result is that lithium ions can move rapidly through the material with a high electrical conductivity.
According to Braun this could revolutionize the battery. "We like that it's very universal," Braun is quoted as saying in a number of articles covering the report. "This is not linked to one very specific kind of battery, but rather it's a new paradigm in thinking about a battery in three dimensions for enhancing properties."
Professor Paul Braun and his colleagues just published in the March 20th edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology their results that showed ultra fast charge and discharge rates by "using cathodes made from a self-assembled three-dimensional bicontinuous nanoarchitecture consisting of an electrolytically active material sandwiched between rapid ion and electron transport pathways."
What this could mean, according to the excited science and technology press, are electric cars that could be charged in five minutes, a laptop in just a couple of minutes and a cell phone in seconds.
While thin film technology has allowed faster charging capabilities than seen in your typical li-ion batteries but it can't store the energy well, meaning that a mobile device would run out of power in mere seconds.
What Braun and his team have done essentially is to take the thin film technology but built it up through self-assembly into a three-dimensional structure thereby increasing its surface area and its ability to store energy.
The actual structure apparently resembles a lattice of tightly packed spheres. Metal is used to fill in the spaces around the spheres and then it is all melted leaving a 3D scaffold that appears like a sponge. Then the structure is electropolished that increases the size of the pores.
The result is that lithium ions can move rapidly through the material with a high electrical conductivity.
According to Braun this could revolutionize the battery. "We like that it's very universal," Braun is quoted as saying in a number of articles covering the report. "This is not linked to one very specific kind of battery, but rather it's a new paradigm in thinking about a battery in three dimensions for enhancing properties."
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