Re: E-Biikes are not bicycles

Am Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:54:27 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net>:

On 9/26/2024 10:27 AM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

Am Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:23:03 -0400 schrieb Zen Cycle
<funkmaster@hotmail.com>:
 

I'd suggest you go
out on an E-bike for an hour and ride some hills. You'll get a good
sense of why "with proper gearing there is usually no need for an
electric motor" is a rather myopic comment.

 
This statement alone proves that e-bikes are not bicycles.   A bicycle
that gives a weak rider the power of a Tour de France athlete is not a
bicycle, but a motorcycle.  It does not have the essential
characteristics that distinguish a bicycle from a motorcycle.

>
I agree that classifying ebikes as "bicycles" is a sham. It was a
deliberate move by the industry to make sure that these low power
motorcycles would benefit from the laws applied to bicycles, and to make
sure that the public would buy them and not be scared away by the idea
that they are motorcycles.
>
But I don't believe that anyone can train so they have no need for a
motor. It depends.

Right. I don't believe that either, and didn't write anything like that,
therefore. Actually, I wrote the exact opposite in
<r0hafjddb2dnr6050j5noes2ehig96ee9a@4ax.com>:

| Modern low powered electric mopeds could have become a nice
| addition to [the] range of motorized vehicles at the lower end, without this
| coup of staging such a vehicle as a bicycle by combining the
| disadvantages of an e-moped with the disadvantages of a bicycle.   A
| missed opportunity, with the result that many people are now forgoing
| the benefits of real cycling and living unhealthier and more dangerous
| lives by pseudo-cycling, instead.

The current E-Bikes sold as bicycles are mostly sold to people and used
by people who do not have a need for a motor, even without that training
you get almost automatically by riding a real bike.  I've met enough
people riding E-Bikes in an areea of about 700 square kilometres where
we live, and elsewhere. I'm able to estimate that, by following these
pople often in the past for a short while, looking at how much power I
actually do.  As shown later on, I am able to do an average of 22 km/h
on a long trip that includes quite some slow riding on steep ascents,
and quite some air drag loss by riding faster than 22 km/h, most of the
time.

Most e-Bikers I meet on flat ground, are riding about 20-22 km/h. Riding
a road bike that slowly on flat terrain needs less than 80 W, but even a
person on a clumsy Dutch style bike or a similar E-Bike needs only about
120 W for that.

The range available "modes" of most E-Bikes in use around here start by
adding about 80 percent of what the cyclist spends (ECO), usually add
100 or 120 percent (STANDARD/TOUR), or up to 200 and 340 percent,
depending on the type of E-Bike (modes above 200 percent are usually
more expensive).  Calculating for simplicity with 100 Percent, those
E-Bikers do only 60 W in the worst case, or less, when riding, say, a
more streamlined MTB.   

A vast majority of those people have as much need for a motor on their
bike as your neighbour is in need of a machine gun.

With that out of the way, an important problem of the current variant of
mopeds which are legally treated as bicycles is that these bikes aren't
just ordinary low powered mopeds. In fact, these mopeds are bicycle
simulators, too.  Their simulation built into the motors control
software nowadays is more suggestive than Microsoft's flight simulator.

Riding such E-Bikes for a while is able to make you believe that you are
in fact riding a bicycle. "It really feels like a better bicycle, just
try it yourself!" they say.

Even after riding an older E-Bike for a only a day, it was quite
difficult for me to not experience the motor power as a personal
achievement.  Modern E-Bikes are much better in that regard.  One reason
for this is the fact that it is very difficult to estimate actual
performance purely on the basis of perceived effort. Simulating the
human power curve only enhances that suggestive experience even better.
Another reason is that people like to to lie to themselves, even more,
if they get positive feedback.


A little bit more technical context.

For several years now, I have been able to display, measure, record and
analyse not only my heart rate, but also the pedalling power I generate
while cycling.   The accuracy is around one per cent. Of course I know
how much power I use on average, for a 50 km course I've ridden
repetatly in the past. 

For example, for this course (roundtrip, 85 km, 737 m cumulative
altitude gain, 21 km/h average) on the 25th of july, I did an average of
99 watts
<https://www.mystrobl.de/ws/pic/fahrrad/20240725/zkarte.jpg>
 
Three days later, one a slightly shorter, but otherwise identical trip
(81 km, 731 m, 22 km/h) my average power was 100 watts.

But ... I'm still not good at estimating my average power over a short
intervall of say, ten seconds, or five minutes, when I have to guess,
without estimating based on heart rate, speed or gradient.  I'm not even
able to guess the average over an complete course, without basing that
on an already known older measurement.    

For shorter time intervals, even with my experience, I'm often
completely off the actual value when I try tu guess the average power
during the last 30 seconds and then look what my Garmin edge shows (it
displays both a 10 second and a 30 second average, on a separate page).

>
On today's club ride, one of my good friends was at the rear, as always.
One somewhat ignorant newcomer to the club has offended her by
"mansplaining" advice on how to climb hills at higher speed. He didn't
realize his four years of riding experience are nothing next to her 40+
years, plus her touring Montana, the Skyline Drive, etc. etc. etc. Fact
is, she has a cardiac problem that will always limit her power. BUT she
has no interest in an ebike.

I experienced similar situation quite often, just with the opposite
tendency, people trying to talk somebody into switching from a bicycle
to an E-Bike. 

Just try to buy a biycle at my age in a bicycle shop, without mentioning
your preferences.  Or show some interest in what a place at your holiday
destinating offers for rent.

Even more strange, on our last vacation in Southern Germany (Pfalz), on
one of our biketours we ran into a group of E-Bikers led by a person,
who then introduced himself as a "certified MTB guide", a middle aged,
strong looking person.  After some chatter and me taking a somewhat
critical look at his e-MTB, he felt compelled to launch into a lengthy
speech about the advantages of e-bikes used off-road, and then praising
the Semi-finished paved cycle path we where standing on.

Looking up the local touristic presentations of the area via web I
noticed that a lot commercial training grounds for MTB  have long been
predominantly promoting e-MTBs, with a few non-motorised ones in the
background.  I assume the audience for his speech was not me, but his
flock.  That also explains why he wasn't thrilled about my contemptuous
attitude towards this cycle path and me prefering the road as it is.

>
Another guy on the ride is ~80, will always be somewhat overweight, but
wants to ride with the club for social reasons. When his ebike was
recently out of commission, he was desperately tired trying to keep up
on a very fancy, lightweight conventional bike. The motor and battery
allow him to socialize with his friends.

Perhaps.  But perhaps he got overweight and stayed overweight, because
he was given a tool that enabled and rewarded this very behaviour.
Including a narrative suitable as justification. A fancy, lightweight
conventional bike might have been the the road not taken, twenty years
ago, figuratively speaking.

>
OTOH, today a guy much younger than me showed up for the first time with
an ebike. I rode with him decades ago, when he was quite strong. He's
not plump and could probably train himself into decent shape if he
tried. When I asked about the bike, he said "But it still gives me a
good workout." I thought "No, not as good. And you're just pretending to
be riding a real bicycle." Long term, he'd do himself more good by
shutting the motor off.

It is worse now.  Nowadays, as both older and somewhat disabled people
have long been captured by the marketing teams and many healthy middle
aged people have already bought an E-Bike too, children have been in
focus an the target for marketing for a few years now. Have a look at

<https://www.mystrobl.de/ws/vp/ebike/vsf_e-bikes_fuer_kinder.JPG>

That picture shows the cover of a magazine from VSF ("Verbund Service
und Fahrrad", formerly and translated "association of self-managed
bicycle companies", a nation wide marketing and lobby organization in
Germany)

The title on the cover, in bold letters, says "E-bikes for children".

Different from what the finer print on the cover suggests, the multi
page article is essentially an argumentation template for why parents
should treat their children to an e-bike. It generally follows the
narrative that is also being ridden to death here: so that children can
keep up with their parents in the mountains, yadda yadda ...


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