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Do electric bicycles pose a threat to Tesla (car companies in general)?
by sc90 7y ago
Do electric bicycles pose a threat to Tesla (car companies in general)?
- koverda 7y agoNot any more of a threat than regular bicycles pose to regular cars.
- jvagner 7y agoI wish cities would commit to bike-only streets. E-bikes are unbelievably fun ways to get around.
- morkfromork 7y agoPickup trucks are the top selling vehicles in the US. Hard to replace those with bicycles.
- sc90 7y agoNot really, a significant percentage of car trips involve a short distance.
- morkfromork 7y agoDepends on how you define short, how many trips you take per day, terrain, weather and physical ability of the person to actually ride a bike.
- ggg2 7y agowould be interesting to see how much of this is real need for a pickup. there's a marlon brandon(?) movie where he buys the biggest ram truck, just to drive up and down the street every day :) likewise, one could say that california has a need for SUVs, while everyone only drive them under 30mph in a perfectly paved roads under perfect dry weather, alone 90% of the time, and with a single kid the other 10. At this point I think the america Lives on pickup truck production is just a fashion indicator that some car manufacturers love to disseminate to help their stock over japanese makers who are not heavy on pickups.
- HillaryBriss 7y agowasn't a big part of the pickup truck success story that the government required lower safety standards on them compared to passenger vehicles? like, it worked out that trucks were more profitable and less costly to the end consumer or something. so that's what car companies made.
- Theodores 7y agoChicken Tax. The danger was the VW Transporter, they didn't want a rerun of The Beetle. So they taxed the vans/trucks VW were making with a tariff and added it to The Chicken Tax. Emissions are also different for trucks, they would not make it as a viable product outside the U.S. due to the purchase and gas price incentives. The VW Camper Van became a thing as adding seats to the van was a way of evading The Chicken Tax. That bit was a happy accident. You could blame the Germans for America's planet sized carbon footprint, had there not been the Chicken Tax then Americans might be driving cars more aero and fuel saving than these tank sized things. Incidentally some US pickup trucks are Sherman tank sized, albeit not as tall and not as well armed.
- tdb7893 7y agoNot really in most places in the US with the current infrastructure there. Even in many places that have fine infrastructure for it (like Minneapolis in my experience) weather makes it a hard sell.
- solean 7y agoNot everyone is an able-bodied 20-something, and not everywhere is sunny California.