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When someone does come along and create an e-bike that's fast and comfortable enough to coexist with cars on every road short of a limited access highway it wil
by throwaway0a5e 5y ago
When someone does come along and create an e-bike that's fast and comfortable enough to coexist with cars on every road short of a limited access highway it will instantly be regulated into oblivion with a bunch of hand wringing about road safety. See mopeds for an example. As soon as they got both good and cheap they got regulated to the point where a crappy car has a better value proposition.
You can already see a litany of comments expressing support for regulating ebikes so they remain a novelty niche in this very thread.
- bambax 5y agoIn trafic a moped is better than a car, and an ebike better than a moped, regardless of regulations. If they impose a full helmet for ebikes I will hate it, but still choose that over a car.
- analog31 5y agoIn my locale, mopeds / scooters had a very narrow niche, among college students and some employees, because they could be parked for free. You didn't want to be driving through the campus in between classes because of the scooter traffic. When the university started restricting and charging for scooter parking, the scooters vanished. At the same time I've seen practically no e-bikes in the racks on campus. Most student housing has no indoor bike storage, and they're hard to carry up stairs so it's a problem to find a way to charge them. On the other hand, as I've told my kids, "you were born with feet, you can pedal a bike." Conventional bikes have returned to their proper place at the top of the student transportation food chain.