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From: Catrike Ryder <Soloman@old.bikers.org>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: E-Biikes are not bicycles (was: Re: Extensive article on Rivendell and Grant Petersen)
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 11:27:13 -0400
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On Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:27:24 +0200, Wolfgang Strobl
<news5@mystrobl.de> wrote:

>Am Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:23:03 -0400 schrieb Zen Cycle
><funkmaster@hotmail.com>:
>
>>On 9/23/2024 8:47 PM, sms wrote:
>>> On 9/23/2024 8:18 AM, Roger Merriman wrote:
>>> 
>>> <snip>
>...
>
>
>>Sorry, not buyin' it. Not to mention the fact that taking someone off an 
>>e-bike and telling them they have to pedal is one way to completely put 
>>them off cycling, regardless of the proper gearing. 
>
>That makes no sense. Someone who has switched from a bicycle to an
>E-bike has already essentially given up on cycling, regardless of how
>some clueless politicians twist the laws to treat low-powered mopeds
>like bicycles. 
>
>
>>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. 
>
>A bicycle is driven by the person sitting on it, that determines how it
>is ridden. For a great part, this depends on how much power that person
>can deliver and for how long, both short term, for looking at a single
>ride, and in the long run.   
>
>This isn't a static relation. Quite the opposite, how hard you exercise
>your muscles while cycling and how long you train your cardiac system
>influences how much you gain - or lose - in strength and endurance.   A
>motorized bicycle, on the other hand, makes most of this unnecessary, as
>it reduces these constraints and incentives to almost nothing.  All that
>remains is the illusion of riding a bike.
>
>A little bit of history and context, plus some technical details.
>
>For about two hundert years now, the common understanding of the term
>bicycle is a human powered vehicle with two or more wheels and one or
>more crank drives.   
>
>Now there exists this modern equivocal term "pedal assistance" though,
>which has been ridden to death to justify calling a class of low powered
>motorcycles bicycles, suggesting that most of the power still comes from
>the person riding the bike. Unfortunately, it ain't so, for a long time
>now.
>
>In Germany, the campaign began with the term “pedelec” being used to
>describe e-bikes with pedal assistance that only support up to 100% of
>the rider's power and up to 25 km/h. Only when e-bikes were legally
>treated as bicycles in some respects,these motorized bicycles were
>increasingly referred to as “bicycles” in the media.
>
>The actuall law that was enacted says something completely different:
>there is actually no formal limit to how much power the motor driving a
>25 km/h-E-Bike may deliver and there is no capacity limit,  about how
>long a motor may power the bike, either. So the two characteristics that
>make up a bicycle were eliminated: the limited amount of power and
>endurance that a person can muster.  
>
>Of course, besides the cut-off at 25 km/h, there still is some kind of
>limit, often mentioned to downplay the amount of motorization:  
>"But, eh, there is a 250 watt limit!".  
>
>Sure, there is.  But it is specified in a very specific way so that the
>restriction has almost no teeth.   It's called "Nenndauerleistung" in
>German, or "nominal continuous power" in English. In essence, this again
>specifies that there is no real limit.  A 250 W e-Bike motor may deliver
>500, 600 or even 1000 watts, as long as it doesn't spend more than 250
>watts on average in a sliding 30 minute window.  
>
>That 100 percent limit which paved the way for this toothless regulation
>didn't even get into European law at all.  All we have is a rule that
>the motor may not deliver power when the person sitting on the bike
>stops pedaling for a while.  Who hasn't yet seen some "food delivery
>hero" on an electric bike riding their bike uphill by just turning the
>crank half a turn forward and than backwards?
>
>A Bosch motor easily delivers 600 Watt, it assists with up to 340% in
>addition to the power the rider supplies, when using one of the old
>"modes", or an unspecified amount plus some likewise unspecified
>additional boost, when using one of the newer "intelligent" modes.   And
>that's just what the adds say, currently. It might even become 900 Watt
>and 400%, next year, without breaking the rules. 
>
>What gives?  Modern low powered electic mopeds could have become a nice
>addition to 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.
>
>
>>
>>My wife is a great example. Her favorite bike is a Jamis Dakar MTB 3x9 
>>Deore. Even on the moderate hills around here on the road (with 
>>semi-slicks) hills are very challenging. Sure, she's in the granny doing 
>>6 mph on a 3% grade, but it's still a lot of work for a casual cyclist.
>
>For comparison:
>
>I'm 71 years old now, my wife is not much younger. I've never been into
>sports, neither is she.  She could walk to work, I commuted by bike for
>decades, had to give up cycling completely for quite some time after an
>accident, but managed to gain some strength back, after retirement. Took
>a while.
>
>I did that by starting moderately in 2018, slowly expanding my range,
>from initially less than 30 km and 200 meters of altitude gain, avoiding
>steep ascends,  to 140 km and almost 2000 meteres of altitude gain, in
>spring this year. 
>
>About halve of those rides that go from the flat rhine valley into the
>nearby hilly countryside,  my wife and I did together. These where short
>rides initially, from some 20-30 km and 200-300 m in altitude gain to
>about 60 km and 600 m. 
>
>In the past, she had strictly refused to ride climbs that were steeper
>than around six percent.   "I just cannot do that", she said.   
>
>Of course, she couldn't, for the following reasons.
>
>For context, we were using road bicycles that whe bought in early 2010,
>for using them for vacations in the south of France, both equipped with
>3x10 gears, drop bars, 25 mm slicks.  After changing cassettes to the
>lowest possible gear ratio, whe had 30 front, 30 rear on my bike, 30
>front, 28 rear on her bike, good enough for both of us doing some longer
>6-6 percent streches uphill and some short 7 percent ascents, but no
>more.
>
>Problems when riding uphill
>  
> * Riding up steeper hills using a 1:1 ratio or worse with a very low
>cadence does reduce the necessary power (watts), but doesn't reduce the
>necessary torque/force.  Men have better prerequisites here. 
>
> * Riding uphill with a low power budget needs riding slowly, the
>necessary riding technique has to be learned 
>
> * Stopping for that reason isn't easy to handle
>
> * Riding slowly needs a good fitting bike 
>
> * A difficult to operate gearshift doesn't help concentrating on
>pedaling and steering 
>
>In essence, while our old bikes where still more than good enough for
>getting around quite a bit on flat and moderately steep ground and
>getting better by just doing it often enough, there was a kind of
>chicken and egg problem here, for riding uphill.  You have to learn and
>master riding up steep hills by just doing it. But how do you do that,
>when you can't even start or ride that slowly, without tipping over,
>because the cadence is far to low, initially?
>
>
>After some research and a long trip through local bike shops, my
>solution was to start the project with a professional bikefitting with
>our old bikes, in order to get key values for new bikes. And then I
>built two customized bikes myself, early last year.  Problem solved. 
>
>She even rode up a long ascent, 9 percent average, including some short
>10 and 12 percent parts, half a year later. Twice!  "Let's look wether I
>can do it again", she said.
>
>These bikes weren't cheap, but E-bikes aren't that cheap, either, if you
>don't buy complete thrash.   It's just the question how in what to
>invest, into an e-bike for getting instant gratification, or into a
>better bike plus some time, for getting a delayed gratification,
>combining two benefits, independence from a motor, and better health.
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