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From: AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: E-Biikes are not bicycles
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 11:00:17 -0500
Organization: Yellow Jersey, Ltd.
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On 9/26/2024 9:27 AM, Wolfgang Strobl 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
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