Helmet laws are not the answer

It is campaign season again, and there are a number of candidates running for the Board of Aldermen in our sleepy little town of Carrboro, NC (right next to Chapel Hill, NC).

Just a few days ago, Sierra Club held a candidates forum. One question they asked the candidates was how they might improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians. While we found all of the responses to be lacking (perhaps in part due to the reporting in the newspaper), one particularly stood out. Randee Haven-O'Donnel is claimed to have said we should pass an adult helmet law, mandating that we all wear helmets.

NO WE SHOULD NOT PASS A MANDATORY HELMET LAW! I rarely if ever yell in this blog, but this one warrants a big yell.

Many places have tried mandatory helmet laws, and it has been a miserable failure wherever and whenever tried. Australia is the biggest case in point. Seven years after the mandatory helmet law was passed, the cycling population dropped by 22%. At the same time, the total number of bicycle injuries increased.

Some may be scratching their heads. How could that be? Why didn't this law instantly make people safer?

Because one-size-fits all laws like this usually have unintended consequences. One consequence is discouraging people from riding at all. And study after study has shown that cyclists have safety in numbers. The numbers go down because of helmet laws, and safety goes down. There may also be a factor of risk compensation - people riding faster and more aggressively when wearing a helmet. But the reasons really do not matter. Because the facts are the facts - and those facts aren't unique to Australia.

The same experiment was born out in New Zealand, which also passed a mandatory helmet law, and also saw a reduction in cycling by 51%, and saw only a 51% drop in fatal accidents. In other words, less people are biking, and less accidents are occurring, by the same amount. The helmet law is making people no safer, while it is preventing many people from biking.

We're not anti-helmet, we're anti-helmet law. In fact, all the owners and employees of Cycle 9 regularly wear their helmets. We help many of our customers get fitted out with a helmet.

But helmet laws just don't work. And worse, they promote a nanny-state mentality that every risk we might take must be proscribed by legal decree. We believe bikes are about freedom, not laws. Maybe that's why less people cycle when helmet laws are passed - the association of riding a bike with a sense of freedom becomes diminished.

Biking should be a free activity. An adult should be able to choose how she regards his or her own risks and rewards from either wearing or not wearing a helmet. This would be true even if helmet laws did work. But it is especially true since mandatory helmet laws don't work.

I hope that Ms Haven-O'Donnel and the other Aldermen/women don't go down that route. It may benefit certain helmet manufacturers, but it won't benefit anyone else.

The state of things

It's been a while since I posted to the Cycle 9 blog. The hiatus was in part due to a lot of grant writing that I had to do for my day job. There's this thing called the "stimulus" that congress passed, and they are trying to stimulate scientific research. And so government agencies like the National Institutes of Health are accepting grant proposals to spend the stimulus money. Well, since I work at a major research university (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), I was obliged to write some grant proposals. With all the grant writing, the blog was left a bit lonely.

But in the background, a lot has been going on at Cycle 9, in terms of bike stuff. Let's see what I can dig up from the recesses of my memory:

• We got a few of the Marin hardtail mountain bikes in stock. Some folks had asked for a more aggressive looking bike for their everyday riding, and the Marin bikes fit the bill. They make a great platform for an everyday commuter bike, or for an electric conversion. We're not about to switch over to carrying a whole shopful of full suspension mountain bikes. I love mountain biking, but that's not what the store is about. We're here to promote transportation and utility biking. And we have the mountain bikes for people who prefer the look and feel of that to a more road oriented bike.
• We have lots of kids bikes in stock from Marin. They make a nice lineup. We also have the "running bikes". These are bikes without pedals, that the kids use by "running" along while seated on the bike - kind of like Flinstones. My daughter learned how to bike this way, and it was a lot faster that learning how to deal with pedals. Once she was balancing on the running bike, then moving over to a regular pedal bike without training wheels was easy.
• We're getting some of the new "electric mountain drive" assist kits in from Ecospeed. It is a chain-drive electric assist, that has the advantage of using the bike's existing gear set. So they are claimed to be better for steep hill climbing, and to have better efficiency than hub motors. We'll be testing one out extensively, and we'll also have a demo in the shop.
• Speaking of demo bikes, we are also a Stokemonkey dealer (the only one on the East Coast!), and now have a Surly Big Dummy utility bike (great for kid and grocery hauling), with the Stokemonkey installed. The Stokemonkey is like the Ecospeed, but it is designed specifically for cargo bikes like the Xtracycle, Big Dummy, and Yuba Mundo. It is a very high efficiency, quiet motor setup that has power for big loads and very steep hills. Come try it out!
• If you want to charge your electric bike battery faster, we now have a new line of chargers in for the long-life LiFePO4 (lithium ion) battery type. One of them is a dual-voltage dual-amperage charger that puts out 9 amps in "fast charge" mode, fast enough to recharge a 10 amp-hour pack in just over an hour. But since charging batteries fast too often may shorten their life, this charger also has a 4 amp slower-charging mode, that will take 2-3 hours for a full charge. Not only that, it has dual voltage, so it can charge either a 36 volt or a 48 volt pack, at either current rate! We have a few 20A/48V chargers for large electric vehicle batteries. And we have some 6 amp dual-voltage chargers (36 and 48V). In this first run, we only have a few of each kind. Once they're gone, they're gone for a while.
• We now have the small Day 6 frames in stock, available for a test ride. The Day 6 is an extremely comfortable ride like a recumbent bike, but it is more upright. Several folks have come in to try the Day 6 before or after testing a Townie at another bike shop in town, and a lot of them prefer the comfort of the Day 6. The new small frames are designed for people 5'3" and under.

I'm sure there is a lot more to talk about, but let's save that for another post. I want to talk about the economy for a few moments.

Lots of people seem to think we've got green shoots. It would probably be best for our shop to just pretend that is the case and act as if everything is going to be hunky dory tomorrow. But sorry folks, it isn't. I'm a bit of an economics junkie. I do a lot of reading. And there's an elephant in the room. That elephant is:

DEBT

If I could have used a larger font for that word, I would have. The reason why is I want to emphasize the scale of the problem. Our country is in hawk. Under water. We've sold off our children's future to the pawnbrokers.

This has all happened before... during the 20's. See, back then a similar thing happened. There got to be a very few rich industrialists at the top of the pyramid, and a lot of other folks who were quite poor. The disparity between rich and poor got more and more extreme. But most people didn't know it - because there was a debt bubble. So, while people were getting poorer, they kept feeling richer - because they got more and more in debt. That was the roaring 20's, until it came to a screeching halt in the crash of '29. But ironically, in 1930 there were newspaper reports very much like our "green shoots" reports now. Everything was going to go back to normal. Things would start roaring again. And what happened next? It was three more years until the economy would bottom out in 1933. The middle class was eviscerated. So were the poor folks. A few rich folks were just fine, but everyone else was not. There was a debt hangover that had to be cured.

Well, our debt as a country is bigger now than it was at the height of the great depression, when FDR was doing all-out government spending to try to dig this country out of the mess. Obama is trying to spend our way out of it - but the problem is, the spending is all in the form of ever more debt (not that the alternative of outright printing is any better). But our country can't handle more debt. Our creditors like the Chinese are getting sick of lending us money - because they don't see how we'll pay it back. And they're the only ones lending these days.

To bring it back to bikes, here's the thing: we import well over $500 billion per year in foreign oil. What do we trade this for? Debt, debt, and more debt. Not anything real - the US doesn't produce all that much anymore, except debt, and dollars (which represent debt).

I frequently have conversations with folks about oil. People seem to think there is a "glut" of oil, and that oil prices should come back down. Well, aside from the fact that the "glut" consists of only 20-30 days worth of US oil consumption, there is a much bigger fact being ignored: the price we pay at the pump is a direct correlation to the strength or weakness of the dollar. If the dollar gets stronger, that means oil and gas get cheaper for us. If the dollar gets weaker, that means oil and gas are more expensive for us. The dollar got a lot stronger last winter, which is a major reason why gas prices dropped. Now the dollar is weakening again. While it could do anything over the next 6-12 months (go up or down), the long-term prognosis is absolutely clear: there are too many dollars in the system, and our creditors are getting tired of taking those dollars in return for real, tangible things like oil and manufactured goods. This will not be dollar positive. What that means is that, even if we ignore the major geological constraints on oil supplies (i.e. peak oil), that it is very likely to get much more expensive for us at the pump in the future. We can "drill baby, drill" all we want, and it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what we import.

So, folks, be prepared for increasing costs in the future. Unless our government and the Federal Reserve bank manage to pull off a miracle of getting an economic recovery while holding the dollar's value, we will be paying more and more at the pump.

And cap-n-trade isn't going to help, either. I'm anti pollution and anti-CO2 being released, but this cap and trade thing has me mad. It is just another scheme for some very rich folks to get even richer trading in carbon credits. It would have been far better to just be honest about it and charge a direct carbon tax. And then to use that tax to build things like bike paths, rail lines, and etc. But, no, we'll just let some rich folks get richer, and we will all pay more money at the pump.

So, anyway, why would you want to buy a bike in this economy? Because bikes are one of the very cheapest ways to get around for short and medium-distance trips. Far cheaper than a car. For anyone who is struggling financially and asking "can I afford a bike" - if you can't afford a bike (at least a used one), then you definitely cannot afford a car. Each month of owning a car costs as much as buying a typical low-end transportation bike. Think about gas, insurance, repairs, and parking. Just the other day, someone I know had to pay over $300 to fix the electric window opener on her car. She had a sudden insight - all it takes is a few such repairs, and an electric bike would be paid for.

It's funny that occasionally when I'm riding along on the road, some guy in a big pickup will honk or something, trying to tell me to get off the road. I'm sure that most of these folks consider themselves US patriots. But how can they be patriots when they are dependent on foreign oil? When they are contributing to our large US debt, that will weaken our currency?

There was an interesting discussion on the RootsRadicals about the effect that having a US flag on the bike has with folks who might otherwise treat cyclists with disdain.

In that vein, we're going to do a t-shirt. Here's a mock-up/draft version:

This t-shirt points out that it is patriotic to ride your bike and free our country from foreign oil. Maybe it will help some drivers who "don't get it" to start figuring it out. We hope to have this shirt ready in August. Drop us a line if you want one. They'll be printed right here in North Carolina using organic cotton and chemical free dyes.

Happy 4th, I hope everyone had a great celebration of our country's independence - and I hope we have many more to come.

"Pedaling a hard truth"

Yesterday a nice article about Morgan's vision for Cycle 9 was published in UNC's Faculty/Staff newsletter. It discussed some of the motivations behind why we got Cycle 9 going. The one thing that was perhaps a bit inaccurate was its focus on climate change as a reason that I founded Cycle 9. While I think that anthropogenic climate change is likely real and likely a problem that we as a society will have to face, it was a much more immediate issue that caused me to co-found Cycle9: Peak Oil. Peak oil theory says that at some point the world will have used up half of all its oil, and at that time, the remaining half will be harder to access and more expensive. There is now a consensus that the world is already past peak (estimates vary, some say 2005, some 2008, but it is clear we've been on a bumpy plateau).

What does this mean?

- That soon (6 months to 3 years), the accelerating reduction in oil supplies will catch up with the reduction in oil demand.

- When that happens, prices are likely to skyrocket

- Countries are likely to start competing seriously over oil. Imagine the US competing with China for scarcer oil. Not a good scenario for us.

- The problem is actually made worse by the current economy, because many projects for oil development are being shelved as uneconomical when oil is < $50 per barrel. That means the decline will be even faster in the next few years.

The real problem I see is that the current, low gas prices have lulled people into a false sense of security. I have run into so many people that seem to think these prices are here to stay, "until the economy recovers." This shows some fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of our oil supply, and the reasons why oil is presently "sort of" cheap. Note that if oil were truly cheap, we'd be back at $10 oil - but we aren't there, we're at $50 - a value that just 6 years ago would have been seen as quite high. But I digress - it only takes a small oversupply of a product to cause prices to fall. And so what if we are 1-2 million barrels per day over supplied? If production is declining at only 3% per year (most estimates are closer to 6% once we fall off the plateau), that little bit of oversupply will be eaten up in less than a year. The only way the oversupply can continue is if the economy continues to crash at a rate that is comparable to the reduction in oil supply. That would be an unprecedented rate of decline for any modern economy.

The other thing many people don't seem to realize about oil prices is that oil on the international market is priced in dollars. For the past 6 months, we've benefited because the dollar has strengthened, due to lots of folks buying treasury bills as a safe investment. But just in the past week or so, there are signs that things are headed the other way. Among other things, larger than predicted federal budget deficits, along with the Federal Reserve's recent announcement that it is monetizing unprecedented levels of debt (> 1$Trillion worth) are things that will be very likely to weaken the dollar. As the dollar weakens, oil prices will rise. And there are grumblings internationally about getting away from the dollar altogether. If that happens, the dollar cost of oil is likely to be much higher.

Fortunately, there seem to be some folks who realize this - we are still selling bikes and electric motor kits to folks who realize that we have to change our ways of everyday transportation. But, I'm afraid there are many people who don't realize that there is this tsunami headed our way, and that the longer that gas prices stay low, the worse it will be when it hits. I know many people are optimists, who think some techno-fix will solve the problem. But, given that we are already past the peak in world oil, the promised techno-fixes aren't deployed in time. Some people have talked about the potential for electric cars to solve the problem. Electric cars are great, and there are quite a few people doing their own conversions now. But even if 10,000's of people do that, it is a miniscule drop in the bucket.

I don't want to sound like a pessimist - I'm not. I'm a realist, who realizes that some difficult times are headed our way, but I think we can change and adapt. However, that will require people changing their thinking. And it has become clear to me that, while some people are already changing their thinking, most are not. Most are "waiting for something to happen." That concerns me, because imagine waiting and waiting, then suddenly one day you can't buy gas for any price, because it is rationed for essential uses like farming or trucking? If things get to that point, it is too late to easily do something proactive about it (like moving closer to work, getting a bike, etc)

People often don't like hard truths like that. It must be some inbuilt defense mechanism, to avoid the obvious when it is staring us in the face. It was similar with the financial crash. Two years ago, after doing a lot of reading about our economy and the housing bubble, I realized we were headed for a big economic crash. I warned a lot of people I know about it, trying to convince them to get their retirement savings out of stocks and into something safer. But most people ignored the warnings. I have had several people come back to me and say "I wish I had listened to you." I don't feel gleeful at all about that, it is very sad that friends and relatives have lost retirement savings in this debacle.

But the thing is, if (or I should say, when) oil supplies start to seriously crash, the damage could be much worse to the unprepared.

And that's why I co-founded Cycle 9. To show people that there are alternatives, that exist right now, that can drastically reduce oil consumption for day-to-day trips. We don't have to wait for the Holy Grail to arrive. But we do have to change our way of thinking to realize that the solutions were at hand all along.

Work and pleasure

Today I got to combine work and pleasure: I rode 38 miles round trip on my electrified Big Dummy (the Firefly) to Duke University. I gave a seminar on Bioinformatics, and then rode home. It was a cold day out (at least for these parts), with my ride home dipping well below freezing. I brought along a thermos with hot tea, and stopped several times to top off my tea cup (mounted in my handlebar beverage holder). On the way home, I even stopped at my favorite place to waste spend money, A Southern Season, to buy some more tea and sundries.

Why is such a trip even of note? For a couple reasons. First, today we spoke to one of our bicycle suppliers on the phone. He was asking us about electric assist, and saying that he didn’t really “grok” (understand) the whole electric bike thing.

Today’s trip is a perfect example of why an e-bike works. I have ridden many miles on road bikes; I could have ridden the ~40 miles on my (non-electric) road bike on a recreational ride in better weather - easily. HOWEVER, I wouldn’t have done that in a down coat, with insulated boots, with a thermos of tea, with a handlebar stereo, with a large U-lock, with a full change of dress clothes (to give the talk), with my computer, with a full array of bike lights for after dark, and other miscellany. If I had ridden my road bike with that assortment of gear, I would have arrived very tired out (and also about 1 hour later).

With the e-bike, I got two hours of exercise (I was pedaling moderately the whole time), but I did the trip in luxury (especially since the Big Dummy allows me to carry so much stuff). I never got cold, since I had plenty of spare warm gear, and big heavy duty boots, down parka, etc. I was drinking hot tea for the whole ride there and back. I had good tunes. In the narrow, fast moving parts of the road, I used the electric assist to keep my speed faster to not impede traffic. I hauled my load of stuff up some steep hills without problem. I arrived for the seminar feeling good from the ride, but not worn out. I left after the talk with plenty of energy, and had a (mostly) pleasant ride home, through some back neighborhoods up some very steep hills (to avoid the more traffic filled routes).

Simply put, I wouldn’t have done this trip without the electrified longtail bike. I would have ended up driving a car. Comparing the energy usage of that:

Car: 25 miles per gallon. That’s about 1,320 watt-hours (KwH) per mile. If I still had a Prius, that might have been as good as 45 mpg (doesn’t do as well in cold weather), or 733 watt hours per mile. In other words, each mile traveled in a Prius would have consumed the equivalent of 7-hours running a 100 watt lightbulb. For the whole trip, that would would amount to 27 kWh - the equivalent of leaving a 100 watt lightbulb on in my house for 278 hours or 11 days straight (that’s with the more efficient Prius!)

Bike: 18 watt hours per mile (about 1,833 miles per gallon). The whole ride consumed 684 watt hours of electricity. That’s equal to less than one mile in the Prius, and about 1/2 mile in the big car! I could charge my battery with the equivalent of 7 hours of 100-watt lightbulb usage, easily doable with the solar panel on my roof.

Why highlight the stark difference? Simple: I never used to think about how much energy I was using when I got into the car to drive. And I suspect most people don’t. Gas has been so cheap for so long, there is no motivation to think about it. But, when put in the above context, it is all the more clear how much energy it takes to move that hulk of steel around. It doesn’t matter whether the car is electric or hybrid or whatever. It is heavy, and it travels fast. Both of those factors mean that it is intrinsically inefficient, and consumes a lot of energy. For those folks concerned about CO2 emissions, the above numbers say a lot.

But here’s the sad part. I studied the maps carefully before going, to find a route where I wasn’t going to be fighting traffic. And the best route I could find was far less than ideal. There was a 5-mile stretch of former country road, that is now used by commuter traffic. It was busy. It was narrow. It had no shoulder. And it was the least of all evils connecting the towns of Chapel Hill and Durham. Sure, I know about things like “ride big” and “take the lane”. I did those things. But as I watched in my rearview mirror for approaching traffic, it was a constant concern; would the car slow for me? Would I have to get out of the way? Statistics show that for slower-paced roads, concerns about being hit from the rear are overblown. That doesn’t change the basic human instinct to want to know what is going on behind, and not liking having a zillion cars whiz by. It is the number one reason more people don’t bike.

It just seems absolutely crazy that two neighboring college towns, Chapel Hill and Durham, don’t have a reasonable bike route connecting them. I blame this firmly on the old boy network in North Carolina’s DOT. Maybe I shouldn’t say this on a public blog, but those guys need to get their heads out of their rear ends and realize that we are in the 21st century, not the 1950’s. Maybe in the 1950’s we needed more roads to be built; now we don’t. Now, we need more bike paths, sidewalks, railways, and other means for people to get around without burning ridiculous amounts of energy. And doing this would benefit the drivers too - it is never fun for a cyclist to be passed by a bunch of cars on a narrow busy road. But it is no fun for the drivers, either. Building out infrastructure to appropriately accommodate both would make everyone’s lives better.

Would I do the trip to Durham/Duke again? Yes. It was great. Much better than sitting in a car or bus. I got exercise, and an adventure, all wrapped within some important work-related business. I would probably plan my ride for a bit less busy time, if possible. But, regardless of whether I would do it, most people just won’t face such a ride, without the kind of experience I have commuting by bike. And some people think I’m crazy, anyway. To get more people on their bikes, and less people using up tremendous amounts of energy to move metal boxes around, we need to invest in bike facilities, now.

Why isn’t that part of the economic stimulus?
(note: there are token amounts in the stimulus for bike paths, but they pale in comparison to road funds).

News from the front in the war on bike purism

We've had a lot going on this week, with moving our store to a smaller, temporary space while we sort out our permanent retail showroom. Nonetheless, the wheels of my mind are always turning, and here are a few resulting random thoughts:

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On the financial situation in the US. This is the big, big news. I can feel it in the air - everyone senses change is coming. Yes it is. The current blow-up in the big banks was not at all surprising to me. I've been reading this great site, itulip.com, for several years now. Eric Jantzen, its founder takes the long view based on history about our present situation, which he predicted quite accurately a few years ago. It is a large and complex problem that boils down to one simple thing: the USA has way too much debt. It is not just government, it is all of us. We are in hawk up to our ears as a nation. And our creditors are nations like China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Our continued spending spree is dependent upon them continuing to provide us an ever expanding credit line. Let's compare this to personal finances. One can get ever bigger credit lines and get further in further in debt - to a point. But when the creditors decide that the debts are too big to pay, they stop lending new money. What would (will) happen if (when) these countries decide to stop funding our profligate spending as a country? To sum up: ouch. A big change in the way most of us live, at least until we figure out how to get our manufacturing businesses re-started and re-build an economy based on true value, not just Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE, a term coined by Mr. Jantzen).

What does this have to do with bikes? Two things. First, a big portion of our debt as a nation are the > $500 billion per year we spend importing oil. What do we provide in return for those 4.8 billion barrels of oil we import per year? Create paper (or electronic) money. Money that can be printed, or at least created out of thin air as new treasury issues (i.e. debt). We are racking up the mother of all debts - debts that will be very hard to repay with anything of concrete value, unless we sell off all our assets to foreigners. The best way to reduce this debt, here and now, is for all of us to use less oil. Based on my own personal experience, electric bikes are the best available option, here and now, not some pie in the sky electric car that may or may not exist in the future at a price that may or may not be affordable to most of us.

But second, we as a business feel a responsibility to our community. We think that at least some of our products need to be produced locally. It is a long road from where we are now to that future, because in the past years, it's been pretty darn hard to compete with the Chinese and other countries on labor costs. But that is changing, slowly. Shipping costs are rising, while the dollar is sinking (see the stuff about our debt above, for an explanation of why). This means that as currencies like the Chinese Yuan rise against the dollar, imported products will get a lot more expensive. This is likely to re-balance the equation back towards making it favorable to produce at least some products at home. We are already starting in small ways - we build our own BMC wheels up in house, and we are designing a new DC/DC converter to power bike lights, stereos, coolers, etc directly from the main bike battery. That, too, will be produced locally. Those are small but important steps, providing local employment, and a tiny bit of insulation against drastic changes in world trade as various currencies re-balance.

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The eZee 26" kits are back in stock. These are still one of our favorite kits for upgrading a bike to electric - light weight and reliable. Also, easy to install.

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We've had a lot of inquiries about the BMC hub motors. We hand-build each wheel, so we'll be working hard to keep up with the interest.

Our next batch will be the new BMC V2 motors, which are capable of higher power and speed. Nominally rated at 600W, the new V2 motors have heavier wiring and internals to allow more extreme usage. They are capable of peak power of up to 1200W or so. We'll post more here as we get these in our hands and on our bikes for testing. We also have a V3 wheel (1000W) for testing. That wheel is supposed to be very, very fast.

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Well, the title of this entry mentions bike purism. I recently saw an article about the explosion of electric bicycles now available in the market. Some of the commenters wrote in with a negative attitude about electric bikes. The objections raised are the same ones I've been hearing since my first e-bike in 1994: why do you need power when you have perfectly good legs? Are you a wimp? When will you "graduate to a real bike?"

I do not think everyone needs an electric bike. There are plenty of people who are young, fit, or live close enough to work/shopping/etc that they are perfectly happy biking by leg power alone. That's great - I own 4 non-electrified bikes, and I use them often, and love them. But I also use and love my electric bike, for a variety of reasons that include: it is fun, it is great when I'm tired, it helps me carry heavy loads on my bike, it is more energy efficient than pedaling (because the food that I eat is transported mostly by oil-powered vehicles), it is great for hot weather, it helps keep me in shape, and it encourages me to ride the bike every single day and for all my errands.

So, my question is, why do the "purists" have to dump trash on the rest of us who find an electric bike practical and useful in our own lives? Excepting when I go on a rant like this one about their anti-ebike views, I don't trash on their choice of bikes. I've never once said "fixies are stupid" (referring to the trendy fixed gear bikes). What is it that compels such folks to have such an anti-ebike stance? I think it stems from the attitude that bikes are all about racing and recreation, and not for real transportation.

I've had multiple customers call up to tell us the same thing. They go into their local bike shop, and ask about an electric assist motor, and the bike shop folks look at them like they are aliens. They walk out, search on the web, and find us.

Seriously, there are many good things about ebikes, and it surprises me that so many in the bike industry in the US are so unaware of these facts:
1. Electric bikes are the most efficient form of transportation on the planet. They get over 2,000 miles per gallon equivalent.

2. Electric bikes encourage more people to ride. They help people who are out of shape, or in shape, get back on the bicycle and get in the car less. This leads to less oil use, less pollution, and a lot more fit people, reducing healthcare costs for us all.

3. A little racing bike is a lot of fun, but it is not meant to carry the items that most people need to carry in their day to day lives. For example: today I used my electric cargo bike to transport my daughter 9 miles each way to and from daycare, I picked up Chinese take out food, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a set of items including a large 3' x 3' screen protector, and I had a change of clothes handy for an important business meeting. I rode over 30 miles, transporting these things with an electric assist, that consumed a total of about 500 watt-hours of power, which costs about $0.07 (seven cents). By comparison, a typical SUV would have consumed 1.5 gallons of gas ($6.00), equivalent to 55 kWh of energy. That is 110 times the amount of energy, and 85 times the cost. A Toyota Prius is better, but still not great: optimistically estimating 50mpg for in town use, it would be about $2.40 for gas (34 times as expensive as my bike, not counting the difference in maintenance and depreciation costs), but more importantly, the Prius would consume at least 22kWh of energy, or 44 times the energy that I used on my bike. Do the purists really prefer that I just keep burning oil?

4. Electric bikes are not very complicated, but for a shop to provide good support and repairs, they do have to understand electricity. I understand why typical bike shops are reluctant in this regard. In our shop, we have a group of people with degrees in Physics, Biology, Computer Science, and (most of) a math degree. With that kind of background, figuring out what's wrong in an electrical system is not rocket science (it's not like what I do in my day job, which is developing computer programs to analyze genomes). But the typical bike person is not versed in volts, amps, power, and etc. I hope someday the USA will get to the point where many bike shops are versed in these things, because that will help all of us. But that will take a lot of time. In the meantime, I just wish those folks who complain about e-bikes being "difficult to fix" would just come out and admit that the reason they are "hard to fix" is because the person making this statement doesn't have the proper training to fix them.

5. I'm not going to "graduate" to a real bike (seriously, I've been asked when I will "graduate")! I have non electric bikes, and I ride them fast and hard. But I ride my electric bike fast and hard too. It is a great bike. There is nothing to graduate to, except an even more advanced electric bike.

C'mon bike purists, let it lie. There are more important battles to fight that affect all of us who bike, like getting better bike facilities and friendliness in our cities.

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And finally, something that all cyclists should cheer about (electric or not): The "Bicycle Commuter Act" passed as part of the Financial Bailout Package. This provides a tax credit for "Any qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement," of up to $240 per year ($20 per month that the bike is used for commuting). We're not tax experts, but it seems that a bicycle hub motor used in commuting should qualify... (ask your tax person to be sure!)