E-Bikes (are, um, wonderful)

6 July

I really dislike electric bikes, but I am doing my best not to. Really. I’m even writing this month’s blog post about how wonderful they are, which I’m sure will help convince me that they are, in fact, wonderful.

To be honest, my decision to write about e-bikes was inspired by the experience of nearly being run over by one, and I certainly didn’t feel fond of them then. I actually spent most of the next week planning out a long, impassioned essay explaining why the inattentive, non-pedalling, helmetless e-bike-straddling youth in my neighbourhood are the perfect metaphor for contemporary civil society collapse.

Unfortunately, I am no longer able to write that essay.

Before starting my magnum opus, I made the erroneous decision to first read all of the articles that are now located in the Further Reading section below, as well as several others. This led to the disdainful discovery that electric bikes are actually climate superheroes, which means I need to set aside my ‘Stop Being a Lazy Sod and Pedal, Dammit!’ tome and write something nice.

Do my best to, at least.

According to all of those articles, electric bikes are having a much more positive impact on carbon emissions than electric cars. That’s not really surprising. E-bikes are a lot smaller than the average Tesla; the backseat of an electric Hummer would quite easily fit half a dozen of them. As a result, they require much less mining and manufacturing to assemble and only a fraction of the energy to run. Anyone that buys an electric bike instead of a car, or even someone that replaces a couple of their weekly car trips with an e-bike, is automatically a climate warrior.

If everyone in my local area used an e-bike instead of a car every time they popped to the shops, it would certainly be a nicer place to live. I reserve the right to grumble about an obnoxious youth haphazardly zooming along the footpath, but I would prefer all of his mates were doing that instead of driving. Or, more specifically, instead of speeding through local roundabouts in dilapidated vehicles with offensively loud exhausts that are only partially drowned out by the much louder “language warning required” genre of music being pumped through their car windows.*

Imagine if your neighbourhood had fewer roads and wider bicycle lanes, and most people got about the local community by cycling. Wouldn’t that be a quieter, more pleasant place to live? It would. My little unit is on a quiet street but, even as I write this sentence at 8:35 p.m., I can hear the steady hum of cars and trucks from the nearest main road. Wherever you are, you can probably hear them too.

If people rode their e-bikes instead of driving (and I am italicising the word rode in order to emphasise the fact that I don’t just mean sat on), they would feel quite good about themselves when they got to their destination. If they did that regularly, they would probably feel better about life in general and that would mean fewer grumpy people in my local shopping centre, which would make the experience of leaving the house much more pleasant for the entire community.

You also can’t carry that much on an electric bike, which means e-bike commuters will be less likely to buy things they don’t need. (A slab of Coke seems much less appealing when you know you’ll have to cycle all the way home with it balancing precariously on the handlebars.)

The whole concept of an e-bike is really quite fantastic. Theoretically, people can go a lot further much faster than they would on a regular bicycle, which means they should be ideal for replacing car trips. Forty minutes to work on a pushbike might seem daunting, but it would be a piece of cake on an e-bike as you could cruise most of the way.

They are also much cheaper and smaller than vehicles, easier to ride than regular bikes, and you don’t need a special license. That makes them ideal for young people and those with poor mobility, limited space, or very little money. E-bikes provide a viable alternative to purchasing and maintaining a car. They are generally more expensive than non-electric bicycles, but most Australians would make back the cost in a year with what they would save in fuel alone. Charging an e-bike costs next to nothing, plus the insurance and servicing costs are a fraction of what car owners pay.

So, why is it that I have such an aversion to them?

Well, firstly, I’m really trying not to dislike them. Honestly. Have I not just said lots of lovely things? I am also perfectly aware that my ongoing aversion is centred around highly subjective personal observations and the discomforting sense that human beings are technologically edging themselves ever closer to obsolescence. I have absolutely no empirical evidence to support my emotion-based opinion, so I am probably wrong (and I really hope I am), but I can’t get rid of this nagging feeling that e-bikes are not replacing the cars as intended—they are simply (and unnecessarily) replacing the humble bicycle.

I have no doubt I would feel differently if all the e-bike owners I knew had disabilities that made regular bicycles an unfeasible transport option and electric bikes ideal, but I am yet to meet any of those people. I have no doubt there are plenty around. The NDIS has likely approved electric bike funding for hundreds of them. It has certainly (and unknowingly) paid for the e-bikes of thousands of participants that have not been approved funding for them.

For those with mobility issues who are able to get about on e-bikes, my aggravation about this form of transportation is not directed their way. I am pleased that an electric bike is available for them in the same way that I am pleased there are wheelchairs and scooters. They can provide independence to people that may not have it otherwise and that is a genuinely wonderful thing.

The trouble is, my experience of e-bikes is very different. While, granted, some disabilities are not visible, it is also highly unlikely that all the teenagers and office workers e-biking around my city are doing so out of physical necessity. It is lovely that people are biking, but I can’t help but wonder how they would be travelling if e-bikes weren’t around. If they would otherwise be driving, then the arrival of the e-bike as an alternative transport mode is a marvellous thing. I’m just not entirely convinced that this is what is happening.

Are all the youthful, nimble-looking cyclists straddling e-bikes because their commute is so arduous that a regular bike wouldn’t have been feasible? I don’t imagine so, yet e-bikes are increasingly the norm.

And this bothers me.

An e-bike uses much less energy than a car, but why use any at all, if you don’t have to? Our ever-growing list of devices attached to charging docks all add up (not to mention all the energy needed for lithium battery mining). Wouldn’t it be better to just use the excess energy we already have stored on our bodies to power the bike home from the office or supermarket? At least with a regular bicycle you wouldn’t need to worry about finding a charging point. If you’re battery runs low, you can just eat an apple.

Most e-bike owners would argue that the e-bike is essential. They made a very reasonable purchase taking into consideration the number of steep hills surrounding their house, the speed with which they would like to arrive at their destinations, their current fitness level, the weight of items they will need to carry, the weight of the person sitting on the bike (most likely an underestimate), and the probability of them cycling anywhere without an assisted motor (accurately assessed as ‘very low’). Based on all of that analysis, they have come to the very sensible conclusion that if any cycling is going to happen, it is going to be on an e-bike.

Fair enough.

Unfortunately, what many optimistic new e-bike owners fail to take into consideration is that, although the idea of commuting to work by bike seems less daunting when pedalling is not required, it is never going to be as warm or comfortable as when you are sitting in a car—or even on a bus. Cycling is outside. This means even e-bikers have to contend with wet, cold and miserable days; gale-force winds; cars parked on bike lanes; the noise of traffic; truck fumes; and the constant fear of not being seen by a warm and comfortable driver.

If all previous attempts to become a regular cyclist have failed miserably, and there is already a flat-tyred bicycle gathering cobwebs in the garage, will the purchase of a two-thousand-dollar e-bike really provide the impetus needed to make cycling the dominant mode of transport?

When riding conditions aren’t perfect (that’s most days), and when the alarm goes off and an e-bike owner realises they can snooze for thirty extra minutes if they drive to work, the car is going to win out. The initial new-bike-healthy-habits-complete-life-makeover enthusiasm will quickly wane, and the e-bike will just end up spending its days wedged in between the other unused bike and several boxes of decommissioned gym equipment. If it ever does get wheeled out and dusted off, it will only be for the occasional Sunday leisure ride during the summer, which means it will simply be replacing the perfectly good road bike that was already there.

When this becomes the life of an e-bike, they lose their climate hero status. They just just become more pointless stuff that we didn’t really need that we’ll end up storing with all the other stuff we didn’t really need either.

E-bikes can be wonderful, but only if they replace a car, and the best way for them to replace a car is to not have a car to begin with. So—to the car-less, the infirm, and the economically challenged, go ahead and buy yourself an e-bike. It will change your life for the better and won’t make the planet too much worse.

Everyone else should first dust the cobwebs off their rusty, old road bike, pump up the tyres, and commit to cycling to the local bakery and back every Sunday morning for the entirety of winter. If even the enticement of baked goods can’t keep you committed to a regular cycling practice, an e-bike probably won’t do it either. If it does keep you committed, you will likely find, by the start of spring, that you don’t need the e-bike at all.