Wide load! Extra thick four-wheeled electric cargo bikes to replace trucks in New York
A proposed rule update in New York will pave the way for four-wheeled electric cargo bikes, which look like small delivery vans with bicycle pedals, to share the bike lanes and roads.
Four-wheeled electric cargo bikes are commonly used across Asia and Europe, often for last mile delivery. They’re larger than typical e-bikes but much smaller than box trucks and delivery vans used in the US for last mile delivery jobs.
They usually consist of a rear cargo box on a larger platform cargo bike frame, and use bicycle pedals paired with standard mid-drive motors common across most electric cargo bikes. Thus, while they may look like a shrunken delivery van, they’re still operated like an electric bicycle.
Most bicycle laws in the US require either two or three wheels to be legally classified as a bicycle, and thus four-wheeled e-bikes have yet to catch on in the country. But if the New York City Department of Transportation gets its way, those useful last mile delivery bikes will finally be coming to the Big Apple.
The proposal hopes to use the four-wheeled cargo e-bikes to make deliveries safer and more sustainable by reducing the number of delivery trucks on New York City streets.
Mayor Eric Adams, who has been a proponent of increased micromobility in NYC, explained how the use of these larger electric cargo bikes will help improve the city:
“Safety and sustainability go hand in hand in New York City, and our administration is innovating every day and using every tool available to advance both. Cargo bikes have been a valuable tool in our administration’s efforts to move goods throughout the city while prioritizing street safety and our environment, and these pedal-assist cargo bikes will help New Yorkers get the items they need while reducing carbon emissions and traffic congestion — and getting dangerous trucks off our streets.”
NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez further detailed the impact of using cargo e-bikes instead of box trucks:
“Greater use of cargo bikes will bring incredible environmental and safety benefits for New York City by reducing the number of large, high-polluting trucks on our streets. Just two cargo bikes can replace one box truck, increasing safety and reducing CO2 emission by 14 tons per year — equivalent to 30,872 passenger car miles traveled.”
In order to allow for these types of cargo e-bikes, the NYC DOT will have to update current laws. Electric cargo bikes used on NYC’s streets and bike lanes have previously been limited to a width of just 36 inches (91 cm) and no more than three wheels. According to the NYC DOT, the updated rule would “expand low or no-emission options for freight deliveries — including packages and groceries — by allowing the use of pedal-assist bicycles that may be up to 48 inches [122 cm] wide and have up to four wheels.”
The rule proposal isn’t final, and the city has just opened a 30-day public comment period. The NYC DOT will hold a virtual public hearing on the proposed rule on September 13, 2023.
Cargo bikes have seen rapid expansion in NYC where they are frequently used for commercial deliveries.
Since the launch of the NYC DOT’s Commercial Cargo Bike pilot program back in 2019, cargo bike deliveries have skyrocketed in the city. In 2022, cargo bikes made more than 130,000 trips delivering over 5 million packages. That resulted in the reduction of over 650,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions and demonstrated the effectiveness of cargo bikes as a last-mile delivery mode.
NYC is leading the US with hundreds of thousands of cargo e-bike trips per year and millions of deliveries, yet is still playing catchup compared to cargo e-bike deliveries in Europe and Asia. But just as the consumer e-bike market in the US has followed years behind the rest of the world, it appears that the North American commercial cargo e-bike market is finally joining the modern age of urban delivery as well.
Electrek’s Take
It’s about time! This is wonderful news for anyone who lives in NYC and uses the road (no matter what type of vehicle you use). But it’s also great for anyone who breathes air and lives within roughly 12,500 miles (20,000 km) of NYC.
The only downside here is that some cyclists are going to be annoyed about sharing the bike lane with what are effectively bike vans. And I get it. The bike lane is an area to efficiently slip through the city, and getting stuck behind a wide bike is going to be annoying. But you know what’s worse? Getting run over by a box truck. At least when an overworked and underpaid FedEx driver parks a four-wheeled e-bike in the bike lane, you can still pedal around it.
Also, this is basically going to become the new normal so we better get used to it. Just as it’s annoying to get stuck behind a truck on the road when you’re driving, it’s going to be annoying to get stuck behind a big bike in the bike lane. But in the same way that we still acknowledge the truck’s right to use the road, we have to acknowledge the right of bigger bikes to use the bike lanes. This is all for the greater good, which is reducing the use of heavy and dangerous delivery vans/trucks in our cities. If Amsterdam’s e-bikes of all sizes can co-exist, we can make it happen too. And if this helps push the city to continue its expansion of bike lanes, then all the better.
via: Gothamist
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Rather than straining the grid, the batteries in EVs can actually help to stabilize the energy grid under heavy loads. PG&E gets that, and to encourage participation in its growing V2G programs, the utility is offering GM Energy customers in its territory up to $4,500 toward qualifying home battery systems.
Billed as a glimpse into the future of energy resilience, efficiency, and sustainability, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) launched a pilot program with GM Energy in March, and the pilot’s success has led to more serious conversations around the topics of home batteries, EVs, and other distributed energy resources (DERs) on the national level.
Now that it’s had time to digest the results of the initial pilot, it seems like the Oakland-based utility is doubling down, the utility is expanding the program, encouraging participation with up to $4,500 in incentives for GM Energy customers willing to plug in.
While giving customers the ability to use their GM EV as a back-up home generator is an incredible, practical benefit to customers, it is just the beginning of what we can do to help encourage mass EV adoption with this technology … with the right incentives and policies in place, programs like this one could accelerate the shift toward a more distributed energy model.
As more states explore ways to meet renewable and distributed energy targets as they build up grid resilience – witness Illinois’ recent passing of SB25, which is slated to add 3 GW of battery storage by 2030 – incentives that encourage new participation in V2H, V2G, and VPP tech can help utilities meet those goals.
While you gear up to write your state legislators about what a great/terrible job they’re doing to encourage more EVs in your neck of the woods, you can check out this episode of EV Reality Check where my good friend (and frequent Quick Charge guest) Matt Teske interviews Harris Schaer, Senior Program Manager, Utilities & Aggregators at GM Energy, as they look at similar programs already live across the country, talk up some real-world performance data, and explore the ways utility partnerships are shaping the future of distributed energy.
GM Energy v. Matt Teske
SOURCE: GM.
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A new video surfacing from a Tesla demonstration in Miami this weekend shows the Optimus humanoid robot taking a nasty fall. But it’s not the fall itself that is raising eyebrows, it’s the specific hand movements the robot made on its way down, which strongly suggest it was mimicking a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset.
Humanoid robots are all the hype right now. Billions in investments are pouring in, and Elon Musk claims it will be a trillion-dollar product for Tesla, justifying its insane valuation.
The idea has been that with the advent of AI, robots in human form could use the new generalized artificial intelligence to replace humans in an increasingly larger number of tasks.
However, there are still many serious concerns about the effort, both at the ethical and technological levels.
Technologically, most humanoid robot demonstrations have relied on remote control by human operators – pointing to a remaining gap between the software and hardware.
We discussed how the robots at the “We, Robot” event were heavily teleoperated, despite Tesla not explicitly disclosing that fact to the public.
That was more than a year ago, and despite claims that Tesla has made “AI demos” of Optimus since, it appears the company still relies on teleoperation to control them during demonstrations.
The Tesla Optimus Miami Incident
This weekend, Tesla held an event called ‘Autonomy Visualized’ at its store in Miami. The goal was to showcase Tesla’s “Autopilot technology and Optimus.”
However, there was nothing “autonomous” at Tesla’s “autonomy” event.
Many Tesla fans were seen posting videos of a Tesla Optimus robot handing out bottles of water at the event. It was also seen posing for pictures and dancing.
On Reddit, someone posted a different video of the demonstration:
As you can see, Tesla Optimus moved its hands too quickly, causing some water bottles to drop to the ground. It then loses its balance and begins to fall backward.
But the most interesting part is that just before falling backward, both of its hands immediately shoot up to its “face” in a distinct grasping motion, as if pulling an object off its head.
The robot, of course, is not wearing anything on its head.
The motion is instantly recognizable to anyone who has used VR or watched teleoperation setups. It appears the human operator, likely located backstage or in a remote facility, removed their headset in the middle of operating the robot for unknown reasons.
Optimus faithfully replicated the motion of removing a non-existent headset as it crashed to the floor.
Here’s a look at how Tesla trained Pptimus with VR headsets in its lab:
Electrek’s Take
This is embarrassing, but not just because the robot fell. Robots fall; that’s part of the R&D process. Boston Dynamics blooper reels are legendary, and they never really eroded the company’s credibility.
The problem here is the “Wizard of Oz” moment.
The specific motion of removing the “phantom headset” destroys the illusion of autonomy Tesla tries so hard to curate.
Even recently, Musk fought back against the notion that Tesla relies on teleoperation for its Optimus demonstration. He specified that a new demo of Optimus doing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated”:
Musk said again during Tesla’s last earnings call in October:
“Optimus was at the Tron premiere doing kung fu, just up in the open, with Jared Leto. Nobody was controlling it. It was just doing kung fu with Jared Leto at the Tron Premier. You can see the videos online. The funny thing is, a lot of people walked past it thinking it was just a person.”
Musk keeps telling shareholders that Optimus will be the biggest product in history and that millions of units will be working in factories soon. But if they are still relying on 1:1 teleoperation to hand out water bottles right now, it feels like we are still far away from a useful generalized Optimus robot.
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After images of an the new mid-sized electric crossover were leaked by the Chinese MIIT, Nissan pulled the wraps off its all-new NX8 – and it looks so good, I’m wondering if it couldn’t spearhead the brand’s American turnaround.
Nissan has had a rough go of it in the US, if not, well – everywhere of late. And while we may all have our own ideas about what Nissan needs to do to turn its ship around and get back to its winning ways, one thing just about every auto industry analyst seems to understand is that, at its core, Nissan’s problem is a product problem.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Despite what the optics of cynically slapping a Nissan badge on a decade-old Mitsubishi platform and calling it a new Rogue might have you believe, Nissan happens to have fantastic, modern new products in its production pipeline – including the all-new NX8 BEV and EREV crossover shown here. There’s just one problem: Nissan’s comeback cars are all in China.
The “N” stands for Nice
Dongfeng Nissan, a Chinese-market automotive joint venture between Dongfeng Motor Group and Nissan, has been rolling out hit after hit in recent months, like the N6 (above), which sits between the Altima and Maxima, size-wise, and offers 112 miles on a full charge of its 21.1 kWh LFP battery before its 1.5L gas engine kicks on to keep the odometer rolling.
The N6’s stablemate, the all-electric Dongfeng Nissan N7 sedan, debuted a few months earlier to rave reviews and hot sales, too – moving more than 10,000 units in the model’s first three weeks on the market.
Like its sedan siblings, the all-electric version of Nissan NX8 crossover rolls on an 800V system architecture and features a CATL-sourced LFP battery pack with 5C ultra-fast charging technology (xC is how many you can charge in an hour, effectively, so 60 minutes divided by 5 = it can charge in as little as 12 minutes). That battery reportedly sends power to a single electric motor putting out either 215 kW (~290 hp) or 250 kW (~335 hp), depending on model.
EREV version of the NX8, meanwhile, features a similar setup to the N6, pairing a 1.5L ICE producing 109 kW (~145 hp) with a 195 kW (~260 hp) electric motor. Expect the NX8 EREV to get slightly less than the N6’s claimed 112 miles of electric-only range (Chinese cycle).
The NX8 is expected to reach its first customers in April 2026. Take a look at some of the firs official photos of the new Nissan crossover, below, then let us know how you think this would do in the US in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Dongfeng Nissan NX8
SOURCE: Dongfeng Nissan, via CNEVPost.
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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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