It’s not an ‘electric bike craze.’ You’re looking at the future of transportation
As electric bikes become increasingly popular in cities across the US, some in the media are trying to wrap their heads around this reported “electric bike craze.” But make no mistake, this isn’t some short-lived enthusiasm or a passing fad. This widespread adoption of e-bikes by young and old alike is merely the first signs of a paradigm shift.
That’s right, welcome to the future.
Sure, the car is still king in the US. But not like it once was.
The rate of US teens seeking driver’s licenses has continuously dropped for decades. The reasons are myriad. Cars are more expensive than ever. Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. Cities are slowly becoming more navigable without cars. Young people care more about the environment because they’re the ones who will have to survive it. The reasons go on and on.
But the newest reason added to the list rolls in on two wheels. Not the traditional bike, but the electric bike.
Unlike pedal bicycles, whose sales have been on a steady decline outside of the pandemic-induced boost, electric bicycles are skyrocketing in popularity. They give the same freedom of movement as a pedal bicycle, yet are easier to ride with the motor-assisted pedaling. That lets people go faster and travel longer distances than they previously thought possible. Throttle enabled e-bikes are even easier to use as they don’t even require pedaling – they can basically be used as 20 mph (32 km/h) mopeds. At that speed, they’re fast enough for people to cruise through a city easily yet don’t come with the same power and speed concerns that have traditionally turned most commuters away from motorcycles.
Add in the free parking, low entry cost, nearly zero maintenance cost, as well as turning commutes and errands from slogs into joy rides, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a new transportation paradigm.
While electric bikes were once the domain of elderly riders in the US that had discovered a way to get back on two wheels for recreational rides and light fitness, now the new technology is found across the age spectrum from kids to adults. And it’s no longer just about Sunday morning cruises or getting in a workout; electric bikes are now widely used as serious transportation and utility vehicles in their own right.
As much of the media is still trying to understand the phenomenon of this massive growth in e-bike use, cities are already grappling with just how to handle it. Not only are cities around the US seeing their own rise in e-bike usage, but several are helping to support the shift away from cars by providing incentives for purchasing electric bikes.
Even without incentives though, e-bikes are surprisingly affordable. Like anything, you’ll find fancier expensive options. But a good e-bike can be bought for under $1,000. When you compare that to the cheapest $40,000 Tesla, you can see why young people are moving to e-bikes in droves.
That massive adoption rate among younger riders though has also lead to questions about safe riding. Santa Barbara City Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez, himself an electric bike rider, explained to the Independent that he wholeheartedly believes that most e-bike riders are “law abiding, responsible, and considerate,” but that some reckless riders are “bad actors” that give a bad name to everyone.
Cities and states around the country are seeking solutions to help regulate and manage the growing influx of e-bike riders. Many are quickly adding bike lanes to help provide safer cycling areas away from the leading cause of death among bike riders: cars. Others are proposing rider education programs for those that don’t yet have driver’s licenses, such as a new bill proposed in California that would create a simpler “rider’s license” e-bike riders that use public roads but have never taken driver’s education or gotten a driver’s license.
On one side of the issue, some argue that cities should take a light touch, making it safer to cycle with better public infrastructure but without imposing burdensome regulations that could disincentivize cycling. Others believe that the increased number of riders, especially teens and young adults that have sometimes demonstrated a penchant for reckless riding, should be met more heavy-handedly with police crackdowns.
If you know me, then you may already know what I think. But if not, that’s what the next section is for.
Electrek’s Take
To me, this is a very simple issue. No matter who you are, as long as you are a road user, you should like seeing more usage of e-bikes, scooters, skateboards, pedal bikes, a solid pair of shoes or any other personal transportation device. Studies have shown that a mere 10% shift from car drivers to bike riders has resulted in a 40% reduction in traffic congestion. Even if you never touch an e-bike, you would benefit from supporting their increased use.
That being said, I absolutely understand the safety issue related to dangerous riding. Anyone being reckless on the roads should be held accountable. No one should use the roads recklessly, whether you’re on a 50-pound electric bike or a 5,000-pound car. Hmmm, it almost seems like one of those is drastically more dangerous than the other, now that I think of it.
You’ll often hear complaints about cyclists running red lights, and that certainly can be dangerous. The implementation of rules like the Idaho stop can help make it safer for cyclists to navigate stops signs and red lights.
But to me, I think there is still room for compromise on e-bike safety. We’re going to see more riders every year, so we need to figure this out. In parallel to creating more safe, protected cycling lanes to separate bikes from the same roadways as cars, we should also enforce reckless driving laws, whether that means ticketing drivers or riders who endanger others on the road or in the bike lanes.
The tricky part, as it often does, comes down to enforcement. Police departments are often stretched thin, and ticketing bike-riding hooligans or car drivers parking in bike lanes isn’t a top priority. Perhaps we can find a little more funding (cough, tax car registrations, cough) to create an “E-bike Force” of bike cops who focus on this primarily. It could even be a force of good, not just doling out punishments. They could carry tire pumps and tools, helping cyclists and handing out education just as often as ticketing rule breakers. Who knows, maybe I’m a dreamer. But I think that if we actually care about making our cities safer, then we should prioritize getting more people on bikes and also find a way to educate riders and drivers while simultaneously enforcing rules that are designed to keep people safe.
Perfect, now people from both sides of the argument can crap on me in the comments section below.
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Elon Musk went on an all-day Tesla self-driving propaganda spree ahead of the company’s earnings, which are expected to be rough.
It’s well known these days that Musk doesn’t often comment on Tesla as he is busy with his government work, buying elections, and running several private companies.
Some Tesla shareholders argue that the CEO is neglecting the public company, which saw its stock tumble this year.
That wasn’t the case today.
Musk went on a tweeting spree about Tesla, specifically about Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Here are some of the highlights:
Tesla posted that “one day” its vehicles will drive themselves from the factory to new customers and Musk couldn’t stop himself and had to say that it will happen “this year”:
Like most of Musk’s self-driving comments, this one is hard to take seriously since he said the exact same thing in 2018 and claimed it would happen in 2019.
The tweet he was responding to has been deleted by the author, but it asked when Tesla vehicles would drive themselves to customers:
Spoiler alert: regulators are not the bottleneck here.
Musk then claimed that “Tesla self-driving will be far safer than human driving”:
The problem here is that Musk has claimed on many occasions that Tesla’s FSD is already safer than humans, like in 2023: “Supervised FSD is vastly safer than human driving.”
There’s no data that supports that. Tesla refuses to share any data regarding its self-driving program and instead, the company shares a very misleading quarterly “safety report.”
Considering Tesla’s FSD requires supervision from a driver at all times, the driver’s supervision and attention help reduce accidents that the self-driving system wouldn’t necessarily prevent.
Musk also shared positive experiences of a few Tesla owners, including a Tesla engineer and Joe Rogan:
As we often highlight, Tesla’s FSD can be impressive to use, but the problem is when you compare it to its promise, which is in the name: full self-driving.
Under its current form, FSD is still a level 2 advanced driver assist system, and not self-driving, but Musk said that it would become truly “unsupervised” self-driving every year for the last 8 years.
Therefore, it’s not what Musk has been promising buyers for years and as for when it is coming, he has been consistently wrong and has asked owners to rely on anecdotal experiences as Tesla refuses to release any data.
We previously reported that Musk has twice positively referred to a crowdsourced Tesla FSD dataset that shows Tesla’s FSD v13 on HW4 is achieving fewer than 500 miles between critical disengagements.
Tesla has previously stated that FSD must achieve 700,000 miles between critical disengagements to be safer than humans.
The spree of Tesla FSD tweets comes as Tesla is preparing to report its Q1 2025 earnings next week, which should be difficult after the automaker reported its lowest delivery results in three years.
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Texas is No. 1 in the US for wind and solar capacity, but the Texas Senate just passed a bill that aims to kneecap clean energy with an industry-killing review process. Will the Texas House pass it, too?
The Texas Senate today passed SB 819, which creates new restrictions on the development of wind and solar energy under the guise of “protecting” wildlife. The restrictions don’t apply to any other forms of energy.
Texas uses an extraordinary amount of power, and renewables play a big part in supplying that power. The Texas Tribune reported in March that “ERCOT [the Texas grid] predicts that Texas’ energy demand will nearly double by 2030, with power supply projected to fall short of peak demand in a worst-case scenario beginning in summer 2026.” That’s because of extreme weather, population growth, and crypto-mining facilities.
As of February, Texas increased its energy supply by 35% over the last four years, and 92% of that supply came from solar, wind, and battery storage.
Solar is the largest source of energy generating capacity that has been added to the Texas grid. That’s because it’s cost-effective and it can be deployed quickly. So if new solar projects are kneecapped, power demand will outstrip supply in the Lone Star State.
Daniel Giese, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)’s Texas director of state affairs, stated after the Senate’s vote, “With energy demand rising fast, Texas needs every megawatt it can generate to keep the lights on and our economy strong. We cannot afford to turn away from the pro-energy and pro-business policies that made the Lone Star State the energy capital, but that’s exactly what SB 819 does. We urge the Texas House to reject this bill.”
Less clean energy would also jack up electricity bills for Texans, and rural areas would lose billions in landowner revenue and tax payments. Every time a wind farm or solar farm is installed on rural land, it brings a lot of money to the community that surrounds it. A January report estimated that existing and planned solar, wind, and battery storage projects will contribute $20 billion in local tax revenue and $29.5 billion in landowner payments.
What’s especially baffling about this bill is that it flies in the face of a core Texas value – keeping the government out of private property decisions – yet it does precisely the opposite.
Environment Texas executive director Luke Metzger issued the following response: ‘By making it much more difficult to build wind and solar energy in Texas, this bill threatens to increase pollution, increase blackouts and increase our electric bills.
“Under the guise of helping land and wildlife, SB 819 would create a discriminatory and capricious permitting standard that could grind renewable energy development to a halt.
“We urge the House of Representatives to reject this bill and instead support policies that promote a cleaner, more sustainable energy future for all Texans.”
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I find this bill ludicrously masochistic. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and please keep it civil.
Read more: A vast 600 MW Texas solar farm just hit a major milestone [update]
To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
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Blink Charging’s (Nasdaq: BLNK) new partnership with Eco-Movement will make Blink’s EV chargers a lot easier to find across multiple platforms.
Eco-Movement is a global platform that collects, refines, and maintains a massive real-time database of public and semi-public EV charging locations and pricing data. That info is used by some of the biggest names in the industry. Now, Blink is tapping into Eco-Movement’s platform to make its chargers way easier to find – whether you’re searching on Google Maps, asking your voice assistant, using a charging app, or navigating from your car’s dashboard.
As new Blink chargers come online, Eco-Movement updates its database of EV charging locations in real-time, and that information is incorporated by mapping and charger-finder apps. That way, EV drivers are kept up to date.
Mike Battaglia, president and CEO at Blink, said, “The leading mapping apps trust Eco-Movement and its state-of-the-art, quality-checked, and constantly updated data. We are excited to be teaming with them to ensure drivers worldwide can easily find our chargers and receive up-to-the-minute updates on charger availability.”
Eco-Movement’s global database includes detailed charging point info – like addresses, operators, pricing, accessibility, truck compatibility, and real-time availability – along with roaming partners, membership rates, and payment options.
“Ultimately, this data will help EV drivers all over the world to find their next charging stop, which is a mission we share with Blink,” said Roderick van den Berg, CEO of Eco-Movement.
Read more: Blink Charging will more than triple EV charger production with a new factory
To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
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