Yeah I guess the big issue there is the voltage on the main battery is pretty high. Too high for USB. But it has to be brought down anyway for the electronics, so why not let people tap into it at that point? It’s petty not to offer the option.

Mine was a USB-A connector hidden under the display. Once I realized where it was, it was easy enough to get to. On my wife’s bike, it was trickier to find/use. I had to crane my neck and look carefully under where the finger controls were and there was a tiny panel with a USB-C connector behind it.

This all reminds a bit of what happened when we got a hybrid car and my coworker needed a boost. I had jumper cables on me but it was a real head-scratcher to figure out where to attach them on a hybrid? Like in the bike case, the battery is plenty powerful but the voltage is way too high. Eventually, I found a positive 12V terminal hidden in the fuse box! You remove the cover and there’s this U-shaped piece of metal sticking out you can attach the positive clip to.

I’ve tried it both ways. What I have noticed with the e-bike is I ride it 7 days a week, where it was more like half that with my old bike. Frankly, it is so much fun I am making excuses to get out there.

Some points based on my experience:

• I used to avoid deep ravine trails due to the steep climbs involved. Now I seek them out.
• I don’t mind travelling somewhat out of my way to reach said trails. It’s really no bother on an e-bike. Nothing is ever a slog anymore.
• Heat waves and smog alerts don’t phase me anymore.
• As for winter, you have more options. You can get fat tires that ride better through snow or mud, for example. Of course you can do so with a regular bike also, but it adds weight, so there’s a trade-off.
• Travel times have lowered somewhat, but more importantly, they have become much more consistent. You don’t pay a time penalty for fighting head winds.
• I don’t show up at work a sweaty mess.
• If I want a stronger workout, I can choose where and when to do it, such as on a trail rather than busy city streets, and on the way home rather than work.
• I tend to slow down more often, where before I was blowing through stop signs and what not.
• If you have any muscle or joint issues, e-bikes are a godsend.
• A minor point, but my e-bike has a usb for charging phones. (These things are amazingly stealth. I owned mine for like a year before realizing it was tucked under a rubberized cover below the front panel, and then I found it on my wife’s bike in a different spot.)

On the negative side:

• My e-bike model at least is bulkier than a regular bike (I do have the fat tires for winter and all that), which can make it more challenging to lock it up at bike racks.
• Brake pads don’t seem to last as long as they used to.
• Yes, it costs more initially. But as the article points out, if this is an alternative to driving, you quickly make back the investment. A regular bike is obviously the cheapest option of all though.

The carbon tax was revenue neutral. It came back to you in the form of rebates. If you were an average Joe and did absolutely nothing in response to it, you’d still break even.

But if you did do something to lower your personal carbon footprint, you’d get ahead. You’d be getting back more than you were paying. And the higher the tax went, the bigger the payout would become. That was the point of it. It was an incentive to lower your taxes and emissions at the same time.

But all people with half a brain could hear was TAX TAX TAX. And so here we are…

I was renewing my CAA today (Canadian equivalent of AAA motor club in US) and they mentioned they do roadside assist for bikes now. So I looked it up and among the FAQ it said:

Do we cover motorized bicycles? Yes, provided they are conventional bicycles with standard pedals and chain and mounted with an external electric geared motor. Motorcycles, electric scooters and mopeds are covered under Plus and Premier Memberships only.

That’s interesting that scooters are only covered by their higher tiers while e-bikes are fine with the basic plan I have. Bikes are looking better and better at this point.

How is the center of mass is lower on a scooter? It is the same or higher.

I guess I was thinking in terms of the contraption itself. The battery and the bulk of the weight would be down near ground level. But that’s a good point about the rider’s position.

The tiny scooter wheels will react enormously to tiny disadvantages in the road surface and the consequences of it. Hitting an tiny rock on the asfalt with a e-scooter will result in way nastier accidents than hitting a similar rock on the asfalt with a bicycle.

Yeah, this was main concern. There are potholes around here that are so bad your teeth may clunk together if you don’t have any sort of suspension, and I can’t help but think it would be difficult to steer your way out of those if you hit one on a scooter?

My main reason for considering a scooter was for hybrid trips where you drive to another place and then ride around. But if anything, the by-laws are even more vague around e-scooters than e-bikes in a lot of cities, so that makes me a little reluctant to take one on the road. Folding e-bikes are getting much smaller now though, so that might be the better option?

I ride a scooter on a regular basis. With regards to terrain: I can do uneven terrain pretty well. The only time I’ve run into trouble is when my wheel got caught on a train track once, but that was easily avoidable. 100% I can assure you they are easier to manage than skates.

That’s good to hear.

As for the brakes, they can definitely kind of suck. My scooter only has brakes on the front wheel, which makes riding in the rain diffcult, but I’ve learned to do slower braking which prevents my back wheel from fish-tailing.

Ohh boy… I think I will insist on rear brakes if I find myself in the market. Wow.

I am curious about e-scooters but have never ridden one. They have a lower centre of mass which, in theory, would offer some advantage over bicycles in terms of the severity of collisions.

Otoh would you not tend to have more control issues over uneven terrain? I think about my inline skates from the 90s. The streets suck here, and I had one too many an instance of a pothole or a bump sending me flying to keep that up.

Scooters have bigger wheels than skates, of course, but much smaller than bikes and they seem to have very low ground clearance. This makes me a little edgy.

My coworker who switched to one after riding an e-bike to work said the brakes were weaker with the e-scooter. That could just be a workmanship issue. I’d have to think about whether physics would play a role there?

Yeah, I guess it keeps you far enough away from the light/heat source to avoid burns. But in this day and age of LEDs, it’s rather vestigial. Maybe you can make a game out of flicking rubber bands through the hoop?

What a one-sided article. I am rather disappointed with the BBC.

To begin with, statistics show the prime motivator for adopting e-bikes is as an alternative to driving. Yet there is no mention of how traffic fatalities are affected by people moving away from vehicles.

The article is narrowly focused on e-bike incidents involving self-injury or injury to pedestrians. It criticizes the extra weight of an e-bike vs a conventional push bike. Let’s consider that for a moment. My weight as a rider is easily over 3x that of the e-bike. And let’s say a regular bike would weigh half as much. Then the aggregate increase in weight from me choosing an e-bike is something like 1/6th more weight. Sure, that could factor into the severity of an injury, but we’re not talking 2-ton vehicles here…

Then it mentions speed. Street legal ebikes are limited to not travel faster than regular bikes. The extra weight does add some kinetic energy. Otoh I am literally hard-pressed to go faster than the limiter on my own power and people on regular bikes pass me all the time. The only place where I have an advantage is in climbing hills. I don’t mind if they make speed zones around playgrounds and what not. I never pass a pedestrian at >20 kph myself. Most e-bikes have speedometers. Most regular bikes do not, however, so there could be some trouble with regulating that.

Our transportation network isn’t ready for a full return-to-office either.

Nice dig at OCTranspo there…

C’mon this totally rocks! Seriously though, I like it.

I’ve been thinking of late that his tweets look AI generated. You just enter something like: take today’s news from a reputable source, invert all the facts, add lots of hyperbole, and capitalize words for emphasis.

That’s good to know! Actually, now that I think of it, my wife and I visited the one and only mosque in our home town during a public event in a show of solidarity after it got vandalized. And I have to say, it was an absolute food fest in there!

I once had a conversation with my boss who was well-travelled. He said the secret to Europe is to eat in the Catholic countries. If you must spend time within a Protestant country, look around for a Catholic enclave within it. Not only will the food be superior, but people will be falling over each other to make sure you are well fed.

I looked at him incredulously. How can you say that? It’s such a sweeping generalization! And then I went to Europe…

Yeah, I know what true shepherd’s pie is made of thanks to Denis Leary.

I was thinking more Hugh Laurie?

I always wanted to see what Florida Man actually looks like. Dude’s been through a lot!

I got a twinge of sympathetic lower back pain when I saw this, so your art has real power!

I hate articles that don’t give real units. 5 million households. Ugh. According to another article, we’re talking 7 GW.

I don’t know about the AI projections, but the idea that the current US administration would have a reasoned, thoughtful response to any emerging threat from AI or react in a constructive way to widespread public protests over it is what strains credulity for me.