As a bike guy, having starting assembling and repairing bikes at Spoke and Sprocket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky in 1969, and later working in bike shops, owning bike shops, and selling bike shops until 1996, I have loved the mechanical simplicity and sophistication of human powered bicycles all of my life.
I add to my bike guy resume a successful racing career as a Junior in the long forgotten ABLA, a Triathlon participant, a USCF Official, a Race Promoter, and now a recovering bicycle retailer.
A gold trim on my credentials was being consistently in the Trek Top 100, and the Schwinn Presidents Club as well as The Best of SW Florida. I wrote a book on being a bicycle retailer (not a very good one), and for years all was great.
My last retail store was Benjamin Cyclery, a 4 store chain in SW Florida, which the family divested in 1995-96 after losing two family members / store managers to accident and cancer.
The idea of electric bicycles had fascinated me since I first heard of it in 1994. An elderly customer in our Naples store was bringing the earliest generation of tire scrubbers, Japanese PAS bikes, and more to us for adjustment and repair. Dr. Frank Jamerson PhD was an early observer, activist and writer on the electric bicycles emerging in Europe. He was to become my mentor and we would write Electric Bikes World Wide together for two decades.
In the 90’s, the human / electric hybrid seemed like a brilliant idea to me. As there were no jobs for ex-bike shop owners in a market where the existing shops still regarded me as an enemy competitor, I needed a new niche and thought electric bikes, which I knew were just starting in Asia.
An article in Japan Cycle Press by Alan Parker inspired me to think this was my future, and a part of the future of the Human Race.
An invitation from Hannes Neupert (Extra Energy ViG) to deliver a paper by Jamerson at a EU trade show, and a push from Dr. Jamerson to travel to Shanghai to report to him on ebike usage in China caused a Kentucky boy to get a passport and become an international traveler.
In those days, if an ebike worked, it was attention getting. There were many participants in the development and attempted commercialization of the electric bicycle idea. But the bikes were, at best, clunky and needed constant expert attention.
Regulations were mostly non-existent, with the exception of the Japan PAS system, which Yamaha (patent holder on that system) was lobbying other countries to adopt.
There were some famous players getting involved. Lee Iacocca of Ford and Chrysler fame was one who believed in and articulated a future similar to the one I saw. I regret that he never forgave me for contradicting him about his first year sales expectations in a Time Magazine interview. Dr. Currie was another.
Sales, world wide, were small. Japanese people were buying a few hundred thousand PAS bikes starting in 1994. China adopted laws to “encourage” electric bikes and “discourage” ICE two wheelers starting in 1996. But my first trip to China, in 1997, was a disappointment in that I found only two electric bikes on the streets of Shanghai, one without a battery.
That “encouragement” by China central government was to manifest itself in many important ways. Universities started to focus on the engineering needed. Battery development, motor development, controller development accelerated. And the huge domestic market that was promised (and would come to pass) not only caused a rapid pace of progress, but also created low costs due to economies of scale for key components. That created inexpensive ebikes for the west as well.
It helped that China was the land of the bicycle, where an estimated 650 million people used bicycles every day for transportation. It also helped that so many moped and gasoline assisted bicycle factories had to make a quick conversion to electric.
At that time, only a few people thought or imagined that we would see the present day situation. In 2024, only 28 years later, the fleet of electric bikes world wide in in excess of 350 million units. Adding in electric mini scooters and light electric motorcycles, mopeds, and motor scooters…not to mention handicap chairs…humans are using an astounding number of small electric vehicles.
And those vehicles are making money for their builders, developers, and distributors. Along with those who service them and educate about them.
Yet we are only in the early days. I think of today as being similar to the 1920’s for automobiles. The people of the 1920s were learning about, desiring, and buying cars…but would have had little idea of what was to come. They could not have imagined the sophistication, reliability and features of a new Lexus.
Today’s electric bikes and micro-mobiity vehicles work. Training exists for technicians (www.LEVAssociation.com), and millions are in use in most Asian and Western markets. We can believe that there will be similar numbers in use in every market soon.
Appropriate regulations exist for these vehicles in most markets now. In the USA this happened from the work of the Electric Cycle Association, and People for Bikes. (More on those in a future article). In Europe, LEVA-EU, Extra Energy, and others worked hard to create appropriate rules.
With vehicles that work, out of the box, and are reliable, appropriate laws…attention can change to advanced features. Here is a quick tour:
Accident prevention by way of vehicle to vehicle communication.
Crash response (calling an ambulance automatically) in the event of an injury accident.
Updates to the owner, and the builder, on vehicle condition and performance.
Automatic updates to software in the vehicle / motor / bus controller.
Batteries that are very unlikely to fail or catch fire due to testing and handling improvements.
Theft deterrence, due to GPS and internet connections.
Equally important, but still very much under the radar of most media and most in our industry:
Automated factories using printed parts that move production of our product out of the big factory across the sea, and into home towns. Creating MOQs of dozens of units instead of thousands. Reducing shipping costs, and creating highly targeted product.
Pressure on expanding the use of such small vehicles caused by climbing energy prices, especially oil pushing up the cost of ICE vehicle operation and increasing shipping costs.
Humans are moving into denser and denser cities. This will increase and such cities create problems with limited roadways, parking, and cost. But also make short range trips more common and ideal for bicycles and electric bicycles.
We are in the midst of a bright future.
Edward Benjamin, Fort Myers, FL, Feb. 2024