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Endorphin: Electric bike weighs just 26 pounds (12kg) and is barely recognisable as an e-bike
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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Is this actually true though? I'm not a mechanical engineer, and while I do know that material properties necessarily influence the realized design, I can't quite see how swapping out an aluminum or steel frame for a carbon fiber frame is going to save any more than maybe 2-5 kilograms max.
My cursory examination of the popular ebike models suggests the current average weight is around 25 kilogram. I would posit that the higher weight for run-of-the-mill ebikes compared to this €5800 model is more likely due to: 1) overbuilt, stock frame designs in errant anticipation of offroading or hitting potholes faster than an acoustic bicycle would be subject to, 2) a lack of market demand for pushing the weights down, since the motor can compensate for the loss of performance, and 3) if a bicycle of any type is going into the mid four figures, of course it would use premium, lighter components than other cheaper manufacturers.
What I'd love to see is a teardown of a commercially available $2k range ebike to see how much the frame really weighs. The motors and batteries can't really be reduced without substantial electrical or chemical engineering, but frame design is well within the remit of bike manufacturers, and I think it behooves them to not overbuild the frame. Ebikes deserve to be equally hauled up a flight of stairs, or onto a bus, or just onto a bike stand. And it's not like acoustic bikes can't get up to ebike speed going downhill, and their frames generally hold up just fine.
To be clear, I'm mostly talking about conventionally shaped bicycles versus conventionally shaped ebikes. It would be apples to oranges to suggest that a cargo ebike should weigh only as much as an acoustic commuter bike. For a cargo bike, payload capacity is a major consideration and so would warrant an appropriately sized frame. But the weight discrepancy between an equally capable cargo bike and cargo ebike should not exceed that of the motor, battery, and ancillary components.
IDK, but this weighs less than my regular bike (a modified steel Trek 820) and a third of my ebike (modified EP2, also fuck Engwe - terrible company, don't buy their shit)
There are some other light ebikes out there but yeah, a lot of them seem unconcerned with shedding weight or battery capacity.
But when you're talking in terms of rider+bike, a handful of kilograms isn't going to be a huge difference unless you're really focused on your Strava stats or you're racing (other people or the clock). I mean, the difference between 10 and 15kg seems significant but throw an 80kg rider and 5kg of gear on that thing and suddenly you're comparing 95kg to 100kg which is far less drastic, that kinda thing. So I can see why some are tanks
I get that the weight pales in comparison to the rider or cargo. But a lighter bike -- electric or otherwise -- comes with some quality of life improvements. There's the extra redundancy where a dead ebike is still ridable if it's light enough or has sufficiently low rolling resistance. Then there's transporting the bike, whether by bus, car, or just hitching a ride if the bike is dead or damaged.
My experience at university -- where an ebike would have been phenomenally useful back then -- involved hauling my acoustic bike up two flights of stairs daily. At 15 kg, that was doable. 25 kg is starting to push things. And my current ebike at 40 kg would be infeasible unless I decide to really work on my deadlift.
But I agree that there's a point where ebikes are Good Enough(tm) given the constraints of technical and economic feasibility, as well as what consumer demand looks like; all consumer products tend to do this. We've reached an equilibrium in the market -- which isn't bad at all as it means more bikes available to more people -- but I just hope the industry continues to push the envelope to welcome even more riders.
Someone out there will have all the preconditions for a short/medium distance ebike commuter, where they can replace a car drive or waiting for three buses, down to just a single bus and a modest ebike ride to their final destination.