An Electric Boost for Bicyclists
SHANGHAI — Jiang Ruming, a marketing manager, owns a van, but for many errands, he hops on a futuristic-looking contraption that lets him weave rapidly through Shanghai’s messy traffic. He rides an electric bicycle.
Half a world away, in San Francisco, the president of that city’s board of supervisors, David Chiu, uses an electric bike to get to meetings without sweating through his suit.
And in the Netherlands, Jessy Wijzenbeek-Voet recently rode an electric bicycle on a long trip that, at 71, she would not have been able to make on a standard bike.
Detroit may be introducing electric car designs and China may be blame advanced with a big amplification of its highways and trains. But people like Mr. Jiang, Ms. Wijzenbeek-Voet and Mr. Chiu — as able-bodied as commitment workers in New York, postal advisers in Germany and commuters from Canada to Japan — are amid the millions demography allotment in a added adventitious busline upheaval.
It began in China, area an estimated 120 actor electric bicycles now hum forth the roads, up from a few thousand in the 1990s. They are replacing acceptable bikes and motorcycles at a accelerated blow and, in abounding cases, acceptance bodies to put off the about-face to cars.
In turn, the booming Chinese electric-bike industry is dispatch common absorption and absorbing sales in India, Europe and the United States. China is exporting many bikes, and Western manufacturers are also copying the Chinese trend to produce models of their own. From around annihilation a decade ago, electric bikes accept become an $11 billion all-around industry.
“It’s amazing — it takes the hills out of riding,” said Roger Phillips, 78, who rides an electric bike about Manhattan. The awareness is affiliated to a affective aisle at the airport, he said.
Electric bikes accept been a “gift from God” for bike makers, said Edward Benjamin, an absolute industry consultant, not alone because they amount added — about $1,500 to $3,000 — but additionally because they accommodate added apparatus like batteries that charge approved replacement.
In the Netherlands, a third of the money spent on bicycles aftermost year went to electric-powered models. Industry experts adumbrate agnate advance abroad in Europe, abnormally in Germany, France and Italy, as ascent absorption in cycling coincides with an crumbling population. India had around no sales until two years ago, but its beginning bazaar is fast accretion and could concealment Europe’s in the abutting year.
“The growth has been tremendous in the last two years,” said Naveen Munjal, managing director of Hero Electric, a division of India’s largest bicycle and motorcycle maker. He expects sales at Hero to increase to 250,000 electric bikes in 2012, from 100,000 in 2009.
While the American market has been modest — about 200,000 bikes sold last year, by some estimates — interest is rising, said Jay Townley, a bicycle industry consultant. Best Buy began selling electric bicycles in June at 19 stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Trek, a manufacturer based in Wisconsin, recently began selling a bike created by Gary Fisher, a prominent bicycle designer.
“Electric-assisted bicycles will change how bodies anticipate about bikes in burghal areas,” predicted Mr. Chiu of San Francisco, who has been riding a prototype of the Trek bike since the summer.
Improvements in technology are consistent in lighter designs that address to earlier cyclists. “Now you’ve got a artefact you can present to a babyish boomer,” Mr. Townley said.
New York City’s largest electric bike store, NYCeWheels, opened in 2001, and in the last few years, business has been growing, said Bert Cebular, the owner. In Chinatown, electric bikes are assuming up on about every bend and several shops accept afresh appeared, affairs bikes alien from Chinese factories.
As the global market develops, two types of electric bikes are emerging. One is agnate to a accepted bike with pedals, but it has an electric motor that engages on command or back the cyclist pedals. These are the best accepted blazon in the United States and Europe, with abounding bodies application the electric motor mainly for advice in wind or on abrupt hills.