Das ist genau der Grund, weshalb ich das nicht mehr mache. Zig unterschrieben, nie ist was draus geworden. Die Statistik über erfolgreiche Bundestagspetitionen ist schrecklich und es ist hier schlicht und einfach nicht zu erwarten, dass eine Merz-Regierung jetzt nach Erhalt der Petition verkündet, dass das eine gute Idee ist, dass man das überhaupt nicht auf dem Schirm hatte, den Initiatoren dankt und die Steuer wieder einführt
I reach it every time. You do not need much pedal assist to reach the max. And if I'm on my road bike without a motor, I'm even faster. And I communte by bicycle and can tell you: 25km/h is the default speed for eBikes
The bicycle industry is kind of insane price wise. You can buy one of those electric NIU scooters for 2100-2500€. That will go 45km/h. Your pedelec will cost more.
They will become quite valuable oldtimers. As hated as they are, they are kind of an iconic car. Unique design and there are (were?) a lot of Tesla fanboys around. Expensive. Really small production run, not many around. Owners crashing them left and right. Bad build quality. And it's kind of hard to think about one of them being able to really run in 30 years or so with how connected they are to Teslas software infrastructure.
And how many time you reach 25 km/h while pedaling and how many time you reach 25 km/h with a throttle ?
Have you ever ridden an eBike? It's totally easy to reach 25km/h by pedalling. It's also possible to reach that speed (and to go over that) on a normal bicycle without a motor
Not really - I'm going 25km/h if I'm pedaling and I would go 25km/h with a throttle. And bike manufacturers fitting underpowered brakes on eBikes is an issue for another regulation?
The problem here is, that at least in Germany S-Pedelecs are not allowed on bicycle paths at all. Which makes city driving a nightmare and is also preventing S-Pedelecs on many other paths. Around here there are many paths through nature reserves and woodland, where it totally makes sense that motorcycles are banned, but since S-Pedelecs fall into that category, you are screwed.
A regulation like "feel free to drive there, but do not even think about going faster than 25km/h" could work.
It's even harder with cars: Why are cars even allowed to go 240km/h? Yeah, there is the german autobahn, but there's no reason why a car which is registered in France should be able to go faster than the french max motorway speed limit. There is also no reason to allow cars to be able to go from 0 to 100 in x seconds. There is no use case for that, even if you try to merge into a motorway or overtake somewhere.
Which is actually a really crap regulation as each city has to check all of their bicycle paths and allow S-Pedelecs. Which means that there are many cities which are simply not doing that.
Nicht nur das - seit Covid spielen wir das gesamte Arbeitsleben auf einem deutlich härteren Schwierigkeitsgrad. Nicht nur die GenZ, die jetzt aber natürlich zusätzliche Probleme mit dem Berufseinstieg hat. Aber es ist natürlich nicht auf Dauer tragbar, dass wir jetzt seit einem halben Jahrzehnt erst Covid mit diesen zerrissenen Lieferketten und völlig anderer Arbeit irgendwie managen. Dann die ganze Energiescheiße nach dem russischen Überfall. Plötzlich diese Zollkacke von Trump. Dazu dann innerhalb kürzester Zeit dieses totale Gaslighting der Geschäftsführungen von "HomeOffice ist für immer" hin zu "Alle zurück ins Büro" zu "Lol, wir brauchen gar keine Menschen mehr, wir machen KI" kombiniert mit dem Fachkräftemangel, wo dann Stellen nicht nachbesetzt werden, wo dann Leute ohne Erfahrung auf Stellen sitzen oder halt im Winter erstmal alle lange krank sind. Ist kacke gerade
But is there really a fundamental difference? If I build a throttle on my bicycle, it still has the same breaks, the same lights, the same driver, the same max speed. The only difference is that I do not have to pedal, everything else is exactly the same. There are countries where it is totally legal to do this and others where you get quite harsh fines. There is no reason for it to be a different thing.
This way you basically made out a scooter out of your bike, that is what the regulation probably want to avoid.
And that is exactly the point: The regulation doesn't make any sense. It is the same vehicle. Me pedalling doesn't bring any safety improvement. It's not suddenly a scooter, it's the same vehicle.
There are a lot of countries where throttles on eBikes are legal and they do not have much problems either. So yeah, there might be a big legal difference, but that is totally arbitrary and we could do better.
I really can't see this in the traffic accident statistics. Yes, there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, but if you look deeper into them, those are in most cases "real" motorcycles and not those slower variants. And if you take a look at those eScooters, most accidents here are people driving those rental scooters while drunk. That's a problem, but that's also a problem you won't solve by regulating the dude going to the train station in the morning.
The problem is that a licence is expensive as fuck here in Germany. If I wanted to upgrade my drivers licence to those 125 motorcycles, that will be around 800€. A full motorcycle licence is several thousands of Euros. There are also age limits in place. So a young person can just hop on a bicycle with a motor for free or "simply buy a small bike" with costs of several thousands of Euros. It would make sense if we bring the cost of thoses licences down.
The point is that a ebike and a bike are two separated things that follow different rules.
Yeah and that is exactly what I wanted to say: Why is a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h a different thing from a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h? I'm not talking about full motorcycles, but to give you an exemple: I own an eBike. There is a throttle available that would let me cruise at up to 25km/h without pedaling. That is totally illegal to install here, because that would make it a legally totally different thing and that would e.g. also prevent me from using my current brakes or to install the current tires. Which makes no sense - the risks are the same, brakes and tires are of course normal bicycling components which are totally fine to use at 25km/h, but the regulation is crap.
That's not totally correct. Here in Germany we have so called "Mofas" which translates to "motorized bicycle". Those are different from eBikes and heavily regulated. There are age limits, drivers licence, insurance requirements, regulations where you are allowed to drive and so on. And yes, they are also restricted to 25km/h. Why are there this heavy regulations which are not in place for our pedelecs? The reason is plain racism in combination with "old people hate young people". Those Mofas were popular with young migrant workers back in the 50s and 60s. And therefore they were regulated as fuck. You will see stuff like this with modern eScooters where the whole class will be restricted because they are popular with younger people.
What I wanted to say was exactly this: There is a rule in place that basically created artificial differences between the same thing. A 25km/h vehicle with a motor and pedals is heavily restricted, another one is totally free. Which makes no sense.
There's a whole class of electric vehicles being held back by regulation. We can slap electro motors on wheels and bicycles are not the only vehicles you can build with that tech. Many EU countries are e.g. banning throttles on eBikes, but why are we forcing all those delivery drivers to pedal the whole day? Just give them a gas throttle. For many eBikes uses it really doesn't make sense to include the whole bicycle complexity of gears, chains, shifting and so on. Just give them a motor and a throttle.
Killing the eBike with additional rules, insurance, mandatory inspections and so on would be absolutely idiotic and a good business model for insurances, car companies and so on, so I'm really afraid that this could happen
Lass es. Oder sei zumindest nicht naiv und schau dir an, was in der Branche aktuell so abgeht. Fahr alleine mal mit offenen Augen die Autobahn entlang und guck, wie überfüllt die Parkplätze sind, wie erbärmlich die LKW-Fahrer behandelt werden, wenn sie dann ganze Wochenenden oder gar die Weihnachtstage auf der Auffahrt irgendeines Ranzparkplatzes ohne Klo verbringen müssen und dann bei Regen unter der Motorhaube des LKWs ihr Essen kochen müssen. Die Branche klingt romantisch, ist es aber nicht.
Das ist genau der Grund, weshalb ich das nicht mehr mache. Zig unterschrieben, nie ist was draus geworden. Die Statistik über erfolgreiche Bundestagspetitionen ist schrecklich und es ist hier schlicht und einfach nicht zu erwarten, dass eine Merz-Regierung jetzt nach Erhalt der Petition verkündet, dass das eine gute Idee ist, dass man das überhaupt nicht auf dem Schirm hatte, den Initiatoren dankt und die Steuer wieder einführt