It’s a simple pleasure, but Xu Beilu savors it daily: gliding past snarled traffic on her motorized bicycle, relaxed and sweat-free alongside the pedal-pushing masses.
China, the world’s bicycle kingdom — one for every three inhabitants — is going electric.
Workers weary of crammed public transport or pedaling long distances to jobs are upgrading to battery-powered bikes and scooters. Even some who can afford cars are ditching them for electric two-wheelers to avoid traffic jams and expensive gasoline.
The bicycle was a vivid symbol of China in more doctrinaire communist times, when virtually no one owned a car. Even now, nearly two decades after the country began its great leap into capitalism, it still has 430 million bicycles by government count, outnumbering electric bikes and scooters 7-1.
But production of electric two-wheelers has soared from fewer than 200,000 eight years ago to 22 million last year, mostly for the domestic market. The industry estimates about 65 million are on Chinese roads.
CHEAP, CONVENIENT
Car sales are also booming but there are still only 24 million for civilian use, because few of the 1.3 billion people can afford them. And unlike in many other developing countries, Chinese cities still have plenty of bicycle lanes, even if some have made way for cars and buses.
“E-bike” riders are on the move in the morning or late at night, in good weather or bad. When it’s wet, they are a rainbow army in plastic capes. On sunny days, women don gloves, long-sleeved white aprons and face-covering sun guards.
One of them is Xu, on her Yamaha e-bike, making the half-hour commute from her apartment to her job as a marketing manager.
“It’s obvious that driving would be more comfortable, but it’s expensive,” she says. “I like riding my e-bike during rush hour, and sometimes enjoy a laugh at the people stuck in taxis. It’s so convenient and helpful in Shanghai, since the traffic is worse than ever.”
The trend is catching on in the US and elsewhere.
In Japan, plug-in bicycles are favored by cost-conscious companies and older commuters.
“Many company workers are beginning to use them to visit clients instead of driving, to save fuel costs,” says Miyuki Kimizuka of the Japan Bicycle Promotion Institute, a private industry group.
Australians use electric bicycles in rural towns without bus and train service. Tony Morgan, managing director of The Electric Bicycle Co Pty Ltd, the continent’s largest manufacturer and retailer of e-bikes, says he has sold about 20,000 in the past decade, priced at A$1,000 (US$800) to A$2,000.
In the bicycle-friendly Netherlands, the industry says sales passed 138,800 last year.
In India, Vietnam and other developing countries, competition from motorcycles, as well as a lack of bike lanes and other infrastructure, are obstacles.
Indian sales have risen about 15 percent a year to 130,000 units, thanks in part to a 7,500 rupee (US$150) government rebate that brings the cost down to about the cost of a conventional bicycle. But they are far outnumbered by the millions of new motorcycles taking to India’s roadways.
In China, electric bikes sell for 1,700 yuan (US$250) to 3,000 yuan. They require no helmet, plates or driver’s license, and they aren’t affected by restrictions many cities impose on fuel-burning two-wheelers.
It costs a mere 1 yuan (US$0.15) — about the same as the cheapest bus fare — to charge a bike for a day’s use, says Guo Jianrong (郭建榮), head of the Shanghai Bicycle Association, an industry group.
They look like regular bicycles, only a bit heavier with the battery strapped on. Some can be pedaled; others run solely on battery. In China, their maximum weight is about 40kg, and maximum legal speed is about 20kph.
“For us, these are tools for transportation,” Guo said. “We’re not like Americans and Europeans, who tend to bicycle for fun or exercise.”
BAD ACID
The e-bike doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, though it uses electricity from power plants that do. The larger concern is the health hazards from production, recycling and disposal of lead-acid batteries.
Although China is beginning to turn out more electric bikes equipped with nickel-meter-hydride and lithium-ion batteries, 98 percent run on lead-acid types, Guo said.
A bike can use up to five of the batteries in its lifetime, said Christopher Cherry, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who researches the industry. A Chinese-made battery containing 10kg of lead can generate nearly 7kg of lead pollution, he says.
“Electric bikes result in far more emissions of lead than automobiles. They always use more batteries per mile than almost any other vehicle,” Cherry said in a phone interview.
In China, owners are paid about 200 yuan (US$30) to recycle old batteries but the work is often done in small, under-regulated workshops.
With price competition brutal among China’s 2,300 electric bike and scooter makers, manufacturers have shied away from embracing costlier, cleaner technology. But bigger foreign sales and demand for better batteries may speed improvements.
“We are trying to upgrade to lithium battery technology to be able to sell internationally,” said Hu Gang (胡剛), a spokesman for Xinri E-Vehicle Group Co, the country’s biggest e- bike manufacturer, with sales of more than 2 million units last year.
The goal is to boost production to more than 5 million units by 2013, he said.
“It’s not that we’re that ambitious,” Hu said. “It’s just that the industry is growing so quickly.”
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS