ebike good and bad in BC. | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

ebike good and bad in BC.

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FullMotoJacket said:
Here's an OEM promo shot with the pedals on it. It was actually hard to find a pic with one that actually had them still mounted.

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So the 3" long cranks are behind your hips? That's a ball buster.

I want to see the distributor of the legal e-bike actually pedal his bike. My suspicion is it is infinitely easier to push it than attempt to use the pedals.
 
GreyGhost said:
So the 3" long cranks are behind your hips? That's a ball buster.

I want to see the distributor of the legal e-bike actually pedal his bike. My suspicion is it is infinitely easier to push it than attempt to use the pedals.
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Take a close look at the "drive" side. 200 lb. vehicle driven by aprox. 1:1 gearing and 140mm-ish crank arm. I don't see getting it to begrudgingly move more than a foot or so before operator failure.

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Having owned a Grom, topping out at 95kmph, 225lb wet, a bike that many of these models base themselves on, and acclimating myself to people's reactions when I would hope a curb or split to the front of a downtown intersection, I can say with confidence that the lifespan of heavy, fast, ebikes will come to an end soon.

The GTA contains people too pissy to permit so much fun as I had without expressing some derogatory slur.

A memorable amount of these escooters are already ridden with globs of tape holding in place front fairings.

Some are fine, some check blind spots before swerving outside the bike lane. The MAJORITY of those I've seen do not.

The problem I see is more the type of people that tend to ride them as Nobbie says.

That's fixed with legislation, because it's bound to be that that grandma will one day be hit, and the likelihood of it being the people that benefit most from ebikes, not the middleclassman, being the culprit is heavily weighted
 
KD99 said:
And some of the worst of it, no reasonable person looks at these things and thinks, 'ah, advanced bicycle.'

The people lump them in with riders, and at a standstill it is hard to tell some apart, so here we sit, hit with poorer public reception
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If I had a Grom and was an idiot, I would be tempted not to plate or insure it and get the quietest muffler possible. The vast majority of the public/police will just think you are another idiot on an ebike and you won't get caught.
 
GreyGhost said:
If I had a Grom and was an idiot, I would be tempted not to plate or insure it and get the quietest muffler possible. The vast majority of the public/police will just think you are another idiot on an ebike and you won't get caught.
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Funny you mention, downtown last night I came across a 2t scooter blaring it's high pitch song without plate in Liberty village. It looked like one of those retro basic frame 50cc things made in 80s. It looked like a toy and seemed to be used as one.
 
i'm sure not one ebike rider is wearing a helmet capable of impact protection at ebike speeds.
 
-Maverick- said:
What make and model is that ebike?

The guy formerly known as Mladin.
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The bike specifically mentioned in the BC article is the Motorino XMr (black and green photos above). The white picture above is a Daymak something just to show a typical pedal drive setup.
 
GreyGhost said:
So the 3" long cranks are behind your hips? That's a ball buster.

I want to see the distributor of the legal e-bike actually pedal his bike. My suspicion is it is infinitely easier to push it than attempt to use the pedals.
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I think it was approved by someone extremely pigeon toed. Seriously, does it have to get passed by a normally built person?
 
I don't think there are any technical requirements for how functional the manual pedals have to be ... and that was a fundamental mistake. No one thought about how the rules they had written could be circumvented. Everyone thought an e-bike would look like a bicycle, but with an assist motor to help out on hills. No one thought about how the rules that they had written could lead to a vehicle designed to be fully powered by electricity with manual pedals as an afterthought to satisfy the letter of the law.

It's obviously not just Ontario ... it has to be a lot of other jurisdictions, including outside Canada (probably US as well). The Canadian market can't be big enough to justify designing a vehicle like this.
 
Brian P said:
I don't think there are any technical requirements for how functional the manual pedals have to be ... and that was a fundamental mistake. No one thought about how the rules they had written could be circumvented. Everyone thought an e-bike would look like a bicycle, but with an assist motor to help out on hills. No one thought about how the rules that they had written could lead to a vehicle designed to be fully powered by electricity with manual pedals as an afterthought to satisfy the letter of the law.

It's obviously not just Ontario ... it has to be a lot of other jurisdictions, including outside Canada (probably US as well). The Canadian market can't be big enough to justify designing a vehicle like this.
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The manufacturers, and more so, the companies selling these just don't give a crap because they know that with very few exceptions theres no enforcement. Worse yet they knowingly sell bikes that do not fulfil the legal requirements of e-bikes to unknowing customers, knowing that if the poor sap who buys them gets nailed for no licence, no insurance, no plates...well, they still made the sale and get off scott free.

It took me all of 5 seconds with the right keywords to find a dealer on Kijiji selling the motorcycle style e-bikes and even outright advertising hop-ups for "more speed". Many of these come setup to adhere to the 32kph legal requirement but overriding it is as simple as connecting a jumper somewhere, or pushing a button. You KNOW people do that within seconds of it leaving the shops, if the shop themselves aren't doing it for that matter already.

Some pics even have the pedals removed right on the showroom floor.

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This is a problem that's going to take a multifaceted approach to solve, the first step being redefining the e-bike regulations to make a clear definition between an electrically assisted bicycle, and these abominations which are very much NOT bicycles but are just abusing the regs.

And then hard enforcement of both dealers and riders.
 
GreyGhost said:
If I had a Grom and was an idiot, I would be tempted not to plate or insure it and get the quietest muffler possible. The vast majority of the public/police will just think you are another idiot on an ebike and you won't get caught.
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Have seen this before. Not a Grom specifically but some LSM or tiny scoot/bike that put the 'e-bike' plate on. Muffler was clearly showing exhaust and you could hear it while driving behind it. I pulled up to the guy and asked 'isn't that a gas powered engine?' he gave me the finger and rode off. LoL I love it.
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