e-Bikes + China = Hope

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For office staff, and also for workers in trades and crafts, young and old alike, a gas-powered vehicle seems now to be more complicated than a person needs, out-of-proportion to what  daily travel requirements call for.

This is especially true as e-bike speeds are quite practical and safe on city streets here. 

This sense of scale is their measure of efficiency.  There are no thoughtful calculations of the energy used in creating vehicular motion.  It is a frugality that is deep in the culture, born of an intimate knowledge of scarcity, and of how one reduces its impact.

While it is true that Chinese enlarge their carbon footprints when they move from human power to an e-bike, as Bagatelle-Black notes, it is also true that such a move to modestly easier transport is but a small luxury in lives with precious few luxuries -- lives that otherwise remain quite hard, lives that are devoid of so many of the emissions-producing idle comforts that Westerners take for granted.

Moreover, Chinese e-bike shoppers and owners know that repairs are simple, quick and inexpensive.

Shops in a nearby city uniformly offer a one-year warranty on the three- or four-pack of twelve volt lead-acid batteries in a typical e-bike battery pack.  For all other items on the bike, a warranty period of two years is common.  One shop I visited offers a warranty with no time limit at all.

For these reasons alone -- easier parking, helpful regulations, cleanliness, scale, and ease of operation and maintenance -- we can find cause for real hope that Chinese e-bike owners will not abandon clean and efficient personal transport as soon as they have greater incomes.

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