WhateverBikes

Sorry for my late reaction 🤓
It's actually a GoldLine M-Bike, an early 90s mtb frame, handmade here in The Netherlands from Reynolds 853 tubing.
It served as my bike messenger bike for 2 years, and is now waiting for a new use as my main bikes for 2026.
Old 26" rim brake mtbs are my thing 🙃

And then you find out you can actually ride a bike on muscle power.
Though the e-part does kinda make the bike-part suck a bit of course.

Those poor wheels… 😬

Yes!
26” FTW 👊

I’m not sure if a €2000+ bike which needs regular professional maintenance and requires an insurance with two mandatory heavy locks etc. can still be considered ‘affordable’.
As a car replacement maybe, but not for someone here in The Netherlands who used to get by with a simple bike.

A problem that I see no one addressing is that the fact that e-bikes are now becoming the default choice also means that the costs of ownership are rising very substantially.
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I didn’t ask you to explain why you got an ebike 🤷🏻‍♂️
You do you.

There will always be exceptions, but that doesn’t change what I said about Dutch people’s e-bike usage in The Netherlands.
Elderly people ride further then they used to do on regular bikes, other people generally really don’t.

but are really electric motorcycles. They have been tinkered with so go way faster than allowed and often don't require pedaling.
And parent have to pay for those expensive things, which are crap quality and only last a few years.
It's not about being a hardcore cyclist, it's about real objections.

I do.
12y old kids, who used to ride everywhere, playful and active, are now zipping by with speeds dangerous to themselves (little experience with bike handling and traffic, high on youthful bravoure, combined with high speeds is a bad combo) and others, on bikes that are only bikes by name, →

Be that regular or e-bikes, I want infrastructure for bikes. I'm not blind for the benefits of e-bikes to many people, but everybody seems to be blind - or ignorant - for their downsides.

The part in this article that is most telling of the state of affairs is this: "If we really want to see a permanent uptake in the use of e-bikes".
It points to where my irk is with e-bikes: they are sold to us as the new default.
I don't want an uptake in e-bikes, I want an uptake in BIKES.
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It's definitely not like that here in The Netherlands.
E-bikes are mainly replacing regular bikes, as people here already do lots of things by bike. Now they just have a way more expensive bike for it, and are less active. Even the youth, and that's a sad thing.
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DAMN

For them, ebikes are making cycling lazier.
That's not a moral judgement, that is just factually what ebikes do.

people. You don't need to be super fit, or young, or athletic to ride a bike for transport in most cities. My country has shown that for a few decades now. Kids ride bikes, old people ride bikes, mundane, average, regular people ride bikes.
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Lastly, you are portraying it as if I made a moral judgement about people's fitness or laziness. I didn't.
I have merely pointed out that I don't agree with your assessment that ebikes are making cycling more accessible for most people. Cycling already was accessible to the vast majority of the →

I also never claimed anyone is 'proposing to ban acoustic bikes'. I can list quite a few ways in which ebike popularity is in fact hurting people who prefer to ride regular bikes (there's nothing acoustic about them, btw), but a ban isn't one.
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Sorry, but you are putting words in my mouth, and that's not a fair way of having a discussion.
I never said 'ebike journeys only replace acoustic bike journeys', I specifically said 'ebikes HERE don’t replace car trips' (emphasis mine).
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I never claimed they do.

However, you can't have your cake *and* eat it.
You can't say 'someone else's fitness is not your business' while also mentioning 'ebikes make people fitter'.
Fitness is either a factor in the discussion, or it isn't.

seem totally unwilling to even acknowledge that there are negative aspects too. And there are quite a few more than I have mentioned here.

More frequent, more expensive maintenance, insurance is essential, expensive, heavy locks, a shorter life span… it is just getting too expensive for big groups of people.

I am not against ebikes. I don't like 'm myself, but I am not blind for their advantages. I stings me however that proponents →

for most, it merely makes cycling lazier.
Lastly, a fact that is almost universally ignored, is that ebikes becoming the default, it also makes cycling much LESS accessible for MANY people.
Ebikes are much more expensive than regular bikes, and much more so when you factor in COO.
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My *example* was indeed specific for The Netherlands. What I said before that wasn't.
I'm also very much on the fence about the much used 'ebikes make cycling more accessible' argument.
Sure it does for certain people (elderly, less fit/healthy people, etc.), but let's be honest, →

I wouldn't say that to anybody.
My comment was merely that the OP's take isn't the whole story.
Also, the people I was talking about can't go 'back to driving', because their ebike replaced a regular bike, not a car.

One that hardly demands any input, if at all.
Same goes for many adults. Ebikes here don’t replace car trips, they replace regular bike trips.

Here in The Netherlands, the majority of school kids are now riding ebikes. They are *not* riding more than they did, they just now do it on an ebike. →

True, but same goes the other way.
Many who ride an ebike are fit and could ride a regular bike.
Riding an ebike makes them less fit.
Now before you dismiss this as nonsens (because yeah I know, that research says people ride more on their ebikes etc.), let me substantiate it. →

It's not. It was fun for a while, a novelty, but we've seen it now, and it's time to get rid of it.
It's a hindrance for the riders, that should be reason enough to stop it, just like all the running along side the riders etc.

True. I lost interest in working as a bike mechanic because of it.
I like mechanical stuff, not fumbling with wires and messing with batteries and displays.

you'd normally expect. Things bend, break, fail, can't be adjusted properly, etc. etc.
Time consuming and frustrating, and clients don't want to pay for that extra time. 'But it was just a flat!'
We stopped working on them too.