The Vintage Electric E-Tracker marries 100-year-old styling with modern battery technology to create an exciting electric bicycle/moped hybrid. The £2,700 bike offers a tantalizing glimpse of what commuters could be riding to work if legislation recognised, and promoted, electric vehicles other than cars.
Evoking the elegant lines of the board track racing motorcycles of the early twentieth century, the Vintage E-tracker looks unlike any other electric bike on the market.
The Vintage E-Tracker is a equipped with a 3000W motor that can be ridden in restricted mode at a maximum of 20 mph, or switched to race mode, which makes possible a top speed of 36 mph. Charging takes two hours and the bike’s range is 30-35 miles
Electric mopeds
The British government has a blind spot where electric vehicles are concerned. The £5,000 grant towards plug-in electric cars costing over £20,000 was launched to great fanfare, but a more significant step towards personal electric transport could have been made had the initiative included electric bicycles and mopeds – not least because such vehicles are more affordable to buy and far less reliant on recharging infrastructure.
Under current British law, if an electric bicycle (pedelec) exceeds 200W or is capable of more than 15.5 mph it is considered a moped. Most fit cyclists on a moderately lightweight bicycle would be capable of prolonged speeds of 16 mph or over, but if that speed is even partially sustained by an electric motor, the law requires the same lights, paperwork and number plate as a moped.
We are decades away from a wholesale switch to electric cars. Electric bicycles and motorcycles are here now. Vintage Electric E-Tracker is too powerful to be considered a pedelec here in Europe, but arguably does not warrant classification as a full-blown motorcycle.
Pedelec power restrictions
Our law will soon catch up with the rest of Europe and raise the maximum permissible power for a pedelec to 250W. In the meantime, the 99 per cent of British pedelec riders who ride a 250W bike can rest assured that the police, Department for Transport and the electric bike insurer ETA, will make allowances until the law finally changes.
Crankwinder
It is possible to say “Most fit cyclists on a moderately lightweight bicycle would be capable of prolonged speeds of 16 mph or over” only because normal people have been passively discouraged from cycling in this country for several decades, reducing the population of cyclists (literally and figuratively in the sense of ‘boiling down’) to a concentrated stock in which a hard core of racing enthusiasts is hugely over-represented. So yes, these extraordinarily keen cyclists can, in the main, maintain more than 16mph.
But that is not normal cycling. We no longer know what normal cycling looks like in this bike-forsaken country and must go abroad, to Holland, Denmark or Germany, to see what cycling is when most people do it. If you go there, you will see that most fit cyclists on a good quality bicycle do not easily maintain more than 16mph. About 12mph is more like it.
Even when restricted to 16mph, riders of pedelecs (electrically assisted bikes) tend to make better progress than the majority of the cycling population – in countries where a majority DO cycle. Thats because they still go at almost 16mph uphill, where pure cyclists, with only about 200W of sustainable human power at their disposal, are slowed to less than 10mph. And the motor speed restriction does not stop the E-bike freewheeling just as fast down the hills – if not faster given its greater weight and similar drag.
Cyclists in Holland, Denmark and Germany are moving to pedelecs in droves – even though these places are flat, where the pedelec’s advanatges are less marked, and even though their pedelecs are limited to 16mph. These bikes are the one sector of the Eurozone cycling market that has shown healthy growth throughout this recession. Any further relaxation of the speed or power limits will only result in more people losing the full health benefits of pedalling themselves.
The machine illustrated above is a facsimile of early motorbikes, that evolved from pedal cycles. And we are revisiting all the same discussions that occurred in that past time. Eventually a line had to be drawn between pedal cycles and motorcycles, when it could no longer be denied that they were two different and incompatible means of locomotion.
We have allowed that line to be blurred for the benefit of the environment and of those individuals who are unable or unwilling to pedal as vigorously as an average able-bodied person NOT engaged in sport. The line nevertheless still exists and must not be shifted any further.
I am not saying that an electric moped is a bad thing, but the fact that some cyclists can sometimes make a bike go as fast as a moped does not make it a similar thing to a pedal cycle. An electric moped is probably a much better thing than a petrol moped, but it is still a moped. Let mopedists argue that it perhaps should benefit from certain tax concessions, but any further encroachment, upon the few narrow rewards this bike-forsaken country offers for purely pedalling places, must be resisted or else there is no hope of smuggling a significant amount of exercise into the lives of unhealthy Brits.
Matt
I have no problems with the present LEGAL pedalecs for the elderly who need assistance up the hills or even to keep up a decent cycle sped on the flat but if they want to travel like a moped or motorbike they should be required to comply with motor cycle regulations. Virtual mopeds must not be allowed to take over the shared use cycle/foot paths. We already have a problem caused by a small minority of cyclists who race along the paths at excessive speed without regard to the safety of other users. The 15 mph maximum assist speed is a good compromise. It allows elderly cyclists to continue with utility cycling while getting some exercise but it makes these electric bikes unattractive as tearaway toys for teenagers and young adults who can get better performance out of a standard bike.
There is no place on public paths for imitation racing motorcycles.
In the past we have had a problem in many areas with youngsters riding trecking motorbikes and minimotos or the cycle paths illegally. This was mostly by people without licences to ride legally on the road. They were a menace to Pedestrians and cyclists alike. Fortunately the police seem to have stamped it out in most areas. We must not let overpowered electric toys start up the dangers again.
Tony
Where can I buy one, I am in the Midlands UK and would really like to get one
let me know
Cheers and have a great day
TONY