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Unregulated e-bikes can be a terror on the roadways
December 19, 2011, Monday
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ELECTRIC bikes, or e-bikes, are pouring on to China's bicycle lanes and streets.
While bicycle ownership in China is much higher, at 470 million, there's no denying the popularity of e-bikes, whose numbers have been growing steadily and now total 120 million. Annual e-bike sales jumped from 1.5 million in 2002 to 4 million in 2003, and recently hit 25.2 million a year.
But e-bikes may now be at a crossroad. Just like a host of other local industries, it's a highly fragmented, and thus inefficient, industry. It's also struggling to increase demand in new markets outside China, making it overly dependent on domestic sales - 29.5 million e-bikes were manufactured in the country in 2010, of which 585,000 were for export, according to the China Bicycle Association (CBA).
Electric Bike Worldwide Reports (EBWR) says that of the roughly 29 million e-bikes sold worldwide, the US and Europe accounted for only 80,000 and 1.02 million, respectively.
Revving Up
Up to now, one barrier after another has fallen in China to spur the industry's growth. In 1996, for example, Shanghai banned the use of gasoline-powered scooters.
The internal combustion engine motorcycles seen in Shanghai today run on either liquefied petroleum gas (which are legal but their number is restricted) or (a few) gasoline, but these gas-powered bikes have license plates from outside Shanghai.
Along with the ban on motorcycles in various cities, other factors in the rise of e-bikes include the 2003 SARS epidemic, which discouraged people from traveling on buses and subways out of fear of catching the bug; new housing and employment policies requiring longer commutes; increasing disposable incomes; and more and better cycling infrastructure, says Christopher R. Cherry, a civil and environmental engineering professor at University of Tennessee.
With car prices still out of reach for many, e-bikes have become the Cadillacs of the working class. Equipped with removable batteries that can be charged easily at home or in the office, e-bikes are more like scooters and are classified as non-motor vehicles so they're exempt from the motorcycle restrictions in force in a number of cities.
Hitting potholes
Chinese e-bike makers may have an advantage with one promising group of consumers - in rural China, where some 800 million people live.
Li Zejian, a project research associate at Tokyo University's Manufacturing Management Research Center, says he is noticing more e-bikes in both the outskirts of cities and the countryside in China.
The affordability of e-bikes is one of the big attractions. A gasoline-powered motorcycle costs from between 5,000-8,000 yuan (US$788-US$1,261), compared with a price tag of between 1,500-3,000 yuan for an e-bike.
What's more, some e-bikes can also cover reasonably long distance. "I was surprised to see that some e-bikes have a range of more than 100 kilometers on a single charge. Can you imagine? It means those e-bikes are powerful enough to even travel the 100 kilometers from Shanghai to Suzhou," says Li.
Yet it may be environmental and safety concerns rather than travel needs that lead the e-bike industry to retool products. In China and elsewhere, consumers are realizing that despite their relative energy efficiency and absence of direct carbon emissions, e-bikes are not as green as often thought.
About 97.5 percent of the e-bikes produced every year in China use lead-acid batteries instead of less polluting lithium ion batteries. The former have been responsible for a rash of lead poisoning cases, and earlier this year, authorities cracked down on heavily polluting factories making them.
More dangerous
A slew of traffic accidents have prompted some cities to consider restrictions on e-bikes. "You don't have to observe any traffic lights or any traffic regulations and you can ride anywhere, even on the sidewalk," enthuses a salesman at an e-bike shop in a Shanghai suburb. "You don't even need a driver's license."
Often not as noisy as other vehicles and traveling unexpectedly fast, e-bikes can be dangerous. The death toll from accidents involving such two-wheelers reached more than 3,600 in 2009, compared with 2,500 in 2007.
Regulations introduced in 1998 require e-bikes to weigh less than 40 kilos (88 pounds) and travel no faster than 20 kilometers per hour, but many on the road today are much heavier and faster than that. Neither manufacturers nor retailers are willing to heed the rules. E-cyclists are equally complicit.
Adapted from China Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. To read the original version, please visit: http://bit.ly/sMZGJI.
While bicycle ownership in China is much higher, at 470 million, there's no denying the popularity of e-bikes, whose numbers have been growing steadily and now total 120 million. Annual e-bike sales jumped from 1.5 million in 2002 to 4 million in 2003, and recently hit 25.2 million a year.
But e-bikes may now be at a crossroad. Just like a host of other local industries, it's a highly fragmented, and thus inefficient, industry. It's also struggling to increase demand in new markets outside China, making it overly dependent on domestic sales - 29.5 million e-bikes were manufactured in the country in 2010, of which 585,000 were for export, according to the China Bicycle Association (CBA).
Electric Bike Worldwide Reports (EBWR) says that of the roughly 29 million e-bikes sold worldwide, the US and Europe accounted for only 80,000 and 1.02 million, respectively.
Revving Up
Up to now, one barrier after another has fallen in China to spur the industry's growth. In 1996, for example, Shanghai banned the use of gasoline-powered scooters.
The internal combustion engine motorcycles seen in Shanghai today run on either liquefied petroleum gas (which are legal but their number is restricted) or (a few) gasoline, but these gas-powered bikes have license plates from outside Shanghai.
Along with the ban on motorcycles in various cities, other factors in the rise of e-bikes include the 2003 SARS epidemic, which discouraged people from traveling on buses and subways out of fear of catching the bug; new housing and employment policies requiring longer commutes; increasing disposable incomes; and more and better cycling infrastructure, says Christopher R. Cherry, a civil and environmental engineering professor at University of Tennessee.
With car prices still out of reach for many, e-bikes have become the Cadillacs of the working class. Equipped with removable batteries that can be charged easily at home or in the office, e-bikes are more like scooters and are classified as non-motor vehicles so they're exempt from the motorcycle restrictions in force in a number of cities.
Hitting potholes
Chinese e-bike makers may have an advantage with one promising group of consumers - in rural China, where some 800 million people live.
Li Zejian, a project research associate at Tokyo University's Manufacturing Management Research Center, says he is noticing more e-bikes in both the outskirts of cities and the countryside in China.
The affordability of e-bikes is one of the big attractions. A gasoline-powered motorcycle costs from between 5,000-8,000 yuan (US$788-US$1,261), compared with a price tag of between 1,500-3,000 yuan for an e-bike.
What's more, some e-bikes can also cover reasonably long distance. "I was surprised to see that some e-bikes have a range of more than 100 kilometers on a single charge. Can you imagine? It means those e-bikes are powerful enough to even travel the 100 kilometers from Shanghai to Suzhou," says Li.
Yet it may be environmental and safety concerns rather than travel needs that lead the e-bike industry to retool products. In China and elsewhere, consumers are realizing that despite their relative energy efficiency and absence of direct carbon emissions, e-bikes are not as green as often thought.
About 97.5 percent of the e-bikes produced every year in China use lead-acid batteries instead of less polluting lithium ion batteries. The former have been responsible for a rash of lead poisoning cases, and earlier this year, authorities cracked down on heavily polluting factories making them.
More dangerous
A slew of traffic accidents have prompted some cities to consider restrictions on e-bikes. "You don't have to observe any traffic lights or any traffic regulations and you can ride anywhere, even on the sidewalk," enthuses a salesman at an e-bike shop in a Shanghai suburb. "You don't even need a driver's license."
Often not as noisy as other vehicles and traveling unexpectedly fast, e-bikes can be dangerous. The death toll from accidents involving such two-wheelers reached more than 3,600 in 2009, compared with 2,500 in 2007.
Regulations introduced in 1998 require e-bikes to weigh less than 40 kilos (88 pounds) and travel no faster than 20 kilometers per hour, but many on the road today are much heavier and faster than that. Neither manufacturers nor retailers are willing to heed the rules. E-cyclists are equally complicit.
Adapted from China Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. To read the original version, please visit: http://bit.ly/sMZGJI.
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