It is used by poshes in San Francisco, delivery boys in NYC, couriers in Germany, tourists and residents in the Netherlands, the working force in France and by a lot of Chinese people. Millions of people around the world ride an electric bike often, or even daily…

People use electric bikes to go to work or just get around, exercise without sweating, and overcome steep inclines and strong winds. The industry of e-bikes, as they are called, is growing at breakneck rates, making over 11 billion dollar a year, and technology follows.

Jiang Ruming is the sales manager of a company in Shanghai. David Chiou is the same company’s head of administrative council in San Francisco. Jessie Visenbeek-Boet is a retired 71-year-old in the Netherlands. All of these people share a common love for electric bikes. Jiang uses it to move faster in the traffic-jammed streets of Shanghai. Chiou uses it to get to his meetings without getting his suit sweaty. Finally, Jessie uses it to cover the great distances that a conventional bike would not allow her to cover. “It’s a miracle, it makes the inclines a breeze to climb”, says 78-year-old Roger Phillips, who rides his e-bike almost daily in New York. Specialists predict; “E-bikes will change the way in which people conceive urban biking”.

A gift from God. For bike manufacturers, e-bikes are, according to Edward Benjamin, an independent contributor to the industry, a gift from god: and that is not only because e-bikes are pricier, but because they have more parts, like batteries, that need to be replaced. In the Netherlands, one third of the money that was spent on buying bikes was for e-bikes. There is a similar rise in demand in other European countries, especially Germany, France and Italy as the growing interest in biking, exercising and a more eco-friendly way of getting around meets the growing numbers of middle-aged people. In the USA the demand for e-bikes is relatively small: about 200.000 e-bikes were sold last year but the demand is rising. When it comes to China, there are already 120 million bikes on the streets.

The environment. E-bikes are friendly to the environment, as long as their batteries are recycled. More controversial are the autonomous e-bikes which do not require the biker to pedal. These bigger models, which are bikes only by name, are becoming increasingly popular in China as they can get up to 48 km/h, with a range of 80 km. The masterminds can’t decide whether to embrace the e-bikes as a green way of transport or ban them as a health hazard. Some cities balance the scales and forbid them from entering cyclist lanes. In the USA and Europe, where civilians clearly prefer e-bikes, steep inclines are becoming less… feared of and bicycle purists who want bikes with no motors or engines are becoming less and less by the day.                                                Source: newspaper "Ta Nea"