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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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There is one major issue with this article:
No. They are made with the majority in mind, since the European and Asian bike market, where significantly fewer people are overweight or obese dwarve the American market.
Projected North American bike market revenue (2024):
$10.44 billion
Projected European bike market revenue (2024):
$27.89 billion
Projected Asian bike market revenue (2024):
$42.13 billion
On an international market, if you don't matter enough you won't get special treatment.
Just imagine if 74% of Luxembourgians decided that their smartphone must have a USB-A port, as an essential requirement. How many major manufacturers would accommodate them instead of continuing to sell "normal" phones? Sure, they could put a USB-A port onto all phones globally sold, but why bother? It's more expensive and nearly nobody outside of Luxembourg would want that feature.
Edit: Source for the numbers (you can switch the displayed region)
Hey, not sure if you're getting your numbers from the article, but you may want to double check.
40% of Asia is overweight or obese and over 50% of Europe is overweight or obese, with USA at 75%. (Sourced from WHO)
Also, just an aside: the USA is the smallest of these three by population, so the total number of overweight or obese people in Europe vs USA (240-250M)is fairly close even though the percentages are higher.
A good point, but from the article it sounds like the demographic for which this would be a problem is 300lbs+. The proportion of people meeting the criteria for being overweight is in the same ballpark, but I wonder if maybe there's a more skewed distribution of people who are overweight enough to exceed the safety margin of a standard bicycle.
I think it starts to be more of a problem around 230-250lbs. Like they mentioned in the article, the bikes are often listed at a total weight capacity, meaning rider + cargo, with most brands at or below 300lbs. If the rear rack is meant to hold 40lbs and maybe 5lbs of accessories and water bottles then add 20lbs for a front rack/panniers; your getting into the close to the rider weight limit by being anything more than a little overweigh.
It’s worse than that, even. Some brands (like Tern) go by gross vehicle weight, meaning rider + cargo + bike. And their most popular bike is 75 pounds.
It’s not as much of a problem for Tern specifically because their bikes are rock solid (I’m very big and tall and don’t have a problem with mine) but still a confusing way to measure.
I think the article is mostly advocating for the weight limit to be on the technical specificationd of the bikes, which seems a fair argument to me.