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Article: Do electric bikes have an image problem?
- Thread starter rsscott
- Start date
Well, going by the interest our bikes receive whenever they happen to drop in at one of the local pubs for lunch, no! People of all shapes, sizes, sex and ages ask questions & scrounge test rides - with very positive feed back!
Tom
Tom
Although RNW claims to be independent its part public sector funded (like the World service here) and its remit is to create positive spin and trade opportunities for the host nation. It also has a slight liberal/progressive bias - and thus gives a lot of space to the opinions of "yoof". No bad thing IMO and no worse than our BBC or Guardian in this respect..
They journalist shaping their article from the opinion of a single teenage girl (around 15-17?) interviewed with her mother, who is still in full time education. To her, "older people" might be anyone from their mid-late 20s upwards!
I also expect that the smart Dutch would have set out their neighbourhoods so students would not have to travel much more than 3-5 km to their place of education - in a country which is flat and so easily achievable on a push bike and there is already a strong cycling culture - its not surprising therfore schoolkids do not immediately see the value of an e-bike, and anyone riding one might well be laughed at for being unfit!
I expect if instead they interviewed a slightly older young woman in her mid to late 20s, who has a full time career, perhaps having landed a job further away than her school/college, and may well now be a mother herself, they would get a wholly different opinion of e-bikes from this woman!
Youngsters in NL are the same as in the UK or anywhere else in the EU - they look at the short term, hedonism etc and many also aspire to cars, particularly working class youths and those from ethnic communities. The only reason they stay on bikes is due to a lot of social engineering and public money spent, although this does pay back in terms of less RTCs and subsequent healthcare costs.
However, there is still a "gary boy" culture in NL and one of the most popular shows on the "yoof" channel Veronica is Top Gear!
They journalist shaping their article from the opinion of a single teenage girl (around 15-17?) interviewed with her mother, who is still in full time education. To her, "older people" might be anyone from their mid-late 20s upwards!
I also expect that the smart Dutch would have set out their neighbourhoods so students would not have to travel much more than 3-5 km to their place of education - in a country which is flat and so easily achievable on a push bike and there is already a strong cycling culture - its not surprising therfore schoolkids do not immediately see the value of an e-bike, and anyone riding one might well be laughed at for being unfit!
I expect if instead they interviewed a slightly older young woman in her mid to late 20s, who has a full time career, perhaps having landed a job further away than her school/college, and may well now be a mother herself, they would get a wholly different opinion of e-bikes from this woman!
Youngsters in NL are the same as in the UK or anywhere else in the EU - they look at the short term, hedonism etc and many also aspire to cars, particularly working class youths and those from ethnic communities. The only reason they stay on bikes is due to a lot of social engineering and public money spent, although this does pay back in terms of less RTCs and subsequent healthcare costs.
However, there is still a "gary boy" culture in NL and one of the most popular shows on the "yoof" channel Veronica is Top Gear!
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Kudoscycles respect the image problem,for that reason we have a 12 cycle range with many of the bikes targeted at younger people and our bike Cheetah aimed at teenagers. It is up to the industry to supply bikes that youngsters want to ride. Kudos Cycles :: e-bikes with style