Interesting BMW ebike proposals

[Andy-Mat]

But I didn't say that Andy, and you were answering my post, not that future post of your own. I very clearly only commented on unrestricted autobahn in the country you live in today, indeed that was the whole point of my mentioning them.

DUUHHH!
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You got your posts mixed up, and were also unfriendly. But that is typical of a few of our members - sadly.

You should go and read them back in the sequence they were posted...Not what you think apparently.

DDDUUUUUUHHHHHHHH

 

[flecc]

12,000 globally is not a lot for a product and seemed to have a production run of less than 2 years. I've never seen one on the road and so could be seen more as a novelty product typically. I could be wrong but I don't think the C1 would actually improve safety, there will be slightly reduced visibility. However its a mute point as statistically the numbers are too low to be useful. The fact the person is secured by a belt but the body of the vehicle provides no real protection in an impact is to my mind not necessarily good. If the vehicle was impacted by a HGV and damaged I would try to get out of the vehicle rather than have the HGV roll over me while I'm securely belted in. The best way of making 2 wheel vehicles safer in my opinion is to separate them as much as possible from idiots going around with 2 tons of steel wrapped around them so I would say dedicated cycle ways for bikes and low power 2 wheel electrical vehicles is where we should focus. Making those 2 wheel vehicles as light as possible will mean huge energy efficiency. Making larger vehicles more expensive and more restrictive like they do in the Netherlands is where we need to go. Perhaps there will come a time when conventional cars can only park in park and ride car parks and have to come into towns and cities using other transport unless they actually live in that city or town is a way forward.

Motorbikes are really a extreme danger sport. I can't see how you can ever make them that safe but if you have a fully enclosed cabin made from strong materials you could be safer but its only really for motorbikes with decent size engines that would have the power to move such a strong body. As the energy density of batteries improve its certainly an option though. I don't think its possible with low capacity petrol engines or low power hub motors because the outer body ends up being flimsy with little impact protection. Better to move such bikes onto cycle paths etc and forget all about the low capacity 125-250cc class of motorbikes and similar e-motorbikes.

I think as the technology improves we can increase speeds of ebikes. I.e. when there are no other ebikes nearby perhaps max speed goes to 30 or even 40mph and reduces down to 20mph when other traffic is nearby. In certain straight sections of cycle paths with good visibility your speed limit goes up and for other areas you would always be restricted to 20mph.

Segregation is certainly the best answer, but I dont ever see it being achieved here in Britain. Lack of space and lack of will combined.

Strangling all vehicles down to low speeds seems to be the way we are going, my whole large borough 20 limited for example, with only the through routes 30 limit. We've even got large speed humps on many of the bus routes which the buses have to slow for to below 10 mph, to avoid bottoming out.

For these reasons I can't ever see the sort of e-bike speeds you envisage, no matter how much sense it makes. Sense is in short supply where our traffic laws are concerned

Mixing any sort of moped with bicycles on cycle paths isn't really advisable. They tried it in the Netherlands and it caused a storm of protests from the cyclists.
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[flecc]

You got your posts mixed up,

You should go and read them back in the sequence they were posted...Not what you think apparently.

No Andy, hoisted by your own petard, that is what you should do:

My post number 12 containing this:

"How can you bear to live as you do in a country like Germany where about half the autobahn network allows unlimited top speeds?"

Was before your post number 14 with all the diatribe about the DDR and transit autobahns. As clever as I might be when posting, I cannot take into account posts you have not yet made.
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