Have a look at these names and slang terms associated with the successful types of transport:
Car, Van, Truck, Bus, Coach, Bike, Train, Plane, Ship, Scooter, Moped, Tractor, Motor, Wheels.
They're all simple, easy to say, rolling off the tongue without the slightest effort.
Now think about Electric Bicycle, or Electric Bike. Awful, isn't it? No way to market anything.
The "motor cycle" trade and riders try to avoid that term, they just misappropriate the word Bike for their machines, recognising how unhelpful and awkward the double barrel name is.
Of course we did have an ideal name for our "bikes", it's Moped of course, but it's been wrongly applied for vehicles that have never usually had pedals. We either need that name back, or we need another equally promotable name for our velocipedes (No, not that!).
The conjunction of "ctr" in the middle of Electric makes it a word that doesn't flow readily, we trip at the middle. Other examples are Nuclear, commonly mispronounced as Nucular, famously by George Bush, and the similar difficulty that many Afro-Carribean and Asian peoples have with Ask, often pronounced as Arks. We don't need the descriptive Electric in a name for our bikes, we don't all the time (or any time) say Petrol Car, Electric Train, Aviation Fuel Jet Airliner, Diesel Ship.
Here's an example of the importance of a good name that catches on with the public. From 1950 on I was fitting and servicing cyclemotors for bikes. They were petrol of course, 25cc and 32cc Cyclemaster powered rear wheels, the 49cc Power-Pak driving the rear tyre surface, and the later 49cc BSA Winged Wheel, a variation on the Cyclemasters. There was no recognised vehicle name for these bikes, just "cyclemotors" for the engines only, and in a decade they were gone. Not quite though, there was still one to carry on.
The French introduced the Velosolex, a complete powered bike with a 50cc engine driving the front tyre through a carborundum roller. Was it better? Absolutely not, it was too heavy, underpowered, didn't have a very good reliability record and was a pig to pedal, both to start the engine and when the bike had broken down. The only hills it was good at were the ones going down. But it lived through a production span reaching into four decades, and to this day many older people instantly recognise the Velosolex name. And that's the key. Despite it's length, the name flowed easily and the bike caught on with the public in a way that the others without a name never could. That name came from Velo, meaning bike in France, and the Solex company, but it's derivation wasn't important, the nature of the word was.
So we need your thoughts. Either how do we get back our rightful name of Moped? Or, alternatively, we need a new one to popularise our bikes which someone has to dream up. All your ideas very welcome, one of them possibly leading to fame!
As with Hoover, Vespa, Duralay, TV, and countless others that are part of the consumer language.
Car, Van, Truck, Bus, Coach, Bike, Train, Plane, Ship, Scooter, Moped, Tractor, Motor, Wheels.
They're all simple, easy to say, rolling off the tongue without the slightest effort.
Now think about Electric Bicycle, or Electric Bike. Awful, isn't it? No way to market anything.
The "motor cycle" trade and riders try to avoid that term, they just misappropriate the word Bike for their machines, recognising how unhelpful and awkward the double barrel name is.
Of course we did have an ideal name for our "bikes", it's Moped of course, but it's been wrongly applied for vehicles that have never usually had pedals. We either need that name back, or we need another equally promotable name for our velocipedes (No, not that!).
The conjunction of "ctr" in the middle of Electric makes it a word that doesn't flow readily, we trip at the middle. Other examples are Nuclear, commonly mispronounced as Nucular, famously by George Bush, and the similar difficulty that many Afro-Carribean and Asian peoples have with Ask, often pronounced as Arks. We don't need the descriptive Electric in a name for our bikes, we don't all the time (or any time) say Petrol Car, Electric Train, Aviation Fuel Jet Airliner, Diesel Ship.
Here's an example of the importance of a good name that catches on with the public. From 1950 on I was fitting and servicing cyclemotors for bikes. They were petrol of course, 25cc and 32cc Cyclemaster powered rear wheels, the 49cc Power-Pak driving the rear tyre surface, and the later 49cc BSA Winged Wheel, a variation on the Cyclemasters. There was no recognised vehicle name for these bikes, just "cyclemotors" for the engines only, and in a decade they were gone. Not quite though, there was still one to carry on.
The French introduced the Velosolex, a complete powered bike with a 50cc engine driving the front tyre through a carborundum roller. Was it better? Absolutely not, it was too heavy, underpowered, didn't have a very good reliability record and was a pig to pedal, both to start the engine and when the bike had broken down. The only hills it was good at were the ones going down. But it lived through a production span reaching into four decades, and to this day many older people instantly recognise the Velosolex name. And that's the key. Despite it's length, the name flowed easily and the bike caught on with the public in a way that the others without a name never could. That name came from Velo, meaning bike in France, and the Solex company, but it's derivation wasn't important, the nature of the word was.
So we need your thoughts. Either how do we get back our rightful name of Moped? Or, alternatively, we need a new one to popularise our bikes which someone has to dream up. All your ideas very welcome, one of them possibly leading to fame!
As with Hoover, Vespa, Duralay, TV, and countless others that are part of the consumer language.
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