micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: 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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I'm struggling to see how power has anything to do with the amount of hurt that will result in a crash. Yes, higher speed means higher hurt, and everyone from motorists, motorcyclists, bicyclists, and e-bikers will agree to that. But power is the wrong quantity to focus on.
Case in point: coming down a hill on an acoustic bike, I too can do 45 kph just like an ebike can. If both me and my ebike-riding compatriot both reach level ground at the bottom of the hill and are both doing 45 kph, and then we both crash separately, then it's equal hurt for us both. Motor power (with mine being 0 Watts) has nothing to do with hurt. Speed is kinetic energy, and that's the real worry when crashing: if that energy goes nowhere else, it goes into the fleshy human being.
↑Motor Power ∝ ↑Frequency of going at high speeds ∝ ↑% of time when a severe accident is possible.
I understand the argument that any given rider doesn't have to use the power. It's the same argument as "guns don't kill people, people kill people". While technically true, it ignores all of the evidence that shows that having the thing accessible increases its use in aggregate. I'm okay with people choosing to put themselves at risk, but a user of a more powerful eBike increases the danger for those around them as well. That kinetic energy works both ways when you hit someone else, and it's way easier to get up to that energy on a powerful eBike.
I hope we can agree that unlimited eBike power without a license is the incorrect policy. If my bike has as much power as a motorcycle (and electric motorcycles do exist), then I should need to be appropriately licensed. At some insane power, it should probably not be street legal. If you imagine a "smooth morph" between the most powerful electric motorcycle and the least powerful eBike on the market, there is some line where we need to transition categories. I'm willing to argue over where the various categorical lines around vehicle regulation and driver licensing should be, but I hope we can agree that they need to exist.
That said, I'm not sure that the ~25km/h limit in NY is the right limit, I might choose something more like 30-35km/h (~18.5-22 mph). But that's without any data and I'm not an expert, so 🤷
I build my own bikes and I definitely used to go faster on average when I had a more powerful motor and/or higher limits. I've done trips on the 1.5kW Tangent where I've averaged 45kph. These days I ride small 250W hubs, limited to 700W (overpowered) but with pedal assist that tops out at 2x human power. That way I can't go much more than 400W continuous. At the same time I get high torque when starting from a stop. Which is more or less what factory ebikes with torque pedal assist do. I now average 25-28kph.
Its an odd way to convey that they meant the kinetic energy once you impact something. But power is Energy over Time, so they are talking about energy at that speed and its irrelevant if it is manmade watts or ebike watts
I should have clarified. I didn't mean motor power. These are power levels needed for any average bike to maintain this speed on level ground. You and your friend would definitely be hurt the same if you both went 45kph and fell the same way.
100% and you can estimate how much kinetic energy is stored by looking at how much energy is needed to maintain that speed. Can use bike sim to get the numbers. And as you said - that's the energy that the meatbag would have to dissipate. The real interesting part which isn't obvious to everyone is that the energy grows exponentially with speed due to air drag. So falling at 40 hurts much more than 2x than falling at 20.