Joe Blake asked about a draft of the proposed PAC (power assisted cycle)legislation. The NSW Road Traffic Authority spent about a year coordinating the PAC proposal with all state RTAs to up allowable power from a current 200w to 250w, with the proviso that ebikes comply with the EU 250w/25kmh motor cutout regs. Bicycle NSW and Bicycle Vic both unquestioningly supported this recommendation. Any research that was conducted was designed to support the EU shoe fit. Eg the average speed of 1080 bicycles (incl bmx's?) was measured, and the top 15% eliminated to then come up with '85% of bikes travel below 25kmh', so a 25kmh max is OK.
The May 2009 draft legislation by the NSW Centre for Road Safety is located at this URL:
http://www.bv.com.au/file/file/RTA%20May%2009.pdf
Fed Dept of Infrastructure's Vehicle Safety Standards Division haven't released a draft copy for public comment, despite sitting on the "power-assisted_pedal_cycles-proposal_for_a_new_ab_vehicle_definition-may_2009" proposal which the NSW RTA gave them for over a year. Their 'It's not a priority' excuse offered for most of the past year is wearing a bit thin. Someone who's had to deal with them recently told me they have little comprehension of what ebikes are and how they work. For example, max torque in an ebike motor is right when it goes to take off, whereas in a petrol motor it's probably closer to 65% up the rpm range. Max horsepower is about half way through the rpm range, and fades to about nil on my ebike at 32kmh. Electric motors draw a lot more power than their rating at startup or on hills, so how does that count for a 250w rating? Hence, rather than think about it we'll just adopt the EU standard; probably the lowest common denominator that 25 EU countries' transport ministers could agree to at a time when NiCad batteries were interesting.
This month, when I replied to a
Bicycle Victoria (BV) annual subscription renewal notice to the effect that they're working against my ebike interest (speed limiting of motor) so I'd have to think whether their RideOn magazine is good enough to offset this, I received the reply below. I regard their input on ebikes as a rubber stamp, with little consideration for current ebike manufacturers/retailers or ebikers. I put a 13p paper to their Board with 40 reasons why 25kmh speed limiting was taking ebikes in Australia backwards or being irrelevant, and their Board took 5mo to reply with a 'we're not changing' response. They are hardly transparent with their ebike policy, other than acknowledging it was invented in Europe. This BV letter is rather more informative, and follows:
Bicycle Victoria to me on ebikes, 7/11 (unabridged):
The Euro and Japanese 25 kph standard (and soon to be China standard) is supported for a number of reasons.
Because bikes frequently travel on shared paths, bike riders have to travel in the same performance envelope as a pedestrian and runner. High speed e-bikes on shared trails would lead to pressure for the exclusion of bikes on these paths. Your tales of tail wind adventures on the Fed trail are guaranteed to make public liability insurers very nervous.
Throttle controls are excluded because they result in e-bikes accelerating away from lights at a faster rate than human powered bikes, resulting in crashes. Hence the pedalec requirement.
But the main reason is that the Australian bike retail network is not interested in non-standard e-bikes, and until they are, we will not see big take up of e-bikes in Australia.
We want to see a full range of e-bikes in every bike shop, with simple controls, and reliable and durable equipment that the everyday man and woman in the street will use with confidence. There needs to be full ranges of spare parts, batteries, accessories and so on, backed up by trained and knowledgable staff.
The bike industry has made it clear that it won't do all these things until the standard is introduced so they can use the same models as they sell in the major e-bike markets.
Like you, we want to see e-bikes take off in a big way. But it won't happen unless there is a powerful commitment from the bike industry. At the moment they are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the government to finalise the standards.
I know that there are passionate individuals with knowledge and technical expertise who are keen to have regulations which permit their individualistic e-bike builds.
But our concern is with the mass of cyclists. We want to see a huge uptake in e-bikes, and that requires an industry wide response to an internationally accepted standard.
By way of rebuttal, I'd say (if they didn't have 'no reply' in their email address'):
This doesn't address middle and outer suburbanite's and country folks' need to travel long distances, and the 25kmh cutoff adding about 20% to trip time compared to my legal 200w ebike now. In my report, I said I normally ride 28-34kmh but this could rise to 45kmh in a 25kn tailwind. The absence of cyclists on the Fed trail is a far greater concern than my doing an occassional 45kmh; and top speed to date on my road bike (unassisted, downhill) is 67kmh.
The reference to insurers offers insight. Bicycle Victoria inherited a bicycle insurance scheme from the Vic govt when Mr Kennet was privatising all the govt institutions he could. As a BV member, you get insurance cover for what the RTA and Medicare schemes miss. I'd say that keeping cyclists below 25kmh would suit their insurance interest just fine, and is perhaps a front runner reason in why a group purporting to represent cyclists would work against their interests. We can also see that ebikes are being tied to pedestrian speeds, which may be appropriate in the inner suburbs with a network of tracks but is a stretch out here in the 'burbs where I mostly travel on-road of necessity. At no time do they allow for ebikers having a brain and driving to suit prevailing conditions. In traffic, I'm safest when I travel closest to car speeds - and in busy traffic cars often do 40kmh and I can ebike at 32kmh. A slow cyclist dodging in and out of parked cars is the greater hazard, and I've heard of major arterial road disruption when a slow cyclist asserts his/her right to be on-road.
My thumb throttle lets me get across busy 4-lane highways quickly. No way is a slower pedalec start beneficial to my health.
It's retailers that want the EU standard, so they can access a greater range of western brand ebikes (eg Gazelle). Not entirely unreasonable, but - a big flaw here, is that the existing ebikers and ebike manufacturers/retailers have been actively ignored. It's like Pol Pot promising an agrarian Utopia, and excuse me I'll just put this plastic bag over your head. I bought my ebike 3 years ago, and I have bought a replacement throttle and battery (to increase distance) in the last 6 mo, so my ride does have a standard or parts would be different. If EU 250w/25kmh standard ebikes are so sh*thot, let them sell on their own merits. Don't tell me I now need a motor cutoff pedalec throttle on a 200w ebike because there might be a pedestrian on the Fed Trail. And I'm going to pay a subscription for this advice?!
UK's Pedalec forum lists 41 ebike reviews in their 'Bike Directory' on <
http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/content.php?r ... ke-reviews>. Are all 41 ebikes standard, why? Why would you say my ebike is unstandard? The Jamis Coda Sport EVS ebike has been around at least 3 years that I know of, and I'd bet $10 it's 200w would take out any of the 250w EU ebikes in a race. The 250w/25kmh EU adoption proposal in Australia has both ebike customers and rbike etailers sitting on the fence waiting for an outcome. Rather revealing that the govt espouses green credentials and yet allows 2 years to pass to copy another region's ebike standard, without so much as a discussion paper from the current authority (fed DoI). An ebike moves a person using 1% of the caloric energy in fuel that it takes using a car.
As noted, my ebike is an established model of Australian build, using a 14:1 reduction planetary gear drive Bafang motor hub. There are millions of these drive units around the world, including China, Europe and Australia. BV completely ignore the existing ebike landscape in Australia, and basically sound like vacuum cleaner salesmen. BV promise an ebike in every bike shop, with an electronics engineer to service it. Yeah, right! And from discussion with a Qld ebike manufacturer/retailer 10y in the business, Bicycle NSW pedal the same line, wouldn't discuss core engineering issues, motor drive through the cranks advantages, etc.
A UK pedalec friend said to me in Sept 2010, 'It's sad isn't it Alan, exactly the same as the sort of reply we get in Britain, "Thanks very much but we'll just carry on as we intended", so you already know what to expect in their full reply. This sort of governance makes a mockery of democracy, just blocking any participation in decision making, no matter how well informed'.
