On Sep 27, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Michael Ross <[email protected]> wrote:
> A velo implies not carlike speeds. Presumably you are OK with that part. > If you want more than 20mph on electric only then you have exceeded the > federal limits. That was a big part of the problem. From a mechanical standpoint, there's no reason why, say, a Quest with a 500W motor shouldn't be able to keep up with surface street traffic and even be reasonable for long-distance highway (not freeway) trips. I had even figured out something with off-the-shelf motors and battery packs and the like how to make it from Phoenix to Tucson in time for lunch, or from here to Joshua Tree (where a cousin lives) in a single (long) day. The electric motor was going to provide a bit more than half the motive power at high-speed cruising. That sort of thing made it reasonable to spend ~$20k for a "glorified bicycle"...but not if it was going to be limited to 25 MPH in bike lanes. > It is legal though not completely practical for mixed use greenways. That was the other side of the coin. To use it at speed in travel lanes, I'd have to register it as a motorcycle...which would then mean I'd be barred from riding it even with the motor disengaged in bike lanes or on multi-use paths. > You could move to a more natural location... Sorry, but I'm not willing to pull up all my roots and move just to buy a bike. > Phoenix is so artificial it might be a model of extraplanetary living. Not necessarily. Even with all the not-optional air conditioning running day and night for so much of the year, the solar panels on my roof generate half again as much electricity as I use -- plenty to power the electric vehicle(s) I'll hopefully be driving sooner rather than later. That right there makes my home far and away one of the lowest-impact ones in the entire developed world. The next biggest environmental impact here is water, but it's agricultural exports and golf courses that are depleting the water tables faster than they're being replenished, not residential dwellings. Annual average rainfall for the square footage of my property, little as it is compared to other parts of the country, isn't all that much less than my personal municipal usage. Of course, capturing every drop that falls on my property isn't practical nor would it be smart, but it demonstrates that I'm not personally the reason water tables are dropping -- it's all those cotton (cotton!) and citrus (citrus!) farmers and golf courses and swimming pools (that I don't have) and the like. > • and the danger of riding a low-profile > There is nothing low profile about the ELF, but having put many miles on a > Greenspeed GTO recumbent trike, I can tell you that low profile is an > imagined problem. Sadly, I can tell you that it _is_ a problem -- at least here. Several years ago, I was riding my Haluzak 'bent home from work. Right around sunset -- maybe a few minutes one way or the other, don't remember; I was going southbound and so the lighting was near ideal: perfect contrast, no glare, the works. I had NiteRider lights front and rear: an headlight as bright as a car's and a pair of taillights also as bright as those on a car, the taillights mounted slightly above waist height. Fluorescent green trunk on the back, fluorescent yellow helmet, reflectors everywhere. Brand-new ZZipper fairing that the headlight was shining through and thus itself (slightly) illuminated. I was doing ~25 MPH in the right-hand lane when some idiot, yakking on a phone, speeding, and passing left-lane traffic...rear-ended me and didn't even touch the breaks until after the impact. I was damned lucky. The bike, of course, was totaled, but it saved my life, between the "crumple zone" of the rear wheel, the (superlative) seat that both cushioned and spread out the impact, and the fairing that took the worst of the road rash. I was badly beaten up and it took surgery and lots of very painful physical therapy, but I made a full recovery and today I'm in the best physical condition of my life... ...but there wasn't a more visible 'bent on the road at the time I was run over, so, yes, visibility is most emphatically a problem here. > And yet millions of cyclists across the US do it anyway. Yes...and, if soccer moms had injury and fatality rates comparable to those cyclists suffer at their hands...well, those soccer moms would be unimaginably outraged. > You could do it if you wanted to. It's a question of priorities. As you've identified, I'd have to make the electric velo a priority over most else in my life, and sell my home and move far away from my aging parents and my work and everything else and sacrifice not a small amount of personal comfort and safety. I'd absolutely love to live somewhere where it made sense -- many places in Europe spring to mind. And I'd love even more to see that sort of cycling-friendly environment and culture take root here. And I've served on the Tempe Transportation Commission for a number of years and done what I can to make that a reality... ...but that reality is yet to come, alas. So I'll keep doing what I can, cheer those (like you) who can live it...but not beat myself up for living in the real world that's not (yet) perfect. Cheers, b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140927/d14a26ca/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
