Ebikes Focus of The Conversation Hour

The Conversation

The Conversation Hour is a Victorian based interview and talkback program on ABC Radio. Hosts Richelle Hunt and Warwick Long recently devoted an entire episode to the growing popularity of ebikes.

Richelle opened the program by declaring that she and her family, who were definitely not ‘hard core’ cyclists, were considering buying an ebike instead of a second car.

The program included calls from various members of the public plus experts from the Australian Electric Vehicle Association and Victoria Walks and Peter Bourke from Bicycle Industries Australia and We Ride Australia.

Clip On Ebike Power Within Seconds

Clip On Ebike Power Within Seconds

Brooklyn / New York / USA Despite the boom in ebike sales over recent years, there are still far more non-ebikes on the road than ebikes. E-bike conversion kits have been around for many years. But they are relatively expensive and labour intensive to install. There have been some attempts to make conversion simpler such…

Harley-Davidson Ebike Launch Generates Blaze of Publicity

Harley-Davidson’s Serial 1 name is derived from its first motorcycle, built in 1903.

Famous American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson has just launched its first production ebike and with it, a whole new brand and company division. Known as Serial 1 Cycle Co., the brand takes its name from “Serial Number One,” the nickname for Harley-Davidson’s first motorcycle. As you can see from the photos accompanying this article, the bike…

Sub 7kg Ebike Sets New Guinness World Record

Mechanical engineer Dennis Freiburg from Germany has set the Guinness World Record for the lightest ever e-bike prototype with a design that weighs just 6.8kg. The ride – named the Freicycle – reportedly took Freiburg almost a year to design and build, serving as part of a project for his doctorate. Unsurprisingly, the Freicycle is…

Australian Wholesalers Want Faster eBikes

A survey of 55 Australian wholesalers who sell ebikes found that 73% of them would like our legislation changed to increase the maximum speed of power assistance from the current 25kph to 32kph. Bicycle Industries Australia (BIA) conducted a three question survey of wholesalers. In answer to the first question as to what their preferred…

Google Trends Shows Cycling Search Surge

Google trends on bike brands

Our new age of big data may send shivers down this spines of many civil libertarians, but it also reveals fascinating insights that were previously hidden. Using Google Trends software, we looked at the relative number of searches from within Australia for the three biggest bike brands over the past year, followed by four bicycle…

Research Shows that Ebike Riders are Not ‘Cheating’

e-mountain bikers

A research paper published by members of Brigham Young University in the USA has concluded that eMTB riders are working their bodies almost as hard as those on regular bikes. In the study, 33 regular MTB riders aged 18 to 65 formed the pool, with each participant tracked via Strava over a 10 kilometre loop…

New Technology Will Mean Greater Range, Smaller Batteries for Ebikes

Bosch

Bosch is investing approximately one billion Euros (A$1.63 billion) in new silicon carbide semiconductor technology that is due to enter production in the first half of 2020. In simple terms, the new semiconductors allow power to flow more efficiently from the ebike battery to the motor. Bosch says that semiconductors made of silicon carbide set…

What’s in the Future for Australian Ebike Sales?

cropped-Canva-Riding-electric-bike

Now that we have our first ever reasonably accurate number of ebike sales in Australia, how does this compare with other countries where they have been collecting sales data every year? Firstly, to be fair to Australia, we need to take the combined figure of the 22 companies who participated in the survey, 27,500, and…