Why ebikes are good / bad

[am50em]

Owners of e-bikes or e-scooters will not be allowed to charge their batteries inside their apartments under rules developed for strata schemes concerned about fire risk.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-10/ ... /103295780

[zebee]

At least someone in that story points out the issue is most likely the illegal ones and the cheap imports.

And that there is no point forbidding something you can't control - although I suppose what happens is they forbid e-bikes on the property. Lots of people wanting to rent flats who don't use e-bikes after all.

I charge mine in the garage. But it's a very fancy setup (Bionx) and the charger/battery are well made and have protections. If someone rocked up with a cheap and cheerful one I'd have a problem as a strata committee member to know what to do. Bionx has been out of business for years, I couldn't prove it was safe.

[Mr Purple]

E-bikes are bad. I smashed myself trying to chase one up the hills on Friday mornings commute. Easy to catch or keep up on the flat, but I paid for making my commute a couple of minutes quicker than normal.if it had been a regular bike it would have been a fair ‘race’

I was caught out on this one this morning but on a virtual ride.

I train on Fulgaz which is filmed by other cyclists with your speed relative to theirs based on your weight and power output. I normally go a fair bit faster than the filming rider, but got about 20km into a hilly ride today and was getting smashed by them on every hill over about 4% - as in doing about 60% of their speed with 500W.

Wasn't until I saw the guy's shadow on the road that I realised it was a fat bike with about 15 electronic devices on the handlebars. Would have been nice if they'd mentioned in the ride description that it was filmed on an overpowered e-bike before I broke myself trying to keep up with them.