Image description:
Text: Amazon’s electric cargo bikes have arrived in DC.
Image: A four-wheeled vehicle that appears to be a cross between a bicycle, a go-cart, and a mini-truck
Response text from high t alpha shemale @gluetaster: that’s not a cargo bike man that’s a loopholemobile
I did see a real electric cargo bike, it was not only DIY-ed from a broken mountain bike and a broken kid’s bike, but also from a discarded electric roller that one could rent.
The “Deutsche Post” uses bicycles to deliver the mail. I see nothing wrong with an e-bike to deliver parcels.
What a great way to make everything worse.
Pretty sure all that bullshit is so they can use bike lanes, hence the helmet
Aren’t these still a whole heck of a lot better than cars?
For the environment, yes, but Amazon are doing it to avoid licensing, vehicle registration, and insurance costs, and putting workers at higher risk while doing so.
Yes… on roads.
It really depends though if their weight per wheel surface area is higher than a car per surface area it could still cause more damage to roads and using these on bike paths not designed to support motor vehicles (such as mulch paths) will likely destroy those paths.
They’re also a visibility hazard. Bike paths aren’t designed in roadways to have an 8x5 visual obstruction in them. This could endanger cyclists, pedestrians and drivers due to visual obstruction (which is already a problem with giant trucks and SUVs). You could mitigate this by requiring them to have like a blinking yellow light like we do for oversized highway traffic.
As far as climate, environmental and oil pollution. These are probably pretty good. They aren’t going to generate the level of toxic runoff and air pollution ICE cars will.
The shit us Americans will do to not just fucking use Kei trucks like the rest of the world.
A lot of it has to do with well-intentioned but stupid regulation.
The auto companies in the 2000s started calling everything a truck in order to get around fuel economy standards, so in 2008 the EPA announced that beginning in model year 2012, standards would be based on vehicle footprint instead of vehicle classification.
Notice how all the small trucks stopped being made after 2011? It’s because small cargo vehicles suddenly had to somehow have better fuel economy than a sedan.
It’s also why trucks have gotten stupidly big over the last 15 years. As standards increase, they can just make the footprint bigger.
We have blacks picking cotton for free in the prison-industrial complex of the deep south and parts of the midwest. As Americans we have this thing for slavery and subservience. The optics of things. I guess at some unconscious level we just want to see the rickshaw come back in some big, highly visible way.
Kei trucks can’t legally travel in bike lanes.
and bicycles have ~ $0 registration overhead wherever they are operated.
This…
Capitalism, uh, finds a way.
Capitalism finds a loophole.
I would love to see those taking over the streets, but I would hate to see them in the bike lane.
Ngl, I kinda want to get one to transform into a camping trailer. Become a traveling tea monk.
Meanwhile in Germany:
I visited Hamburg (number of years ago), and I couldn’t believe how much worse the bike lanes were compared to my pretty car-centric city’s bike lanes (Melbourne, Australia).
How does this death trap works In the winter? Or is this only for the southern states?
I mean, for the driver? They’d probably do what all the food app drivers do in winter in DC, handlebar muffs, cold weather gear. The summer is what would suck ass hard, I mean, that windshield is going to eliminate your main cooling.
For those tiny ass wheels on poorly plowed sidewalks and roads? Probably die.
prolly don’t want to be working this thing (in a blue and black uniform, no less) when it’s 115f and humid either
We have quite a few companies in Germany using similar vehicles in cities (I can’t compare the sizes here). All in all it’s a positive development. Maybe in this case it’s a way to utilize a legislative loophole, but even then I would say: The loopholed law has a positive impact if the new vehicles are smaller and more energy efficient than the ones they replace.
I think the larger issue is that most places in the US just don’t have bike lanes at all, and the coverage even in major cities is pretty spotty. So routinely bikes end up on sidewalks to keep from getting run down by F-150s. Legally bikes are allowed on all non-highway roads here and have the same rights as cars, but as my grandma used to say “they’ll put that you had the right of way on your tombstone”.
So these things will end up driving on sidewalks. And then people will want local governments to ban bikes from sidewalks and enforce those bans harshly, so bikes will have to enter mixed traffic on busy streets with no bike lanes, and less people will bike because don’t want to risk getting plastered by a pickup, and then the existing bike lanes will get ripped out because not enough people are biking to justify them.
Like, medium sized vehicles like this are great, but, the bike infrastructure just isn’t ready for them here. Better off using a Kei truck for the same type of work.
I deffo feel the same way here. Ultimately it’s probably a net positive, but people who bike there are gonna be piiiiissssed.
thats so funny, they cant include a steering wheel and the driver has to performatively rotate their legs :DD
Yep, nothing weird going on, just your regular cyclist enthusiast
Ahh, I now understand the need for max 250w motor. Also hope a judge can be real, use his head, and just say: “nope, not a bike” … bi-cycle, isn’t that word from two wheels?
tricycles are a thing. there are even legitamate quadricycles
Actual cargo bikes (the ones people use all the time to bring their children to kindergarten etc that are actually good and reduce traffic a lot) often have 3 wheels (2 at the front where the cargo space is, 1 at the back)
Then it is by definition not a bicycle. It’s called a tricycle.
😅 if only language was that simple
