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
the fucking bike helmet
Electric truck.
Ahh, a western Took Took!
Looks like a useful vehicle. Whatever else people decide to call it is their problem, not the driver’s.
How to test if it’s actually a bicycle:
I propose a simple ontological test by law enforcement. Simply steal one. If the police treat it like they do bicycle theft, it’s a bicycle. If the police treat it like it’s an auto theft, then it’s an automobile.
If the police take the theft of one of these seriously, like they would a car theft, then point to that as justification for why they should be regulated like autos and banned from bike lanes. If the police treat it like bike theft…well…there’s a lot of valuable materials in those loopholemobiles…and the police clearly aren’t taking theft of them seriously…so…well the problem will solve itself.
The shit us Americans will do to not just fucking use Kei trucks like the rest of the world.
I work at Portland State University, which is embedded in downtown Portland. They have small maintenance trucks that go on street that have many traits in common with Kei trucks. They are too small, slow, and unsafe for a freeway, but are perfect for carrying cargo around campus. I am unclear why there is a carve out for those trucks, but not for Kei trucks.
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.
Kei trucks can’t legally travel in bike lanes.
Pretty sure all that bullshit is so they can use bike lanes, hence the helmet
I used to sell snow cones out of something similar when I was a teenager.
Capitalism, uh, finds a way.
Capitalism finds a loophole.
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).
A bike tour through Italy opened my eyes to this.
There was no usable bike infrastructure at all, most of the time.
One of the campsites we went to was only accessible via a 4-lane road with dividers.
But drivers crossed all the way into the other lane to pass us. At one point, a driver stayed behind us and put his hazard lights on when passing wasn’t possible, then gave us a thumbs-up when he could pass safely.I’d rather share the road with drivers like that than have German bike lanes and German drivers.
Of course I’d much rather have Dutch bike lanes and Dutch drivers.
See what? I can only see red looking at this. Bastards!
What a great way to make everything worse.
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.
I would love to see those taking over the streets, but I would hate to see them in the bike lane.
That’s a keitruck without regulations.
What? you don’t like corporate-exclusive keitrucks?
Amazon: Kei for me not for thee
Nope, I don’t like corporate-exclusive keitrucks that skirt laws and regs. Keitrucks are the designed result of regulations.
Keitrucks are the designed result of regulations.
So exactly as this “cargo-e-bike”… especially designed to work within the existing regulation for cargo-e-bikes.
That is a stupid assumption to make and even more stupid that you’re trying to defend Amazon. It has 4 wheels, so it literally isn’t even a bike. This is obviously an attempt to cut some corner, probably trying to save on gasoline and shove more responsibility to the workers who aren’t being paid anywhere near what their labor is worth.
Having to actually defend Amazon is the bad part.
Having regulation that makes small(-ish) electric vehicles with certain speed limits count legally as e-bikes is exactly how you get efficient small electric vehicles to be used for the last mile of deliveries instead of stupid trucks.
That’s how Kei cars and trucks were established: special regulation for vehicles with limited sizes and power not counting as normal cars so being exempt from certain requirements, paying reduced taxes and insurance etc.
I don’t think there’s necessarily anything corporate-exclusive about these; you could probably commission your own if you wanted.
I don’t really see how this doesn’t count as a motor vehicle, though. Be interesting to see what the ‘assist’ speed and power limits are.
I looked up what constitutes an ebike in my state and it has to to be 750w or less motor and limit to 28mph with pedal assist. Has to have a front light and rear reflector like a regular bike. If you can go 30 or more on an ebike, its considered a motorcycle and you can be pulled over and need registration, insurance, license. This thing is gonna end up with many states adding vehicle weight limits.
28 mph is 45 kph and about twice the speed at which assist is required to cut out in Europe.
This thing needs weight limits and its speed halved. There should also be a momentum limit on speed times weight so a heavier vehicle has to go slower.
A power limit acts as kind-of an implicit momentum limit, although it can be more limiting going uphill.
Aren’t these still a whole heck of a lot better than cars?
