Scaliboy62

I live on the south shore of Long Island NY & my area has been whacked by our worse natural disaster in modern day history in the form of Hurricane Sandy. 950,000 homes/customers or 90 % of long Island lost power & Gasoline lines are miles long. My home town is one of a few with their own Power Station & I have power. Even though E-Biking through a disaster zone can be dangerous it's been a great way for me to get into town, the post office, visit friends in need without using my car which is in the garage with a full tank of gas for extreme emergencies.
People are waiting 2,4,6 hours or more on these lines to fill up their cars when an E-Bike would handle most of the tasks they use their cars for as mine does.
Even though portable generators can be tricky when used with some electronics I believe most E-Bike batteries & chargers would fare OK being charged with a generator. & Then there's always a Solar set up to recharge these bikes .
My point of this post is these bikes are a great tool, mine has been. yet another reason to buy an E-Bike in todays world weather it be global warming contributing to more frequent & more violent storms or the threat of these finatics in the middle east, it's great to have one of these bikes @ your disposal.

EBikeFL 

I don't think I could have said it better, Scaliboy62. First it was California gas prices and now due to Sandy, it's the New England's gas availability. It's hard to even imagine a time when gas will be unavailable or too high of a price for the average person to afford but that time is coming. Every educated member on this forum should do his/her homework and find out what's in store as far as oil and energy are concerned for the foreseeable future.

Here are a few videos to get your investigation started:
[h=1]Congressman Bartlett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWh85...ure=watch-vrec[/h]Post Carbon Institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Yp0...feature=relmfu
The IMF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZmJK...ure=plpp_video
Former Shell Oil President, John Hofmeister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRLUd...ure=plpp_video
Petroleum Geologist Jeffrey J. Brown Start at 25:20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7h4V...ure=plpp_video

Scaliboy62

It's a sad terrible situation here on long Island, there's no traffic lights & the people who are behind the wheels that normally drive like Jack Asses are racing around with their SUV's to get from point A to point B then waiting on gas lines for 5 hours for 10 gallons. The truth is the gasoline should be reserved for generators & Emergency vehicles not Little Dicky in his Escalade.
I'll check out your video links no doubt we cant continue to rely on burning fossil fuels @ the rate we do . Thats my trip with my love for E-Biking I really believe they are an alternative mode of transport that makes sense for the future for a lot of people who can safely embrace E-Biking with the ability to properly maintain them & safely use them, heck I'm living proof I sold one of my cars & put 4200 miles total on my E-Bikes since Feb. 2012 & I'm 50 years old. Say a prayer for the East coast, NJ, long Island , Conn it's starting to get cold & people have no place to go thousands lost everything, towns washed away our own Katrina & the clean up has just begun.
Also this.. God Forbid there was a Tsunami, or Chemical or attack of some sorts, I could easily escape the area faster then any car which would be useless due to traffic jams & violence. Man I could boogie 60 miles in no time to safety, I would just have to get a holster for my shotgun & do like Arnold did on his Fatboy in Terminatior 2

powell

EbikeFL
It all at the bottom of your every post in your signature , very true , how we use energy and what energy we use.
In flood of news about USA weather disasters on all TV networks no journalist will mention WHY are those disasters happenning right now.
"thousands lost everthing???" - every house on morgage must be insured often with furniture covered, every car must be insured to be even consider for registering in general in N.AMERICA.
or I am missing something??
my house insurance garantees that I can rebuild for insurance money, so it is not true??
Pretty sure weather disasters included in coverages. or not?
People lost everthing in Russia latest weather disaster , because anybody hardly insure house there, most are owned, no loan.
The biggest looser here are insurance companies which must pay off tens of millions

Scaliboy62

Powell, it's all in the fine print & the insurance companies will try to wiggle off the hook when possible & not everyone has insurance or enough insurance, also the personal items that are lost add up to everything. Bad scene here trust me

cerewa

Why ebike beats a car in certain emergencies: it can bypass gridlocked cars, and is still useful when completely out of battery. (Try that with a car that's out of gas!). I've been thinking of getting the proper converters to use my ebike battery (which is a big 48v20Ah LiFePO4) for other purposes. Would enable me recharge my Pphone, listen to radio, or work (since the nature of my work allows me to work from home and I'm more in needed for work precisely when coworkers are dealing with power outages.

Scaliboy62

Your 20 AH battery should keep your cell phone charged, a light & radio till the power gets turned back on even if it takes 6 years LOL but seriously . E-Bike companies should have these accessory ports on these bikes & tout the other uses for them in an emergency maybe offer a light that plugs in, cell phone charger etc..

EBikeFL 

Check the bottom of the linked page for all your adapter needs: https://www.powerwerx.com/adapter-cables/

TiBikeGuy

Here's my view on E-bikes in a disaster like Hurricane Sandy.

There is flooding in many areas, I don't know if e-bikes work if with the motor under water, If you are riding and there is a fallen tree or collapse road, and you need to carry your bike over this obstacle. E-bikes are not light. Given a situation where you need to climb and hold on with one hand while trying to lift your your bike over. It would be much easier with a 12 kg mtn bike than a 30 kg e-bike.

Charging with solar panels. Given that current photo-voltaic technology, the efficiency of about 20%, it would be quite difficult, but not impossible to charge your e-bike with solar panels. Because even with strong sunlight it would take many hours to fully charge the battery. It would be easier to charge your battery with a generator because you could do it, while you are sleeping so you can get a freshly charged battery when you wake up.

If you are in a situation where you cannot charge your battery, and it goes flat. You will be pedalling with dead weight, E-bikes are not very efficient with a flat battery.

EBikeFL 

TiBikeGuy, check out this website and YouTube video: https://www.shuttlebike.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmxKS...eature=related

350htrr

Charging an E-Bike just from solar is easily doable, I did it for about 10 days strait when I went on my biking holiday. We never plugged in anywhere for those 10 days and had plenty of electricity for our camper using the laptop and the wife even used her sewing machine almost every day and I plugged my bionX every day/evening for about 3 to 4 Hrs fully charging up the battery with the battery usually down to 1/4 to 1/2 from my daily ride... A properly set up solar power done right can power practically the whole house today...

Scaliboy62

Tibikeguy, you dont want to be riding the E-Bike during the storm but after the storm surge subsides & the storm blows offshore & the tides return to normal it has proven to be a handy tool, just being outside & walking around can be dangerous after a Typhoon with downed wires, trees but if you keep your wits about yourself it's OK, riding in NYC is more dangerous IMHO.. The thng is here now theres no gas, people are so used to cars as their only source of transport that they cant get around, not me I've averaged 15 miles or so a day since the storm blew out taking care of business via E-Bike.
EBikeFL, that Shuttle bike video is pretty cool

turbo1889

Having a bike period and knowing how to use it in rough terrain (think mountain bike and mountain biking skill set) along with all the extras to keep it moving (patches, extra tubes, and other necessities) is extremely useful in an infrastructure break down event regardless of what causes it. To that I would add that having a utility bike capable of hauling significantly more then just you and/or a trailer is even better. Add to that a bike with motor assistance either electric or another power source such as a small extremely fuel efficient small internal combustion engine and that is even better. If you can get 150 miles per gallon even with only five gallons of gas to your name you can go a long ways or last a long time with short errands before your on pedal power only.

I'm a conservationist not an environmentalist. The vast majority of electrical power in the U.S. and for that case the world in general is generated by the burning of fossil fuels or even worse nuclear fission power which is the most dangerous technology of all and represents far more of a threat to life on this planet then all the fossil fuels in existence and should only be used in situations where it is the only practical choice despite the dangers, deep space exploration probes such as our current rover on Mars comes to mind. Long story short most electricity is dirty electricity the pollution is merely moved to the power plant chimney rather then the tail pipe on your vehicle. Granted some of the cleanest fossil fuels available such as natural gas (methane) are much more easily used to generate electricity in a power plant then used in a portable vehicle due to storage issues.

Long story short, its going to be a long road and there are no magic bullets (unless someone miraculously cracks the cold fusion conundrum without generating any unforeseen negative side effects like nuclear fission power generation) we all need to take individual stewardship and make wise choices to limit unnecessary waste. The key is not in any government program (don't forget the government has the worst pollution record of anyone especially when it comes to nuclear pollution) the key is with us and the choices and decisions we make. Driving a light vehicle that gets 100 to 150 miles per gallon whenever practical and saving many trips in a larger less fuel efficient vehicle if multiplied millions upon millions of times over around the whole planet would have a huge impact. Small choices when repeated over and over make huge differences in the long run, the solution is grass root from the bottom up not from the top down, it always has been and always will be.

The little people on the bottom are smart enough (or at least more likely then the idiot politicians and bureaucrats who have their collective heads too far up their collective rears to see squat) to realize that an electric car (or for that matter bike) is not a 0% pollution vehicle unless the power used to charge it comes from a non-polluting source and the hardware of that non-polluting source is itself made using non-polluting technologies and the same goes for the hardware on the bike. Where did the materials to build the solar panel come from and to build the bike and its batteries, mining and petro-drilling most likely for the vast majority. How much damage to the ecosystem was done there? And how about when those batteries wear out and the same for the solar panel neither of which have an unlimited service life what happens then to deal with the waste and even if it is fully recycled is the recycling process fully ecologically sound.

The footprint created by our activities and choices can never be fully eliminated. It will never be 0% but we can certainly make wise choices to reduce it. Even without major life-style changes simple choices repeated often enough by enough people will make a huge difference. Do your part, do more then your part. Everyone should be applauded for the conservation efforts they have made any movement in the right direction is ultimately to everyone's benefit. I would be surprised if anyone of us here on the e-bike section of this forum who has been using an e-bike on a regular basis for any length of time hasn't encountered one of those pedal only snobs who treat us nastily because we aren't going as far as they do. My response is always the same and in a nut shell I ask them if they would prefer I drive a big gas guzzler instead.

I think some of the e-bikers have a similar snob problem and fail to appreciate the reductions that others make that aren't quite as much as theirs. Some of the e-bike guys get all snobby about someone using a bicycle that is gas burning motor assisted or someone riding one of those light motorcycles that are basically a street legal dirt bike (which by the way often get upwards of 70-mpg). We all need to do our part and anyone pulling at least some of their weight should be appreciated for doing so.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now. Just felt the need to inject some "big picture" outlook into a thread that seemed to be going the way of an erroneously simplistic mindset that could be summed up in an attitude projection of: "Gas burning cars caused Super Storm Sandy ~ E-bikes are completely pollution free ~ Therefore all gas burning large vehicles and those who drive them are bad and all e-bikes are good ~ We be the good guys you be the bad guys ~ Now we get all snobby about it."

350htrr

The "only" Eco friendly way to get around is by walking, anything else would need something that is not as Eco friendly, thus bad for the environment...

Metal Man

I guess that would depend on what your shoes are made from??

009jim

I'm with you dude.

turbo1889

Exactly, 350htrr & Metal Man, you get my point:

Everything is a matter of degree and everyone needs to have the mindset of realizing the size of their own footprint and making wise choices to minimize it and conserve our resources and environment. Lots of small changes multiplied many times over make a big difference, steady constant improvement based on you actually doing something as an individual instead of expecting someone else to fix the problem especially government (which rarely fixes anything and if it ever does can't see to do it without screwing up other stuff even worse) should be the goal not stopping everything and instantly going back to the stone age walking around barefoot like the radical eviro-nuts would prefer. Take the very materials we build our houses out of for instance. I made a conscious choice to build my place almost completely out of natural stone-work and natural wood-work using non-chemically treated natural glass fiber insulation with stainless steel thin sheet panels for the roofing. Natural stone work using raw stone and a non-exotic-chemical mortar mix has far less ecological impact then poured concrete and if done correctly will last literally for thousands of years as proven quite well by ancient stone work still standing to this day. Provided they aren't cut down faster then they grow back with minimal invasive selective harvesting using wood from trees without any chemical processing or other dumb stuff done to the wood has much less impact then almost any other resource. Natural non-chemically treated fiberglass is merely a mix of natural minerals (or better yet recycled glass) heated to the melting point and drawn into fibrous strands. Yes of course there is fuel used in that heating process but if the resulting insulation value saves more energy in heating needs for ones home then is used in melting the glass then it is a net gain. Unfortunately, there are only two practical roofing materials that will truly stand up in my area to the elements without having to be redone every so many years or so and thus of course creating a continual drain on resources and a disposal problem, namely a sod roof or a metal roof. Although my place is built deep into a side-hill to use the thermal heat-sink of the earth to keep it well above freezing in the winter even without any additional heating sources and naturally cool in the summer it wasn’t built deep enough in or with heavy enough timbers to make a sod roof practical so I had to go with metal and since if I was going to use metal I wanted it to last nearly forever so as to make it a one time expenditure not just in the financial sense but the ecological footprint sense as well so I used stainless steel sheet metal instead of regular steel roofing which will eventually rust away despite being coated with some not so eco-friendly paint or zinc galvanization coating.

In the dead of winter I use only about 2-4KW of electric energy to heat my place to a toasty warm 70+ degrees or so when I’m not burning wood bio-mass in a high-efficiency double stage catalytic stove instead of using electricity since when done correctly burning fire-wood is a renewable resource that is part of an already existing natural cycle. My home isn’t made out of a bunch of chemical laced poisonous materials that have a large ecological footprint. That was a conscious choice I made, yet I still have a car and a truck and sometimes drive them and burn gas doing so but I do so only as necessary and use a pedal only bike, an e-bike, a bike with pedals and motor assistance from a small efficient IC-engine, or a full blown motor-cycle because they are all in degrees of margin more efficient with a smaller foot-print then the heavy vehicles.

That kind of thinking, that kind of mindset that recognizes the situation and makes wise choices to maintain a comfortable and healthy life-style while substantially reducing ones ecological footprint is the kind of thinking that will actually fix the ecological problems we face. Why on earth would you use a nasty harsh artificial chemically laden cleaner to clean your toilet bowl when there is a clear alternative that is a plant extract based natural product purpose made for that use that works just as well the vast majority of the time. Yes, its $4 and change a bottle instead of $2 and change a bottle but it is so strong and so concentrated you only need to use a tiny bit and because a bottle lasts for more then twice as many cleans actually turns out to be cheaper. Yes, if you got a really bad one to clean you might need to use the nasty harsh stuff every once in a while, and I totally understand that, but why aren’t you using the safe stuff the rest of the time?

As a consumer you ultimatly have to power to vote with your dollar (or whatever other currency you use) and that is the most powerful form of voting there is and as a consumer you have literally hundreds of choices to make every pay-check as to what you buy and how you use it and for what and in most cases there is a product with a lower ecological footprint you could use instead to satisfy the same purpose in many cases with no long run additional cost to you compared to the alternative you are already using and in many cases actually a savings to you. So let’s start all making better choices, they don’t have to be perfect choices just progressively better ones.

An e-bike is one of those choices. If you need to get yourself and a light cargo load from point A to point B depending on the distance, time allowed, and conditions an e-bike may be an excellent choice that is better for your health, better for your wallet, and better for the ecosystem then driving a conventional gasoline powered heavy vehicle. Same goes for other light vehicles all the way from a pedal only bike up to a full blown motorcycle that is still more efficient then a heavy vehicle.

Provided “better” is a continuous exercise performed by enough people at the grass roots it is all that is needed to get our society back on the right track. Problem is that people have been brain washed into looking only at drastic shattering changes driven by a radical environmental agenda that divides people and creates unnecessary conflict based on unpractical demands instead of just making continuous small changes that are all just a little bit “better”. A “better” that gains momentum and builds on itself.

Scaliboy62

Good to see many Police Dept's utilizing E-Bikes & regular bicycles as well, good way to burn off those doughnut calories ! { Just kidding Officers out there **

turbo1889

Now that could make for an interesting slap-stick comedy chase scene in a move. A fat cop on an e-bike chasing a pedal only roady ~ no matter how hard he pedals the roady can't seem to get the cop off his tail and the cop can't quite seem to catch him. I suppose it depends on your sense of humor and your imagination capabilities but that is the first thing I though of when I clicked on the picture of the cops with the e-bikes and saw it full size.

Scaliboy62

Yup, the Cops look pretty " hefty " in that picture, they must run 48 volt systems to catch up the Bad Guys on the Road Bikes & in general, I dont mean to bring the thread a different direction by posting that picture It's to show the value of E-Bikes as a Policing tool being similar as a tool after hurricanes etc. when gasoline isnt available.

dougmc

As much as I like electric bikes, I'd say in that situation you'd probably be better off with a bicycle with a gasoline engine on it. It has all the advantages of the electric bike in a disaster (you probably don't care about emissions or noise in that situation) but has the added advantages of being able to "charge" it at a gas station quickly.

And yes, gas might be hard to find, but gas to power your generator is hard to find too, and the motor bike can be "charged" in a minute or so rather than many hours like a generator would require. It would be more efficient to take the gasoline out of the generator and use that to refill your tank to burn the gasoline in the generator to charge a battery, and you could do that on the road more easily as well. (You might even be able to siphon gas out of cars if it really is an emergency and bad enough to warrant stealing.)

That said, bicycles with electric motors or gas engines tend to suck when the motor/engine isn't on. They're still ridable, so they beat a motorcycle, but they suck compared to a standard bicycle. If you're a fairly strong cyclist, you might do better with a normal bike if you think fuel/recharging will be hard to find.

graywolf

Let's see, the power is out gasoline is not available, so you can not run a generator, nor you car to charge your batteries. Assuming your do not have a wind generator that you set up after the storm, nor solar power, how do you see an electric bicycle as being viable?

That is the problem I always see when people start talking about rechargeable battery powered stuff like it was independent of the grid.

I only see two viable methods. You either have an oil well in your back yard (one home we had listed when I was in real estate actually did, free natural gas was written into the title) to run a generator off of, or you have your own mini-hydroelectric plant (surprisingly easy to do if you live in the mountains and have a good water source). I can not think of any other long term viable way to have power off the grid that a hurricane can not destroy (like wind, tidal, or solar power).

Scaliboy62

Graywolf lets start with you- my bike charges to full in 2.5 hours . Today I rode to my Doctor's office 14 miles away, went to the ATM, Post Office & Food Market then checedkout the damage closer to the water where i live I rode a total of 33 miles on my E-Bike. Since the hurricane a week ago I bet I racked up 90 + miles taking care of business & running errands & checking in on friends. My car is in the garage gassed up & used once to drop off my brothers dog 10 miles away.. Although I'm one of the approx. 10 % of millions in Long Island & NJ that never lost power { my town is an incorporated village with it's own Power plant & not in a flood zone ** my generator would've kept my bike charged up & or ideally a Solar panel charging station which I'm looking into now. Even if my generator being was being used I'm still using an E-Bike that gets 1500 miles to the gallon better then my 2003 24 valve Mercury Sable that barley cracks 20 miles to the gallon.
The gas lines seem to be easing up a little I noticed they are about 3-4 blocks long now not 8-10.
Dougmc- I couldnt ride my regular bicycle to my Doctors office 14 miles away today 30 degrees 15 knot winds but the E-Bike did the trick, also I wouldnt ride a gas powered kit bike the Cops would be all over me too noisy & unreliable those little kit jobbies if thats what your refering too.
I guess you 2 guys dont agree that an E-Bike is an excellent vehicle to own in a situation like this, I'm not sure why but I see all these people lined up for gas for hours, State Police @ every station to control the angry Folk who's nerves have been pushed to the limits not pretty, so far I've avoided those lines

graywolf

I think my point was that if your power was out, and you did not have gas for your generator nor your car, your ebike would just be a peddle bike.

However, I think both of us were talking more generally than your specific case. Many people seem to think rechargeable batteries give you independence from the power gird. They do not, they are just as tied to the grid as all of our electric toys. A 50cc motor scooter will give you the same mobility as an electric bike and probably cost less to own and operate, but would not be as much fun.

The late Hugh Morton used to tell folks that there were 7 coal fired powerplants here in North Carolina that were grandfathered in and did not have to install emissions control systems, and that each one of them produced more pollution than all the cars in the state; so much for that clean electricity. Most people do not think things all the way through, before making unrealistic claims. Electric bicycles are quiet and fun, I do not think any more justification than that is needed.

350htrr

Well as far as I'm concerned when I charge up my E-assist bike from my solar panel I use zero fuel, coal, oil, Natural gas. Sure when my solar panel and bike was made, it used some of those things but now in theory they can keep me mobile for many a year with "MINIMAL" additional use of those resources as compared to any other mode of modern travel...