Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
You don't think the same is true in the U.S.? I do.
American e-bikes are arguably more powerful, but it can also be argued that they have to be. We have hills here. America's car market has popular models that have insane speed capabilities but nowhere that a driver can actually utilize it. There are tracks that you can rent time on though if you really want to explore the far side of 100 mph. Number of accidents with peds? God help me I don't know that I've heard of such a thing happening here. I'm serious. All this handwringing about the misdeeds of an impossibly small number of people and their hotrodded e-motorcycles. The vast majority of American e-bikes are being ridden responsibly. And it could be argued that if EU countries increased the power limit of ebikes they could be used more in utility/cargo applications and maybe 85 to 90 percent of sales would be e-bikes. THAT is success.
"Of all the global markets (except for Africa), the USA was the slowest to accept the electric bicycle as a viable means of transportation. Even today, the USA is considered to have a medium growth rate, which is much lower than the European and Asia-Pacific regions."
https://www.ebicycles.com/ebike-facts-statistics/
When you say America has hills... Europe also has hills, I've ridden over some of them.
For bikes, all kinds, to be truly successful here, we need much better cycling infrastructure...