Electric bike riders in the Big Apple who need a place to charge up their e-bikes might soon find more options thanks to a plan being considered by the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Electric bicycles, which are essentially normal pedal bicycles with the addition of a helper motor and battery, are common sights in most large cities around the world.
New York City has long been home to a large number of e-bikes used by commuters and delivery workers, though the numbers have skyrocketed after the city finally got with the times and legalized them in 2020.
While e-bikes are fairly common among commuters seeking to avoid the hassle of car ownership and the limitations of public transit, they’re even more popular with food delivery workers and bicycle couriers. As one of the busiest and most densely populated cities in the world, NYC poses unique challenges for efficient food delivery such as traffic congestion, limited parking, and the need for quick and agile navigation.
Electric bikes address these issues by providing a fast and cost-effective form of transportation. The electric assist allows riders to cover greater distances with less physical strain, enabling them to complete more deliveries in a shorter period of time.
Additionally, electric bikes require minimal maintenance and have lower fuel costs compared to cars or gasoline-powered scooters, making them an attractive choice for workers trying to maximize their income.
But with the increase in cheap electric bikes imported from budget factories overseas, there has also been an increase in li-ion battery fires.
These are usually sparked by the use or self-repair of damaged batteries or by using an improper aftermarket charger that is incompatible with the batteries.
While e-bike battery fires occur in a tiny fraction of all e-bikes operating in NYC, there have been a few fatalities linked to these fires so far this year.
NYC recently passed a measure that will ban non-UL certified electric bikes from being sold in the city. Now the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is going a step further to try and provide a safe charging space for e-bikes, according to ABC.
The proposed plan would see e-bike charging stations installed throughout the city, though details relating to their design and implementation are sparse.
We’ve seen electric bike charging stations in other US cities, but they’re basically just a standard outdoor 120V electrical outlet.
In fact, any standard home electrical outlet can effectively become an e-bike charging station. Unlike electric cars, which generally use higher power electric vehicle charging stations, e-bikes charge with a small external charger just like a laptop. That makes it easy to provide charging infrastructure through simply installing outdoor outlets.
The effectiveness of such electric bike charging stations in New York City remains to be seen, especially since most electric bikes use slower chargers that can take between four to seven hours to fully recharge the battery.
Riders needing a quick top up can use a higher power charger to get around a third of a recharge in an hour, but faster charging speeds than that are usually not advisable on electric bikes that lack sophisticated cooling systems like those found in electric cars.
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