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  1. #1 China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Motorcycle Addict chinabiker's Avatar
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    From January 1st, 2010, a driving license will be required to ride electric motorcycles. Two wheelers, weighing over 40kgs or exceed a speed of 20 km/h are considered electric motorcycles and will have to have a license plate as well as insurance.

    Read the complete story

    Theoretically they are not allowed on bicycle lanes anymore. Let's see.

    Andy
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  2. #2 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Senior C-Moto Guru ZMC888's Avatar
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    Typical China, shooting their own industry in the foot! Never understood why you'd need a license for an electric bike. I'm pretty fit and I can ride my bicycle at 40km/h on the flat and 60 down a hill, so why these regulations, should we have bicycle licenses too? Or just if we are too healthy?

    I 'm being cynical again but, is there a possibility that the people making these laws drive cars?

    Less electric bikes means a healthier car industry! With the added benefit that there may be the possibility of less things in the way of the 'holy' car, making their journeys faster. However the planet cannot sustain a never ending amount of gridlock, steel mining, and fossil fuels being burned needlessly, there isn't enough steel in the world for every Chinese family to have a car or two each!
    Without consciousness, space and time are nothing; in reality you can take any time -- whether past or future -− as your new frame of reference. Death is a reboot that leads to all potentialities.
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  3. #3 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Duct tape savant felix's Avatar
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    it's enraging that the government is so adamant about removing every way to ease traffic in its already gridlocked cities.

    Does anyone have any guesses as to how bad it will get before china starts to recognise the benefits of two wheels?
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  4. #4 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Senior C-Moto Guru ZMC888's Avatar
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    There's a local bar that has car parking spaces very conveniently next to the front door.

    Instead of being thanked for their lack of selfish use of road-space and non-emission of CO2, electric bikes, bicycles and motorbikes get a urine soaked alleyway a hundred yards away with no security. To enforce the rules they have the typical over-zealous chicken-flapper Chairman-Mao wannabe security guard.

    Unfortunately most Chinese people can't drop the idea that cars are wonderful, and that people who drive them are better. They fail to see the context of western countries, where most people regrettably need a car due to the structure of towns and cities.

    Most Chinese car users absolutely do not need a car, as rarely they leave a city, they drive because they want to, a difference that they fail to see every time. Everything is set out perfectly for bicycles in China, yet many the people are determined to follow an out of context copy of the American dream, and have a government which encourages them. We may laugh at the stupidity of it all, but it actually costs lives, because emergency services can't get through the grid-lock.
    Without consciousness, space and time are nothing; in reality you can take any time -- whether past or future -− as your new frame of reference. Death is a reboot that leads to all potentialities.
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  5. #5 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Administrator-tron CrazyCarl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by felix View Post
    Does anyone have any guesses as to how bad it will get before china starts to recognise the benefits of two wheels?
    Ummm...when they stop making fists-full-o-cash from it?


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  6. #6 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Motorcycle Addict chinabiker's Avatar
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    Another, more detailed article about the topic, which became a big issue in the public.

    I think there is more behind it than just licensing and insurance.
    Andy
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  7. #7 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Administrator-tron CrazyCarl's Avatar
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    Taken from article:

    "They are even not licensed, the electric bikes," said Wang Fuhe, a Beijing taxi driver. "So they have nothing to fear. They hit pedestrians and cars then run away, barely traceable."
    While it's a pain for them to require licenses on vehicles that previously enjoyed such low entry restrictions, what ol' Wang Fuhe says is totally true. When I first landed in Chengdu, ebikes were a priveledged luxury item like cars are now... almost everyone still rode standard bicycles. Then in only 2-3 years ebikes became more ubiquitous and crowded the bike ways careening though thousands of pedestrians and tri-shaws at 20-30km/hr while talking on cellphones, checking their cool-boy hair styles in the mirror all while straddling 20kilos of groceries between their legs.

    I remember I was riding my old style Phoenix bicycle to work one morning and, while cruising around a corner, some dick head goes wide and nails my rear wheel - literally knocking the bike out from underneath me. The response on his face was like "You shouldn't have gotten in my way". I wanted to fucking beat the shit head into a pulp but without thinking twice he just took off!. AT LEAST if a car hits a pedestrian, the police will generally make the car driver at fault... but not so for ebikes.

    Many ebikes are totally capable of matching 50cc scooter speeds (and weight). Mixed with obnoxious, selfish, narrow minded, tunnel visioned, distracted by their own image in the side view mirror riders, they hit shit all the time. Regardless of the motor type, speed is speed and mass is mass. Tthey need proper training to know how to control vehicles which are usually HEAVILY under-engineered in the braking department.

    Granted while ebikes make A LITTLE environmental sense and one would hope to see them used judiciously, they are still largely abused machines with untrained/certified riders. I say license the hell out of ebikes! If you need a license anyway, why deal with the crappy limited range that only gets worse and worse to become almost unusable in the winter after one year?

    It may put more people back into gas motorcycles and scooters.

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  8. #8 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Senior C-Moto Guru bigdamo's Avatar
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    So I take it you don't exactly like E bikes Crazycarl.

    They will just make lighter E bikes with lithium batteries.
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  9. #9 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Administrator-tron CrazyCarl's Avatar
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    Problem with that theory is it would take some real re-engineering for them to do so. If you REALLY wanted to make a lighter e-bike you'd need entirely new frame designs made of something other than modified steel gas scooter frames and plastics. If their regulations are enforced, they'd have to do some serious work to keep them under 40kg and still provide the cheap prices they've been selling for over the past few years. Unique engineering costs money, and who's willing to pay for that? We're talking to the tune of 20,000,000 units a year!

    Also, adding lithium batteries still won't address the supposed 20km/hr limit which would classify them as motorcycles.

    I saw a tv report just now that said some e-bike industry people are claiming the new regulations are there to protect the motorcycle manufacturers but I don't think that's the case since they've done just about everything they could to make sure motorcycles are hard or impossible to use where they'd make most sense.

    I think they came to the realization that e-bikes are dangerous AND they can make money from them through regulation and licensing.

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  10. #10 Re: China: E-Bikers will need driving license 
    Senior C-Moto Guru ZMC888's Avatar
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    Carl,

    Although personally I hate E-bikes, as I don't see the point of them.

    Either get fit and ride a bicycle.....

    OR

    Have some proper fun and get out of the big smoke on motorcycle.....

    They make sense for many people commuting to work, or too old to ride far, and what's the point of polluting the air with a 50cc scooter that has no balls at all? This restriction will just become a bargain basement 10 yuan 'hong bao' Gong An occasional purge fine. Few ebike riders will become any kind of real motorcyclist, they will switch to buses, bicycles or carry on riding illegally. Some will switch to cheap Chinese cars which will just cause yet more gridlock.

    Just because ebikes are ridden by idiots, so what, what vehicle isn't driven like that in China? How many car drivers have licenses, and how many just bought their way around the whole test for 10,000 and don't have a clue?

    The reasons I believe are similar to why they banned motorcycles in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It's this simple: keep the poor (especially city immigrant farmers) off the roads, and make them use mass transport only, so the newly wealthy can kid themselves that the roads will be less busy, and deprive the poor of any kind of work for themselves, keep them on a construction sight or in a factory.

    Bicycles can easily be ridden at up to 40kmh on the flat too...so ban them too?
    Without consciousness, space and time are nothing; in reality you can take any time -- whether past or future -− as your new frame of reference. Death is a reboot that leads to all potentialities.
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