Hi from Shanghai

[euphonius]

Felix,

There's also a storefront dealer in Jiaoji Lu selling the Sachs Madass 125 for about 8k rmb. Not a bad little ride at all. Somebody even POSTED ONE FOR SALE in MCM back around the turn of the year. Never heard more about that one...

I see plenty of these Madasses around town, usually beneath a foreigner's ass.

Wow, that genuine Honda Ruckus would be a blast.

what's with this Zuma/Zoomer outfit? their link comes up empty. the girl's kinda cute, though...

cheers

[felix]

I do love those madass too, but if i'm going to go through the whole registration and getting legal torture, why not just stick with the XTR?


To get back to the little engine kits, here is what i had in mind to try and reproduce:



Pure class...


PS: i think you got your links a bit mixed up there!

[euphonius]

I know you like petrol, but then there's THIS....



And THIS



And THIS



And THIS

[felix]

Wow, some of those are pure sex! (you a gizmag fan at all?)

I do prefer petrol for its convenience (1 minute to fill up, as opposed to 8 hours), but also don't think ebikes present any improvement for the environment, considering battery disposal and how electricity is produced. But that's a different discussion...


Forgot to add, I don't know why that zoomer link doesn't work. It never did.

There's a million of those bikes on taobao though, just type 祖玛 in there and watch the results roll in. Lots of them in Shanghai too.

[shanghailoz]

What you mean how electricity is produced?

Thats such a straw man argument.

Power stations can't turn on / off at whim, they're running whether we use them or not. Hence cheaper electricity at night in an attempt to get people to use more, otherwise its wasted.
Mind you, in Shanghai at 40degree's, I'm sure not much gets wasted even at night in summer time.

Battery tech does need improvement - mind you thats improving too. We're always 5 years away from a big breakthrough, but there are some promising battery tech's around the corner.
I keep an eye on that from a stock market perspective, always good to know which small China company is in theory going to jump up in price.
I made some decent change on CBAK a few years ago ;)

[felix]

I don't see how that's a straw man. Ebikes need electricity (and lots of it), electricity in china is made almost entirely by burning coal. You have to factor this in, ebikes don't run on magic. They do pollute, just not in the city, which i do agree is good thing.
Then there's the batteries, which are toxic to produce and become toxic waste at the end of their short life. Try to imagine the amount of batteries that must be lying in dumps around here, it's terrifying.

I'm really not against electric vehicles, they probably are the future. I just don't think that the ones we have now are a very viable way to save the planet.

[jape]

Its all OK lads, the USA is killing off tens of thousands of innocents in the third world while looking for OBL and many other countries are killing ethnics with impunity while UN etc. looks the other way. No carbon footprint anymore for those poor dead sods so a few dead batteries and a bit of ebike pollution can be balanced against that too.

A multi-trillion dollar war still going on against a country or two, spewing chemicals and depleted uranium all over the place to balance a few thousand and a couple of buildings? Sigh. It is all shit and a bit more don't matter much, so enjoy.

[jetzki]

This looks absolutely gorgeous! Did you ever get around to making your motor-bicycle then? You see a lot of tricycle-cart things going around with petrol engines built onto them, they never seem to get pulled over by the police.

[felix]

hi jetzki, no i never got around to it. I figured it was gonna get taken off me by the police at some point so i didn't bother. I still want to though, so might give it a shot when i move to xi'an at the end of the year, the rules are slacker out there than in shanghai.

[klwheels]

cool bike ,hope you enjoying