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Batavus Bicycles – let’s go Dutch!

sasha — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:27:20 +0000

Sophisticated, trendy, worldly, and refined. These words pop into mind when I think of the people I encountered in my European travels. With cycling integral to the Dutch culture, the Netherlands-based Batavus creates a city bike to couple the style of Europe with the practicality of a daily commute. These bikes are characterized by their upright posture and low maintenance design. They’re comfortable, relaxed, and the perfect way to get around town. At Cycle 9, we’re pleased to bring some European elegance to North Carolina with our line of Batavus bikes.

Batavus Diva

The lowest maintenance Diva you will ever know! With 3 speed Shimano Nexus hub gears and a fully enclosed chain ring, this bike is designed for hassle-free commuting. The wider tires allow the Diva to carry heavy loads around town, while the aluminum frame lightens things up a bit. The cushy seat and upright design make for a comfortable ride. The Diva also features built in lights, fenders, and racks. Is this diva high maintenance and demanding? No. Sexy and stylish? Yes.

Cross Old Dutch style with modern biking technologies and you get the best of both worlds with the Fryslan. Attractive and versatile, the Fryslan’s 5 speeds and aluminum frame allow travel over longer distances and up hilly terrain. Like the Diva, the Fryslan has a fully enclosed chain ring, internal hub gears, fenders, rack, and an internal lighting system.

Batavus Fryslan

If your city commute is sprawled or hilly, the Batavus Breukelen may be up your alley. The Breukelen has all the great commuter features of Batavus’ other bikes, but with 7 speeds, a lighter frame, and a sleeker style.

Batavus Breukelen

The award-winning design of the Batavus Utility Bike, or BUB, was inspired by a bent paperclip. And like that little, practical, no-frills office necessity, the BUB’s form follows the function – a great, durable way to get around town. The handlebar design allows for a front basket, and racks can be added. Beautifully crafted, modern, and urban, the BUB is a city-slicker’s cycle.

Batavus Utility Bike

Every-Day Heros – Go By Bike Episode 27

elise — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:07:04 +0000

Are you an every-day hero?

Being an aware citizen and taking action can do more for keeping our streets and communities safe than most any other measures we can take. It’s been proven that the more people that are around witnessing a crime, the less likely it is that any one will do anything about it. It’s a psychological thing – we don’t want to be bothered and hope one of those other people will take action instead, so we can go along with our own lives in a bubble.

It’s stories like these that really reinforce for me the idea of community and what it means to be part of one. In some ways biking and walking brings our communities back to a more human scale. I notice when I’m biking that I take more notice of what is around me because it’s easier to do. It’s a way to connect with the environment and the people I see. I love it when I see another biker on the road and they wave to me, just because we’re both out biking and no other reason.

Do you have any stories like this to share?

-Elise

How Our Friends Can Help Us – Go By Bike Episode 23

elise — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:06:44 +0000

Friends can give us that much-needed kick in the pants

Getting and staying motivated to make a life change like biking more is sometimes hard. And that’s where our friends can come in. In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I talk about motivation and the role people can play in it.

Did you have help making a bike lifestyle change? If so, share it in the comments below.

-Elise

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Stop Drilling? or Stop Driving! – Go By Bike Episode 22

elise — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:36:27 +0000

Environmentalists need to examine if their words and actions go together

As the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the gulf continues to wreak environmental havoc, I’m sure the reaction from many environmentalists will be loud calls to stop drilling and curtail offshore oil drilling. This may be something we should do, but I wonder how many of these same environmentalists will continue to drive their cars every day, mindlessly burning up oil while they wait for electric or alternative vehicles to solve their transportation guilt. In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I talk about his connection.

For a more detailed discussion of this viewpoint, see this excellent article from Jason Henderson, Geography Professor at San Francisco State University .

Send your comments below!

-Elise

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Why We Bike – Go By Bike Episode 17

elise — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:14:16 +0000

Why do we go by bike, car, or feet?

I’ve been thinking lately about what motivates us to bike versus drive or take other forms of transport. There is certainly a big contingent of people in the US who believe the “car is king” philosophy. I was talking with one of our city planners recently who had just returned from a regional meeting to discuss pedestrian facilities. After a full day of discussion, he said one of the other planners from a larger city in this area expressed the viewpoint that people really wouldn’t walk or bike in most places, even if we built the facilities. Then this other planner turned to our local friend and said “well, you guys are different up there in Chapel Hill/Carrboro”. Why is that? What makes us “different” if we even are different? Why would people bike more here than they would in other areas?

Around the country I find little pockets of people who are into biking for transportation. Maybe it’s not mainstream yet, but there are lots of us out there. What motivates people to bike rather than drive, or reversely, drive rather than bike?

In today’s video, I talk about one reason that is a big consideration for me personally when deciding how to get somewhere.

What do you think? Why do you bike? Leave your comments here to motivate other people to keep biking. The more of us who are out there biking, the safer it is, the more resources we conserve, and the less we pollute. Spread the word….

-Elise

Go By Bike is a daily video series that talks about how to be green by riding more and using your car less, including electric bikes, electric kits, cargo bikes, bike safety, and getting motivated to bike.
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Are Downtowns for People or Cars? – Go By Bike Episode 12

elise — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:38:37 +0000

What Can Chapel Hill Learn From Durham?

In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I talk about what makes a downtown a nice place to hang out – at least in small to mid-size towns? Downtown Chapel Hill has been on a quest to “improve” downtown for as long as I’ve lived here, but I think they’re missing one key element. What is is? Listen and find out.

What do you think are the critical elements to making a downtown a nice place to be? Write your comments below.

-Elise

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Biking and Hollywood – Go By Bike Episode 6

elise — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:12:02 +0000

What can you learn about biking from Hollywood?

In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I talk about how bicycles are portrayed in the movies now and in the past.

Welcome to Go By Bike! I started this series to talk about how to ride more and use your car less, including electric bikes, electric kits, cargo bikes, bike safety, and getting motivated to bike. Using your car less reduces your carbon footprint, saves energy, helps the environment, keeps you healthy, and makes your community a nicer place to live, so overall most people would agree it’s a good thing.

What movies have you seen with bicycles portrayed in them lately? Has it been in a positive or negative light?
-Elise

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What do you pay for parking? – Go By Bike Episode 5

elise — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:18:58 +0000

What can you save by not parking your car?

In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I tell a story of trade-offs and how biking can win out over driving.

Do you have a good story about what you did with money you saved from not driving your car? Let me know about it in the comments section below.
-Elise

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Using our cars is bad for us! – Go By Bike Episode 3

elise — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:06:24 +0000

Give your kids a cleaner, brighter future

In today’s episode of Go By Bike, I discuss energy use, the environment, and one key thing we can do right now to be green and give our kids a better future…

What do you think? Can you replace some short car trips by bike? Send me your comments.

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News from the front in the war on bike purism

Morgan Giddings — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:39:00 +0000

We’ve had a lot going on this week, with moving our store to a smaller, temporary space while we sort out our permanent retail showroom. Nonetheless, the wheels of my mind are always turning, and here are a few resulting random thoughts:

—–
On the financial situation in the US. This is the big, big news. I can feel it in the air – everyone senses change is coming. Yes it is. The current blow-up in the big banks was not at all surprising to me. I’ve been reading this great site, itulip.com, for several years now. Eric Jantzen, its founder takes the long view based on history about our present situation, which he predicted quite accurately a few years ago. It is a large and complex problem that boils down to one simple thing: the USA has way too much debt. It is not just government, it is all of us. We are in hawk up to our ears as a nation. And our creditors are nations like China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Our continued spending spree is dependent upon them continuing to provide us an ever expanding credit line. Let’s compare this to personal finances. One can get ever bigger credit lines and get further in further in debt – to a point. But when the creditors decide that the debts are too big to pay, they stop lending new money. What would (will) happen if (when) these countries decide to stop funding our profligate spending as a country? To sum up: ouch. A big change in the way most of us live, at least until we figure out how to get our manufacturing businesses re-started and re-build an economy based on true value, not just Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE, a term coined by Mr. Jantzen).

What does this have to do with bikes? Two things. First, a big portion of our debt as a nation are the > $500 billion per year we spend importing oil. What do we provide in return for those 4.8 billion barrels of oil we import per year? Create paper (or electronic) money. Money that can be printed, or at least created out of thin air as new treasury issues (i.e. debt). We are racking up the mother of all debts – debts that will be very hard to repay with anything of concrete value, unless we sell off all our assets to foreigners. The best way to reduce this debt, here and now, is for all of us to use less oil. Based on my own personal experience, electric bikes are the best available option, here and now, not some pie in the sky electric car that may or may not exist in the future at a price that may or may not be affordable to most of us.

But second, we as a business feel a responsibility to our community. We think that at least some of our products need to be produced locally. It is a long road from where we are now to that future, because in the past years, it’s been pretty darn hard to compete with the Chinese and other countries on labor costs. But that is changing, slowly. Shipping costs are rising, while the dollar is sinking (see the stuff about our debt above, for an explanation of why). This means that as currencies like the Chinese Yuan rise against the dollar, imported products will get a lot more expensive. This is likely to re-balance the equation back towards making it favorable to produce at least some products at home. We are already starting in small ways – we build our own BMC wheels up in house, and we are designing a new DC/DC converter to power bike lights, stereos, coolers, etc directly from the main bike battery. That, too, will be produced locally. Those are small but important steps, providing local employment, and a tiny bit of insulation against drastic changes in world trade as various currencies re-balance.

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The eZee 26″ kits are back in stock. These are still one of our favorite kits for upgrading a bike to electric – light weight and reliable. Also, easy to install.

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We’ve had a lot of inquiries about the BMC hub motors. We hand-build each wheel, so we’ll be working hard to keep up with the interest.

Our next batch will be the new BMC V2 motors, which are capable of higher power and speed. Nominally rated at 600W, the new V2 motors have heavier wiring and internals to allow more extreme usage. They are capable of peak power of up to 1200W or so. We’ll post more here as we get these in our hands and on our bikes for testing. We also have a V3 wheel (1000W) for testing. That wheel is supposed to be very, very fast.

——-

Well, the title of this entry mentions bike purism. I recently saw an article about the explosion of electric bicycles now available in the market. Some of the commenters wrote in with a negative attitude about electric bikes. The objections raised are the same ones I’ve been hearing since my first e-bike in 1994: why do you need power when you have perfectly good legs? Are you a wimp? When will you “graduate to a real bike?”

I do not think everyone needs an electric bike. There are plenty of people who are young, fit, or live close enough to work/shopping/etc that they are perfectly happy biking by leg power alone. That’s great – I own 4 non-electrified bikes, and I use them often, and love them. But I also use and love my electric bike, for a variety of reasons that include: it is fun, it is great when I’m tired, it helps me carry heavy loads on my bike, it is more energy efficient than pedaling (because the food that I eat is transported mostly by oil-powered vehicles), it is great for hot weather, it helps keep me in shape, and it encourages me to ride the bike every single day and for all my errands.

So, my question is, why do the “purists” have to dump trash on the rest of us who find an electric bike practical and useful in our own lives? Excepting when I go on a rant like this one about their anti-ebike views, I don’t trash on their choice of bikes. I’ve never once said “fixies are stupid” (referring to the trendy fixed gear bikes). What is it that compels such folks to have such an anti-ebike stance? I think it stems from the attitude that bikes are all about racing and recreation, and not for real transportation.

I’ve had multiple customers call up to tell us the same thing. They go into their local bike shop, and ask about an electric assist motor, and the bike shop folks look at them like they are aliens. They walk out, search on the web, and find us.

Seriously, there are many good things about ebikes, and it surprises me that so many in the bike industry in the US are so unaware of these facts:
1. Electric bikes are the most efficient form of transportation on the planet. They get over 2,000 miles per gallon equivalent.

2. Electric bikes encourage more people to ride. They help people who are out of shape, or in shape, get back on the bicycle and get in the car less. This leads to less oil use, less pollution, and a lot more fit people, reducing healthcare costs for us all.

3. A little racing bike is a lot of fun, but it is not meant to carry the items that most people need to carry in their day to day lives. For example: today I used my electric cargo bike to transport my daughter 9 miles each way to and from daycare, I picked up Chinese take out food, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a set of items including a large 3′ x 3′ screen protector, and I had a change of clothes handy for an important business meeting. I rode over 30 miles, transporting these things with an electric assist, that consumed a total of about 500 watt-hours of power, which costs about $0.07 (seven cents). By comparison, a typical SUV would have consumed 1.5 gallons of gas ($6.00), equivalent to 55 kWh of energy. That is 110 times the amount of energy, and 85 times the cost. A Toyota Prius is better, but still not great: optimistically estimating 50mpg for in town use, it would be about $2.40 for gas (34 times as expensive as my bike, not counting the difference in maintenance and depreciation costs), but more importantly, the Prius would consume at least 22kWh of energy, or 44 times the energy that I used on my bike. Do the purists really prefer that I just keep burning oil?

4. Electric bikes are not very complicated, but for a shop to provide good support and repairs, they do have to understand electricity. I understand why typical bike shops are reluctant in this regard. In our shop, we have a group of people with degrees in Physics, Biology, Computer Science, and (most of) a math degree. With that kind of background, figuring out what’s wrong in an electrical system is not rocket science (it’s not like what I do in my day job, which is developing computer programs to analyze genomes). But the typical bike person is not versed in volts, amps, power, and etc. I hope someday the USA will get to the point where many bike shops are versed in these things, because that will help all of us. But that will take a lot of time. In the meantime, I just wish those folks who complain about e-bikes being “difficult to fix” would just come out and admit that the reason they are “hard to fix” is because the person making this statement doesn’t have the proper training to fix them.

5. I’m not going to “graduate” to a real bike (seriously, I’ve been asked when I will “graduate”)! I have non electric bikes, and I ride them fast and hard. But I ride my electric bike fast and hard too. It is a great bike. There is nothing to graduate to, except an even more advanced electric bike.

C’mon bike purists, let it lie. There are more important battles to fight that affect all of us who bike, like getting better bike facilities and friendliness in our cities.

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And finally, something that all cyclists should cheer about (electric or not): The “Bicycle Commuter Act” passed as part of the Financial Bailout Package. This provides a tax credit for “Any qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement,” of up to $240 per year ($20 per month that the bike is used for commuting). We’re not tax experts, but it seems that a bicycle hub motor used in commuting should qualify… (ask your tax person to be sure!)