The Benefits of Using China electric motor assisted bicycle

April 28, 2022

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By: Kiran Herbert, PeopleForBikes' Content Manager

E-bikes are fun, but do they still offer exercise? We surveyed the available data to find out.

There’s no question that electric bikes are soaring in popularity, or that sales will continue to rise (especially as gas prices do, too). The one demographic that seems more hesitant to embrace the e-bike boom, however, is avid cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts. To those more drawn to “type II fun,” an e-bike — with its pedal-powered battery offering riders a boost — can feel like cheating, a way around hard climbs and the stamina required for a traditional 20-mile ride. 

But the beauty of e-bikes lies in the fact that they’re more inclusive, allowing people of all ages and fitness levels to enjoy bicycling. While more expensive than your average bike, there is a slew of electric bicycle incentive programs aimed at low-income individuals, a growing list of e-bike lending libraries and an increasing number of bike share systems going all-electric. Plus, because of the ease associated with using them, electric bikes are also more likely to replace car trips (a recent study found car owners who also own an e-bike used the bike to replace about half the miles they usually traveled by car). 

People love e-bikes for the very reason their detractors don’t: the bike's motor and rechargeable battery carry the brunt of the hard work. 

According to Chris Cherry, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Tennessee who studies e-bike use, a battery-powered bike can help bridge the gap and bring non-cyclists into the fold. “The most powerful thing that e-bikes do is that they take the most painful parts of bike riding away,” said Cherry. “Either the climb or the duration — the stuff that keeps people from starting.”

Because electric bikes are less physically demanding on joints and muscles, they not only bring in riders who might otherwise be inactive, but they also offer the opportunity for people to ride longer periods of time and go greater distances. That leads to more folks using e-bikes as an option for commuting or running errands. Although users won’t find themselves doing the sort of vigorous physical activity uphill mountain biking or even hot yoga entails, e-bike use has been shown to deliver the sort of moderate physical activity most doctors recommend. 

While Cherry isn’t an exercise scientist, he did partner with several on a 2017 study that found e-bikes provide moderate physical activity on flat segments and downhill segments and vigorous physical activity on uphill segments. Notably, that same study found that compared to traditional bikes and walking, e-bikes lower a person’s need to shower after riding, allow riders to dress appropriately for the weather, require less exertion and elicit higher levels of enjoyment.

“If you’re only using your bike when you feel energized versus all the time — as e-bike users tend to — then you’re not doing yourself any favors,” said Cherry. “Research says people ride e-bikes more often and farther, so they get more physical activity, even though it’s less intense.”

A 2019 study found that e-bikes can provide intense exercise, it just doesn’t feel like a workout. Another 2021 study came to roughly the same conclusion: Electric bicycling can definitely count as exercise. Those researchers, who compared the physiological effects of e-bikes and standard road bikes during a simulated commute, determined that the e-bike riders elevated their breathing and heart rates enough to count as a meaningful workout. However, those health benefits varied from person to person.

When on a Class 2 e-bike — which includes a throttle and a max speed of 20 miles per hour — a person could theoretically not pedal at all, burning through their battery power using it like a motorcycle. Obviously, to obtain a health benefit, one has to actually pedal the bike. Similarly, if you’re always using the maximum amount of pedal assist, you’ll get less exercise than someone who’s more conservative. In the 2021 study, some participants that used the highest level of pedal assistance were found to get moderate exercise while others’ heart rate response was too mild to count (rider height and weight can also play an important role in the number of calories burned). 

Across the board, the e-bike users burned about 30% fewer calories than those on road bikes but as with the participants in Cherry’s study, they reported having more fun. Other studies echo this sentiment, with many driving home the point that when bicycling is made easier and more enjoyable, courtesy of pedal assist, it’s more likely to become a part of people’s everyday lifestyle. 

While the mental health benefits of e-biking are harder to quantify, there is something to be said for a form of transportation that provides joy, allowing more people to better connect to the places they live. There’s plenty of research that points to the mental health benefits of spending time outdoors, including one 2019 study that links 120 minutes spent outside per week with elevated levels of health and well-being. Plus, physical activity in general has been shown to improve sleep, mood and cognitive functioning, as well as decrease stress and ease depression and anxiety.

Based on such research, Canadian doctors can now prescribe national park visits to patients. Anna Wassman, the business development manager at Bosch eBike Systems — which manufactures e-bike batteries, motors and displays for more than 70 brands globally — hopes to someday get to the point where doctors might also be able to prescribe e-bikes. In tandem with Cherry and others, Wassman is working to develop a long-term, large-scale scientific medical study to fill a current gap in the research. While it’s still in the conceptual stages, for there to be any sort of medical intervention, longitudinal evidence is needed.

“The adoption of e-bikes as the go-to health and wellness tool for the medical community — that’s the dream goal,” said Wassman. To help achieve that dream, Bosch believes insurance companies, benefits brokers and employers have a large role to play. “It’s lots of little pieces that all tie together to create a better world. We need to help people get there.”

For older adults, whose immune systems benefit from exercise, as well as folks with pre-existing conditions or joint pain, e-bikes are a low-impact way to stay healthy. Research also shows that outdoor e-bike exercise can help stroke, spinal cord injury survivors, Multiple Sclerosis patients, and people born with motor function disorders — as well as people recovering from more everyday injuries. Again, they’re also expensive. Since socioeconomic status is a known indicator of things like hypertension, heart disease, obesity and respiratory issues, e-bikes remain out of reach for many who would benefit most from their use.

In 2021, Biketown, the all-electric bike share system in Portland, Oregon, launched a prescribe-a-bike program to both increase access to e-bikes and improve public health. In partnership with the Multnomah County Health Department, Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program and its student health centers, the two-year pilot is offering prescriptions for bike share for clinic patients and 16 and 17-year-old high school students. All prescriptions come with a free bike share membership, helmet and educational support.

According to Roshin Kurian, transportation demand management specialist at the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which manages Biketown, the clinic and student populations live in the same zip codes, one of the best-known indicators of poor health outcomes. “These are underserved communities that are more low income than the rest of the city and more ethnically diverse,” said Kurian. 

Thus far, the prescribe-a-bike program has 58 participants, all of whom agreed to have their ridership data tracked and to submit health surveys. Although prescribe-a-bike programs aren’t new — Boston, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York, have their own, and the U.K. announced a nationwide initiative in July 2021 — they are rare, and haven’t traditionally involved electric pedal-assist bikes. Kurian believes that Biketown’s all-electric fleet helped not only secure the initial buy-in from participants but will ensure that folks ride more often.  

“Once you get on an e-bike and you feel that pedal-assist and you're able to go up the hill, you're able to go further and that builds confidence,” said Kurian. “It’s a gateway drug to more activity and to better behavioral changes around your health.”

For children aged 6 through 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity each day. For adults, it’s 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity (and two days of muscle-strengthening activity) each week. Biketown’s prescriptions are in line with these guidelines, although Kurian acknowledges that for many folks, it can seem like a lot.

“It's a recommendation, so anything that we hit near that is great,” said Kurian. “It’s also probably more realistic if you’re using an e-bike.”

By focusing on youth and clinic patients with preexisting conditions, the study will showcase how electric bikes might work as both a preventative and curative intervention. The larger public health savings brought on by a large-scale shift to e-bikes is harder to quantify. According to a 2021 study conducted by epidemiological researchers at Colorado State University, bike share alone saves the U.S. $36 million in public health dollars every year. Researchers also found that bike share trips in the U.S. provide health benefits for bicyclists and those health benefits are greater than the risks, such as air pollution or injury from cars. 

Bike share systems that go electric consistently bring in more users — in 2019, when the Madison BCycle fleet in Madison, Wisconsin, went electric, usage more than doubled, and in New York City, electric-assist Citi Bikes see more than twice as many rides per day than traditional bikes. It follows that the more electric bikes there are on our streets, whatever the source, the larger the collective public health benefit. The more e-bikes swell in popularity, the more likely they are to play a role in helping reshape our streets to be more walkable and bikeable — which comes with health savings of their own. 

A widespread mode shift would also reduce emissions while redesigning our streets for bikes can help lower road fatalities all around. And if a future full of electric bicycles seems far-fetched, consider this: In Europe, e-bikes are projected to outsell cars — all cars, not just electric ones — by the middle of the decade. In the U.S., e-bike sales are outpacing electric car sales and are tracking towards 1 million annually. 

Electric bikes are proven to have the ability to help individuals, and getting more individuals on e-bikes has the ability to help our communities and the planet at large. The more people bicycling, in whatever capacity, the better.

J. DAVID GOODMAN

SHANGHAI — Jiang Ruming, a marketing manager, owns a van, but for many errands, he hops on a futuristic-looking contraption that lets him weave rapidly through Shanghai’s messy traffic. He rides an electric bicycle.

Half a world away, in San Francisco, the president of that city’s board of supervisors, David Chiu, uses an electric bike to get to meetings without sweating through his suit.

And in the Netherlands, Jessy Wijzenbeek-Voet recently rode an electric bicycle on a long trip that, at 71, she would not have been able to make on a standard bike.

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Detroit may be introducing electric car designs and China may be pushing forward with a big expansion of its highways and trains. But people like Mr. Jiang, Ms. Wijzenbeek-Voet and Mr. Chiu — as well as delivery workers in New York, postal employees in Germany and commuters from Canada to Japan — are among the millions taking part in a more accidental transportation upheaval.

It began in China, where an estimated 120 million electric bicycles now hum along the roads, up from a few thousand in the 1990s. They are replacing traditional bikes and motorcycles at a rapid clip and, in many cases, allowing people to put off the switch to cars.

In turn, the booming Chinese electric-bike industry is spurring worldwide interest and impressive sales in India, Europe and the United States. China is exporting many bikes, and Western manufacturers are also copying the Chinese trend to produce models of their own. From virtually nothing a decade ago, electric bikes have become an $11 billion global industry.

“It’s miraculous — it takes the hills out of riding,” said Roger Phillips, 78, who rides an electric bike around Manhattan. The sensation is akin to a moving walkway at the airport, he said.

Electric bikes have been a “gift from God” for bike makers, said Edward Benjamin, an independent industry consultant, not only because they cost more — typically $1,500 to $3,000 — but also because they include more components like batteries that need regular replacement.

In the Netherlands, a third of the money spent on bicycles last year went to electric-powered models. Industry experts predict similar growth elsewhere in Europe, especially in Germany, France and Italy, as rising interest in cycling coincides with an aging population. India had virtually no sales until two years ago, but its nascent market is fast expanding and could eclipse Europe’s in the next year.

“The growth has been tremendous in the last two years,” said Naveen Munjal, managing director of Hero Electric, a division of India’s largest bicycle and motorcycle maker. He expects sales at Hero to increase to 250,000 electric bikes in 2012, from 100,000 in 2009.

While the American market has been modest — about 200,000 bikes sold last year, by some estimates — interest is rising, said Jay Townley, a bicycle industry consultant. Best Buy began selling electric bicycles in June at 19 stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Trek, a manufacturer based in Wisconsin, recently began selling a bike created by Gary Fisher, a prominent bicycle designer.

“Electric-assisted bicycles will change how people think about bikes in urban areas,” predicted Mr. Chiu of San Francisco, who has been riding a prototype of the Trek bike since the summer.

Improvements in technology are resulting in lighter designs that appeal to older cyclists. “Now you’ve got a product you can present to a baby boomer,” Mr. Townley said.

New York City’s largest electric bike store, NYCeWheels, opened in 2001, and in the last few years, business has been growing, said Bert Cebular, the owner. In Chinatown, electric bikes are showing up on nearly every corner and several shops have recently appeared, selling bikes imported from Chinese factories.

As the global market develops, two types of electric bikes are emerging. One is similar to a standard bicycle with pedals, but it has an electric motor that engages on command or when the cyclist pedals. These are the most popular type in the United States and Europe, with many people using the electric motor mainly for help in wind or on steep hills.

By contrast, in China, electric bicycles have evolved into bigger machines that resemble Vespa scooters. They have small, wide-set pedals that most cyclists do not use as they travel entirely on battery power. The bikes move at up to 30 miles an hour, with a range of 50 miles on a fully charged battery.

These larger models are causing headaches for global transportation planners. They cannot decide whether to embrace them as a green form of transportation, or ban them as a safety hazard. Some cities are studying the halfway measure of banning them from bicycle lanes while permitting them on streets.

In China, electric bicycles “have a moderating influence on the use of cars,” said Cornie Huizenga of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities, an advocacy group. A survey by American and Chinese researchers in the Chinese city of Kunming found that one in six electric bike riders would drive a car or take a taxi if their bicycle were taken away.

Such is the case with Mr. Jiang, the Shanghai marketing manager. Environmental benefits never factor into his decision to use his bike instead of his car, he said; it is simply a matter of convenience. “If I’m not going to anywhere distant, driving a car doesn’t save any time,” he said.

For each mile traveled, electric bikes cause fewer emissions of the gases associated with global warming than do cars. But they come with their own set of pollution concerns. A typical Chinese model uses five lead batteries in its lifetime, each containing 20 to 30 pounds of lead. In areas without stringent recycling programs, the potential for environmental contamination is high.

“This is perhaps the most problematic issue for electric bikes,” said Christopher Cherry, an author of the Kunming study.

Safety is increasingly a concern. An electric bike rider is more likely than a car driver to be killed or injured in a collision, and as the number of riders has soared, fatalities in China have risen. And riders of these vehicles often choose to take bicycle lanes, where they mix with slower-moving bikes and pedestrians, adding to the potential for an accident.

In December, conflict over electric bike safety and design erupted when a government agency introduced a rule effectively banning large electric bikes from bike lanes. But the response from manufacturers and bike owners — nearly 10 percent of the population — was forceful. Less than two weeks later, the rule was suspended.

As China struggles to find the proper place on the road for electric bikes, some bicycle advocates in the United States see them as a potential boon for bike commuting, especially for older riders.

But with greater numbers, conflicts between electric bikers and old-fashioned cyclists may also grow. Several Canadian cities, including Toronto, have considered banning electric bikes from bicycle lanes, while in New York and in parts of Europe, riders have reported harassment from regular bike riders when they use the lanes.

Ms. Wijzenbeek-Voet said she often gets stares from other cyclists when she takes her electric bike to the store. “They look at me wondering, ‘How is it possible that lady is going so fast?’ ”

Officially, electric bicycles are not permitted on New York streets, though that does not seem to be stopping many riders. However, Mr. Phillips, the Manhattan rider, recently found himself unable to get accident insurance, making him wary of riding and eager for a change in the law. A bill before the State Legislature would permit bikes with a top speed of 20 miles an hour and less than 1,000 watts of power. Other states limit power output to 750 watts.

One barrier to wider adoption of electric bicycles in the United States and Europe may be the culture of cycling. Bicycle riders have long valued cycling as a sport and a form of exercise, not simply as a utilitarian means of transportation, and many of them look down their noses at electric bikes.

“To the core cyclist, it’s cheating,” said Loren Mooney, editor in chief of Bicycling Magazine. “Marketers understand this, and it’s why some have put e-bikes in mass retailers like Best Buy, rather than engaging in the uphill battle of trying to sell them in bike shops.”

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