Greg LeMond and the magic candy-colored dream bike

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When you are a Child, bicycle means freedom. Long before you get a driver’s license, long before you can afford a car, you can jump on this simple machine to convert human power into distance and speed through a simple sequence of levers, gears and wheels. To ride a bicycle, all you need is a heart, legs, a sense of balance, and maybe a pocket wrench.Bicycles have become the preferred mode of transportation in many disaster movies for a reason, from Booth arrive VastYou can check gears, inflate tires, and maneuver dexterously in a car accident, or travel through desolate land to reunite with tribes.

A beautiful electrical One feature of a bicycle is that it has a motor that can do a lot of work for you. But, of course, it requires plugs, grids, and infrastructure. In your opinion, this means that electric bicycles are either a fun way to get as many people off as possible, or they are an unforgivable violation of a core principle of the bicycle world. It’s like one of those line drawings, either a beautiful princess or an ugly old witch. Look at it in one way and you will see one thing. You can’t see another until your brain changes.

I tested the electric bike Served WIRED Gadget Lab for many years. For a long time, I thought that these ideological differences—what is a bicycle, what is not, and who rides a bicycle, and why—are only of interest to my time-wasting weirdos and amateurs.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate change crisis made my time-wasting, quirky hobby rise to national awareness. In the global pandemic, electric bicycles make it easier for people to move in cities without risking close contact on crowded public transportation. They are also a substitute for cars, a low-carbon solution to urban congestion in a world that is increasingly devastated by climate change.

But even if cities start to encourage electric bikes, they must also regulate them-which means figuring out what an electric bike is Yes. It is easy to distinguish it by observing the simulated bicycle-two wheels, some pedals and a frame, complete. But some electric bicycles look like heavy miniature cars, with large wheels and luggage racks at the front and rear. The others look almost like motorcycles, except for the two remaining pedals.

In order to maintain the ever-shrinking boundaries between electric bicycles, electric scooters and electric motorcycles, many regulatory agencies impose arbitrary restrictions. They vary from city to city, from county to county, and from state to state. Within the city limits, electric bicycles can only help riders up to 20 miles per hour. In some places, it cannot have a throttle. sometimes It is counted as a motor vehicle and is forbidden to be used in public parks, but sometimes It is allowed on trails.

This is confusing. I can’t ride them in the lane because they can’t exceed 20 miles per hour (unless sometimes they can?). On the other hand, riding on the bike lane will surely make everyone — cars, cyclists, pedestrians, dogs — stare at me.

Most companies want their electric bicycles to be legally defined as bicycles and allow their customers to enjoy the same freedom and safety protection as other cyclists. Anyone can ride a bicycle; for scooters and motorcycles, you need a permit.

Of course, there is a neat way to get rid of the legal logistical chaos that the e-bike world has created for itself. You only need to make electric bicycles that look and feel exactly the same as analog bicycles and treat them accordingly. No one wants to make a more motorized electric bicycle than LeMond. You only need to look at his pictures in the 80s-with his mouth open and raising his number in surprise to the camera-to feel the obvious surprise and joy of the sport, youth and openness to the world. In front of you, when you are ready to fly down the mountain, blood is flowing in your superhero’s heart.

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