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Image description:
Text: Amazon's electric cargo bikes have arrived in DC.
Image: A four-wheeled vehicle that appears to be a cross between a bicycle, a go-cart, and a mini-truck
Response text from high t alpha shemale @gluetaster: that's not a cargo bike man that's a loopholemobile
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. These have to be far quieter and don't pollute like cars. That's progress!
By all means, do criticise Amazon's treatment of workers and horrible policies in general. And yeah batteries are better than fossil fuels but still aren't the greenest. But IMO anything that brings the US closer to bicycle culture can't be all bad. Let's accept a win when we see it and keep pushing, yeah?
The posts about Berlin and Finland are inspiring, let's get others there too.
Okay, but what is pictured is a car sized vehicle that is going to be moving in traffic in the same place as cars, while simultaniously having fuckall safety features and no climate control. This is a fucking deathtrap, and just a new way to cut costs at the expense of working class lives. This is not progress, the is sacrificing people for the great capitalist overlords.
I don't know how fast it's meant to go, but it looks like it shouldn't be going faster than 30 kph (20 mph). That is the speed that most city traffic should have. If this helps to make that the standard, that's going to save far more lives than anything else.
Loopholemobile, oh yeah for sure, still waaayyyy better than a whole ass SUV.
I am amazed at how this is mostly not mentioned in more upvoter comments. If kei trucks were not outlawed in the US ~~for having the driver see the road too well~~ this wouldn't exist, most likely
I actually just saw a kei truck in fucking Arkansas of all places!
thats so funny, they cant include a steering wheel and the driver has to performatively rotate their legs :DD
Yep, nothing weird going on, just your regular cyclist enthusiast
The "Deutsche Post" uses bicycles to deliver the mail. I see nothing wrong with an e-bike to deliver parcels.
My first reaction would be: great!
Then I remember it's Amazon we're talking about, so it's pretty safe to assume there is some fuckery somewhere going on...
I would say so they can use bike lanes as well as the road, so say hello to essentially a small van to dodge in your bike lane
no AC and a singular water bottle. no protection for the driver either if someone decides to run up and drive off with it. Who thought this was a great idea?
Someone who will never have to use it, or likely even interact with someone who does
Its a van not a car. So it doesn't need to be automatically fucked.
Assuming it's not delivering frivolous crap and is carrying stuff people actually need then it's fine.
When they start coming in bike lanes and up on the pavement then fuck them. That's when vans can get fucked too.
Ahh, I now understand the need for max 250w motor. Also hope a judge can be real, use his head, and just say: "nope, not a bike" .. bi-cycle, isn't that word from two wheels?
Actual cargo bikes (the ones people use all the time to bring their children to kindergarten etc that are actually good and reduce traffic a lot) often have 3 wheels (2 at the front where the cargo space is, 1 at the back)
Then it is by definition not a bicycle. It's called a tricycle.
😅 if only language was that simple
How does this death trap works In the winter? Or is this only for the southern states?
I mean, for the driver? They’d probably do what all the food app drivers do in winter in DC, handlebar muffs, cold weather gear. The summer is what would suck ass hard, I mean, that windshield is going to eliminate your main cooling.
For those tiny ass wheels on poorly plowed sidewalks and roads? Probably die.
At least it isn't racking up tens of thousands of hours of pollution emitting idle time like the gas vehicles.
They've had a ton of these style of delivery vehicles around Berlin for years now. They work great, are really quiet, and solve the vast majority of last mile delivery needs.
That said, the one in that photo is huge. I've never seen one even close to that size. The ones around here look more on this scale:
If people would stop buyung shit from Amazon this wouldn't happen. I can't believe so many folks don't care. People I know still get stuff from Amazon. It's like talking to a brick wall.
Let's just put pedals on an F-150 Lightning and call it an e-bike.
I'm fine with these as long as they don't use the bike lanes. Nothing with more then two wheels should use the bike lane because:
don't care, if it says Amazon it needs to burn.
That's all that matters.
Obviously Amazon is only interested in these as an opportunity to inflict further cruelty and exploitation upon their workers while flaunting regulations, but even beyond that there is a bigger issue here regarding the absence of space for something between bikes and cars.
The thing about electric bikes is that they are a wonderfully deep well of loophole nonsense, this cuts both ways TBH. Right now, the American road is just too generalized, with not enough separation of regulation, infrastructure and spaces to accommodate different niches. Instead everything is forced to exist in a single framework, which is built to match large, highway capable, trucks and cars. It is a cataclysm of needless gigantism that wastes energy, space, and lives.
Having a separate category of smaller, lighter vehicles that are less dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, with lower energy usage, looser licensing and smaller footprints is needed. But you can’t have them operating alongside normal cars/trucks, or regulated in the same framework. The carveouts around powered pedal assist vehichles, and the growing network of bike infrastructure, created space for these kinds of middle vehicles to start coming in to existence, but there is a very real risk that they’ll push out light vehicles like bikes( including those with reasonable powered pedal assist) for the same reason they’re not practical alongside trucks and cars. They will get people killed, both other people in bike lanes with them, and their own operators. There will have to be regulation, and that regulation will ether push this deeply needed middle ground vehicle out of existence, or kill the growth of bicycles.
I think the real solution here is to formalize a regulatory standard for these kinds of middle vehicles, kick them out of bike lanes and off of side walks, and heavily restrict highway capable cars/trucks from dense areas like urban cores to give the middle vehicles somewhere safe to operate.
“Oh but if I can’t drive my suburban assault vehicle straight in to the middle of the city, my hundred mile a day commute would be very inconvenient” drive to a park and ride and take the metro(DC area in this context) in, for the areas where that’s not practical yet, we should build more light and commuter rail.
Strong Flintstones energy
I don't think these are a problem. They deliver mail and parcels with kind of similar vehicles here in Finland, though I grant that ours are a little bit smaller.
If there's a problem with these, it's that legislation doesn't properly recognize a class of vehicle smaller than a car but bigger than a bicycle. That's not to say these vehicles shouldn't exist, and stuff like this rightfully shouldn't have to follow the same rules cars do (because, well, it's a lot smaller, lighter, quieter and slower).
Why the world doesn't switch to mostly vehicles like this is fucking dumb. Hate amazon but support more vehicles like this.