[gibagger]

For the teenagers of which country, exactly?.

I live in the Netherlands, where the average teenager used to ride a regular Dutch city bike. Internal hub, no-frills bicycles.

Nowadays, however, fat e-bikes are all the rage among that age group. They are quickly becoming extremely popular, and are essentially electric scooters without plates or registration. Many of them require little or no effort to pedal, and can carry up to two riders in them. These are also designed to meet regulations, while also being able to easily be modified to circumvent them, such as removing speed restrictions, and removing the need to pedal itself.

This is also reflected in the shape of these things, which generally does not account for ergonomics. Their seat and handlebars are usually fixed in place. They appear to be designed without pedaling in mind, as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would quickly become uncomfortable and painful. You can actually see some such bikes in the linked article.

Time will tell whether this is truly healthy to them, but I have a hard time believing this to be the case. I think the fat bike demographic might start putting on weight.

[arp242]

> For the teenagers of which country, exactly?

United States, obviously. Article makes zero pretence being about anything other than that and it's stated right there in the opening paragraph: "among America’s youth".

[FirmwareBurner]

What was wrong with regular bikes that American youth had to wait for electric bikes to discover cycling?

[j_w]

American drivers tend to be extremely aggressive towards cyclists. Long distances mean you will get tired and/or sweat. Lot of 2 lane roads without shoulders or sidewalks makes cycling on them scary.

I do cycle (normal bike). These are some of the things that I told myself that kept me from getting into it when I was younger.

[FirmwareBurner]

> Long distances mean you will get tired and/or sweat.

Yes, that's what happens when you exercise, and judging by how fat Americans are, seems like they could use some.

>Lot of 2 lane roads without shoulders or sidewalks makes cycling on them scary.

How do ebikes fix this? It's still a bike, not a tank.

[j_w]

Bit of a necro.

On fat Americans: at the time and still I'm likely a 99.9%er cardio wise, and I still had the concern about being sweaty. I wasn't exactly trying to smell bad during lectures.

Ob ebikes not being tanks: Going 20 in a 25 is a lot less scary then going 8 up a hill where cars are BLASTING past you. Lower effort also means you can spend more brainpower on spacial awareness, when you are gassed you tend to notice less around you.

[hyrix]

Americans travel farther distances for many things, even within cities, and it’s not flat like the Netherlands

[avar]

Before the "fat bike" phenomena the same demographic used to ride around in "snorfiets" scooters which were theoretically limited to 25 km/h, but pretty much everyone modified for speeds of up to 50 km/h.

But somehow the Dutch have this collective amnesia on the topic, and today nobody remembers how the "snorfiets" problem of 10-15 years ago has pretty much disappeared, to be replaced by a quieter and safer mode of transport (even ilegally modified E-Bikes usually fall far short of modified "snorfiets" speeds).

    > [...]appear to be designed without pedaling in mind,
    > as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would
    > quickly become uncomfortable and painful.

This is a trend in E-Bike design in general, which makes sense. When they first came out manufacturers were just adding a motor and battery to existing designs.

The "fat bike" design is something that wouldn't work well unassisted, because it trades a severe increase in rolling resistance for better ride comfort.

But as a clean sheet design it makes more sense than the alternative. Why incorporate a complex suspension design (which, to be fair, some of them also have), when you can just have the tire absorb the bumps in the road? The marginal cost in electricity is trivial.

[gibagger]

> This is a trend in E-Bike design in general, which makes sense. When they first came out manufacturers were just adding a motor and battery to existing designs.

It's only a trend because people are not using them like bikes. The people who still want to pedal but need help because of illness, old age or too-long-distances for normal cycling often purchase actual bicycles which use normal bike parts.

> The "fat bike" design is something that wouldn't work well unassisted, because it trades a severe increase in rolling resistance for better ride comfort.

That is an understatement. People would quickly develop knee and/or lower back pain if they had to put any effort for any meaningful distance.

[avar]

    > It's only a trend because people are not using them like bikes.

Who's using E-Bikes "like bikes"?

The grandmother maintaining an easy 20 km/h against strong headwinds on her Sunday cruise? The petite mother bringing her kids to school at a comfortable 20 km/h in a 50 kg cargo bike, something she'd probably struggle to do at 5 km/h unassisted by an electric motor, if at all?

The fact is that E-Bikes have have opened up all sorts of use cases that wouldn't be practical without motor assistance.

I don't think "Fat bikes" are a particular outlier here. The basic design (or something similar) has been around since the 60's[1] as lowrider bikes. Fat Bikes provide basically the same riding geometry, only with an extra wide tire.

    > actual bicycles which use normal bike parts.

I can assure you they use "normal bike parts", e.g. Shimano shifters, brake discs, or similar. Despite the rhetoric around them, they're not actually in the performance envelope (even when speed unlocked) of requiring actual motorcycle parts.

Yes, the frame and seat are custom/unusual for a bicycle, but the same is true (at least for the frame) for a lot of modern bicycle designs, e.g. VanMoof and Cowboy bicycles (both of which you'd presumably consider "like bikes").

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowrider_bicycle

[sebazzz]

> Before the "fat bike" phenomena the same demographic used to ride around in "snorfiets" scooters which were theoretically limited to 25 km/h, but pretty much everyone modified for speeds of up to 50 km/h.

The difference is, of course, that a snorfiets/bromfiets requires a driving license (AB) and a fatbike does not, nor does it have any age restriction. A classic case of the legislator not keeping up.

[avar]

    > A classic case of the legislator not keeping up.

This isn't the legislator not keeping up. Not requiring insurance or licenses for E-Bikes where the assistance is limited to 25 km/h has been law across the EU since 2002. There was a deliberate decision to treat them like bicycles, not motorcycles.

[Aurornis]

> (even ilegally modified E-Bikes usually fall far short of modified "snorfiets" speeds).

Class 1 e-bikes are limited to 32 km/h here, but simple mods push them well above 50 km/h.

Many of these bikes are designed to be hacked, with unlocked power output significantly higher than the locked output. It’s a selling point and a key part of reviews.

[Aurornis]

> These are also designed to meet regulations, while also being able to easily be modified to circumvent them, such as removing speed restrictions, and removing the need to pedal itself.

This is the trend near me: Kids buy hackable e-bike, immediately unlock it, and then ride their new electric scooter (motorcycle) around pretending it’s an e-bike.

There’s a separated mixed use bike path parallel to a road on my commute. It’s typical to see e-bike kids driving up it faster than the road traffic on the road, while pedestrians and families jump to the side.

[SoftTalker]

This is exactly the same as the mopeds that were popular when I was a young teen (over 40 years ago).

[whywhywhywhy]

You need a license to drive a moped, you can hear them coming and people never drove them up the sidewalk, it's completely different.

[SoftTalker]

We didn't need a license, by virtue of the displacement of the stock engine being small (IIRC the limit was 125cc? Or maybe even less). They also had to have pedals, so small motorcycles or vespa-style scooters did require a license. Or at least a registration.

The mopeds would barely go 30mph as sold. That was hackable though if you were so inclined and had a set of wrenches.

[harambae]

Yeah 49cc mopeds that aren't registered appear to still be a thing where I am (Boston). And I think it's 49cc 2-stroke so equivalent to like a 90cc 4-stroke (whether that ends up violating a different emissions rules, I don't know).

Still, parking is such a racket in Seaport, including unnecessarily strict ticketing on motorcycles, that I don't blame the delivery guys for using the mopeds. I'm not sure what their realistic alternative would be.

[SoftTalker]

Too late to edit but I was way off on the engine size.... 50cc displacement or less.

[Aurornis]

Mopeds are still around. It’s completely different than a bike that can appear to be a normal bicycle on a bicycle path.

[BlackFly]

Yeah, those fatbikes are just the latest iteration of the old little scooters (bromfiets) with the small win of being more quiet. I feel like the size of them and the seating arrangement should enable them to legislate fat bikes as scooters while only catching a small number of modified pushbikes that the police would likely ignore when the cyclist isn't being a nuisance.

They'll definitely gain weight, it is quite easy to tell that they aren't exerting much effort during pedal assist.

[gibagger]

Yeah, very easy to spot if you pay a bit of attention to the lower back muscles. They are basically not being engaged.

Tire noise is enormous though. I think their tires are made / selected with this in mind, as young males often do like to get attention. Most e-scooters are way quieter than these ugly things.

[kristo]

I also live here, and while i agree Dutch teens should be riding regular bikes, we here are in the extremest of minorities around the world in terms of what teens would be doing without e bikes

[amelius]

I have seen these bicycles in DE also, they look more like motor scooters.

Can't they be regulated based on weight or otherwise the width of the tires?

[gerad]

Here in Marin it’s not allowed to use an e-bike or scooter with a throttle if you’re under 16. Nicely catches all the edge cases.

[mikae1]

> They appear to be designed without pedaling in mind, as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would quickly become uncomfortable and painful. You can actually see some such bikes in the linked article.

Came here to write exactly that. Those who design those bikes clearly don't know a thing about bicycle design. Want to use them for pedaling? Say hi to knee problems and inefficient pedaling!