You should not be asking why bicyclists are not riding e-bikes. You should be asking why motorists are not riding e-bikes.
0.6% of Americans bike to work.[0] 86% of Americans drive, 89% of them alone. If even 1% of motorists switched from driving to e-biking, that would increase the bicycling population by over 100%.
> The motor addresses the issue of effort, but not safety, weather, or a variety of other factors,
The US has a really bad built environment.[1]
> including the fact that driving a car is fun for a lot of people.
Automobile manufacturers spend billions and billions on advertising, convincing people that driving is fun.
[0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2015/acs/acs-32....
Hmmm... Communting to work is fun for people? I want to live where they live.
Keep the car for weekend cruising, the bike probably makes the boring commutes more fun than a car would.
I built an bike 6 or 7 years ago but only took it once to work (a 20 mile commute). It was underpowered and under-batteried but it was an interesting starting point. I mean to try it again.
Winter is a great time to get geared up for the next season, and there might be some seasonal discounts to take advantage of right now!
Indeed. The issue is the infrastructure.
Thus the "infrastructure" could include public transportation. In my spouse's case, public transit encouraged her to ride her bike because it provides an alternative on days when it's too crappy to ride.
For example, buying 1kg of beef has the same ecological impact as driving 63 miles in a car[0]. However, that 1kg supplies you with only 2,500 calories[1]. At ~50 calories per mile[2], you get 50 miles of biking out of the beef--less than what it took to get the beef to you. It feels like you're saving the environment by not driving, but you're actually doing the exact opposite!
Of course, most environmentally conscious people aren't going to have a diet that meat-rich. But it's something to keep in mind if you're trying to reduce your carbon emissions by biking.
[0] http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html
[1] https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list?qlookup=23568
[2] https://www.livestrong.com/article/135430-calories-burned-bi...
Don't be absurd. Nobody should worry that they're hurting the planet by riding a bike. Your calculation omitted the impact of creating and disposing of the car. Your calorie projections assume riding at a strenuous pace, most bike commuters don't. You assume a nearly all beef diet which is ridiculous. There is no reasonable calculation that would show biking worse than driving for the environment.
I had to return the bike after a week. :)
The author's answers to this question focus solely on the bike technology itself. This is a common thread in a lot of discussions about cycling: If we only built the right bike, more people would ride. This is usually followed by a CAD rendering of the perfect bike, that looks like nobody would want to ride it.
I don't think it's the bike. I think that there are a lot of cyclists who are simply not candidates for e-bikes because riding under their own power is part of the attraction. I'm one of those people. A friend of mine who loves his e-bike finally gave up trying to understand why I don't want one.
So you have to reach the same people who were deterred from cycling in the past for reasons good and bad. The motor addresses the issue of effort, but not safety, weather, or a variety of other factors, including the fact that driving a car is fun for a lot of people. The e-bike could produce a marginal uptick in cycling, in the short term, but not a revolution.