Advent Of System Seeing Day 3

In Advent(ure) of System Seeing Day 3 we use a Futures wheel to quickly explore consequences of things evolving around our bicycle related topic from the previous days.

I chose e-bike increase, not only because it was suggested, but because I experience it daily, riding my e-cargo bike around town.

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For me, living in a place with steep hills (Bath, UK) means I can cycle, but uphill is a challenge, and with kid(s) on the back would be impossible, the hills are that steep. I saw a beautifully rendered diagram as example, but decided to publish my quickly hand sketched one.

After mulling this over for several years, I still have questions.

The inner circle

is:

• Manufacturer volume,
• Repair capacity?
• Safety in numbers?
• Wider audience

I chose manufacturer volume, as I tried (and failed) to buy shares in e-bike manufacturers years ago. (guess at explanation in outer circle).

Repair capacity is a question mark. Some bicycle shops in the Netherlands have switched to selling and servicing e-bikes only. Which raises questions about affordability of regular bikes, e-bikes seem to have very healthy margins. In Bath, KwikFit (a tire replacement and basic repairs chain) is now offering bicycle repair (under a different name, in the same building). This makes it more mainstream. At the same time, the nearest bike shop is 25 minutes walk from where I live. So some way to go, in NL I rarely lived more than 10 minutes walk from a bicycle repair shop.

Safety in numbers has a question mark, because it is my assumption. The 15 min. timeframe does not allow for research. It feels noticeable that drivers pay more attention to cyclists, now there are more.

Wider audience was discussed yesterday.

Wider circle

For wider audience:

• Health outcomes in the population should improve.
• Parking problems increase. Capacity is increasing in dribs and drabs, not always fast enough, or where you’d expect bike stands to be.
• MAMILS strike through. Hopefully. Some female cyclists I know have reported verbal abuse by male cyclists. So I hope aggresive MAMILS will be a thing of the past.
• Support for new cyclists. While the marketing of some e-bike manufacturers seems aimed at car drivers who haven’t cycled (in a long time), how to service your bike (or when to get it done) for instance is not that widely advertised. New owners of cargo bikes are easy to spot, there is a lot to consider, especially transporting infants.

For manufacturer volume

• Capital needs? Question mark, because I don’t know.
• Too small for small private investments? I tried to buy shares in e-bike manufacturers in 2016-2018 when I had the feeling this was going to take off (battery capacity per $ was and is decreasing, and the monopoly of Bosch could not last forever). They were not listed on stock markets, or not available with my provider (I have since learnt that investing in Taiwan is not always possible). One of them has now been bought by a hedge fund.

Ok, so writing this was much more than the 15 mins of drawing. I hope you enjoyed. Onwards and advent-wards!