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LIFE TECH FEATURE

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POWER-UP

Forget the Lycra-clad weekend warriors and saddle up on the new, efficient way to get around town that’s accessible to just about everyone. Words Paul Jones

been leading the e-bike revolution for years now, and while Australia has been slow to catch on, we are now in a match sprint. In 2022, the nation’s cities are teeming with e-bikes, weaving in and out of coagulated traffic streams to deliver food and documents with envious ease. “We’re finding that the e-bike is replacing the second car,” says Peter Bourke, general manager at Bicycle Industries Australia (BIA). “This is predominately in the inner city, but the big impact on this is the trip reliability. Cities are congested, and people understand that regardless of traffic, a trip might take between 20 to 25 minutes on a bike. The same trip might take up to an hour in the car.” And that’s before you fold in the escalating nightmare cost of fuel. An American inventor named Ogden Bolton lodged the first patent for an electric bike 127 years ago, but it wasn’t until Yamaha wheeled

I t doesn’t matter whether it’s been ten days or ten years since you rode a bike; the experience of cruising down a hill on two wheels evokes a true sense of fun and nostalgia. Pedalling through cities or rural environs grants the cyclist an unrivalled level of freedom and serenity. “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best,” said the writer Ernest Hemingway. “You have no such accurate remembrance of a country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” The National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey reported in Australia – a country that embraces its great outdoors like no other – a

whopping 40.1 per cent of us jumped on a bike at least once in 2020. Sharing the top spot for most active cyclists were the ACT, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. Interest in cycling increased exponentially during the pandemic, which you’d be painfully aware of if you tried to buy a bike over that period. Demand was driven by reluctance to use public transport and a renewed focus on daily exercise. But getting active on a bike isn’t just good for the body, it’s good for the brain, too; research suggests it improves your mood, memory, and overall mental health. At the forefront of this riding renaissance is the electric bike (e-bike). Europe and Asia have

out its experimental power-assisted bike in 1989 that the game changed. The company successfully released a pedal-assisted bike in Japan four years later, but high material and production costs limited commercial expansion. Over the last ten years, improved technology has made e-bikes more efficient, with increased range capability. They’re now lighter, more accessible, and offer greater

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” – Author, H.G. Wells

42 AUGUST 2022

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