For this use case you really care about reducing the lifetime total cost of ownership, which means making the bike as reliable, serviceable, and repairable as possible. I love e-bikes, but IME they have a long way to go to get to same level as normal bikes in thos regard. It's good that the bikes in the article are locally-built, but I'd like to know whether or not they emphasize using standardized parts with high availability.

In London e-bikes have basically take over delivery of small stuff. A decade or so ago they tended to use motor scooters but there are a lot less restrictions on e-bikes.

In Australia too.

They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds.

They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it.

I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.

Nothing is being done because it’s not an actual issue. No one is dying from being hit by delivery bikes. They are just annoying.

Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.

In the UK the police sometimes confiscate some of the illegal bikes that can to 30 mph+. The legal ones are limited to 15 mph. But yeah it's kind of chaotic.

I've seen them here going >70kph, just judging by them going faster than 60kph traffic.

But people must have their Ubereats and safety costs money, so the deaths will be justified, I suppose.

E bikes can be used by 15-16 year olds so Dominos uses them a lot here in the Netherlands.

Small off-topic, I see those boxed backpacks and think of their shoulders. On motorbike the box rests in the back of the seat but here all the weight is in the shoulders.

People who have done some mountain hiking knows that the weight of the backpack should be mostly in the waist, thanks to the waist belt (sorry if I don't use the right term, I've done most my hiking in Spanish ;) ).

I don't know how weight distribution would differ from walking but with some research perhaps they could carry more while staying more comfortable.

I can see numerous reasons why you'd want the backpack rather than a box on the bike for food delivery (may not apply for other deliveries):

- no need to fuss when you mount/dismount your bike, your backpack is already on your shoulders. Speed is key.

- the focus is not on carrying capacity, it's on speedy delivery. There's only so much food in their backpack.

- because of the time waiting for orders / going to the restaurant / going back to a hotspot, most of the time the backpack is actually empty.

- a box on the back of a bike costs money.

Counterpoint: when biking, you generally desire to have your center of mass be lower rather than higher, for better stability and handling.

Uno reverse/Yu-Gi-Oh trap card: They're not pushing the handling limits.

But now you’re cutting out all that biological shock absorption.

(Aka: why helmet cams are much smoother than any other bike mount)

Agree with your points about load distribution assuming the weight isn't trivial. Instead of waist, the common term in English would be hips/hipbelt.

> I've done most my hiking in Spanish

That's genuinely impressive, I've done most of my hiking in silence /s

I know what you meant though.

Camino.

Over here in Bengaluru, our quick commerce folks seem to prefer Yulu bikes.

They are small, nimble, low powered electric scooters with a decent carrying capacity, whose biggest advantage is _cheap_.

If you ask anyone other than the delivery folks, the yulu drivers are a menace, as they break the already fragile equilibrium that is Bengaluru traffic.

For USD 1400 you also get a good E-scooter from Taiwan. I got mine here in Germany for that price. It's far better than an E-bike.

I wonder why is still anyone NOT using e-bikes for delivery. This is the lowest hanging fruit ever. No charging issues (just a normal wall socket is more than enough), no range issues - trips are short and battery can be swapped by a person in seconds to the one that was charging. Almost zero running costs compared to a two-stroke.

It pretty much is like that in Australia. Aus post utilises e-bikes and golf cart like things for a lot of deliveries. Most food delivery is done by e bikes.

They still have the traditional vans though since they get loaded up once in the morning to deliver a ton of large packages.

Not all cities are like yours - in Houston, it's reasonably common for a business to offer delivery "anywhere within the inner loop", which is just the smallest of three beltways which circumscribe the city.

The inner loop is 100 sq. miles (260 sq. kilometers). Right now (4:30PM on a Monday) drive times and cycling times are comparable (close enough its not really a deciding factor). But bicycling 6-10 miles for each delivery is a good way to get injured. Very few drivers here have any habit of expecting bicycles. When I bicycled to work, I got hit by a car roughly every other week - and that was just one 2 mile ride per day, not multiple 2-10 mile rides per day.

Again i'm comparing with two-wheel two-stroke mopeds, not with cars... Using cars for delivery is all but impractical anyway because they stand in traffic ESPECIALLY in a city "not like mine", i'd hate to get my food ordered at 6pm, by 7.30, inedibly cold.

Ah. Good comparison, I completely agree. And also, your description of long wait and cold food is reasonably accurate for Houston - it shocks me that food delivery apps are still so popular here; most people seem to talk about mainly bad experiences, but keep using it anyways.

> I wonder why is still anyone NOT using e-bikes for delivery.

In Helsinki, delivery (of food) seems to be dominated by larger scooters with flat beds between yoke and seat post/rear fender. Maybe because the food delivery boxes are quite large, maybe because they have lots of insulation for winter use ? Maybe because the fat tires on the scooters are more stable on snow & ice ? Just guessing.

Not the majority at all, but some people like me do it for fun :)

up front costs compared to non powered bike maybe?

Compared to non powered bike maybe, but it's only practical in a very limited set of scenarios. I'm comparing to a two stroke moped that's still used by majority of deliverymen down here. These days a two-stroke moped costs about as much as an e-bike and is whole lot more expensive and difficult to maintain.

Only force behind it seems to be the force of tradition. Creepy to see it holding so much control over even very young people who delivery drivers tend to be.

I just returned from Brazil and Argentina and yes these E-Bikes are everywhere

It's a job and it pays the bills. Nobody is calling it a career.

You read the article, listened to the stories, and looked at the pictures, right? This is obviously the only source of income for many of those people. They're economically trapped and you're just happy to sell them e-bikes and pretend that it materially improved their conditions.

Oh, but it's greenwashing nonsense, so everyone turns off their critical reasoning skills, and pretends it's a secret virtue that they do so. This place has moved so far away from the hacker ethic that it blows my mind. What a pointless set of discussions and a false social pressure to never think beyond the guidelines set out in the article. Oh and you've got a side wide hall monitor to yell at you if you ever do.

Blech.

>They're economically trapped and you're just happy to sell them e-bikes and pretend that it materially improved their conditions.

What in the hell are you going on about with your criticisms? Here's an idea: Ask these people who buy the e-bikes to do their fairly menial but bill-paying jobs if they'd rather not have at least that option so that you can lecture them about their trapped economic state.

That things should be better and more versatile for more people in the world doesn't mean that shit should be thrown on every small benefit someone can extract from life because it's far from some ideal.

It probably does improve their conditions - the main difference between developed and less developed places is better tech. And e-bikes are pretty much global - there's not much colonial about it.

It is important to celebrate small victories. Don't take that away from people