So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike (they didn't even provide it to him!) is listed as a "reason to be cheerful"?! I swear this is the most depressing thing I read this week so far, and that's something if you consider how depressing the news has been recently...
This sounds like one of those stories in the US about a community crowdsourcing a ton of money for a little girl to get some life saving surgery that would be covered by socialized health care in almost any other country in the planet.
To be fair, stories like this occur in countries with socialized healthcare. People often do come to the US for niche specialized healthcare that is cutting edge.
US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks average or poor in some cases.
I have been through the healthcare systems of Brazil (private) and Sweden (public). I can say that private healthcare is only strictly better if you pay out of pocket, not through insurance.
Public healthcare is FAR more efficient though, I am always amazed how _fast_ doing exams in Sweden are. Like my doctor asked me to take an MRI, put it in the system, scheduled an appointment within a week for me automatically and I was in and out of an MRI clinic in 20 minutes (and I was attended to exactly on time of my appointment) all of that just using my ID card. Bloodwork is usually drop-in so I can just go directly from the doctor without an appointment.
In Brazil with private healthcare I would have to find the MRI clinic myself and see which one was covered by my insurance and try to get an appointment within a reasonable time (by calling multiple clinics). And when getting there I would probably have to wait at least an hour to actually get the MRI done. That is if insurance didn't contest the need for it in the first place. And god forbid I forget to bring the insurance paperwork with me.
Oh yeah, in Brazil I also need to personally go pickup the MRI and personally bring it to the doctor and do another visitation, while in Sweden it is all digital and the doctor just called me on the phone to tell me the results.
My father took ~4 months to schedule a life-saving cancer surgery, insurance kept contesting the surgery. My partners mother in Sweden had cancer surgery approved and done in less than 10 days.
Yes the care in Sweden is usually worse than in Brazil private. I wouldn't say it is so much about doctor quality, more about doctors feeling a bit rushed to see patients. But it is so much faster and easier. Usually you need fast care, not personalized care. And of course a lot of things are just not covered in the Swedish public system (for example some skincare problems) that could be covered in some private in Brazil.
The only thing better about the Brazilian clinics was that some of them had marble floor on the lobby while the Sweden ones usually had concrete floors or tiles.
Overall I prefer the Swedish system much better than the private Brazilian system.
When someone criticizes US healthcare, they are almost always using "healthcare" to mean "the care that everyone receives on average" and not "the healthcare received by those with good insurance." Private jets fly from around the world to The Cleveland Clinic and The Mayo Clinic every day, but that's not what's at issue for most people.
And the routine care at sites like the Cleveland Clinic is often not particularly good even with good insurance. But they do have a lot of fancy specialists.
They also aren't criticising the fact that the US funds most healthcare advancements that are then bought in bulk by socialised programmes once the hard work of discovery and validation is done, and raises the average for everyone.
Until Trump cancels the funding, at which point they suddenly remember it, but only in the context of Trump criticism.
In Brazil the top private hospitals were full of people speaking in Spanish and English. Private care is only better if you pay out of pocket though, most people with private insurance in Brazil don't get to go to those hospitals.
>So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike
Millions of venezuelan migrants are in a similar situation. It is not uncommon to see former university professors with PHDs, lawyers, engineers with decades of experience, etc. to find themselves in another country working as Uber drivers and other types of jobs. Having to migrate really fucking sucks especially if you are old. Consider yourself lucky if you live in a country that is politically and economically stable and you have some sort of net to support you when things don't work out for you.
This goes for European countries as well. Even well-educated people, from whatever country locals deem undesirable at that moment, in general do not get the chance to work in jobs that suit their education. Sometimes these people have benefited from taxpayer funded education in that host country, but the prevalent racist attitudes exclude them from even getting job interviews. E.g. Finland is losing lots of immigrants they have spent lots of money educating to this- not helped by the policies of the current government- people they need to stay in order to plug the plummeting birth rate are forced to leave the country because there is nothing there for them besides rejection after rejection, or jobs that do not match their education.
This tends to be a much lesser problem once the person's original country is in the EU, but yeah if you are coming from outside the EU it can be super tricky. Even professions that is desperate need like nursing and doctors can be hard because of the recertifications required.
Ok, fair enough, then maybe they shouldn't have picked this 50 year old guy who used to have a management job but was then forced to flee his country and work as a delivery worker, but a 22 year old who used to sell drugs but now makes an honest living (maybe they couldn't find one?).
But yeah, that aside, I can definitely sympathize with reducing the number of loud stinking gas motorbikes and scooters. Maybe also give loans to users of gas chainsaws, leaf blowers etc. etc. to replace those too...
From my reading, the article is about how e-bikes are proving to be economically viable and how that benefits the environment. Even more positive is that they are becoming available locally in a way that is accessible to a delivery driver on a fixed low income. Those things seem like something to be pretty optimistic about.
I never owned a car, I commute to work in an e-bike and most other places I go to. It is usually faster than car (if you account parking) or public transport.
Since I got an e-bike I haven't bought a single month public-transport cards, I maybe take the metro/bus 4-10 times per month (depends a lot on the weather). The bike paid itself several times over since I got it around 2019.
Me and my partner manage to save a lot of money per month, even though we just bought a new, very expensive (because it is close to downtown) apartment with a huge mortgage by just living close to place we go to, not having a car and using the e-bike.
"There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in." - Desmond Tutu
Society is not ready for the conversation because more often that not, inquisitive people who dare go upstream find out that capitalism - directly or indirectly - is pushing into the river, and have to walk back down to while hanging their head, and continue pulling those they can out of the river.
I think you can do better than that in charitably reading what I said in the context of a hagiography whose centerpiece is a loan to a 50 year-old immigrant for an e-bike.
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.
The tradeoff is that the higher you carry the bag (i.e. on your shoulders), the more space you have when maneuvering between cars. You can imagine how, if your bag was at the same level as the bike saddle, it would be more likely to get pinched when cycling through traffic. A clever cyclist could even stand upright with the bag on their back to get a few more inches of clearance when need be!
Capacity is still needed, or you will miss out on a lot of deliveries in peak hours, where you load up several orders and then deliver them all in one route and you dont really need to carry whole bag to client/restaurant, just fish up the package.
Also boxy bags allow for bigger packages(pizza, water bottles) and usually help to pack orders in a way that damages them less.
Delivery workers should fuck up their backs because otherwise (1) customers would get their shitty fast food and soggy fries 15s or 20s later, and (2) boxes would eat into the profit of the shareholders.
Reminds me of seeing amazon workers struggle to drag those plastic boxes full of deliveries around the sidewalks of the neighborhood while UPS provides a hand truck. I get it, a hand truck cost more than that 10 cent box they abandon all over town.
In my experience hauling deliveries on the shoulders generally sucks, especially if weight is bigger. hence why most active couriers around my parts prefer to fix some sort of baggage rack to their ebikes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it's because Uber Eats et al relies on social leniency for meatspace presence and not paying for parking lots and bikes themselves. E-bikes and EV vans are used successfully by couple large orgs globally albeit at small scales.
Or maybe because EV transition is not low hanging fruits at all, idk.
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.
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.
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.
"In the five-year period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020, there were 14 deaths reported to an Australian State or Territory Coroner where an electric e-micromobility device, including e-bike, e-scooter and electronic self-balancing device, contributed to the death"
"Seven of the 14 deaths were related to e-bikes); 7 deaths were in Queensland and 5 in Victoria (by jurisdiction of investigation); 6 deaths were in the age group of 35–44 years; 5 were females."
<snip>
"Last year the state recorded eight deaths related to personal mobility devices, including e-bikes and e-scooters, quadrupling the number from the previous year, with more than 3000 people presented to 26 emergency departments."
In addition, the reporting is lacking in this area.
"Often, e-bike injuries are grouped with other road users: motorcycles, bicycles and e-scooter therefore making it difficult to track its use, correlates of it and any injury or harm from it."
There's some serious road use education and rule adjustment called for; it's a perfect storm of young riders, on and off roadways and footpaths, speed, horsepower, and mixed traffic (cars, pedestrians, eVehicles with relatively high speeds).
It's not one or the other in my eyes - both can be a problem. When someone whips by me on the sidewalk on an e-bike or moped at 20+ MPH, that's a serious danger as well. I agree that I haven't heard of anyone specifically dying from this, but it's absolutely a public danger.
An elderly pedestrian I know was recently struck by a car. Compound fractures, dislocated joints. He’s looking at a long recovery and a pile of medical bills, because the driver was barely insured and in the US we’re somehow fine with that. So it comes down to momentum transfer, and I’d much rather he’d have been struck by an e bike.
These frustrations are just as real as the resultant medical bills.
But the situation is here because we have a new technology (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting into the current car-centric infrastructure.
Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes, it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will happen over years or decades.
So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that incorporates it properly look like?
And there's the excessive reactionary regulation that makes people not comply with the rules.
If you put some reasonable speed limit and look at the other important factors like weight, you won't need to register anything that runs as fast as a child on skates, and can focus on what is really the problem.
I just looked it up, it's actually 25kph, which is faster than the average speed of a pedal bike rider.
So assuming that the safe amount of momentum we're happy with (without registration, etc) is that of a pedal bike rider, if we take into account the extra weight of an e-bike, that seems like a pretty lenient cutoff. Overly lenient in my opinion.
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.
Because bikes go the wrong way up one way streets, ride on sidewalks, don't use lights at night and run red lights whenever they feel like it. Think Brownian motion. If there are a lot of them (and there are in New York City) the odds of getting hit by one if you're not super duper careful is high. Worse if you are older and don't see so good or move so fast.
I don't think it is fair to compare Netherlands to other countries like UK or France because Netherlands has a well established culture around bikes and bike lane infrastructure is one of the best in the world, so it will be the last country that will have any issues because of e-bikes.
Well, we (in NL) are used to bikes going mostly the same speed and people in cars and bikes following the rules. With overpowered fat-bikes, it's now much more chaotic than a decade ago.
The established road / bike path system here runs so smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with unexpected situations.
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 this 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.
They article quotes $1400 for these bikes as initial investment. Add that to my personal assertation that anyone working on a bike should be handy enough to DIY for all things related to service/repair. Bikes are not hard to work on at all. If you agree with that, then you should be able to convert a standard bike to an e-bike with a couple hundred dollar kit that is readily available. Unless there's some kind of market capture here where they can't access the cheap parts I have access too via Alibaba/Amazon, this could easily be a DIY with a few simple tools and some research on YT. I've done this myself with no special electronic experience (however, I did service my own BMX bikes when I was a kid/teen).
Do you have any recommendations for something weatherproof? Maybe something easy to convert back to regular bike? I would love for a little supplementary power to flatten the hills on the commute.
Do you deliver packages in a tropical climate? If the answer is no, maybe you have a different use case than the people in the article. Being able to make it through the day might carry more significance for these users than being able to tear the thing down without any electrical knowledge.
HN in a nutshell - you see an article full of first-hand reports of the users and their use case and your immediate reaction is that you know better about what they want and need than they do.
I ride an e-bike 30 miles a day. It's my main mode of transportation, as I don't own a car. Right now it's in the shop for repairs; I understand well the time cost and wallet cost of regular maintenance and am actively considering building my own bike to find a better solution. Please don't pretend that you know me.
I think you're entirely misunderstanding the comment you're replying to here. Of course having a usable bike is critical, but the comment was about reparability and cost of ownership in the long term. A repair shop won't be able to help you fix a bike if there's no parts available. This has nothing to do with the users electrical knowledge.
Agreed - maintainability directly contributes to whether or not something is "affordable" which is one of the center points of the article. Cheap and not repairable can quickly become expensive and wasteful.
I can tell you for a fact that snow and salted streets is far, far worse for an e-bike (I assume cars/trucks too, but maybe not since the gears are more isolated from the street?). However these places are like that only for 2-4 months of the year.
Compound that to e-bikes batteries usually (always?) don't have heating systems to keep them at >0 C, at least you can take them out of the bike when not in use though.
Worse is there are some cities that have both, humid summers and salted streets in winter.
You're right about hot and humid, but Bogota (which is where the story is set) is not hot. Highest temperature ever recorded was 30 Celsius and usual highs all year are about 20 C. Average altitude is 2600 m/8600 ft.
It is humid, but that doesn't seem to translate into especially heavy rain - total precip is less than 900 mm/yr, or somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago.
In my mind there's a "standardized", probably cargo, e-bike that has not yet been invented. A e-bike (or scooter) that is mass-produced and inexpensive like the Volkswagen Bug and popular enough to breed an ecosystem of aftermarket parts, mods, etc.
Let the clones follow using the same parts, connectors and you could have a world-wide phenomena.
I bought a sit-on electric Chinese cargo scooter from an importer in Bulgaria because I liked how it looked, and it's handy for going around town. They are everywhere in China. They are assembled by hundreds (probably thousands) of small factories. A big center is Wuxi. I visited a few factories there last year. The scooters cost about $350 USD in China.
There seems to be a sort of loose standardization around components, that are also churned out by countless factories. Wheels/motors are generally 10" or 12" size. Brake disks have either a certain 3 or 4 bolt pattern. I'm sure the electrics likewise follow some patterns.
I had the thought that it would be fun to 3d scan parts, measure and document some of these scooters, and make a database of suppliers. Then, who knows, start to make the frames and assemble in Bulgaria.
But you really need to be spending time in China to do that, and it wasn't really the right time for me then.
Another thing to note: branded scooters (niu etc.) are becoming more popular, better quality, extensive plastics, and you can probably order parts from the manufacturer.
I think the scooter is going to be the winner in the U.S. People not used to biking are averse to being unable to sit and have both feet solidly on the ground at a stop.
And it will also be a "cargo" scooter because carrying things.
Why's that? I have no experience here so I'm confused as to why the batteries would be different. Is it a size thing? Or are they just different tech all together?
I am surprised that people here are saying good words about food delivery workers. They are at least annoying when they break all the traffic rules, crossing roads in every direction on every traffic light color, and often dangerous when they ride on the sidewalk with a high speed. I wish they were at least banned from the sidewalks.
Also recent police raid (they should make them every day) showed that some of the delivery workers were illegal migrants, which shows that companies do little effort to check their documents when hiring.
Recently spent about 2 weeks driving to Boston every day and 100% of the delivery vehicles I noticed were gas powered scooters. Maybe the electric bike delivery people don't ride on the road?
"E-bikes produce virtually no greenhouse emissions after manufacturing"
Except for the electricity to charge it, which could either come from clean or dirty power. True about the lack of exhaust though.
Then it leads to the question about the efficiency of generation, distribution, and battery charging vs the distribution and burning of gasoline. Also the weight of the bike. Perhaps someone else has already done the math on this.
You have to have a really really dirty energy supply for an electric vehicle to be a higher emitter than an ICE vehicle. E-bikes also will replace things like two-stroke mopeds which are especially dirty for ICE vehicles.
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.
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.
So are many jobs. Many students do them, many people do them as an inbetween thing while looking for a better job, etc.
I get the desire to replace all no skill jobs with roombas and drones but some people need them and some even enjoy them.
A friend did over a year of grocery deliveries with a cargo bike recently and outside of the career growth issues he liked it a lot. Physical exercise, lots of free food and decent pay including tips.
Not everyone is a HN minmaxer following the meta to get to the highest posible salary in the shortest possible time. Some are happy with paid rent, food and a weekend visit to the club or w/e.
>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.
So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike (they didn't even provide it to him!) is listed as a "reason to be cheerful"?! I swear this is the most depressing thing I read this week so far, and that's something if you consider how depressing the news has been recently...
This sounds like one of those stories in the US about a community crowdsourcing a ton of money for a little girl to get some life saving surgery that would be covered by socialized health care in almost any other country in the planet.
These stories are cheerful for capital.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OrphanCrushingMachine via https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine
Hah, as if a mere $20,000 would be enough to pause the machine for long enough to pull out 200 orphans.
To be fair, stories like this occur in countries with socialized healthcare. People often do come to the US for niche specialized healthcare that is cutting edge.
US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks average or poor in some cases.
I have been through the healthcare systems of Brazil (private) and Sweden (public). I can say that private healthcare is only strictly better if you pay out of pocket, not through insurance.
Public healthcare is FAR more efficient though, I am always amazed how _fast_ doing exams in Sweden are. Like my doctor asked me to take an MRI, put it in the system, scheduled an appointment within a week for me automatically and I was in and out of an MRI clinic in 20 minutes (and I was attended to exactly on time of my appointment) all of that just using my ID card. Bloodwork is usually drop-in so I can just go directly from the doctor without an appointment.
In Brazil with private healthcare I would have to find the MRI clinic myself and see which one was covered by my insurance and try to get an appointment within a reasonable time (by calling multiple clinics). And when getting there I would probably have to wait at least an hour to actually get the MRI done. That is if insurance didn't contest the need for it in the first place. And god forbid I forget to bring the insurance paperwork with me.
Oh yeah, in Brazil I also need to personally go pickup the MRI and personally bring it to the doctor and do another visitation, while in Sweden it is all digital and the doctor just called me on the phone to tell me the results.
My father took ~4 months to schedule a life-saving cancer surgery, insurance kept contesting the surgery. My partners mother in Sweden had cancer surgery approved and done in less than 10 days.
Yes the care in Sweden is usually worse than in Brazil private. I wouldn't say it is so much about doctor quality, more about doctors feeling a bit rushed to see patients. But it is so much faster and easier. Usually you need fast care, not personalized care. And of course a lot of things are just not covered in the Swedish public system (for example some skincare problems) that could be covered in some private in Brazil.
The only thing better about the Brazilian clinics was that some of them had marble floor on the lobby while the Sweden ones usually had concrete floors or tiles.
Overall I prefer the Swedish system much better than the private Brazilian system.
When someone criticizes US healthcare, they are almost always using "healthcare" to mean "the care that everyone receives on average" and not "the healthcare received by those with good insurance." Private jets fly from around the world to The Cleveland Clinic and The Mayo Clinic every day, but that's not what's at issue for most people.
And the routine care at sites like the Cleveland Clinic is often not particularly good even with good insurance. But they do have a lot of fancy specialists.
They also aren't criticising the fact that the US funds most healthcare advancements that are then bought in bulk by socialised programmes once the hard work of discovery and validation is done, and raises the average for everyone.
Until Trump cancels the funding, at which point they suddenly remember it, but only in the context of Trump criticism.
In Brazil the top private hospitals were full of people speaking in Spanish and English. Private care is only better if you pay out of pocket though, most people with private insurance in Brazil don't get to go to those hospitals.
This assuming you already have some idea what's going on.
I was turned away from any attempt at diagnosis, because neither facility seemed to know (or care) which department to send me to...
I was ready to sign a blank check - but they seemingly refuse to hurt their stats with potentially unsolvable cases...
Form a reply if you disagree...downvoting doesn't change the fact that even these top facilities end up embarrassing us as a nation...
I've known Canadians facing severe health issues who stay in the US because it's more affordable when you consider the higher wages.
That's not true for everyone, but I'm not talking about the super-rich either. Just plain middle class.
[flagged]
This is PR slop for a startup. Their workers have no benefits or stability.
>So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike
Millions of venezuelan migrants are in a similar situation. It is not uncommon to see former university professors with PHDs, lawyers, engineers with decades of experience, etc. to find themselves in another country working as Uber drivers and other types of jobs. Having to migrate really fucking sucks especially if you are old. Consider yourself lucky if you live in a country that is politically and economically stable and you have some sort of net to support you when things don't work out for you.
This goes for European countries as well. Even well-educated people, from whatever country locals deem undesirable at that moment, in general do not get the chance to work in jobs that suit their education. Sometimes these people have benefited from taxpayer funded education in that host country, but the prevalent racist attitudes exclude them from even getting job interviews. E.g. Finland is losing lots of immigrants they have spent lots of money educating to this- not helped by the policies of the current government- people they need to stay in order to plug the plummeting birth rate are forced to leave the country because there is nothing there for them besides rejection after rejection, or jobs that do not match their education.
This tends to be a much lesser problem once the person's original country is in the EU, but yeah if you are coming from outside the EU it can be super tricky. Even professions that is desperate need like nursing and doctors can be hard because of the recertifications required.
It would be interesting to know how many of those old professors with PHDs, lawyers, engineers supported Hugo Chavez at the beginning.
Your glass is half empty.
Whatever it is is better than the same thing with loud gas motorbikes being everywhere.
Ok, fair enough, then maybe they shouldn't have picked this 50 year old guy who used to have a management job but was then forced to flee his country and work as a delivery worker, but a 22 year old who used to sell drugs but now makes an honest living (maybe they couldn't find one?).
But yeah, that aside, I can definitely sympathize with reducing the number of loud stinking gas motorbikes and scooters. Maybe also give loans to users of gas chainsaws, leaf blowers etc. etc. to replace those too...
From my reading, the article is about how e-bikes are proving to be economically viable and how that benefits the environment. Even more positive is that they are becoming available locally in a way that is accessible to a delivery driver on a fixed low income. Those things seem like something to be pretty optimistic about.
I never owned a car, I commute to work in an e-bike and most other places I go to. It is usually faster than car (if you account parking) or public transport.
Since I got an e-bike I haven't bought a single month public-transport cards, I maybe take the metro/bus 4-10 times per month (depends a lot on the weather). The bike paid itself several times over since I got it around 2019.
Me and my partner manage to save a lot of money per month, even though we just bought a new, very expensive (because it is close to downtown) apartment with a huge mortgage by just living close to place we go to, not having a car and using the e-bike.
"There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in." - Desmond Tutu
Society is not ready for the conversation because more often that not, inquisitive people who dare go upstream find out that capitalism - directly or indirectly - is pushing into the river, and have to walk back down to while hanging their head, and continue pulling those they can out of the river.
Yes I'm sure it's the capitalism in Venezuela that pushed these people into taking these jobs in Columbia.
I think you can do better than that in charitably reading what I said in the context of a hagiography whose centerpiece is a loan to a 50 year-old immigrant for an e-bike.
Welcome to the Orphan Crushing Machine - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine
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.
The tradeoff is that the higher you carry the bag (i.e. on your shoulders), the more space you have when maneuvering between cars. You can imagine how, if your bag was at the same level as the bike saddle, it would be more likely to get pinched when cycling through traffic. A clever cyclist could even stand upright with the bag on their back to get a few more inches of clearance when need be!
Uno reverse/Yu-Gi-Oh trap card: They're not pushing the handling limits.
Capacity is still needed, or you will miss out on a lot of deliveries in peak hours, where you load up several orders and then deliver them all in one route and you dont really need to carry whole bag to client/restaurant, just fish up the package. Also boxy bags allow for bigger packages(pizza, water bottles) and usually help to pack orders in a way that damages them less.
Which companies batch food orders now? It was a short lived and unpopular experiment in India years back.
Both Grubhub and DoorDash allow drivers to pickup multiple orders in one run in my neighborhood.
Well it is pretty normal in russia, atleast for big operators
Maybe there's an issue with the box getting stolen.
Delivery workers should fuck up their backs because otherwise (1) customers would get their shitty fast food and soggy fries 15s or 20s later, and (2) boxes would eat into the profit of the shareholders.
Reminds me of seeing amazon workers struggle to drag those plastic boxes full of deliveries around the sidewalks of the neighborhood while UPS provides a hand truck. I get it, a hand truck cost more than that 10 cent box they abandon all over town.
right? This is the orphan-crushing-machine meme (referenced elsewhere here) playing out live.
Top comment: "This is bad ergonomics for the humans doing delivery"
Reply: "But here's all the reasons why good ergonomics lose money for The Platform"
But now you’re cutting out all that biological shock absorption.
(Aka: why helmet cams are much smoother than any other bike mount)
Anyone seen the wild carriers on the back of scooters in Tokyo? Apparently for delivering ramen without spilling.
https://blog.btrax.com/en/files/2019/08/Japanese_food_delive...
Why not just put the ramen in liquid-tight containers?
In my experience hauling deliveries on the shoulders generally sucks, especially if weight is bigger. hence why most active couriers around my parts prefer to fix some sort of baggage rack to their ebikes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it's because Uber Eats et al relies on social leniency for meatspace presence and not paying for parking lots and bikes themselves. E-bikes and EV vans are used successfully by couple large orgs globally albeit at small scales.
Or maybe because EV transition is not low hanging fruits at all, idk.
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.
When I was doing it, for rush, fun and sport. I guess it's a privileged take on it though.
Not the majority at all, but some people like me do it for fun :)
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.
From my very first google:
"In the five-year period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020, there were 14 deaths reported to an Australian State or Territory Coroner where an electric e-micromobility device, including e-bike, e-scooter and electronic self-balancing device, contributed to the death"
"Seven of the 14 deaths were related to e-bikes); 7 deaths were in Queensland and 5 in Victoria (by jurisdiction of investigation); 6 deaths were in the age group of 35–44 years; 5 were females."
<snip>
"Last year the state recorded eight deaths related to personal mobility devices, including e-bikes and e-scooters, quadrupling the number from the previous year, with more than 3000 people presented to 26 emergency departments."
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/unaware-huge-war...
In addition, the reporting is lacking in this area.
"Often, e-bike injuries are grouped with other road users: motorcycles, bicycles and e-scooter therefore making it difficult to track its use, correlates of it and any injury or harm from it."
There's some serious road use education and rule adjustment called for; it's a perfect storm of young riders, on and off roadways and footpaths, speed, horsepower, and mixed traffic (cars, pedestrians, eVehicles with relatively high speeds).
It's not one or the other in my eyes - both can be a problem. When someone whips by me on the sidewalk on an e-bike or moped at 20+ MPH, that's a serious danger as well. I agree that I haven't heard of anyone specifically dying from this, but it's absolutely a public danger.
A friend's 8 year old kid had his arm broken by ripping, when it got caught in an on-pavement electric bike's wheel. 100% torque straight away.
I assume you heard about it, given the confidence of your assertions. So I'm just reminding you.
If that's the case, then the comparable motor scooters should be deregulated as well.
They are noisy and pollute. Not the same at all.
I meant electric mopeds.
An elderly pedestrian I know was recently struck by a car. Compound fractures, dislocated joints. He’s looking at a long recovery and a pile of medical bills, because the driver was barely insured and in the US we’re somehow fine with that. So it comes down to momentum transfer, and I’d much rather he’d have been struck by an e bike.
I've seen e-bike collisions too. Unfortunately pedestrian's are still badly hurt or killed.
The e-bike rider has more on the line in a collision with a pedestrian as well.
> I’d much rather he’d have been struck by an e bike
E-bikes offer additional risk, not alternative risk, because they're ridden on pavements.
These frustrations are just as real as the resultant medical bills.
But the situation is here because we have a new technology (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting into the current car-centric infrastructure.
Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes, it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will happen over years or decades.
So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that incorporates it properly look like?
> if they can go over 17kph without pedalling
And there's the excessive reactionary regulation that makes people not comply with the rules.
If you put some reasonable speed limit and look at the other important factors like weight, you won't need to register anything that runs as fast as a child on skates, and can focus on what is really the problem.
I just looked it up, it's actually 25kph, which is faster than the average speed of a pedal bike rider.
So assuming that the safe amount of momentum we're happy with (without registration, etc) is that of a pedal bike rider, if we take into account the extra weight of an e-bike, that seems like a pretty lenient cutoff. Overly lenient in my opinion.
It's the same here in New York City. I've seen e-bike accidents and they are no picnic. The city does crack down on them from time to time.
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.
That is because there are millions of kms of roads for cars and virtually 0 for bikes.
Plus cars kill thousands of people every day, and we just sort of accept it as a natural fact of life. Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?
Moped going 20+kph are regulated need registration and can't ride on sidewalk, there are ebikes weighting more than moped and going faster.
Because bikes go the wrong way up one way streets, ride on sidewalks, don't use lights at night and run red lights whenever they feel like it. Think Brownian motion. If there are a lot of them (and there are in New York City) the odds of getting hit by one if you're not super duper careful is high. Worse if you are older and don't see so good or move so fast.
> Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?
because the bike can and will use the sidewalk if there's not bike lane.
E bikes can be used by 15-16 year olds so Dominos uses them a lot here in the Netherlands.
I don't think it is fair to compare Netherlands to other countries like UK or France because Netherlands has a well established culture around bikes and bike lane infrastructure is one of the best in the world, so it will be the last country that will have any issues because of e-bikes.
Well, we (in NL) are used to bikes going mostly the same speed and people in cars and bikes following the rules. With overpowered fat-bikes, it's now much more chaotic than a decade ago.
The established road / bike path system here runs so smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with unexpected situations.
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 this 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.
They article quotes $1400 for these bikes as initial investment. Add that to my personal assertation that anyone working on a bike should be handy enough to DIY for all things related to service/repair. Bikes are not hard to work on at all. If you agree with that, then you should be able to convert a standard bike to an e-bike with a couple hundred dollar kit that is readily available. Unless there's some kind of market capture here where they can't access the cheap parts I have access too via Alibaba/Amazon, this could easily be a DIY with a few simple tools and some research on YT. I've done this myself with no special electronic experience (however, I did service my own BMX bikes when I was a kid/teen).
The only issue with the cheap kits is that they seem to be much likelier to catch fire.
You can buy well built kits that are inexpensive. If you buy the cheapest available on Alibaba then maybe there's some risk of this
Do you have any recommendations for something weatherproof? Maybe something easy to convert back to regular bike? I would love for a little supplementary power to flatten the hills on the commute.
Do you deliver packages in a tropical climate? If the answer is no, maybe you have a different use case than the people in the article. Being able to make it through the day might carry more significance for these users than being able to tear the thing down without any electrical knowledge.
HN in a nutshell - you see an article full of first-hand reports of the users and their use case and your immediate reaction is that you know better about what they want and need than they do.
I ride an e-bike 30 miles a day. It's my main mode of transportation, as I don't own a car. Right now it's in the shop for repairs; I understand well the time cost and wallet cost of regular maintenance and am actively considering building my own bike to find a better solution. Please don't pretend that you know me.
I think you're entirely misunderstanding the comment you're replying to here. Of course having a usable bike is critical, but the comment was about reparability and cost of ownership in the long term. A repair shop won't be able to help you fix a bike if there's no parts available. This has nothing to do with the users electrical knowledge.
Agreed - maintainability directly contributes to whether or not something is "affordable" which is one of the center points of the article. Cheap and not repairable can quickly become expensive and wasteful.
Hot and humid is the worst for any machines. Which tropical climate is. It's also lowkey why Toyota ended up being ~the most reliable brand of cars.
I can tell you for a fact that snow and salted streets is far, far worse for an e-bike (I assume cars/trucks too, but maybe not since the gears are more isolated from the street?). However these places are like that only for 2-4 months of the year.
Compound that to e-bikes batteries usually (always?) don't have heating systems to keep them at >0 C, at least you can take them out of the bike when not in use though.
Worse is there are some cities that have both, humid summers and salted streets in winter.
You're right about hot and humid, but Bogota (which is where the story is set) is not hot. Highest temperature ever recorded was 30 Celsius and usual highs all year are about 20 C. Average altitude is 2600 m/8600 ft.
It is humid, but that doesn't seem to translate into especially heavy rain - total precip is less than 900 mm/yr, or somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago.
In my mind there's a "standardized", probably cargo, e-bike that has not yet been invented. A e-bike (or scooter) that is mass-produced and inexpensive like the Volkswagen Bug and popular enough to breed an ecosystem of aftermarket parts, mods, etc.
Let the clones follow using the same parts, connectors and you could have a world-wide phenomena.
I bought a sit-on electric Chinese cargo scooter from an importer in Bulgaria because I liked how it looked, and it's handy for going around town. They are everywhere in China. They are assembled by hundreds (probably thousands) of small factories. A big center is Wuxi. I visited a few factories there last year. The scooters cost about $350 USD in China.
There seems to be a sort of loose standardization around components, that are also churned out by countless factories. Wheels/motors are generally 10" or 12" size. Brake disks have either a certain 3 or 4 bolt pattern. I'm sure the electrics likewise follow some patterns.
I had the thought that it would be fun to 3d scan parts, measure and document some of these scooters, and make a database of suppliers. Then, who knows, start to make the frames and assemble in Bulgaria.
But you really need to be spending time in China to do that, and it wasn't really the right time for me then.
Another thing to note: branded scooters (niu etc.) are becoming more popular, better quality, extensive plastics, and you can probably order parts from the manufacturer.
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 think the scooter is going to be the winner in the U.S. People not used to biking are averse to being unable to sit and have both feet solidly on the ground at a stop.
And it will also be a "cargo" scooter because carrying things.
Just that the e-scooter batteries last much shorter than the e-bike batteries. And they won't work in colder temperatures.
Typically 2 years only. E-bike batteries last much longer.
Why's that? I have no experience here so I'm confused as to why the batteries would be different. Is it a size thing? Or are they just different tech all together?
I'm not sure why that would be.
> It's far better than an E-bike.
Why? Not doubting you, but would love to hear more.
I am surprised that people here are saying good words about food delivery workers. They are at least annoying when they break all the traffic rules, crossing roads in every direction on every traffic light color, and often dangerous when they ride on the sidewalk with a high speed. I wish they were at least banned from the sidewalks.
Also recent police raid (they should make them every day) showed that some of the delivery workers were illegal migrants, which shows that companies do little effort to check their documents when hiring.
Recently spent about 2 weeks driving to Boston every day and 100% of the delivery vehicles I noticed were gas powered scooters. Maybe the electric bike delivery people don't ride on the road?
Boston where? This article is about Latin America.
If you're interested in e-bike delivery in Boston, Massachusetts though, there was a pilot program starting in August of 2024: https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/boston-del...
I just returned from Brazil and Argentina and yes these E-Bikes are everywhere
"E-bikes produce virtually no greenhouse emissions after manufacturing"
Except for the electricity to charge it, which could either come from clean or dirty power. True about the lack of exhaust though.
Then it leads to the question about the efficiency of generation, distribution, and battery charging vs the distribution and burning of gasoline. Also the weight of the bike. Perhaps someone else has already done the math on this.
You have to have a really really dirty energy supply for an electric vehicle to be a higher emitter than an ICE vehicle. E-bikes also will replace things like two-stroke mopeds which are especially dirty for ICE vehicles.
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Food delivery is some of the lowest quality and highest danger work with the least options for matriculating into a better position.
This article is written from a very colonial perspective. I wonder if the authors have pondered that.
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.
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.
So are many jobs. Many students do them, many people do them as an inbetween thing while looking for a better job, etc.
I get the desire to replace all no skill jobs with roombas and drones but some people need them and some even enjoy them.
A friend did over a year of grocery deliveries with a cargo bike recently and outside of the career growth issues he liked it a lot. Physical exercise, lots of free food and decent pay including tips.
Not everyone is a HN minmaxer following the meta to get to the highest posible salary in the shortest possible time. Some are happy with paid rent, food and a weekend visit to the club or w/e.
The alternative pushed by the tech elite would seem to be that delivery goes to drones and the delivery jobs are gone completely.
I'm pretty sure though they're not thinking about the welfare of those ex-delivery drivers.
It is important to celebrate small victories. Don't take that away from people
>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.
Never let an article about e-bikes used for delivery distract you from fostering a socialist revolution!