Forget driverless cars, the e-bike is today’s real technological breakthrough

Peter Wiltshire

28 October 2016

Peter Wiltshire was a Rees Jeffrey’s prizewinner for a paper on advertising in transport planning in 2005 and joint author, along with Peter Stonham, of Routes to Revenue Growth on bus marketing. He was also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Transport and Society, at the University of the West of England.

A joy to ride, and stylish too: this advert for the Kalkhof shows how slick the German marketing of these machines has become

On 1st January this year, legislation decreed that British cyclists who are over 14 can use a 250 watt electric motor to supplement their pedal power on public highways. Please note the significance of the word ‘supplement’; it means the motor cannot be the sole power source of the vehicle. This puts us in line with the Dutch, the Germans and the French, and the bike motors they produce.

Because I am retired and out-of-touch, I was unaware of this, and while searching the internet...