The Transformational Future of Urban Transport is Derived from the Humble Bicycle, and This is Why...

I've been in the automotive business an awfully long time, and even though my latest tenure is very far from my #McLaren, #Lamborghini and other supercars past, I'm finding this to be the most exciting and fundamentally transformational period in this industry I've ever witnessed.

We're currently experiencing a huge paradigm shift in all transport, having now recognised that more than 100 years of burning gasoline and diesel has caused a lot more damage to the very delicate ecosystem of this planet than anyone realistically expected. But we seem have an odd relationship with the environment as a race and especially within the developed nations. As we scramble to amass greater wealth individually and to raise the collective standard of living of our westernised countries, we've viewed the environmental impact of our use of this planet's resources as a 'tomorrow problem'. But not anymore.

Although there are those who would argue that the current changing global weather patterns are nothing more than the continuing evolution or cyclical phases of Earth's progression through time, the overwhelming scientific evidence now states otherwise. This really has become a 'now problem' and one that the current population is going to have to solve having contributed, not to its creation in the first place, but to its exponential escalation during the 20th Century.

We often hear in the media that Climate Change is a catastrophic issue that will impact the future of our children and grandchildren, leaving them a world now mortally damaged and infinitely more complex to manage while supporting an ever-growing population. This ultimate statement of human irresponsibility on a planetary scale seems to only induce a collectively fleeting public guilt reaction which rapidly subsides when picking up the petrol pump to fill the family 4x4 with diesel. So, if the reality of scientific evidence isn't enough to alter the global attitude towards an impending worldwide disaster, what will?

Politics is a tough career. I wouldn't want to deal with the myriad of issues raised by the general public on a daily basis while balancing the National books and dodging regular pot shots from the political press. If it's 15 minutes of fame you want, then the relative anonymity of life as a social media influencer would surely be the better occupation. Far better paid and with much less chance of being embroiled in a methane-flavoured river of sleaze, it would seem a million miles from Central Government, but the truth is we need both. The politicians with the conviction to force change through legislation, and the media influencers of the younger generation who need to understand and broadcast the true severity of the situation.

Governments have been set decarbonisation targets by global organisations who have the power to punish entire countries if those targets are not met. And, of course the public are going to push back against legislative changes, why wouldn't they? Car ownership has been a right to many for so many years. Representing individual independence, status and personality, it's a deeply ingrained and multifaceted part of global culture. I should know, I have some considerable experience of this.

London's forthcoming ULEZ expansion has been allowed by the widespread introduction, or should I say reintroduction, of Battery Electric Vehicles which, fronted by characters such as Elon Musk and his Tesla brand, have already started to create their own sub-culture. These electric cars have maintained the cultural norm of car ownership, but they're actually far from the solution and certainly not in busy cities and towns which have a future of continued population expansion and therefore ever-increasing consumer demand and consequent traffic congestion. The London Congestion Charge was introduced in 2003 simply to relieve the level of traffic congestion and consequent pollution in the UK capital. 20 years on, traffic levels are rising year on year and electric vehicles are not going to change the urban landscape in any other way than noise reduction and tailpipe emissions.

Enter the humble bicycle, originally invented over 200 years ago. The simplicity of a small lightweight wheeled vehicle, capable of transporting people or goods over short distances, made it the ideal way to get around the 'nicer' areas of growing cities and towns of the early 19th Century. But this isn't meant to be a history lesson, although we can and do learn a lot from history and that brings us rather neatly to where we are now.

The first electric bicycle was invented in 1895, with patents being registered around that time. But the internal combustion engine and easy access to oil and petroleum became all dominant during the 20th Century, literally the century we chose to really accelerate our choking of the environment.

By the early 1990's the eBike was starting to regain more traction however, with Japanese manufacturers attaching electric motors to their bicycles to provide an effective and much less polluting alternative to the moped and motorbike. eBikes and electric scooters are actually extraordinarily efficient ways to move humans around cities and towns, they're far more efficient than anything with an internal combustion engine. For one, you're not lugging pointless amounts of heavy technology around congested city streets and two, you instantly remove the emissions issue and almost all of the particulate problem. Cities become instantly quieter, cleaner and healthier but without any loss of commercial productivity.

Meanwhile, opportunity comes knocking based on that premise. It turns out that most commercial goods vans are only on average 20% full (TfL numbers) which means an awful lot of unnecessary air is being moved around our cities and towns. This simply can't make any kind of sense, commercial or environmental. It's purely a culture thing based on what we're used to, and we're going to have to collectively get our heads around it. So eVans cannot therefore be the solution. An eVan is essentially the same as a legacy van in almost every dimension, although it's a lot heavier but can carry less, and it has to be charged, economically, from a dedicated installed power source. Using eVans is a like-for-like replacement which delivers the same result but without tailpipe emissions. Particulate emissions from brakes and tyres are still an issue though as is congestion pollution which, ultimately, makes our cities and towns rather less than pleasant places to live.

What we need then, is something as simplistically effective as a bicycle, with the technological and user advantages of eBikes plus an advanced knowledge of automotive design and engineering, linked to focused urban commercial vehicle use cases including capacity, range, safety, comfort etc.

That'll be an eCargo bike then.

I looked at the eCargo bike sector about four years ago and saw one of the most obvious sector opportunities in the automotive market I've ever seen. And the eCargo bike does sit in the automotive market because its principal objective is to replace legacy vans and reduce the need for the ubiquitous use of eVans. It is the perfect, almost surgical tool for urban logistics and operations and it becomes even more perfect as traffic is reduced. Capacity is around 25% of a legacy van which accounts for the vast majority of logistics movements as well as carrying equipment, tools and materials. The argument would be that it wouldn't carry the required weight of legacy vans, but this is again a cultural issue as, in the simplest of terms, we have to change the way we do things. You can't always have it your own way.

As time has progressed I've engaged in more and more conversations about adapting processes and operations within forward thinking businesses that are adopting eCargo bikes as part of a larger urban mobility strategy. This has even led to standalone design projects to adapt or develop new equipment for use to improve efficiency in line with the adoption of multiple eCargo bikes. This is a genuinely evolutionary progress of transport and the automotive sector, adopting a 200 year-old invention to achieve all the performance targets of the 21st Century.

As our politicians struggle with the task of decarbonisation targets across industries and entire nations, it turns out that a little retro-progressive thinking combined with a genuine shift in transport culture provides the answer when combined common sense. EAV has developed an extremely effective, efficient tool for supporting urban commerce and providing city and town communities with a softer, safer landscape.

As EAV moves forwards with an extension of the technology provided by the humble bicycle, the urban mobility future has many interesting variants which continue the objective of reducing the bulk of traffic and introduce real fit-for-purpose vehicles.