China Likes Electric Bikes

China is still a land of bicycles. But in recent years the personal automobile has been making significant inroads into everyday Chinese lives, according to an article in Time magazine, bringing with it the pollution and traffic jams that we live with in the fully developed world. Fortunately, the bike-loving Chinese have adopted electric bikes — quiet, small, and with no immediate emissions — in a big way.

"Last year," the article states, "Chinese bought 21 million e-bikes, compared with 9.4 million autos. While China now has about 25 million cars on the road, it has four times as many e-bikes. The ... country has become the world's leading market for the cheap, green vehicles, helping to offset some of the harmful effects of the country's automobile boom. "

The Chinese love of electric bicycles is a product of the government's decision to make the development of "e-bikes" an official technology goal in 1991.

"Major Chinese cities have extensive bicycle lanes, which means riders can avoid the worst of rush-hour congestion. In cities such as Shanghai, local governments have drastically raised licensing fees on gas-powered scooters in recent years, effectively driving hoards of consumers to e-bike manufacturers."

Maybe these bikes will never catch on here in the United States the way they have in China. It's good to know, however, that markets in Southeast Asia and India — where noisy, terribly polluting internal-combustion powered scooters are ubiquitous — are buying many millions of Chinese-made e-bikes every year.

Photo courtesy of xiaming via flickr.