With oil nudging $100 a barrel this week, I did a set of test rides of vehicles that are so cheap to run you can travel 100km for as little as 40c.
These vehicles — electric scooters or bikes — potentially solve two problems that characterise motorised travel in Johannesburg: rising energy costs and increasing gridlock.
The three bikes I rode are made in China, which has undergone a revolution in personal transport since 1998, when most major cities in China began banning the use of petrol-powered motorbikes to clean up pollution.
The result has been the emergence of the ubiquitous electric scooter and bike. More than nine million electric bikes and scooters were sold in China last year, according to Business Week, citing Goldman Sachs, at a cost of $1,5-billion.
Piet Jooste, an entrepreneur based in Albertskroon near Northcliff in Johannesburg, has imported a container of Chinese-made bikes and scooters to test the local market. The idea is spanking new and is yet to be registered as a company, but will probably trade as Pick a Bike.
The cheapest bike, with the brand name Mikey, sells for R4Â 500. The scooters, branded as Remex, sell for R6Â 000.
Jooste is setting up the electric bike and scooter business for his son, Jacko, who recently matriculated. He says at these prices he will not make any money on this consignment, but does not intend raising prices in the future because he has managed to source the batteries locally at a saving of R1Â 000 and expects to buy his next consignment at reduced prices.
The scooters use a 450W motor and take three hours to charge. Jooste says this gives them a range of about 100km on a battery life of six hours. He is importing a slightly larger scooter with stronger rims than the standard used in China because, he says, South Africans are typically larger and heavier than the Chinese.
Jooste says his primary target market is likely to be students, but he is getting inquiries from numerous platteland towns where he sees the scooters, which have a claimed top speed of 55kph, being used for quick and easy commuting.
The motor is quiet, so quiet you don’t even know it is turned on. There is no exhaust.
The overall finish is underwhelming, but then I suppose you can’t expect too much from a motorised vehicle costing just R6Â 000.
I took one of the scooters for a spin, including on some of the hills in the Greymont area. The first impression is that it feels under-powered, but it is fun to ride. My scooter was not going to make 55kph, but I did get to 45kph.
Going uphill I found myself going slower and slower, but the speedometer did not show a slower speed than 20kph. Near the top of a longish hill I was hardly moving and at one point it seemed that the scooter was about to stall.
Joubert says the scooters perform best at gradients below 17° and will function better for students weighing 60kg than journalists of 88kg.
Although the scooters have no pedals, the Mikey, which has pedals, looks like a bicycle with baskets and space for panniers. It is much heavier than a bicycle at 35kg and typically needs a few pedal strokes to get going.
The pedalling helps with speed on uphills and you also charge the battery while you pedal.
I liked both vehicles, which should be seen as human-assisted rather than high-performance transport. They are fun to ride and do the job of getting you from point A to B, particularly if the two points are not that far apart and there are no major hills in between.
A negative with both vehicles is the size of the lead-acid battery, which weighs 17kg in the case of the Mikey, more than a typical mountain bike. The scooter’s battery is even larger and heavier but, with its fibreglass body, is lighter than the Mikey.
The battery is no-maintenance, meaning it does not have to be topped up with battery fluid, but a chunk of battery power is being used just to move itself forward.
Of the two, I preferred the Mikey, perhaps because it can be pedal-assisted and has more space for carrying groceries and other vitals. At R4Â 500 you are getting a lot of bike for your money, as a visit to any bicycle shop will tell you.
On the same day, in the afternoon, I rode another electric vehicle, the Ezee. This is a different beast altogether.
The Ezee electric bikes range in price from R9Â 000 to R15Â 000. It is obvious that you are paying for quality. The frames are aluminium, key components are Shimano and the lithium-manganese battery weighs just 4,4kg. The total weight of the model I rode, the Ezee Torq, is 24,4kg.
This vehicle is a 2×2 as a motor drives the front wheel and the pedals, with eight gear options, drive the back wheels.
The range is 55km and the bike comes with a set maximum speed of 25kph. There is an option to disconnect this, which allows a higher top speed of 35km an hour.
The handling is excellent. The feeling is like riding a mountain bike, but seemingly assisted by a mysterious power that makes hill climbing extremely easy.
The Ezee positions itself as a quality product aimed mostly at people who want low-carbon transport. It costs an estimated 40c for a sufficient charge to cover 100km.
One of the company’s first customers was Carl Nienaber, who is the company’s agent in Gauteng. Nienaber, who runs a blog promoting green transport (www.greencars.za.net), uses the bike to travel to work and to run errands.
He acknowledges, though, that his job means he has to travel vast distances in rural areas and on difficult terrain, so his main transport is by 4×4; he has chosen the most fuel-efficient off-road vehicle he could find.
The Ezee has just completed the Pick ‘n Pay 94.7 Cycle Challenge, ridden by the radio station’s Julio Garcia.
Nienaber met Garcia at the halfway point and exchanged the battery, which is good for 500 charges, but says the used battery still had plenty of life in it.
His next project is to install a set of solar panels so that he can power the bike from the sun. He reckons this will cost about R8Â 000, bringing the total cost of bike and its power source to R22Â 000. But the bike will be running entirely on a renewable energy source.
Electric bike use has been exploding in China, but a ban was mooted a few years back, reportedly because of concerns about the safe disposal of batteries. In January last year the ban was lifted and the country has subscribed to international standards.
These, says a source at the South African Bureau of Standards, are that electric vehicles are exempt internationally from licensing requirements as long as the motor is 250W or below and calibrated so that the maximum speed of the bicycle is 25kph. You put on your helmet and go.
Though China sold nine million electric bikes and scooters last year, the two local companies are new in the market or still setting up shop and, collectively, have not even sold nine bikes.
As such it might appear hardly worthwhile noticing them. But there are moves afoot countrywide to turn the country into a more bike-friendly environment. Johannesburg, for instance, has advanced plans in progress to redesign its transport network to put an efficient public transport system in place.
Bob Stanway, who is charged with establishing the BRT (Bus Rapid Transport) in Johannesburg, says part of the thinking is to provide secure lock-up facilities to encourage commuters to use bicycles to access the key points of the network.
Saneri, a research agency under the umbrella of the Central Energy Fund, is also assisting transport authorities with technology options for running a more energy-efficient network.
Saneri’s Kevin Nassiep sees the possibility of developing new transport nodes with new options around them so that, for instance, an area of limited access could be created around the Gautrain stop in Rosebank. Policy could then encourage pedestrians and low-impact motoring, such as taxis running on electricity and/or bicycles, while discouraging non-resident motor traffic.