[gibagger]

For the teenagers of which country, exactly?.

I live in the Netherlands, where the average teenager used to ride a regular Dutch city bike. Internal hub, no-frills bicycles.

Nowadays, however, fat e-bikes are all the rage among that age group. They are quickly becoming extremely popular, and are essentially electric scooters without plates or registration. Many of them require little or no effort to pedal, and can carry up to two riders in them. These are also designed to meet regulations, while also being able to easily be modified to circumvent them, such as removing speed restrictions, and removing the need to pedal itself.

This is also reflected in the shape of these things, which generally does not account for ergonomics. Their seat and handlebars are usually fixed in place. They appear to be designed without pedaling in mind, as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would quickly become uncomfortable and painful. You can actually see some such bikes in the linked article.

Time will tell whether this is truly healthy to them, but I have a hard time believing this to be the case. I think the fat bike demographic might start putting on weight.

[arp242]

> For the teenagers of which country, exactly?

United States, obviously. Article makes zero pretence being about anything other than that and it's stated right there in the opening paragraph: "among America’s youth".

[FirmwareBurner]

What was wrong with regular bikes that American youth had to wait for electric bikes to discover cycling?

[avar]

Before the "fat bike" phenomena the same demographic used to ride around in "snorfiets" scooters which were theoretically limited to 25 km/h, but pretty much everyone modified for speeds of up to 50 km/h.

But somehow the Dutch have this collective amnesia on the topic, and today nobody remembers how the "snorfiets" problem of 10-15 years ago has pretty much disappeared, to be replaced by a quieter and safer mode of transport (even ilegally modified E-Bikes usually fall far short of modified "snorfiets" speeds).

    > [...]appear to be designed without pedaling in mind,
    > as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would
    > quickly become uncomfortable and painful.

This is a trend in E-Bike design in general, which makes sense. When they first came out manufacturers were just adding a motor and battery to existing designs.

The "fat bike" design is something that wouldn't work well unassisted, because it trades a severe increase in rolling resistance for better ride comfort.

But as a clean sheet design it makes more sense than the alternative. Why incorporate a complex suspension design (which, to be fair, some of them also have), when you can just have the tire absorb the bumps in the road? The marginal cost in electricity is trivial.

[gibagger]

> This is a trend in E-Bike design in general, which makes sense. When they first came out manufacturers were just adding a motor and battery to existing designs.

It's only a trend because people are not using them like bikes. The people who still want to pedal but need help because of illness, old age or too-long-distances for normal cycling often purchase actual bicycles which use normal bike parts.

> The "fat bike" design is something that wouldn't work well unassisted, because it trades a severe increase in rolling resistance for better ride comfort.

That is an understatement. People would quickly develop knee and/or lower back pain if they had to put any effort for any meaningful distance.

[sebazzz]

> Before the "fat bike" phenomena the same demographic used to ride around in "snorfiets" scooters which were theoretically limited to 25 km/h, but pretty much everyone modified for speeds of up to 50 km/h.

The difference is, of course, that a snorfiets/bromfiets requires a driving license (AB) and a fatbike does not, nor does it have any age restriction. A classic case of the legislator not keeping up.

[Aurornis]

> (even ilegally modified E-Bikes usually fall far short of modified "snorfiets" speeds).

Class 1 e-bikes are limited to 32 km/h here, but simple mods push them well above 50 km/h.

Many of these bikes are designed to be hacked, with unlocked power output significantly higher than the locked output. It’s a selling point and a key part of reviews.

[Aurornis]

> These are also designed to meet regulations, while also being able to easily be modified to circumvent them, such as removing speed restrictions, and removing the need to pedal itself.

This is the trend near me: Kids buy hackable e-bike, immediately unlock it, and then ride their new electric scooter (motorcycle) around pretending it’s an e-bike.

There’s a separated mixed use bike path parallel to a road on my commute. It’s typical to see e-bike kids driving up it faster than the road traffic on the road, while pedestrians and families jump to the side.

[SoftTalker]

This is exactly the same as the mopeds that were popular when I was a young teen (over 40 years ago).

[BlackFly]

Yeah, those fatbikes are just the latest iteration of the old little scooters (bromfiets) with the small win of being more quiet. I feel like the size of them and the seating arrangement should enable them to legislate fat bikes as scooters while only catching a small number of modified pushbikes that the police would likely ignore when the cyclist isn't being a nuisance.

They'll definitely gain weight, it is quite easy to tell that they aren't exerting much effort during pedal assist.

[gibagger]

Yeah, very easy to spot if you pay a bit of attention to the lower back muscles. They are basically not being engaged.

Tire noise is enormous though. I think their tires are made / selected with this in mind, as young males often do like to get attention. Most e-scooters are way quieter than these ugly things.

[kristo]

I also live here, and while i agree Dutch teens should be riding regular bikes, we here are in the extremest of minorities around the world in terms of what teens would be doing without e bikes

[amelius]

I have seen these bicycles in DE also, they look more like motor scooters.

Can't they be regulated based on weight or otherwise the width of the tires?

[gerad]

Here in Marin it’s not allowed to use an e-bike or scooter with a throttle if you’re under 16. Nicely catches all the edge cases.

[mikae1]

> They appear to be designed without pedaling in mind, as exerting effort without proper ergonomics would quickly become uncomfortable and painful. You can actually see some such bikes in the linked article.

Came here to write exactly that. Those who design those bikes clearly don't know a thing about bicycle design. Want to use them for pedaling? Say hi to knee problems and inefficient pedaling!