Mopeds are rarely thought of as anything other than a stepping stone towards car ownership for teenagers or a death-defying way of delivering a pizza before it gets cold, but an appetite for good-looking electric vehicles that can be bought today and won't break the bank is breathing life into the low-powered, two wheeler market.
The Juicer 48 pictured right is a custom-built electric bike and a moped in the classic sense – a low-powered motor and pedals to help get the machine moving at low speeds.
The bike has been built very deliberately with styling as a priority – its appearance borrows heavily from American motorcycles of the 1920s.
The bike can manage 13 miles at 20mph, but can reach an unrestricted top speed of 46mph.
Many electric mopeds or e-bikes are lighter and offer a better range, but unfortunately mopeds are subject to different classifications and a bewildering array of regulation depending on where you are in the world. For example, any power-assisted bicycle capable of more than 15mph must undergo the onerous task of being registered as a motorcycle. By contrast, a good-quality road bicycle – without an electric motor – can cruise easily at 25mph but is not subject to the same regulation.
It seems likely that the government will heed advice from the ETA and other organisation's to remove the 40kg weight limit imposed on electrically-assisted bicycles, thereby allowing cargo-carrying bicycles to benefit from electric motors.
A spokesperson for the ETA, which insures conventional and electric bicycles, said: "The promotion of electric vehicles is back to front; the government appears blind to the wider benefits of electric bicycles and mopeds that do not need the investment in technology and infrastructure required by electric cars."
Bicycles currently represent the most efficient and realistic application for electric motor technology; battery-powered cars and motorcycles are heavy and troublesome to charge without widespread charging points, but e-bikes are light enough to be carried into a house to be re-charged. Furthermore, the electrically-assisted bicycle is the ultimate hybrid; if the battery runs flat, the rider can switch to leg power in an instant.
Christmas shopping for kids these days can be a complicated proposition for technologically challenged grandparents who don't watch a lot of cartoons on television.
There are so many battery-operated whiz-bang toys on the shelves, many with hefty price tags. These gadgets light up, transform, require additional games and cartridges, and in some cases are so complicated that you almost need an engineering degree to put them together.
That's why I had to chuckle when a friend passed along a story written by Jonathan Liu on a website called GeekDad.
Liu listed the five greatest toys ever made. Because this was on a website read by, well, geeks, I assumed it would list the latest computer games or kids gadgets.
The five greatest kids toys of all time included a stick, a cardboard box, string, cardboard tubes and dirt.
How many Christmas mornings have you watched your kids tear through a cornucopia of expensive gifts, only to set them aside and play with the wrapping paper or create a fort out of a big box?
Showing posts with label employees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employees. Show all posts
Monday, 19 December 2011
Saturday, 8 October 2011
It's time to bring travel and its associated emissions out of the closet
Delve deeply into most companies' environmental and carbon targets and the chances are that, if the company is growing, costs and emissions from travel will be increasing. Most companies will happily talk about behaviour change initiatives to cut waste or office energy use, but if the conversation moves towards travel, it all goes quiet.
When you talk to people about the reluctance to address carbon emissions from travel, you get a variety of stock answers. The CEO is wedded to his beloved car and doesn't want the debate; our high achievers are literally high flyers and we can't curb their travel; company cars and travel benefits are an essential part of our rewards package; clients demand that we meet them face-to-face. And so on.
But the times they are a-changing. Fuel prices are soaring, profits are being squeezed and hard-pressed chief financial officers are starting to demand instant solutions. Cue a range of draconian top-down initiatives, one of the current favourites being no-travel days and even weeks. These are typical of an attempt to fix a major cultural and behavioural challenge with a piecemeal sticky-plaster approach.
Global Action Plan, with support from Telefónica O2, has been bringing together a range of diverse businesses and organisations to openly discuss the transport challenges they face. The ultimate aim is to increase collaboration and provide freely available guidance as to how a more strategic approach could help organisations deal with this most obstinate of issues.
The debates have been fascinating. An overwhelming consensus quickly emerged that dressing up no-travel weeks as green initiatives, when they are really about cost saving, won't fool anybody. This is greenwash, and it can damage internal trust in the organisation's whole CSR agenda. Besides, employees will often simply move meetings to after the no-travel week, or classify their travel as essential. The sticky-plaster approach fails because it ignores the fundamental cultural change that is required if businesses are serious about changing the way in which their employees travel.
A range of other common themes have emerged. Most organisations admit that they have no strategic policy in place to cut travel without damaging business efficiency. Responsibility for the issue floats between human resources, fleet management, CSR teams and ICT departments.
This lack of strategic overview manifests itself in a mishmash of procedures and policies with no consistency. For example, encouraging people to work from home doesn't chime with line managers' expectations of bums on seats in the office. The plethora of different ways to book travel means that it is hard to track actual costs and carbon emissions. Taxis are a prime example of this; the financial and carbon cost is often lost as people claim the money back on expenses.
When you talk to people about the reluctance to address carbon emissions from travel, you get a variety of stock answers. The CEO is wedded to his beloved car and doesn't want the debate; our high achievers are literally high flyers and we can't curb their travel; company cars and travel benefits are an essential part of our rewards package; clients demand that we meet them face-to-face. And so on.
But the times they are a-changing. Fuel prices are soaring, profits are being squeezed and hard-pressed chief financial officers are starting to demand instant solutions. Cue a range of draconian top-down initiatives, one of the current favourites being no-travel days and even weeks. These are typical of an attempt to fix a major cultural and behavioural challenge with a piecemeal sticky-plaster approach.
Global Action Plan, with support from Telefónica O2, has been bringing together a range of diverse businesses and organisations to openly discuss the transport challenges they face. The ultimate aim is to increase collaboration and provide freely available guidance as to how a more strategic approach could help organisations deal with this most obstinate of issues.
The debates have been fascinating. An overwhelming consensus quickly emerged that dressing up no-travel weeks as green initiatives, when they are really about cost saving, won't fool anybody. This is greenwash, and it can damage internal trust in the organisation's whole CSR agenda. Besides, employees will often simply move meetings to after the no-travel week, or classify their travel as essential. The sticky-plaster approach fails because it ignores the fundamental cultural change that is required if businesses are serious about changing the way in which their employees travel.
A range of other common themes have emerged. Most organisations admit that they have no strategic policy in place to cut travel without damaging business efficiency. Responsibility for the issue floats between human resources, fleet management, CSR teams and ICT departments.
This lack of strategic overview manifests itself in a mishmash of procedures and policies with no consistency. For example, encouraging people to work from home doesn't chime with line managers' expectations of bums on seats in the office. The plethora of different ways to book travel means that it is hard to track actual costs and carbon emissions. Taxis are a prime example of this; the financial and carbon cost is often lost as people claim the money back on expenses.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)