energieautark -- GoPedelec!

From 26 till 27 of September 2011 the GoPedelec!  Roadshow was present in the office park of Rijnsweerd in Utrecht. With about 4800 employees and about 2500 parking places there is a structural lack of parking space near the offices. By means of changing towards the e-bike, public transport and other mobility management measures,  a drastic reduction on the usage of parking places should be realized. It is therefore that the municipality of Utrecht as partner of the GoPedelec!  project invited the test track to have employees from all the office building test  pedelecs.

The test track was located on the venue of ASR insurances, a company with about 2300 employees. ASR realizes that with only 1000 parking spaces near their offices and a limited capacity in public transport from the city center of Utrecht, that bicycles and especially electric bicycles might be part of the solution for their mobility problem. The insurance company not only hosted for two days the event but also showed the already existing infrastructure for parking and charging for e bikes and conventional bikes. Another part of their actual transport policies to reduce car parking is to forbid for all employees living in a range of 10 km to park their cars on the property of the company. This also has a positive effect on use of bikes and electric bikes. As a result of this limiting parking measure car transport has reduced by 7 %, PT has increased by 5% while transport to the office by bike increased by 3 %. (source Pijl and Vermeulen 2011).

On 28 of September the test track was located on the parking lot of one of the municipalities office centers.  (about 1200 employees) By means of an efficient communication plan even employees from other locations at a distance of about 3 km came to the test track to try the electric assisted bicycles.  A total of about 100 test riders participated during the event which took place from 11.00 am and 3 pm.

Bicycle parking in Utrecht

With about 100.000 visitors on bicycle,  the share of cycling in the center of Utrecht is about 60%. Due to this high figure enormous  bicycle parking problems exist in the city center. Looking for solutions the municipality of Utrecht has organized a competition to collect proposals for solutions to optimize the existing parking facilities. About 200 proposals were received  and summarized in a book of inspiration which is available for download here.

A video by bicycle instead of by car in the center of Utrecht you  see here: bicycle rush hour Utrecht

Text :Ton Daggers based on report R. Ditewig and text Angela Budde ExtraEnergy

Photos: GoPedelec.nl, IBC

Within the frame of the 10^th European Mobility Week the Prague City Hall in cooperation with the Association of the New Prague Town and the Go Pedelec! consortium decided to organize the campaign "Wenceslas Square car-free". Thanks to this special event on Sunday, September 18, 2011, the whole square will only be accesible for pedestrians and bikers. From 10 am to 4 pm the square will be car-free as usually it is stuck by vehicles – passing through or parking along.

Compared with Europe the number of e-bikes on the streets of China is immense. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, a car is (still) just too expensive for the Chinese people. Secondly, China tries to keep the air in its megacities as clean as possible. For this reason the number of e-bikes in China expoded years before the people in Europe even dreamed about these electric vehicles. However, the e-bikes in China are different to those now sold in Europe. They look like a mixture of scooters and bicycles, are usually heavier than pedelecs and contain a lead battery not a lithium battery. Furthermore, the electricity for the batteries come from dirty coal power plants.

The most common resource for producing batteries for pedelecs is nowadays lithium. Although lithium can be found all around the world in rocks, salt lakes and sea water its extraction is only technically and economically possible in South America, Australia and China. Lithium is mined today primarily in the form of minerals or brines in mines or salt lakes. In Bolivia, China, Chile as well as Argentina the lithium reserves are located in high-altitude salt lakes – so far nearly untouched eco-systems whose reaction to commercial exploitation is not yet investigated.

Lithium is mainly used in the glass and ceramics industry (37 %), battery production (20 %) and in the production of lubricants (11 %). However, battery production will represent the main consumer in future. Lithium will be used in electric and hybride vehicles. The growth in the lithium demand in the transport sector until 2013 will be between 44 % and 69 % per year.