Izip santa monica2/28/2023 LP: I’ve been involved in the bicycle business since I was a teenager. But on a trail or class 1 bike path they may be restricted.ĭnA: How did you become an eBike manufacturer? In California they can be ridden in a bike lane adjaacent to a roadway. Where you can use them and how they can be used are determined by every state’s vehicle code. The real variable is infrastructure and being able to share that with low-speed eBikes. LP: These things aren’t any more dangerous than a normal bicycle if people are riding them ethically and following the rules of the road they are just as safe as a normal bicycle. IZIP’s store in Santa Monica, designed by (M)Arch project designer, Lara Hoad (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)ĭnA: If lots of people start whizzing along on eBikes might it get dangerous on the roads? Of course you can add human power and go faster and a lighter-weight rider can go faster, so the speed is a variable but its top speed means the vehicle is not unlike a normal bike, from a speed standpoint. The Federal law states that the top speed limit for an eBike is 20 miles per hour, under motor power only, with a 170 pound rider on a flat, paved surface. Under this law, passed in 2002, a class of vehicle called a low-speed electric bicycle was created and that we market today, giving us the benefit of not needing all the standard motor vehicle requirements like turn signals, headlights and a speedometer that a motor cycle or motor scooter would need. LP: When eBikes came about a federal law was passed that classified them as bicycles and not motor vehicles. LP: Those had internal combustion engines and they became very popular here for a short time in the mid 1970’s, but they faded away because they were not particularly efficient, and you had to have registration and license and so on.ĭnA: Why don’t you need a license for an eBike? ![]() Being a cyclist I thought that I wouldn’t ride something that looked really foreign and we achieved that by integrating the battery and other electronics into the frame and bikes design, so it looked as much like a normal bike as possible.ĭnA: What is the difference between an eBike and a moped? LP: I started IZIP as a brand (Pizzi spelt backwards, less one z) and we started designing electric bikes that looked like bicycles. I noticed that eBikes had gone mainstream in the Netherlands and had spread to Germany. LP: IZIP is a brand that I created in 2005 and it was still pretty early on in the eBike phenomenon. He was way out in front in the eBike revolution.Ĭurrie is not really a brand its a technology and we put it into all our drive systems, which we call Currie Electro-Drive. Malcolm Currie, who invented a propulsion system he hoped he could sell to bike companies. LP: Currie Technologies is a development company created in late 1990s by Dr. The bike was designed by Taiwanese-born, Art Center-educated Daniel Shiau, above, who joined Currie Tech early last year.ĭnA spoke with Larry and Daniel and learned about how a lifelong bicyclist became an eBike evangelist, the challenges of reinventing the (bicycle) wheel and just how far an eBike can take you.ĭnA: Your products come with two brand names, Currie Tech and IZIP. The E3 Metro, designed to be utilitarian, recently won 2014’s prestigious Cycle Design and Innovation Award at the Taipei Cycle Show, one of the world’s biggest bicycle fairs. One of the Southland manufacturers that saw the potential for the putting the ‘e’ in bicycles is longtime cyclist Larry Pizzi (below right), president of Currie Technologies and founder of the brand IZIP, the Simi Valley-based eBike company that will display its E3 Metro at KCRW’s Reinventing The Wheel event Sunday. But the electric motor-assisted bicycle is coming into its own. ![]() ![]() Ask a hardcore cyclist about eBikes and he or she will likely be dismissive.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |