'This is not a blip': A quiet movement grows on San Francisco's streets
By David Curran, SFGATE.
Excerpt: “They love it,” my neighbor Ali Schneider tells me of her two sons, ages 3 and 7. “And we do, too. They don’t mind cars, but they love the bike. Pretty much all the kids on the block really like it.” At least three other families on our block also use electric cargo bikes to transport their kids. ...In terms of competing with a car, the electric assist has allowed the cargo bike — first introduced in the U.S. by Xtracycle in 1998, Allen explains — to become a more mainstream product. And while the early years presented numerous challenges, a huge breakthrough came in 2015, when the German manufacturing giant Bosch produced a breakthrough battery for these bikes. ...“with this motor you could put two kids on a bike and climb any hill in San Francisco.” And that has made all the difference. In their first year with the Bosch-powered bikes, the number of e-cargo bikes the New Wheel sold jumped to 61, then to 221 in 2018. Last year, they sold 479. And, just as important to Wiener, after the pandemic when the overall bike market tanked, sales of e-cargo bikes stayed strong....