Cycling
Ampler Bikes is shaking up the e-bike market by ditching proprietary chargers in favor of a standard USB-C port on its new Nova and Nova Pro models. Riders can now top up their battery using any 140W laptop charger - a game-changer for convenience. Better still, it works both ways – the bike’s USB-C charging port can be used to power smaller devices, like your phone, too.
Following the explosion of an e-bike battery at Rayners Lane station last month TfL has banned non-folding e-bikes from its rail and tube services
For many disabled people in Britain, the simple act of getting from A to B is a daily battle against an inaccessible, unreliable, and often indifferent transport system. A new report from the Transport Committee lays bare the shocking reality: people left stranded at airports for hours, taxi drivers refusing to take passengers with assistance dogs, and a fragmented complaints system that leads nowhere.
E-bikes are flying off the shelves across Europe. Here in the UK, not so much. In Germany, over 2 million e-bikes sold last year – that’s over half of all bikes sold there and four times the number of electric cars sold. Meanwhile, our own e-bike sales hover at a modest 150,000 units a year. So, what’s Germany doing right that Britain is getting so wrong?
The urban car is about as well-suited to the modern metropolis as a hippopotamus to a studio flat. Summer streets sag under its weight, our air thickens with its exhalations of nitrogen oxides and soot, and all the while, the creature demands more - more space to move, more space to rest. The sheer spatial absurdity of it: Each steel-and-glass sarcophagus idling for hours, occupying far more square footage than the bodies it transports. And yet, bizarrely, we persist.
