[HN Gopher] For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-...
___________________________________________________________________
For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a
Superpower
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-03-16 14:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reasonstobecheerful.world)
(TXT) w3m dump (reasonstobecheerful.world)
| megamike wrote:
| I just returned from Brazil and Argentina and yes these E-Bikes
| are everywhere
| anovikov wrote:
| I wonder why is still anyone NOT using e-bikes for delivery. This
| is the lowest hanging fruit ever. No charging issues (just a
| normal wall socket is more than enough), no range issues - trips
| are short and battery can be swapped by a person in seconds to
| the one that was charging. Almost zero running costs compared to
| a two-stroke.
| nemomarx wrote:
| up front costs compared to non powered bike maybe?
| anovikov wrote:
| Compared to non powered bike maybe, but it's only practical
| in a very limited set of scenarios. I'm comparing to a two
| stroke moped that's still used by majority of deliverymen
| down here. These days a two-stroke moped costs about as much
| as an e-bike and is whole lot more expensive and difficult to
| maintain.
|
| Only force behind it seems to be the force of tradition.
| Creepy to see it holding so much control over even very young
| people who delivery drivers tend to be.
| Gerard0 wrote:
| Not the majority at all, but some people like me do it for fun
| :)
| reaperman wrote:
| Not all cities are like yours - in Houston, it's reasonably
| common for a business to offer delivery "anywhere within the
| inner loop", which is just the smallest of three beltways which
| circumscribe the city.
|
| The inner loop is 100 sq. miles (260 sq. kilometers). Right now
| (4:30PM on a Monday) drive times and cycling times are
| comparable (close enough its not really a deciding factor). But
| bicycling 6-10 miles for each delivery is a good way to get
| injured. Very few drivers here have any habit of expecting
| bicycles. When I bicycled to work, I got hit by a car roughly
| every other week - and that was just one 2 mile ride per day,
| not multiple 2-10 mile rides per day.
| anovikov wrote:
| Again i'm comparing with two-wheel two-stroke mopeds, not
| with cars... Using cars for delivery is all but impractical
| anyway because they stand in traffic ESPECIALLY in a city
| "not like mine", i'd hate to get my food ordered at 6pm, by
| 7.30, inedibly cold.
| reaperman wrote:
| Ah. Good comparison, I completely agree. And also, your
| description of long wait and cold food is reasonably
| accurate for Houston - it shocks me that food delivery apps
| are still so popular here; most people seem to talk about
| mainly bad experiences, but keep using it anyways.
| euroderf wrote:
| > I wonder why is still anyone NOT using e-bikes for delivery.
|
| In Helsinki, delivery (of food) seems to be dominated by larger
| scooters with flat beds between yoke and seat post/rear fender.
| Maybe because the food delivery boxes are quite large, maybe
| because they have lots of insulation for winter use ? Maybe
| because the fat tires on the scooters are more stable on snow &
| ice ? Just guessing.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It pretty much is like that in Australia. Aus post utilises
| e-bikes and golf cart like things for a lot of deliveries. Most
| food delivery is done by e bikes.
|
| They still have the traditional vans though since they get
| loaded up once in the morning to deliver a ton of large
| packages.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it's because Uber Eats et al relies on social leniency
| for meatspace presence and not paying for parking lots and
| bikes themselves. E-bikes and EV vans are used successfully by
| couple large orgs globally albeit at small scales.
|
| Or maybe because EV transition is not low hanging fruits at
| all, idk.
| kh_hk wrote:
| When I was doing it, for rush, fun and sport. I guess it's a
| privileged take on it though.
| rererereferred wrote:
| Small off-topic, I see those boxed backpacks and think of their
| shoulders. On motorbike the box rests in the back of the seat but
| here all the weight is in the shoulders.
|
| People who have done some mountain hiking knows that the weight
| of the backpack should be mostly in the waist, thanks to the
| waist belt (sorry if I don't use the right term, I've done most
| my hiking in Spanish ;) ).
|
| I don't know how weight distribution would differ from walking
| but with some research perhaps they could carry more while
| staying more comfortable.
| triceratops wrote:
| > I've done most my hiking in Spanish
|
| That's genuinely impressive, I've done most of my hiking in
| silence /s
|
| I know what you meant though.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Camino.
| IPTN wrote:
| Agree with your points about load distribution assuming the
| weight isn't trivial. Instead of waist, the common term in
| English would be hips/hipbelt.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| But now you're cutting out all that biological shock
| absorption.
|
| (Aka: why helmet cams are much smoother than any other bike
| mount)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Anyone seen the wild carriers on the back of scooters in
| Tokyo? Apparently for delivering ramen without spilling.
|
| https://blog.btrax.com/en/files/2019/08/Japanese_food_delive.
| ..
| mock-possum wrote:
| Why not just put the ramen in liquid-tight containers?
| Fradow wrote:
| I can see numerous reasons why you'd want the backpack rather
| than a box on the bike for food delivery (may not apply for
| other deliveries):
|
| - no need to fuss when you mount/dismount your bike, your
| backpack is already on your shoulders. Speed is key.
|
| - the focus is not on carrying capacity, it's on speedy
| delivery. There's only so much food in their backpack.
|
| - because of the time waiting for orders / going to the
| restaurant / going back to a hotspot, most of the time the
| backpack is actually empty.
|
| - a box on the back of a bike costs money.
| kibwen wrote:
| Counterpoint: when biking, you generally desire to have your
| center of mass be lower rather than higher, for better
| stability and handling.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| Uno reverse/Yu-Gi-Oh trap card: They're not pushing the
| handling limits.
| asl2D wrote:
| Capacity is still needed, or you will miss out on a lot of
| deliveries in peak hours, where you load up several orders
| and then deliver them all in one route and you dont really
| need to carry whole bag to client/restaurant, just fish up
| the package. Also boxy bags allow for bigger packages(pizza,
| water bottles) and usually help to pack orders in a way that
| damages them less.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Which companies batch food orders now? It was a short lived
| and unpopular experiment in India years back.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Both Grubhub and DoorDash allow drivers to pickup
| multiple orders in one run in my neighborhood.
| asl2D wrote:
| Well it is pretty normal in russia, atleast for big
| operators
| andrepd wrote:
| Delivery workers should fuck up their backs because otherwise
| (1) customers would get their shitty fast food and soggy
| fries 15s or 20s later, and (2) boxes would eat into the
| profit of the shareholders.
| floatrock wrote:
| right? This is the orphan-crushing-machine meme (referenced
| elsewhere here) playing out live.
|
| Top comment: "This is bad ergonomics for the humans doing
| delivery"
|
| Reply: "But here's all the reasons why good ergonomics lose
| money for The Platform"
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Reminds me of seeing amazon workers struggle to drag those
| plastic boxes full of deliveries around the sidewalks of
| the neighborhood while UPS provides a hand truck. I get it,
| a hand truck cost more than that 10 cent box they abandon
| all over town.
| analog31 wrote:
| Maybe there's an issue with the box getting stolen.
| asl2D wrote:
| In my experience hauling deliveries on the shoulders generally
| sucks, especially if weight is bigger. hence why most active
| couriers around my parts prefer to fix some sort of baggage
| rack to their ebikes.
| samarthr1 wrote:
| Over here in Bengaluru, our quick commerce folks seem to prefer
| Yulu bikes.
|
| They are small, nimble, low powered electric scooters with a
| decent carrying capacity, whose biggest advantage is _cheap_.
|
| If you ask anyone other than the delivery folks, the yulu drivers
| are a menace, as they break the already fragile equilibrium that
| is Bengaluru traffic.
| timewizard wrote:
| Food delivery is some of the lowest quality and highest danger
| work with the least options for matriculating into a better
| position.
|
| This article is written from a very colonial perspective. I
| wonder if the authors have pondered that.
| knowitnone wrote:
| It's a job and it pays the bills. Nobody is calling it a
| career.
| timewizard wrote:
| You read the article, listened to the stories, and looked at
| the pictures, right? This is obviously the only source of
| income for many of those people. They're economically trapped
| and you're just happy to sell them e-bikes and pretend that
| it materially improved their conditions.
|
| Oh, but it's greenwashing nonsense, so everyone turns off
| their critical reasoning skills, and pretends it's a secret
| virtue that they do so. This place has moved so far away from
| the hacker ethic that it blows my mind. What a pointless set
| of discussions and a false social pressure to never think
| beyond the guidelines set out in the article. Oh and you've
| got a side wide hall monitor to yell at you if you ever do.
|
| Blech.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| It is important to celebrate small victories. Don't take
| that away from people
| gottorf wrote:
| Never let an article about e-bikes used for delivery
| distract you from fostering a socialist revolution!
| tim333 wrote:
| It probably does improve their conditions - the main
| difference between developed and less developed places is
| better tech. And e-bikes are pretty much global - there's
| not much colonial about it.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >They're economically trapped and you're just happy to sell
| them e-bikes and pretend that it materially improved their
| conditions.
|
| What in the hell are you going on about with your
| criticisms? Here's an idea: Ask these people who buy the
| e-bikes to do their fairly menial but bill-paying jobs if
| they'd rather not have at least that option so that you can
| lecture them about their trapped economic state.
|
| That things should be better and more versatile for more
| people in the world doesn't mean that shit should be thrown
| on every small benefit someone can extract from life
| because it's far from some ideal.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The alternative pushed by the tech elite would seem to be
| that delivery goes to drones and the delivery jobs are gone
| completely.
|
| I'm pretty sure though they're not thinking about the
| welfare of those ex-delivery drivers.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| So are many jobs. Many students do them, many people do
| them as an inbetween thing while looking for a better job,
| etc.
|
| I get the desire to replace all no skill jobs with roombas
| and drones but some people need them and some even enjoy
| them.
|
| A friend did over a year of grocery deliveries with a cargo
| bike recently and outside of the career growth issues he
| liked it a lot. Physical exercise, lots of free food and
| decent pay including tips.
|
| Not everyone is a HN minmaxer following the meta to get to
| the highest posible salary in the shortest possible time.
| Some are happy with paid rent, food and a weekend visit to
| the club or w/e.
| tim333 wrote:
| In London e-bikes have basically take over delivery of small
| stuff. A decade or so ago they tended to use motor scooters but
| there are a lot less restrictions on e-bikes.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| In Australia too.
|
| They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at
| insane speeds.
|
| They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they
| can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be
| registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do
| anything about it.
|
| I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is
| done.
| tim333 wrote:
| In the UK the police sometimes confiscate some of the illegal
| bikes that can to 30 mph+. The legal ones are limited to 15
| mph. But yeah it's kind of chaotic.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| I've seen them here going >70kph, just judging by them
| going faster than 60kph traffic.
|
| But people must have their Ubereats and safety costs money,
| so the deaths will be justified, I suppose.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Nothing is being done because it's not an actual issue. No
| one is dying from being hit by delivery bikes. They are just
| annoying.
|
| Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill
| entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.
| jollyllama wrote:
| If that's the case, then the comparable motor scooters
| should be deregulated as well.
| barnabee wrote:
| They are noisy and pollute. Not the same at all.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I meant electric mopeds.
| jjice wrote:
| It's not one or the other in my eyes - both can be a
| problem. When someone whips by me on the sidewalk on an
| e-bike or moped at 20+ MPH, that's a serious danger as
| well. I agree that I haven't heard of anyone specifically
| dying from this, but it's absolutely a public danger.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| A friend's 8 year old kid had his arm broken by ripping,
| when it got caught in an on-pavement electric bike's wheel.
| 100% torque straight away.
|
| I assume you heard about it, given the confidence of your
| assertions. So I'm just reminding you.
| sevensor wrote:
| An elderly pedestrian I know was recently struck by a car.
| Compound fractures, dislocated joints. He's looking at a long
| recovery and a pile of medical bills, because the driver was
| barely insured and in the US we're somehow fine with that. So
| it comes down to momentum transfer, and I'd much rather he'd
| have been struck by an e bike.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The e-bike rider has more on the line in a collision with a
| pedestrian as well.
| citiguy wrote:
| I've seen e-bike collisions too. Unfortunately pedestrian's
| are still badly hurt or killed.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I'd much rather he'd have been struck by an e bike
|
| E-bikes offer additional risk, not alternative risk,
| because they're ridden on pavements.
| andrepd wrote:
| That is because there are millions of kms of roads for cars
| and virtually 0 for bikes.
|
| Plus cars kill thousands of people _every day_ , and we just
| sort of accept it as a natural fact of life. Why is a bike
| going 20kph suddenly a problem?
| baud147258 wrote:
| > Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?
|
| because the bike can and will use the sidewalk if there's
| not bike lane.
| citiguy wrote:
| Because bikes go the wrong way up one way streets, ride on
| sidewalks, don't use lights at night and run red lights
| whenever they feel like it. Think Brownian motion. If there
| are a lot of them (and there are in New York City) the odds
| of getting hit by one if you're not super duper careful is
| high. Worse if you are older and don't see so good or move
| so fast.
| xaldir wrote:
| Moped going 20+kph are regulated need registration and
| can't ride on sidewalk, there are ebikes weighting more
| than moped and going faster.
| citiguy wrote:
| It's the same here in New York City. I've seen e-bike
| accidents and they are no picnic. The city does crack down on
| them from time to time.
| floatrock wrote:
| These frustrations are just as real as the resultant medical
| bills.
|
| But the situation is here because we have a new technology
| (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting
| into the current car-centric infrastructure.
|
| Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this
| technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes,
| it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds
| (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will
| happen over years or decades.
|
| So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering
| an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this
| technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that
| incorporates it properly look like?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > if they can go over 17kph without pedalling
|
| And there's the excessive reactionary regulation that makes
| people not comply with the rules.
|
| If you put some reasonable speed limit and look at the other
| important factors like weight, you won't need to register
| anything that runs as fast as a child on skates, and can
| focus on what is really the problem.
| Yeul wrote:
| E bikes can be used by 15-16 year olds so Dominos uses them a
| lot here in the Netherlands.
| concerned_user wrote:
| I don't think it is fair to compare Netherlands to other
| countries like UK or France because Netherlands has a well
| established culture around bikes and bike lane infrastructure
| is one of the best in the world, so it will be the last
| country that will have any issues because of e-bikes.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Well, we (in NL) are used to bikes going mostly the same
| speed and people in cars and bikes following the rules.
| With overpowered fat-bikes, it's now much more chaotic than
| a decade ago.
|
| The established road / bike path system here runs so
| smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People
| can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and
| had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the
| chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with
| unexpected situations.
| rurban wrote:
| For USD 1400 you also get a good E-scooter from Taiwan. I got
| mine here in Germany for that price. It's far better than an
| E-bike.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think the scooter is going to be the winner in the U.S.
| People not used to biking are averse to being unable to sit and
| have both feet solidly on the ground at a stop.
|
| And it will also be a "cargo" scooter because carrying things.
| rurban wrote:
| Just that the e-scooter batteries last much shorter than the
| e-bike batteries. And they won't work in colder temperatures.
|
| Typically 2 years only. E-bike batteries last much longer.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm not sure why that would be.
| jjice wrote:
| Why's that? I have no experience here so I'm confused as to
| why the batteries would be different. Is it a size thing?
| Or are they just different tech all together?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > It's far better than an E-bike.
|
| Why? Not doubting you, but would love to hear more.
| kibwen wrote:
| For this use case you really care about reducing the lifetime
| total cost of ownership, which means making the bike as reliable,
| serviceable, and repairable as possible. I love e-bikes, but IME
| they have a long way to go to get to same level as normal bikes
| in this regard. It's good that the bikes in the article are
| locally-built, but I'd like to know whether or not they emphasize
| using standardized parts with high availability.
| luma wrote:
| Do you deliver packages in a tropical climate? If the answer is
| no, maybe you have a different use case than the people in the
| article. Being able to make it through the day might carry more
| significance for these users than being able to tear the thing
| down without any electrical knowledge.
|
| HN in a nutshell - you see an article full of first-hand
| reports of the users and their use case and your immediate
| reaction is that you know better about what they want and need
| than they do.
| kibwen wrote:
| I ride an e-bike 30 miles a day. It's my main mode of
| transportation, as I don't own a car. Right now it's in the
| shop for repairs; I understand well the time cost and wallet
| cost of regular maintenance and am actively considering
| building my own bike to find a better solution. Please don't
| pretend that you know me.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Hot and humid is the worst for any machines. Which tropical
| climate is. It's also lowkey why Toyota ended up being ~the
| most reliable brand of cars.
| itishappy wrote:
| I think you're entirely misunderstanding the comment you're
| replying to here. Of course having a usable bike is critical,
| but the comment was about reparability and cost of ownership
| in the long term. A repair shop won't be able to help you fix
| a bike if there's no parts available. This has nothing to do
| with the users electrical knowledge.
| jjice wrote:
| Agreed - maintainability directly contributes to whether or
| not something is "affordable" which is one of the center
| points of the article. Cheap and not repairable can quickly
| become expensive and wasteful.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| In my mind there's a "standardized", probably cargo, e-bike
| that has not yet been invented. A e-bike (or scooter) that is
| mass-produced and inexpensive like the Volkswagen Bug and
| popular enough to breed an ecosystem of aftermarket parts,
| mods, etc.
|
| Let the clones follow using the same parts, connectors and you
| could have a world-wide phenomena.
| davidzweig wrote:
| I bought a sit-on electric Chinese cargo scooter from an
| importer in Bulgaria because I liked how it looked, and it's
| handy for going around town. They are everywhere in China.
| They are assembled by hundreds (probably thousands) of small
| factories. A big center is Wuxi. I visited a few factories
| there last year. The scooters cost about $350 USD in China.
|
| There seems to be a sort of loose standardization around
| components, that are also churned out by countless factories.
| Wheels/motors are generally 10" or 12" size. Brake disks have
| either a certain 3 or 4 bolt pattern. I'm sure the electrics
| likewise follow some patterns.
|
| I had the thought that it would be fun to 3d scan parts,
| measure and document some of these scooters, and make a
| database of suppliers. Then, who knows, start to make the
| frames and assemble in Bulgaria.
|
| But you really need to be spending time in China to do that,
| and it wasn't really the right time for me then.
|
| Another thing to note: branded scooters (niu etc.) are
| becoming more popular, better quality, extensive plastics,
| and you can probably order parts from the manufacturer.
| conductr wrote:
| They article quotes $1400 for these bikes as initial
| investment. Add that to my personal assertation that anyone
| working on a bike should be handy enough to DIY for all things
| related to service/repair. Bikes are not hard to work on at
| all. If you agree with that, then you should be able to convert
| a standard bike to an e-bike with a couple hundred dollar kit
| that is readily available. Unless there's some kind of market
| capture here where they can't access the cheap parts I have
| access too via Alibaba/Amazon, this could easily be a DIY with
| a few simple tools and some research on YT. I've done this
| myself with no special electronic experience (however, I did
| service my own BMX bikes when I was a kid/teen).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The only issue with the cheap kits is that they seem to be
| much likelier to catch fire.
| conductr wrote:
| You can buy well built kits that are inexpensive. If you
| buy the cheapest available on Alibaba then maybe there's
| some risk of this
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for something
| weatherproof? Maybe something easy to convert back to
| regular bike? I would love for a little supplementary
| power to flatten the hills on the commute.
| rob74 wrote:
| So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role"
| is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact
| that the company gave him _a loan_ for an e-bike (they didn 't
| even provide it to him!) is listed as a "reason to be cheerful"?!
| I swear this is the most depressing thing I read this week so
| far, and that's something if you consider how depressing the news
| has been recently...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This sounds like one of those stories in the US about a
| community crowdsourcing a ton of money for a little girl to get
| some life saving surgery that would be covered by socialized
| health care in almost any other country in the planet.
|
| These stories are cheerful for capital.
| avgDev wrote:
| To be fair, stories like this occur in countries with
| socialized healthcare. People often do come to the US for
| niche specialized healthcare that is cutting edge.
|
| US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can
| afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks
| average or poor in some cases.
| 1-more wrote:
| When someone criticizes US healthcare, they are almost
| always using "healthcare" to mean "the care that everyone
| receives on average" and not "the healthcare received by
| those with good insurance." Private jets fly from around
| the world to The Cleveland Clinic and The Mayo Clinic every
| day, but that's not what's at issue for most people.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They also aren't criticising the fact that the US funds
| most healthcare advancements that are then bought in bulk
| by socialised programmes once the hard work of discovery
| and validation is done, and raises the average for
| everyone.
|
| Until Trump cancels the funding, at which point they
| suddenly remember it, but only in the context of Trump
| criticism.
| thfuran wrote:
| And the routine care at sites like the Cleveland Clinic
| is often not particularly good even with good insurance.
| But they do have a lot of fancy specialists.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've known Canadians facing severe health issues who stay
| in the US because it's more affordable when you consider
| the higher wages.
|
| That's not true for everyone, but I'm not talking about the
| super-rich either. Just plain middle class.
| 1-more wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/OrphanCrushingMachine via
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine
| thfuran wrote:
| Hah, as if a mere $20,000 would be enough to pause the
| machine for long enough to pull out 200 orphans.
| mateus1 wrote:
| This is PR slop for a startup. Their workers have no benefits
| or stability.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Welcome to the Orphan Crushing Machine -
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine
| sepositus wrote:
| From my reading, the article is about how e-bikes are proving
| to be economically viable and how that benefits the
| environment. Even more positive is that they are becoming
| available locally in a way that is accessible to a delivery
| driver on a fixed low income. Those things seem like something
| to be pretty optimistic about.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Your glass is half empty.
|
| Whatever it is is better than the same thing with loud gas
| motorbikes being everywhere.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, fair enough, then maybe they shouldn't have picked this
| 50 year old guy who used to have a management job but was
| then forced to flee his country and work as a delivery
| worker, but a 22 year old who used to sell drugs but now
| makes an honest living (maybe they couldn't find one?).
|
| But yeah, that aside, I can definitely sympathize with
| reducing the number of loud stinking gas motorbikes and
| scooters. Maybe also give loans to users of gas chainsaws,
| leaf blowers etc. etc. to replace those too...
| thrownaway2323 wrote:
| >So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government
| role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the
| fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike
|
| Millions of venezuelan migrants are in a similar situation. It
| is not uncommon to see former university professors with PHDs,
| lawyers, engineers with decades of experience, etc. to find
| themselves in another country working as Uber drivers and other
| types of jobs. Having to migrate really fucking sucks
| especially if you are old. Consider yourself lucky if you live
| in a country that is politically and economically stable and
| you have some sort of net to support you when things don't work
| out for you.
| sebastiansm wrote:
| It would be interesting to know how many of those old
| professors with PHDs, lawyers, engineers supported Hugo
| Chavez at the beginning.
| miunau wrote:
| This goes for European countries as well. Even well-educated
| people, from whatever country locals deem undesirable at that
| moment, in general do not get the chance to work in jobs that
| suit their education. Sometimes these people have benefited
| from taxpayer funded education in that host country, but the
| prevalent racist attitudes exclude them from even getting job
| interviews. E.g. Finland is losing lots of immigrants they
| have spent lots of money educating to this- not helped by the
| policies of the current government- people they _need_ to
| stay in order to plug the plummeting birth rate are forced to
| leave the country because there is nothing there for them
| besides rejection after rejection, or jobs that do not match
| their education.
| josefresco wrote:
| Recently spent about 2 weeks driving to Boston every day and 100%
| of the delivery vehicles I noticed were gas powered scooters.
| Maybe the electric bike delivery people don't ride on the road?
| yesfitz wrote:
| Boston where? This article is about Latin America.
|
| If you're interested in e-bike delivery in Boston,
| Massachusetts though, there was a pilot program starting in
| August of 2024:
| https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/boston-del...
| Dwedit wrote:
| "E-bikes produce virtually no greenhouse emissions after
| manufacturing"
|
| Except for the electricity to charge it, which could either come
| from clean or dirty power. True about the lack of exhaust though.
|
| Then it leads to the question about the efficiency of generation,
| distribution, and battery charging vs the distribution and
| burning of gasoline. Also the weight of the bike. Perhaps someone
| else has already done the math on this.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You have to have a really really dirty energy supply for an
| electric vehicle to be a higher emitter than an ICE vehicle.
| E-bikes also will replace things like two-stroke mopeds which
| are especially dirty for ICE vehicles.
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