On Bikes and Coffee
I like to think I started the #bikesandcoffee hashtag. But given how many thousands of people use it worldwide, I’m sure the origins are up for debate. Coffee is the most beloved beverage around the globe. The coffee industry is massive. Starbucks is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, and you’ve likely got a favorite local cafe as well. Coffee is everywhere!
We’re certainly not the first company to make an ebike. I believe Lee Iacocca can still take credit for that, or at least the model “Ebike” which was his company’s first electric bicycle. Yes, the guy who invented the minivan also made the first ebikes in America. While there are hundreds of brands and thousands of ebike models available in the United States today, they are still a rare sight on the road. Unlike the Netherlands where 57% of bikes sold in 2015 were electric, ebike sales in America are still single-digit market share.
When will this finally change?
As I was making my Aeropress coffee this morning, I was thinking about the ubiquity of this morning drink in so many countries and cultures around the world. You could argue that bicycles have the same global scale. It is one of the few universal machines in operation around the world. But what about ebikes? What lessons can we learn from the world of coffee consumption and how do we apply that to our slice of the bicycle pie?
Community — Coffee has low barriers and welcomes everyone. From the $1 cup at your local bodega, to the $15 organic, artisan, hand-crafted, single-origin masterpiece (more below!) at the fanciest coffee bar in the hippest part of town. While you can argue about what makes for a great cup, the core of coffee is the people and the process. It has become one of the most common daily habits that we share, no matter who we are, where we live, or how much money we make. I think the ubiquity of coffee comes down to the daily interactions with the baristas, your co-workers around the coffee pot and the social reinforcement that make it an acceptable and routine part of your day. Even if you drink alone (like me), it is a shared activity that we can all relate to each other about. It’s almost more strange if you don’t drink coffee! The knowing nod that fellow coffee addicts give one another is something roadies used to do, before everyone got way too serious about cycling.
Snobbery — I was reading Tonx’s manifesto and I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the super-high-end, hand-built, carbon-everything niches of the bike industry. These are just a tiny number of bikes compared to everything else, but the Bike Media love to ride, review and rave over these bikes. That isn’t helping anyone in the long run. It doesn’t make more cyclists. It just makes cycling more exclusive (i.e. exclusionary), snobbish and offensive to everyone not already in The Club and following The Rules.
Like the $55 cup of coffee, oftentimes the bike industry is the root of its own problem. We are our own worst enemy. As a MAMIL myself, I am the exact customer this industry caters to. That’s great for me, but what about everyone else? The American Bike Industry will die with old guys like me if we don’t change it now.
Democracy — This word is overloaded and misunderstood in the current political climate. What I mean by democratic is the second meaning:
favoring or characterized by social equality; egalitarian.
Funny enough, the example usage is:
“cycling is a democratic activity that can be enjoyed by anyone”
While that may be true in the rest of the world, the Bike Industry here likes to make it seem like a special activity, only for certain people of a certain age, race and income level. Bikes in America are either really high-end expensive things only to be used on Sundays (like some strange cult/church), or to be ignored as poor people’s transportation every other day of the week. We are missing a whole lot of people in between.
Like the Founders of YES PLZ, we think great bikes should be for everyone. While a high-quality ebike will never be cheap, we are working everyday to make it more affordable to more people. We will continue doing that until more and more people are using ebikes instead of cars. I’ve even come around on the electric scooters currently scattered around the streets of San Francisco. They’re like the $1 cup of electric vehicles, I can’t be mad at them.
These are just three things that helped make coffee a daily ritual for so many Americans. We hope that we can apply the same ideas to make ebikes as commonplace as a cup of joe. I’ll keep checking for #bikesandcoffee tweets until then.
Cheers,
Hong
p.s. I’ve had this post in Drafts for almost a year. My friends Tony and Sumi just launched this awesome Kickstater, which made me think about it again.
