A larger firm such as Gazelle will probably stock spare parts for perhaps ten years but often at absurd prices. The smaller operations will often not stock any old parts at all, if they even survive to be called in a few years.

In a nutshell an e-bike is much more complicated than a standard bike, will therefore require more repairs. But those repairs will be often be uneconomical or virtually impossible. So what’ll happen to the bikes: Some will be ridden with the batteries removed and the motor as dead weight. Some will get converted to non-e bikes. Some will actually get repaired. But in general the actual lifespan of e-bikes will probably prove to be an order of magnitude shorter than standard bikes.

Your link goes to a Chia Pet ad BTW.

Also, you have mentioned earlier your resistance to e-Bakfiets but I know that the two-wheel bike that yours is grown upon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzY7qQFij_M) in an e-version has been Blogged about on a UK site.

But, believe it or not there are also people (not many) who just choose to drive around the city, practical or economical or not. Perhaps its a status thing for them, or they could care less about the cost of parking and constant tickets. I know a very wealthy 60ish gentleman who drives his Mercedes everywhere and insists it’s very practical. It doesn’t bother him a bit that it costs several hundred euro a week for prime parking. Different strokes for different folks.

Yes, driving a car around the city is very much frowned upon by many Amsterdammers, as is riding a scooter.

This is all happening largely independent of the pedestrian facilities. People continue to walk here and the streets are crowded with tourists and locals alike on foot. The downtown areas are thriving and there is no significant movement to outside the city or away from independent shops. If anything the opposite seems to be true. The new developments such as in Noord and Ijburg and designed around bicycle, pedestrian and public transport.

Who would pay the high parking rates, gas costs, etc, so they can own a car in Amsterdam?

Upper class folks who want a status symbol, people who are physically unable to bike, or perhaps they have a long commute that public transport doesn’t reach?

And do the cycling Dutch look down on people who use a car?

The longer I’ve been a cyclist, fewer and fewer of my friends are drivers, and now I feel out of touch with the driver’s mentality.

* Is Amsterdam creating more spaces for bikes on major thoroughfares, or this a problem because of the manner in which their respective spaces are generally physically-separated?
Of course the first question is how much bike congestion is there?

* How about more space for pedestrians?

* Pedestrian and collective PT modal share? I mean, the main thing is that people are driving less, but where exactly are they doing instead? Some are cycling, but the others?
These cycle groups just care about cyclists… in the worst case scenario, a city can lose its small, distributed shops which can increase bike modal share as people go to more central stores, but then pedestrian share does down.