Shared electric vehicles are part of urban green transportation, and scientific supervision meets the needs of "people's cities".

Reporter Li Jing reports from Beijing

After 10 years of development, the commuting function of bicycles is gradually being replaced by shared bicycles, and has become an important means of transportation to solve the "last mile" of urban transportation for residents in many cities. Shared electric vehicles (also known as shared electric bicycles) can solve longer commuting distances under the role of electric assistance, and statistics show that within 5 kilometers, the proportion of commuters is 67.5%. This means that shared electric vehicles have a more positive impact on improving commuting efficiency and alleviating traffic pressure.

While "electricity" helps shared electric vehicles to provide longer commuting, the safety hazards of batteries and the safety of too fast electric power have made many local governments have a variety of concerns about the development of shared electric vehicles. Wang Jing, an associate professor at Beijing Normal University's School of Law, pointed out that in the past, most local governments had the idea of "stuck" and "limited" in the number of shared electric vehicles, which actually reflected the lack of ideas for local governments to combine law and new economic development when faced with such problems.

After the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Administration for Market Regulation investigated and understood the development of shared electric vehicles in various places, the "one-size-fits-all" restrictions in the past are changing, but local governments are at a loss for what to do next.

On April 19, at the seminar on "High-quality Development of Two-wheeled Electric Vehicles, Sharing Economy Assistance" hosted by China Business News and China Economic Media Think Tank, representatives from industry associations, related enterprises, experts and scholars discussed how electric bicycles and shared electric vehicles should develop scientifically in the future, and how supervision should be used for the development of the new economy.

Shared electric vehicles are an important part of urban transportation

To be sure, bike-sharing (including electric vehicle sharing) is becoming an important part of people's daily lives.

According to public data, after nearly a decade of development in mainland China, as of 2023, the scale of shared bicycles in mainland China has exceeded 5 million, of which in Beijing and Shanghai, the number of shared bicycles has exceeded 1 billion times a year.

"The function of bicycles has changed, from commuting to sports and leisure, and the former has basically been replaced by shared bicycles. Zheng Xiaoling, director of the industry development department of the China Bicycle Association, said. According to the "2023 Two-Wheeled Green Travel Research Report" released by the association a few days ago, the average riding time of a single bicycle for residents across the country is 13.6 minutes, an increase of 7% compared with the same period in 2022. Among them, private bicycle users accounted for only 38.4% of the cycling users. Shared bicycles play a huge role in meeting the needs of commuting, while private bicycles are more used to meet residents' fitness, entertainment, and social purposes.

Bike-sharing (including shared electric vehicles) has the characteristics of easy driving, convenient use, and convenient parking, so users do not need to worry about road congestion, and its advantages are more prominent in point-to-point short-distance travel scenarios.

For urban transport, Wang Jiannan, an engineer at the China Center for Urban and Small Town Reform and Development, pointed out that shared electric bicycles and shared bicycles should be an important part of urban public transport, and it is not a competitive relationship with urban public transport. The emergence of shared electric bicycles with longer commuting distances has further increased the share rate of public transportation, which can better ensure people's green travel and better expand the service radius of public transportation.

From the perspective of the vehicle itself, shared electric vehicles are a product of China's electrification development process, which is in line with the direction of the national "double carbon" goal. Shared electric vehicle enterprises generally use industrial-grade lithium iron phosphate batteries with the advantages of green environmental protection, long life, light weight, etc., and in strict accordance with the relevant national environmental protection regulations, the waste battery scrapping, recycling and disposal procedures have been formulated, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a "white list" of professional power battery recycling enterprises to dismantle and recycle batteries in a safe and orderly manner, and further realize the cascade utilization of batteries. In terms of the recycling of end-of-life and retired batteries, shared electric vehicles also have the advantage of intensification, and the efficiency is much better than that of private e-bike battery recycling.

In addition, shared bicycles (including shared electric vehicles) with IoT facilities are also of positive significance for digital traffic management in mainland cities.

"Shared bicycles and shared electric vehicles are not isolated physical devices, but the largest IoT cluster in the civil scale of Beidou chips, because every car is an IoT device, and every car is an application of a Beidou terminal. Hu Qianghong, President of Hello Public Affairs, added, "These vehicles form the smallest digital unit of urban digital transportation construction. Operators and city management departments can use this data to achieve intelligent scheduling, maintenance, vehicle supply and demand balance, and orderly road surfaces, or connect to the city's overall transportation system to create digital twin transportation and contribute greater value. ”

Sharing electric vehicles may be able to resolve safety hazards

As an advanced version of shared bicycles, the promotion of shared electric vehicles in some cities, especially first-tier cities, has encountered many restrictions, which is related to the potential safety hazards that electric bicycles may bring.

According to the statistics of the National Fire and Rescue Administration, a total of 21,000 e-bike fires were reported nationwide in 2023, an increase of 17.4% from 2022, and a total of 18,000 e-bike fires were reported nationwide in 2022, an increase of 23.4% over 2021. Not long ago, the electric bicycle fire accident that occurred in Nanjing community caused many casualties, once again sounding the alarm for urban safety management.

Industry data shows that charging-related EV fires account for more than four-fifths. Among them, the fire hazard is the greatest when charging in residential buildings. Although some local regulations have required the configuration of centralized parking areas for electric bicycles and the construction of centralized charging facilities in densely populated places, limited by objective conditions, there are still unbalanced layouts in the construction of electric bicycle charging facilities in residential areas, the operation and maintenance of some charging facilities are not in place, and the charging standards are chaotic.

The executive meeting of the State Council held on April 12 put forward requirements for various localities and corresponding regulatory departments, to pay attention to the system governance of electric bicycles, strengthen standard guidance and regulatory law enforcement, and comprehensively improve the safety level of electric bicycle production, sales, use, parking, charging, scrapping and recycling.

For the current charging problem with the biggest safety hazard of electric bicycles, shared electric vehicles are being resolved from various dimensions. Hu Qianghong introduced: "The operation of shared electric bicycles is a network of self-built warehouses and battery swap cabinets, and the link of charging and battery swapping is directly concentrated in the battery swap cabinet, keeping a safe distance from the living area, which is not only safer, but also more in place for the maintenance of the rights and responsibilities of the battery swap cabinet." In addition, in the construction of battery swapping cabinets, through the installation of charging and swapping cabinets with independent fire-fighting equipment and in line with outdoor safety and fire protection requirements, standardized configuration of fire-fighting equipment, real-time monitoring of charging terminal current, voltage, power and temperature of power distribution equipment and other status information, to achieve closed-loop management of charging and swapping safety. ”

"After research, demonstration, pilot, etc., we would like to propose the opening of urban shared electric vehicles and the laying of charging and swapping cabinets. First, it is recommended that the urban transportation department, fire department, emergency management department and other relevant units investigate the development status and operational capacity of the shared electric vehicle industry, study the feasibility of the orderly introduction of shared electric vehicles, and gradually promote the launch of shared electric vehicles through scientific calculation and simulation, set up pilot operation areas, etc., guide the public to use them safely, improve the environment for the use of electric bicycles through market mechanisms, and reduce various hidden dangers and threats including fires. Hu Qianghong continued, "The second is to promote the shared battery swap model, form a complete community infrastructure and energy replenishment network, and include it in the community renovation plan to trade in the old for the new." For the stock of private electric bicycles, further promote the coverage of the battery swapping cabinet mode to reduce the potential safety hazards of residential charging. ”

Another challenge faced by e-bikes in urban traffic is road safety. Including riding an electric bicycle on the road without going through any traffic regulations or riding safety test, and there are many problems with the unauthorized modification of electric bicycles, resulting in frequent road violations.

However, according to industry insiders, first of all, the shared electric vehicles on the market are in line with the national mandatory standards, eliminate modification, and pass the 3C certification. Secondly, the national standard mandates that the maximum speed of the electric bicycle design should not be greater than 25km/h, and the shared electric vehicle has a speeding reminder function when the speed reaches 15km/h. In addition, it is obviously more efficient for the management department to manage the main few shared e-bike operators than to manage millions of private car owners.

Improve the level of industry supervision

The management of urban electric bicycles involves a wide range of departments, and is related to the vital interests of the people and the image of the city, which is an important part of urban management and a comprehensive issue across departments. How to deal with the relationship between strengthening the supervision of electric two-wheeled vehicles and facilitating the people, and how to deal with the relationship between ensuring the safety of the city and promoting the sustainable and healthy development of electric bicycles is a tangled problem at all levels of departments, and it is also a topic worth studying.

Tang Yuan, vice president of the China Urbanization Promotion Association, pointed out that to promote the sustainable and healthy development of urban electric bicycles, the first thing is to strengthen overall leadership. It is suggested that governments at all levels should put the promotion of the healthy development of electric two-wheeled vehicles on the agenda, set up a special coordination mechanism and cross-departmental coordination bodies, and take this work as an important matter. The second is to focus on safety. The biggest problem facing electric two-wheelers in urban development is safety, and efforts must be made to build an intrinsic safety system for electric bicycles. It is recommended to standardize the management of the whole process of urban management, production and circulation of electric bicycles, listing access and supervision of electric bicycles, and elimination of electric two-wheeled vehicles.

Although there are some safety problems in electric bicycles, for the regulatory authorities, Zheng Xiaoling believes that safety and the market are not opposite, and the development prospects of the future electric bicycle market should be viewed from a more positive perspective.

Specific to the management rules for shared electric vehicles, Wang Jing pointed out that the first is how to define shared electric vehicles? Because shared electric vehicles and shared bicycles are not exactly the same thing, shared electric vehicles are quasi-public transportation products, club goods, or public goods? From an economic point of view, how to define shared electric vehicles, which determines what to do when the government supervises.

Wang Jiannan pointed out the definition of electric bicycles from another dimension. "What is the nature of an e-bike? We think it's somewhere between a motorized vehicle and a non-motorized vehicle, so the way to manage it should also be between a motorized vehicle and a non-motorized vehicle. However, at present, the state does not have a unified regulation on the management of electric bicycles. ”

It is worth noting that the license plate of electric bicycles is not unified across the country, resulting in remote supervision, the public security department has incomplete grasp of vehicle information, and there are great problems in law enforcement and evidence collection.

From the perspective of urban transportation planning, there are no strict motorized lanes and non-motorized lanes in many urban road plans, and there is no qualitative definition of which lane the shared electric vehicles with a certain speed belong to. Wang Jiannan suggested that in conditional high-grade road sections, non-motorized lanes should be tried to separate fast and slow lanes. E-bikes are part of non-motorized vehicles, but they have a very significant speed difference compared to human-powered bicycles. The separation of speed and slow lanes for non-motorized lanes can not only ensure that e-bikes are not interfered with by motor traffic, but also that e-bikes will not interfere with the traffic of human-powered bicycles and pedestrians.

In addition, the city needs to think about how to solve the static traffic problem when developing shared bicycles and shared electric vehicles, because the demand for shared electric vehicles for rail connection is very strong, and the problem of parking order of shared electric vehicles in many places is actually the problem that the parking space demand for shared electric vehicles can not be met by urban land.

Zheng Xiaoling suggested that sharing platform companies can first carry out pilot projects in some cities to further explore scientific and efficient management mechanisms, as well as the development path of large-scale deployment, so as to gradually dispel the concerns of the competent authorities and the public, so as to create opportunities for the high-level development of the electric bicycle industry in the future.

(Editor: Zhang Jingchao Review: Li Zhenghao Proofreader: Zhai Jun)