The Japanese love-affair with bikes

By Hunter Skipworth Published: 9:00AM GMT 07 March 2010

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Sanyo"s Eneloop bike facilities a long-range rechargeable battery, but additionally encourages the supplement to keep fit

The bicycle is fast apropos the idealisation eco-friendly conform accessory. Youngsters career about the streets of East London on charming fixed-gear bikes; politicians have "eco statements", in the centre being held on camera whilst cycling to work; and a little offices even yield employees with fold-up bikes for the every day commute. London, it seems, is cycle obsessed.

Given the cutting-edge record found in Japan you could be forgiven for meditative the common bicycle had been left behind. Far from it; the bicycle is most less an eco conform accessory, some-more a approach of life. Dotted about Tokyo are scores of bicycles piled up in "bike parks". Street corners and shops are mostly swamped with swathes of illegally parked bicycles, and internal authorities are struggling to keep them in check.

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Just as companies such as Toyota and Honda are committed to formulating "greener" cars, so as well are the Japanese to creation even greener bikes. Unlike London, a large suit of bicycles in Tokyo have small electric motors. This is mostly since old ladies have make make use of of of them as a sort of hulk selling basket, ferrying immeasurable amounts of food in between the supermarket and their home.

Not calm with the little volume of wickedness constructed by an electric bicycle, Japanese association Sanyo has taken up the plea of producing a greener bike. They have done have make make use of of of of their illusory Eneloop rechargeable battery record to furnish rarely fit bikes powered by long-range batteries.

The SP array have have make make use of of of of a sort of hybrid record identical to that powering the Toyota Prius. Essentially the supplement plays the purpose of the engine fuel engine, with the battery receiving up the infancy of the effort. The outcome is the supplement still keeps fit, on condition that thirty per cent of the appetite compulsory to get the bike moving, with the electric engine you do the rest.

The Eneloop record equates to that the bicycles have a outrageous range; scarcely 40km per 210 notation charge.

In sequence to discharge all emissions combined by the bikes, Sanyo has left one step further. They have combined the worlds initial "Solar Parking Lot". It"s radically a hulk recharging hire for the Eneloop range of bikes, and the play ground is dictated to emanate positively no wickedness at all. Powered by sets of solar panels on the roof tiles of the lot, bicycles are recharged both night and day with leftover appetite used to light the parking area.

Sanyo, it seems, has found the undiluted resolution for the green-minded nonetheless quiescent cyclist. They have private all the bid of cycling along with all the wickedness of driving.