Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hybrid-electric bicycle

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 22:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hybrid-electric bicycle

Hybrid-electric bicycle (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

There is no such thing as a hybrid-electric bicycle. The article made this clear until some text from the deleted Series Hybrid Cycles was merged in. There is essentially no such thing as a series hybrid cycle, either, outside of the research of Andreas Fuchs, the author of that article, which is why it is deleted. There almost certainly never will be a series hybrid cycle before room temperature superconductivity comes down to consumer prices, because it would be ruinously inefficient. Shaft drives are very low maintenance, cheap, and upwards of 80% efficient and they have still made little headway against the chain because the human body puts out liimted power and efficiency is everything in human powered vehicles. There is nothing here which is not either outright speculation, substantially unverifiable, or redundant to motorized bicycle. Guy (Help!) 22:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - Recreation of deleted material. That's enough for me. Lajbi ^{Holla @ me} 22:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

As the main contributor to this article being considered for deletion I disagree with all statements above:

• Whether a "hybrid-electric bicycle" exists is a matter of definition. In the strict sense every electric bicycle which includes pedals is a hybrid. In a wider sense only those using a third source of power would be hybrids, e.g. solar power, wind power or fuel cells. These all exist as prototypes but not to my knowlege as manufactured items.

In the meantime I've seen that other editors also regard ordinary electric bicycles as hybrid vehicles, and those with additional input from other energy sources such as solar cells even as tribrid vehicles. --Theosch 09:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• The sentence from the original stub "A hybrid-electric bicycle is a theoretical non-existent bicycle that might allow its rider to build up charge in battery or supercapacitor when going downhill or waiting at a red light, and then add the stored power to his or her immediate power at start or for hill-climbing." is wrong because the prototypes of Andreas Fuchs and collegues do exactly that and they do exist. I've ridden on them myself and they work well. The other French vehicles also exist.
• Superconductivity is not an issue here, but whether highly efficient generators - which do exist - can be procured at a price which customers will pay. Currently the best electric technology is about as efficient as a poor mechanical transmission, but the gains lie elsewhere, in particular the high configurability without mechanical means (meaning you can have a tailor-made load curve and don't need to change gears) leading to ideal on-road training devices, and the suitability for larger vehicles, even marine vehicles.
• Nothing here is speculation and it is all verifiable in the literature give.
• I did not recreate the deleted material but rather included those bits from the deleted "Series hybrid cycles" (about 30%) which I felt were up to Wikipedia standards and also improved the wording. I am a former editor of the publication "Human Power" and a current editor an author at Human Power eJournal so feel qualified to do this.
• I do agree that there is a hodgepodge of articles all revolving around similar topics and several of these should perhaps be merged into a suitable new article. I'm not sure that Motorized bicycles should be the container for all these subjects as it is quite large already. I don't think that Guy's method of going and deleting all these - like recently someone did Pedelec - is the optimal method. I would be happy to work in a group of us to try to bring order to this unwieldy field.

In the meantime I've seen that Wikipedia articles shouldn't be too long: somebody suggested 32kB was OK whereas 72kB was too long. Maybe this would be a criterium to decide whether an article should be split into two different articles.

• I do agree that the name of this article (previous existing stub) isn't all that good, also because often the vehicles involved are actually tricycles or quadricycles.
• In a nutshell: I disagree with deleting this article at this moment but might agree with a deletion in the future if we can find a suitable structure for the components in this field which might be too much for Motorized bicycles. --Theosch 11:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• I've since come to the conclusion that the name of this article is poor, as it really should be "Human-electric hybrid bicycle" but this is cumbersome. Also, I saw that Hybrid vehicles already had a section on two-wheeled vehicles saying much the same. Therefore I have expanded this section and now recommend Hybrid-electric_bicycle to be deleted as it is redundant. OK with everybody? --Theosch 10:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per everyone above. Also not convincingly sourced. Addhoc 00:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge with motorized bicycle and create redirect. The claim that they don't exist appears to be false, but they don't seem to exist in large enough numbers to merit their own article. However, a mention under general motorized bicycles (which I believe they qualify as). Plymouths 20:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
• This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science). –trialsanderrors 05:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached
 Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, ST47Talk 19:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• So, judging by Theosch's comments, it's not talking about a hybrid bicycle but a gas-electric hybrid Moped or Motorized bicycle. You'd be better off including such information one of those articles. This one, though, should be Deleted. -- Kesh 03:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - This article provides no verifiable sources to establish notability. It also gave me a headache behind my eyeballs. Shaundakulbara 06:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Human-battery powered bicycle conversions are for sale today, so the article covers an efficient transport mode. The article is clearly of encyclopedic notability, and has sources, so keep it. I am considering purchasing a human-battery powered bike, at [1]. Problems with what the article says? That's an issue for editing, not deleting. Edison 07:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• We really should be looking at this in a wider context. I've started a user subpage User:Theosch/Coordination_of_alternative_vehicle_articles in order to attempt this. Feel free to go there and contribute. However for this article, I'll comment on the new responses below the "new notice line". Hybrid-electric bicycle is about parallel hybrids and series hybrids. The former includes almost every manufactured moped, electric bicycle, pedelec, powerbike, power-assisted cycle, electric power-assisted tricycle and quadricycle and so on. Except for the relatively few multitrack vehicles, these are all motorized bicycle and this article is in turn in the category hybrid vehicles. But because they are so widespread, nobody thinks of these vehicles as hybrids and so it is OK to have them in motorized bicycles. However series hybrid bicycles, tricycles, quadricycles and even marine vehicles exist only as prototypes built by a handful of researchers and hobbyists. They are all electric and most have more than two wheels. Therefore they don't fit very well in motorized bicycles and also not in Hybrid-electric bicycle. I think that hybrid vehicles is presently the best place for this information and it is there already. Therefore Hybrid-electric bicycle should be deleted, but not for the reasons most people here have given, but because it is redundant and because the name doesn't fit the content properly. Therefore I would ask Edison to reconsider his "keep" request and let us delete this article, even if for the wrong reasons (the info is verifiably sourced and notable), and move on to help out in motorized bicycles. --Theosch 16:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of transportation-related deletions. -- Interiot 06:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per not a crystal ball, unless better sources are added. --Interiot 18:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.