For something that took years to arrive, Madrid’s public bicycles sure get off to a fast start. Pedal once and the 36-volt, 10-ampere, electric motors will give you a sudden boost. Going up one of Madrid’s many hills, it is a welcome aid. Downhill, the burst jars. But riders can disable the boost by not pedaling, and moderate it with electric controls on the handlebars. With a little practice, the bikes begin to feel like underpowered motor scooters. “Our major goal is to move journeys that are now done by car to the bicycles,” says Elisa Barahona, Madrid’s director of sustainability and environment.
Category Archives: Datelines
Adaptive Cruise Control and Traffic-Jam Assistants
On the A-1 highway north of Madrid, Ford Spain’s press fleet manager, Eusebio Ruiz, locks his car’s radar onto another vehicle perhaps 75 meters ahead. An outline of the car appears on the dashboard with a few red bars behind it indicating the target distance. Deep memories of the film Top Gun and years of flight-simulator play kick in, and I reach for the joystick to arm my Sidewinder missiles. But the Ford Kuga is armed with neither Sidewinders nor a joystick. I sigh, click my pen, and continue taking notes as Ruiz fiddles with buttons on the steering wheel.
Continue reading Adaptive Cruise Control and Traffic-Jam Assistants
Spanish HIV Researcher Faces €210,000 Fine Over Unauthorized Clinical Trial
MADRID—A Spanish HIV/AIDS researcher is facing a hefty fine for violating clinical trial regulations. A court of appeals has upheld most of a lower court’s verdict against Vicente Soriano, a physician at the Hospital Carlos III here and a well-known clinical researcher with hundreds of publications to his name. Continue reading Spanish HIV Researcher Faces €210,000 Fine Over Unauthorized Clinical Trial
Copenhagen Pioneers Smart Electric-Bike Sharing
Copenhagen, the city that popularized bike sharing in the 1990s, is replacing its coin-operated clunkers with electric motor–assisted bicycles with their own touch-screen instrument panels. The bikes, which the city beta-tested this past September and October, house motors that can provide up to 450 watts of power from a battery pack that’s rechargeable at dozens of docking stations around the city. But all that power may be too much of a good thing.
Beta testers last month “got very good at keeping [their] momentum to where the engine does most of the work,” reports Niklas Marschall, CEO of Cykel DK, the program’s operator. That was the first lesson Cykel DK learned: Riders will go to great lengths to avoid exerting themselves. Continue reading Copenhagen Pioneers Smart Electric-Bike Sharing