In Japan, bikes now use battery power

Riders skip the sweat and gasoline fill-ups

Chie Igawa is part of a trend that’s transforming Japan’s roads. The 36-year-old Tokyo homemaker zips her kids around on a battery-boosted bicycle without breaking a sweat or having to worry about traffic rules.

Domestic sales of the bikes eclipsed those of scooters for the first time last year and have jumped 24 percent since January, according to the Tokyo-based Bicycle Promotion Institute. In 2008, Yamaha Motor Co. sold more of the bikes in Japan than motorcycles. Rival maker Panasonic Corp. predicts the market will triple to a million units a year.

“I started riding it a few months ago,” said Igawa, pausing on a sidewalk near the Imperial Palace, with her two boys strapped into child seats. “You couldn’t do this on a moped, it would be illegal.”

The bikes, which have a brick-size battery tucked behind the seat post, aren’t bound by traffic laws because they’re not classed as motor vehicles. That appeals not just to homemakers, but also companies such as Fuji Xerox Co., which bought a fleet of them to avoid parking tickets.

Japan’s largest maker of color copiers, Fuji Xerox bought its fleet of Panasonic hybrids for field technicians after it became illegal to park motorcycles on the sidewalk. Competitors Ricoh Co. and Canon Inc. followed suit.

“We’d been going to Fuji Xerox and other companies with a sales pitch about how the bikes were eco-friendly and cost-effective. They’d nod politely, but nobody took us seriously,” said Akira Tatsumi, 58, head of Panasonic’s electric bicycle division. “When the law changed in 2006, it changed my life.”

Bloomberg News