Is there any point posting here if your not from the US ?

We'd love to hear what kinds of vehicles are available or are being built outside the US.

The participants in the Vectrix forum are largely posting from Australia and the UK. The E-max forum included French, Austrians, and Swedes. It is an English-language site, and since probably 70% of all English speakers are North American, US users are going to dominate the discussion. But, it is odd we have so few Canadians here compared to the other forum (endless-sphere.com)

I do agree this site could be less USA-centric. Many discussions are often entirely in US customary units instead of SI (Metric), forgetting that the US is the only place where feet/inch/miles and pounds are used. Maybe we could start abbreviating dates the way the rest of the world does too.

I for one use metric units or dual units in my posts.

forgetting that the US is the only place where feet/inch/miles and pounds are used.

Not so - the UK for example uses miles and miles per hour, but sells their fuel in liters. It's kind of like we decided we'd go metric and then ran out of cash and couldn't afford to replace the street signs. (Actually I suspect that's pretty close to the truth - there's a requirement for us to sell using EU weights and measures but there's (apparently) not a requirement to quote distances in kilometers).

But in general I agree with PJD - we do tend to become a bit USA-centric from time to time. But please bear with us - we want "you foreigners" (of which I am one!) to participate... ;-)

There are plenty of non-US people using this site, many of whom are posting. Thank you for the reminder that we can be more aware that the U.S.A. is not the center of the universe ....

And, please, do post .. one way to make the forum more international is for non-US people to post regularly.

A friend and I are working on a solar steam engine (abandoned 8-foot [2.4-meters?] diameter C-band parabolic dish) to generate electricity, and I recently found a great component solution on an Italian website. I don't speak any Italian (except for the few phrases I learned from watching "The Godfather" about 9 times).

The 250/500/750 Watt limit laws around the world have come up a few times in discussion. And any clever solution needs to be posted to the broadest possible audience as soon as possible. (I can't fathom why anyone would use a limit of 250-Watts, you might as well just use your feet to pedal a mile, they have missed the mark by a yard)

Even if an enthusiast didn't speak any English (S'il vous plait, mon Dieu!), a picture truly is worth a kilo-word, and when attempting to fabricate a new conceptual design, an ounce of design advice can often be worth a pound of "fix it later". (si vous comprenez ce que j'essaye de dire!)

With the rise of the US in the increasingly enmeshed world economy, and the Chinese teaching children both Mandarin AND English (plus so much of movies, TV, and music in English) the smart money is on knowing two languages, with "au moins un" being English. But, we all know about politicians pandering for votes from the Vox Populi, give them an inch, and they'll take a mile! (C'est la vie!)

It would have been great if Franklin had persuaded the USA to adopt Metric from France in the early 1800's, or later just before the

A. Industrial Revolution, or
B. WW-one, or
C. WWII, so...

I guess I will just have to keep two sets of tools, convenez-vous, mon ami ?

The forums i frequent are full of non-us made ev's. Both scooters i have are chinese, my chargers are canadian & taiwanese, & electricity is global.

We're all working together to find good transportation solutions wherever we are. The language is english.. it has become the defacto language of the internet.. no disrespect to any other language, it has just been easier to 'standardize' in global forums on a single language. Like in many other forums, there are language specific ones, i'm sure, but they will not have the universal appeal, & will tend to be more regional.

I have frequented many forums on many topics, & while a majority of the posters are american, there are people from all over the world looking for & sharing information.

scotty

It's kind of like we decided we'd go metric and then ran out of cash and couldn't afford to replace the street signs....

Well it goes further than that. All US Civil Engineering and Mining and is done in US customary units, and most aerospace engineering is still US units. Recall the Mars orbiter that became an expensive Martian meteor because a contractor provided NASA with thruster data in US units but NASA thought they were metric.

As an Engineer, I find it awkward because I must "practice" in US units, but most of the new developments come from Europe or Australia using metric units.

Many state highway departments have gone metric for their road and bridge specifications, but it is an odd sort of metric, since they just took the old dimensions, temperatures, and forces US customary units and changed them to odd sized metric units.

To some extent ideology lies behind the US not changing to metric. Metric is regarded a vaguely "un-American", and to convert to metric would be an admission that foreigners just might do some things better. Recall (or maybe you are too young) that the second thing Reagan did upon swearing in (the first being removal of solar panels on the white house roof that Carter had installed) was to halt Carter's metrifiction program.

And as far as the UK, I believe that are it the process of switching over to metric road (and presumably car instruments) this year.

PJD - I'm from the UK, I'm a naturalized US citizen (since 2004) the "we" in the sentence you quoted was referring to me as a Brit. I guess the context of the surrounding sentences didn't help. I find it curious that in the UK we still use the occasional old units in a few very visible ways - miles for speed and distance and pints in the pub (surely they'll NEVER change that?).

I don't know about the UK converting to metric for the road systems - any resident Brits care to comment?

It's all rather a side issue - I was just playing the "anti absolutes" police and pointing out that the US isn't the "only" hold out as you seemed to say in your post.

I'd personally like to see postings in the person's native language. It would be interesting to have a thread of questions and answers in different languages all the way down the page! :)

Would give us the chance to brush up on our translator skills and make this a more united and global forum.

Вы согласны?
Slažete li se?
您同意嗎？
Êtes-vous d'accord?
¿Está usted de acuerdo?
क्या आप इस बात से सहमत हैं ?
Sind Sie damit einverstanden?
Lei è d'accordo?

I would guess that single-language Americans would get upset at that idea - they usually do.
http://translate.google.com

Well, add another Canadian. Can't seem to find a thread for introductions so I will do it here.

I actually discovered this forum about a year ago while trying to research e-bikes and scooters, just never got around to registering. I also noticed a lack of Canadians posting about vehicles, not just here but anywhere, which made things difficult because our selection is so limited. And ultimately led to what has turned out to be a very poor decision. So I think people outside the US should definitely post here.

Canadians are sparse here.

This forum has become, de-facto, a forum for 2-wheel electrics, and the problem is, I don't think anyone has attempted to get any of the existing electric scooters through the Canadian motor vehicle compliance as either a full MC or a "limited speed (70kph) motorcycle". I suspect that most of the importers or manufacturers tend to think there isn't much of a market in Canada due to it's perceived low population and cold climate. An enterprising person in Toronto needs to look into starting an importing/distributing business and getting some models through the tests and paperwork.

John,

Ann Arbor isn't too far from the populous parts of Canada, maybe you can look into getting your product through Canadian as well as US DOT certification.

And on the previous topic, my favorite odd UK unit has always been the weight unit "stone" - but it's used only for body weight.

This is the visitor rate by country as far as Google Analytics can tell, over the last month. This is by the number of "visits" (each visit can involve multiple page views). The total visits over the time period is 56,838. That makes U.S. visitors 56% of total visitors. Canadians about 8%, Brits about 6%, etc.

That's just the top 10 countries. We have visitors from all over the world.

On the chart the first country with fewer than 100 visits per country is Russia at #45.

While the obvious is true that U.S. visitors outnumber everybody else, it's also true that we have lots and lots of non-US visitors.

John,

Ann Arbor isn't too far from the populous parts of Canada, maybe you can look into getting your product through Canadian as well as US DOT certification.

At some future point we will look into international markets - Canada and Mexico would appear to be the obvious first choices. Unfortunately we can't do it all at once - that's especially true as a start up. However, if things go well we may very well want to reach international markets. Thanks for pointing out the opportunities.

Well I am a Canadian, and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Canada has a growing market of E-Bikes (both bicycle and scooter style). I have the scooter style, see my member detail to see a photo of it and it's detail. Late riding last Sunday I saw approximately 6 to 8 new E-Bikes on the same route I take every Sunday. Next year I expect a surprising boom in the E-Bike count because the E-Bike Pilot Program finishes this October and Bill #126 is passed into law that finalizes E-Bikes in to law.

In Vancouver there is a definite demand as awareness has been promoted the past couple years and we have several shops selling e-bikes and scooters. Selection is still limited, though, so it would be great if we could order from outside Canada but I found no one shipping here. I'm sure our restrictive legislation doesn't help, but then how hard is it to set a lower limit for our market? And as I understand not every province has given a green light. For example, the Zenn car, made in Canada, is only legal in British Columbia (and most of the US). Add to that the fact that everything coming into Canada automatically costs significantly more than elsewhere, and it's an uphill battle.

Hi, from Spain, Europe

We are going to be pleased to study the Partnership for the European Market.
Please, don´t hesitate to contact me...You'll be very welcome for it

Best for the project!!!

Javier
Electric Scooters BERECO

BTW there is now a map integrated with this site. If you go into your My Account page, and edit your account, you can enter one or more locations for yourself. Those locations are aggregated into the map.