In the early 1900s, horses were the original “mobile emissions” source of pollution, causing great consternation to anyone that happened to be in their wake at the wrong time. Yes, we have troughs that catch horse poo now, but still doesn’t perfectly mitigate the problem specific to horses.
And then there’s the issue of horses on surfaces: on dirt, their weight cause erosion. On pavement, they can injure their hooves, plus the sound of horseshoes at full gallop on asphalt must be deafening.
(I promise this isn’t a subtoot about automobile environmental impacts)
As an aside, in wilderness in America, where there is the most protection for the environment and anything mechanized (like bicycles) are prohibited, it is a bizarre historical exception that horse riding is permitted, in spite of the obvious degradation caused by trampling over everything. Wilderness is meant to be a nature-first place, but somehow it’s actually horseriders-first, then nature.
In the same way that torque/current-limited ebikes will cause less soil erosion in national parks – case in point, Tahoe National Forest in California now explicitly permits Class 1 ebikes on trails, once they had enough data to support that assertion – I would expect that an electric horse could also be tuned to limit its acceleration on tricky surfaces.
In the early 1900s, horses were the original “mobile emissions” source of pollution, causing great consternation to anyone that happened to be in their wake at the wrong time. Yes, we have troughs that catch horse poo now, but still doesn’t perfectly mitigate the problem specific to horses.
And then there’s the issue of horses on surfaces: on dirt, their weight cause erosion. On pavement, they can injure their hooves, plus the sound of horseshoes at full gallop on asphalt must be deafening.
(I promise this isn’t a subtoot about automobile environmental impacts)
As an aside, in wilderness in America, where there is the most protection for the environment and anything mechanized (like bicycles) are prohibited, it is a bizarre historical exception that horse riding is permitted, in spite of the obvious degradation caused by trampling over everything. Wilderness is meant to be a nature-first place, but somehow it’s actually horseriders-first, then nature.
These problems would equally apply to the ‘electric horse’, would they not?
In the same way that torque/current-limited ebikes will cause less soil erosion in national parks – case in point, Tahoe National Forest in California now explicitly permits Class 1 ebikes on trails, once they had enough data to support that assertion – I would expect that an electric horse could also be tuned to limit its acceleration on tricky surfaces.