How long before Evan Osnos gets his e-bike stolen?

Evan Osnos, of the New Yorker, just bought an extremely nice e-bike in Beijing near the same spot where we almost bought ours about a year ago. In his blog post on the subject, Osnos laments that a love of cars prevents Americans from buying e-bikes.

I disagree with his assertion--I personally believe that when Deng Xiaoping defined prosperity in terms of bicycle ownership, he laid the foundation for an entire citizenry to trade up from acoustic to electric, Dylan-style. For what it's worth, though, Pete's Electric Bikes in Boulder is running an arbitrage play, importing souped-up Chinese e-bikes and selling them at a premium to the Boulder cognoscenti.