Waw246 delivered in Switzerland to the Philipona Brothers.

 

Thomas Philipona of Tentlingen will also service the local WAW population. eWAW tryouts may be possible by request., 

WAW244 off to Izzegem.

Nu te bestellen bij Fietser.be.

De nieuwe van velomobiel.nl. Een gewillig slachtoffer voor de Fietser e-assist.

Cheap cars and fancy bikes at Spezi2015.

FietsFisc Update 2015.

WAW242 gaat naar.... de sympathieke familie Data Support Intl SA!

Een van de weinige goeie dingen des levens waar je nu eens weinig tot geen belasting op betaalt, is fietsen. Integendeel krijg je zelfs een belastingkorting. Uniek is dat de bekende belastingvoordelen niet alleen voor werknemers gelden maar ook voor bedrijfsleiders.

Het systeem van belastingvrije verloning en aftrekbare kosten dat in ons FietserPlan uit de doeken werd gedaan, heeft de laatste jaren effectief een verschuiving veroorzaakt. De fietser zelf blijft de motor achter de keuze voor biomobiliteit, maar meer en meer zien de werkgevers zelf de voordelen op gebied van verloning en belasting, welzijn, milieu en imago. Voor een vier-seizoenen lange-afstandsfiets als de WAW lopen de cijfers significant op.

Naast het evidente woon-werkverkeer zien we een toenemend gebruik binnen bedrijven en instellingen: intercampusverkeer, klantenbezoek, opmetingen,...  De fileproblematiek is daar niet vreemd aan, ook de toenemende belastingdruk op fossiele wagens begint effect te krijgen. De kunstmatig lage brandstofkost, de lange levertijden, minder vlotte financiering en het kluwen van verantwoordelijkheden binnen het bedrijfsorganigram zetten nog een rem op deze tendens.

Ik zet het nog eens op een rijtje:

1. De terbeschikkingstelling van een bedrijfsfiets, velomobiel, fietsparking, douches... mag voor 120% in onkosten gebracht worden, de BTW volledig afgetrokken en mag bovendien gecumuleerd worden met de belastingvrije fietsvergoeding.
2. De variabele (en wel belaste) kosten zijn minimaal (brandstof, onderhoud, verzekering, parking,...).
3. Fietsvergoedingen zijn zowel voor werknemers als bedrijfsleiders vrijgesteld van personenbelasting tot 380 €/maand (~= woon-werk afstand van 43 km aan 22 ct/km). Deze mogen bovendien bij de werkelijke kosten gerekend worden (dubbel fiscaal voordeel).
4. Verlaging socialezekerheidsbijdragen: Er moet geen bedrijfsvoorheffing ingehouden worden op de fietsvergoeding

Een uitgebreider artikel vindt u op de website van Securex

en natuurlijk onze nl.fietser.be/diensten/Velonomics

New front lights and SPAI

Philips has a habit of shooting themselves in the foot. They managed to design and produce the best front ànd rear bicycle lights (the Saferide and the Lumiring resp.), then decided to stop production altogether. We have to revert to the good old twin Busch & Müller. Those have a decent shaped light beam, and having two LEDs in a separate housing has its advantages. This winter was Orca season for me and I could appreciate the twin front lights, one aimed low and the next aimed higher as a high beam and light horn.



Normally they are mounted side by side in the nose, as usual. For those who opt for the SPAI ventilation hole, we needed a new solution, as two of these didn't fit. Stephane had an elongated SPAI crafted, it seems very elegant again.

Better photos will follow as time permits.

Our youngest

ICE VTX trike now in demo!

We ordered the new VTX for a customer who went to try it out in the UK. I too fell in love on the first ride. It is even better than its precursor, the Vortex. You could conclude then it is the best non streamlined cycle in existence - and you'd be right.

It's the best fast tourer at least. It would be a great travel machine as well, but with its disk brakes it's not very well suited for mundane commuting. I'll try to find a solution to fit drum brakes for winter riding.

Coupé

Photo by Hans van der Borght

Just another day at Fietser.be

Recording a TV show "Buurtpolitie" today, involving a robber rabbit on a trike, and me getting caught on the speed radar at 61 km/h in a residential street.
I'm sure now I'm better at pushing than acting.

Fossil mobility. Why it is so hard for humans to change ideas, according to Kurt Vonnegut.

"There had been a time when a copy of Trout’s most popular book to date, Plague on Wheels, had brought as much as twelve dollars, because of the illustrations. It was now being offered for a dollar, and people who paid even that much did so not because of the pictures. They paid for the words.
The words in the book, incidentally, were about life on a dying planet named Lingo-Three, whose inhabitants resembled American automobiles. They had wheels. They were powered by internal combustion engines. They ate fossil fuels. They weren’t manufactured, though. They reproduced. They laid eggs containing baby automobiles, and the babies matured in pools of oil drained from adult crankcases.
Lingo-Three was visited by space travelers, who learned that the creatures were becoming extinct for this reason: they had destroyed their planet’s resources, including its atmosphere. The space travelers weren’t able to offer much in the way of material assistance. The automobile creatures hoped to borrow some oxygen, and to have the visitors carry at least one of their eggs to another planet, where it might hatch, where an automobile civilization could begin again. But the smallest egg they had was a forty-eight pounder, and the space travelers themselves were only an inch high, and their space ship wasn’t even as big as an Earthling shoebox. They were from Zeltoldimar. The spokesman for the Zeltoldimarians was Kago. Kago said that all he could do was to tell others in the Universe about how wonderful the automobile creatures had been. Here is what he said to all those rusting junkers who were out of gas: “You will be gone, but not forgotten.” The illustration for the story at this point showed two Chinese girls, seemingly identical twins, seated on a couch with their legs wide open.
So Kago and his brave little Zeltoldimarian crew, which was all homosexual, roamed the Universe, keeping the memory of the automobile creatures alive. They came at last to the planet Earth. In all innocence, Kago told the Earthlings about the automobiles. Kago did not know that human beings could be as easily felled by a single idea as by cholera or the bubonic plague. There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth. And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: “Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. “The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything. “They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ “And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness. “Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.”

Uit "Breakfast for Champions", Kurt Vonnegut.