Over the last few years, electrically assisted cycling, e-biking, has increased substantially worldwide. Replacing car driving for individual journeys, especially commuting, is highlighted as important to mitigate climate change, improve public health, and reduce congestion and other unwanted consequences connected to the car. Car driving, how-ever, is still the overwhelmingly dominant mode of personal transport globally and the ‘system of automobility’ permeates the whole of soci-ety. Flexibility and autonomy are considered the main reasons for the car’s dominance (Urry 2004). By analysing interviews and diaries kept by e-bikers, collected in semi-urban and urban settings in Sweden, this art-icle aims to contribute to knowledge about emerging micromobility practices such as e-biking in relation to a transport system where flexi-bility is the norm. The results show that e-biking encompasses elements that give the practice potential to both recruit and retain practitioners. By successfully combining elements of conventional cycling and car driving, it offers reliability, convenience, and flexibility. E-biking facili-tates transforming a dull commute into leisure as the rider can enjoy the sensuous and reflective aspects of the journey. At the same time, through that squeezing of time, it does not challenge prevailing struc-tures but rather maintains the time-space of automobility

Almost three decades have passed since the publishing of the last, and only, special issue on the sociology-environmental nexus in this journal. Since then, few of the articles published in Sociologisk Forskning have addressed climate change at all or in any substantial way. This silence could be interpreted as a quiet statement that sociology does not need to concern itself with climate change. However, no such line of argument is suggested in this special issue “Climate crisis”, which (re)presents current Swedish sociological research on climate change. Many of the authors take a similar stance that (environmental) sociology should not shy away from the climate crisis and the societal project of transformative change. Rather, sociologic research should study empirical cases of climate transitions or transformations, and contribute suggestions, as well as explanations, to how such changes can be accelerated.

Electrically assisted cycling, e-biking, is a growing global phenomenon. Just as with other vehicles, the e-bike is operated somewhere in place and in connection to other road users, and is far from always in motion. In this article, e-biking and related activities such as parking and storing take centre stage together with infrastructures such as parking spaces and electricity networks, which facilitate and constrain the practice in different ways. The involvement of a specific set of elements makes e-biking a practice in its own right, not only in comparison to other micromobility modes such as conventional cycling and walking, but also compared to motorised driving and in relation to infrastructure, and especially so when the e-bike is in non-motion.

The starting point of the article is an understanding that practices such as e-biking are connected not only to other practices, but also to small- and large-scale infrastructures and to the context within which it is performed. The empirical material was collected in semi-urban and urban settings in Sweden, a country where cycling is presented as a primary solution to reach net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045 but where the car is by far the dominant mode of personal transport. By analysing interviews and diaries written by e-bikers as well as policy documents, the relationship between e-biking and surrounding infrastructures comes under scrutiny. Insufficient cycle parking infrastructures are shown to discourage usage beyond trips between two places with (known) safe parking possibilities. This avoidance of linking practices risks limiting the range of activities for which e-bikes are used.

An increased knowledge of the infrastructural and situational conditions of e-biking as set out in this article can facilitate planning and policy making and is important to better understand the challenges and opportunities involved in the transition towards a sustainable transport system and therefore highly relevant to contemporary debates.