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280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

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Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#51
post #17

"In the United States, a staggering 60% of all car trips cover less than 10km." Being lucky enough to live in a walkable city (NYC) this is insane to me. The world is so car-brained.

Once I got a car, I became pretty unwilling to walk anywhere. Grocery store is 3 blocks from my house. I haven't walked in years. I would micro mobility though if there were a safe way to store the scooter.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#52
post #5

We don't need a 4000 lb vehicle to move a ~200 lb person. In order of efficiency: (1) Walk (2) Unicycle, roller skate, scooter (no battery, very little material) (2) Bike (3) Electric bike (and all forms of newfangled electric: escooters, segways) (4) Electric motorbike or scooter (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains (6) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric…

How are you defining efficiency here? Is walking really more efficient than cycling? I would put walking as the least efficient manual powered methods mentioned. Aside: I used to unicycle to work, and I have to say that it was both fantastic and much faster than walking while on a 27.5" wheel.

There is another dimension to add: how far do you really "need" to go and how frequently. And why it is so? Remote working vs commuting, local/nearby enough shopping vs long distance for supermarkets, going yourself vs (maybe electric) delivery.

If everything around you is built with base assumption that you must have a car, then the optimization was done by someone else with a different definition of efficiency.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#53

We don't need a 4000 lb vehicle to move a ~200 lb person. In order of efficiency: (1) Walk (2) Unicycle, roller skate, scooter (no battery, very little material) (2) Bike (3) Electric bike (and all forms of newfangled electric: escooters, segways) (4) Electric motorbike or scooter (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains (6) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric…

Energy efficiency is not the only variable that matters. Walking to my grocery store would take almost two hours each way. Biking would take 30 minutes each direction. Driving is 14 minutes each way, and is the only feasible way I can get groceries when I have my kids in tow (which sometimes is a necessity).

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#54

We don't need a 4000 lb vehicle to move a ~200 lb person. In order of efficiency: (1) Walk (2) Unicycle, roller skate, scooter (no battery, very little material) (2) Bike (3) Electric bike (and all forms of newfangled electric: escooters, segways) (4) Electric motorbike or scooter (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains (6) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric…

tbf I prefer to measure human loss in QALYs in case a disease mostly kills old people. It's impossible to measure perfectly but it's not worse than "A death". We all die in the end.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#55

We don't need a 4000 lb vehicle to move a ~200 lb person. In order of efficiency: (1) Walk (2) Unicycle, roller skate, scooter (no battery, very little material) (2) Bike (3) Electric bike (and all forms of newfangled electric: escooters, segways) (4) Electric motorbike or scooter (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains (6) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric…

I wonder how this ranking might change if we also took into account the energy required to produce the extra calories that humans need to consume in order to get around via these modes of transportation. Like, you'd probably expend a lot of calories traveling 10 miles by unicycle, and over time maybe that would be more significant than the materials difference compared to cycling? Of course, it depends a lot on the d…

Most humans on earth already eat way more than what they need. Exercising might actually make them eat less in the long run, because they'll lose weight and not eat so much anymore.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#56
I feel lucky every single day that I can take a 10 minute e-bike ride into the office. I say lucky because I know it's not available to everyone, but it's so good for my mental health to get outside every morning and afternoon. That experience can't be replicated with a Tesla no matter how affordable they might become.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#57

We don't need a 4000 lb vehicle to move a ~200 lb person. In order of efficiency: (1) Walk (2) Unicycle, roller skate, scooter (no battery, very little material) (2) Bike (3) Electric bike (and all forms of newfangled electric: escooters, segways) (4) Electric motorbike or scooter (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains (6) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric…

Energy efficiency is not the only variable that matters. Walking to my grocery store would take almost two hours each way. Biking would take 30 minutes each direction. Driving is 14 minutes each way, and is the only feasible way I can get groceries when I have my kids in tow (which sometimes is a necessity).

Of course. If in the big picture we want fewer people to need to take a car for each trip, it would be a good idea to have towns and cities where grocery stores and houses are closer together.

And of course not everyone wants to live in such a place, but plenty of people would. And in the US this is fairly rare compared to many other parts of the world.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a salmon have in common with a man on a bicycle? They are both Pareto-efficient. Here's a chart of cost of transport (calories/gram/km) vs weight (kg) comparing a salmon vs a bicycle vs a jet fighter etc: https://www.bike.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/efficiency-g...

Fun! But how to read the Y axis? Why does it start from 1 twice?

it's a logarithimic scale [0]

Those go 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, .. 1, 2, 4, ... 10, 20, 40...

I am guessing they printed "0.1" as ".1", and because it's a really bad scan the ".1" and "1" look identical.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_scale

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#60
post #21

I do almost all the grocery shopping for our family of 4 with a Rad Runner Plus with a large basket and bag. I love that bike. Even as someone pretty comfortable getting around on a 'regular' bike, having that extra power just makes it a really easy choice for more trips compared to the car. If it's hot out, it is so much nicer to hop on the bike and get an instant breeze compared to a hot stuffy car. If it's cold ou…

what kind of pannier bags do you use to haul groceries? All the ones I've used have been too small for my purposes.
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