Me in the Netherlands use an e bike for almost everything. Even bike with 3 kids to school, groceries etc. Love it. But i also have a big SUV. I could not live without it. Holidays, visiting friends, picking up large stuff. So i still fill 60 liters of fuel every week.
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
#62This is an area that government subsidies could really influence change in urban planning and cutting oil demand. If there was a similar subsidy on bikes as there are on electric cars, I would expect the push back against bike infrastructure would become less. Right now in the Bay Area through poor design and aging infrastructure there is push back on bike lanes. An example is the Richmond bridge, which has a protect…
There are subsidies in a handful of cities and states in the US (https://ridereview.com/incentives/country/united-states), and there are bills for a federal subsidy with a decent amount of support in the House (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1685) and Senate (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/881).
Also, shoutout to Vienna which has the coolest program I've heard of: businesses get subsidies for cargo e-bikes, and in return they loan them out to citizens for free. So if you've got a bunch of stuff to haul, you can borrow a cargo bike for free and use their incredibly good bike network to move your stuff. English summary: https://smartcity.wien.gv.at/en/approach/smart-city-made-sim....
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#63"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.
walking 10km? in most US cities that is neither viable nor safe anymore
Rural areas too. I made the mistake of walking down to the store when I lived in rural Colorado. A Truck almost turned me into a paste when it blindly took a turn.
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#64We 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).
How inefficient is it that your grocery store is 5 miles away? Everyone should have a grocery store within a 5 minute walk of where they live.
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#65What's soured me on electric scooters and bikes is the complete lack of repair infrastructure. My electric scooter was not cheap and when it broke (out of warranty) my local bike shop wouldn't touch it.
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#66Earlier 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?
I think it starts at .1 at the bottom, but the scan quality makes it difficult to discern the decimal.
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#67Would anyone here like to recommend (or disrecommend) any e-bike models?
Riese & Mueller are great if you can afford them. You pay through the nose, but they're not really built like bicycles. You should be comparing to mopeds (or cars!), not muscle-powered two-wheelers. Do make sure to get the high-speed model, though; there's not a lot of use for the strengthened components if you're limited to regular bicycling speeds.
Does one need a motorcycle helmet when exceeding bicycle speeds?
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#68Yeah, makes sense: way easier to get a bike than a car (price, storage, insurance, etc). And in a society built for cars, personal-power isn't enough to make up the distances between locations that have been created all relatively-sized to a car's mobility (much faster than a human).
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#69We 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).
It also helps if it's not raining, and when there are no slippery surface conditions.
Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes. This is the difference between mobility and access. You can watch a movie by driving to Blockbuster in a SUV and physically picking up an optical disc. Or in an EV. You could bike there. Or get it mailed. If you watch on Netflix you access the commodity without any transportation at all.