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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

#431

Post by jwr »

I ride my E-bike every day, to office and back, and to run various errands (in a European city with some, but not enough biking infrastructure). After several months of doing this, sitting in the car trapped in traffic feels almost painful.

The bike gives me real freedom: I can stop pretty much anytime I want, I can park close to any destination without searching for a parking spot. Compared to this, being stuck in traffic in a car feels like being in jail. You can't stop, you can't move, you can't park, you have to follow the traffic.

Some common misconceptions:

1. An E-bike does not always replace a car, it replaces some/most of car trips and a second car in our case.

2. An E-bike is not for "the lazy people". Pedal assist (which is how this should be one, not like I've seen on some US bikes where you press a button and the bike goes brrrr) means that it's like normal biking, except with a tailwind. You can bike longer distances, you don't arrive sweaty, you can carry lots of cargo.

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

#432

Post by bluGill »

shortcake27 wrote: post #372
bluGill wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost to rent a car for a week is getting close to the cost of just owning a car. (very much it depends, if you only own new cars renting is cheaper, but most people own older cars which are much cheaper). Plus when you rent they worry about little scratches and such which limits what you can do on vacation.

I’m not sure what math you’re on, usually the metric is 1-2 months to match ownership. I recently hired a small car for £20 a day. Not a special deal, that’s just the price. A week would make that £140. An old car would cost almost twice that in taxes. Then you have maintenance, insurance, MOT, and devaluation.

If you can use a small car. I have a family, so I need a larger car (minivan, but typically they give me a large SUV). $100/day. A used minivan amortized over years is pretty cheap.

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

#433

Post by Arelius »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #331
camgunz wrote: post #83

I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…

If you live in a suburban house, with a yard, and drive a car, its likely poster is part of the problem. Its easy to externalize blame and point fingers to something/someone else, when the reality is that people need to look inward. The uncomfortable truth is these macro policy desires, are very much a case of "Do as I say, not as I do" I speak this as someone that does not own a car, or have a yard, and drive a mope…

Isn't it a bit audacious to assume the parent lives in a suburban home with a yard and drives a car? Many people don't. And it'd often a choice of values and principles. Of which the parent shared theirs.

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

#434

Post by mdgrech23 »

anon291 wrote: post #398
houseatrielah wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Notable exception being Tokyo Ironically, if you look NYC in the 1910s, kids used to play baseball in the street because it wasn't yet overrun by cars, suddenly not en…

People want suburbia because crime is often lower. Why won't we accept this reality. I don't understand why so called progressives don't just face this issue head on. Increasing incarceration rates makes cities safer. It's true that some small number of people will be jailed. It's also true that more people would move to cities. And before someone throws out some nonsense politics. I live in the inner city (less than…

I'm in an east coast city. I've visited big west coast cities numerous times. I feel our problems are very different. You have policies that support the homeless and people with drug addictions so people facing those challenges flock to cities like yours from all over the country. The nations problems are then dumped on places like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. It's not fair and it's not right. We need better federal safety nets to prevent people from getting into these positions to begin with and if they do safety nets that allow them to stay in their hometown.

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

#435

Post by webdood90 »

jfim wrote: post #275
Glide wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a positive vision of where society can go rather than having to sacrifice and buckle down. Do people not remember riding bikes as kids? Riding a bike is _still_ fun. It never stopped being fun. Now you can do that and get to work.

It was fun until I got hit by a car when biking back from work. Now I just drive to work due to the risk of injury from distracted drivers and getting doored in bike lanes. It's really unfortunate because I'd rather bike, but the infrastructure in the US even in relatively bike friendly cities here is dangerous.

if you're not already, you should advocate for the infrastructure in your city. these things do not happen on their own, we must push for the future we desire.

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

#436

Post by JAlexoid »

slothtrop wrote: post #368
JAlexoid wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburban sprawl is both ecologically and financially unsustainable, with city dwellers subsidizing suburban living.

Trivially resolved through zoning reform. Rhetoric surrounding "banning cars" will not deter sprawl or achieve anything of note, it will just be considered fringe fanaticism. > unsustainable The global population growth rate is going to stall, and by extension, cities will cease to grow. Sustainability is a moot point.

> Rhetoric surrounding "banning cars"

Which I never engaged in. Banning cars is nonsense and is counter productive.

> The global population growth rate is going to stall

If we give every person a car to drive every day, today - that's enough to make it unsustainable. That's the whole point. We don't even have to have any growth in population.

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

#437

Post by mdgrech23 »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #345
houseatrielah wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the root cause is further up the chain of casuality. People need cars because they live in the suburbs, they live in the suburbs because they have children, they want to raise children in more square footage than the urban housing stock offers. Notable exception being Tokyo Ironically, if you look NYC in the 1910s, kids used to play baseball in the street because it wasn't yet overrun by cars, suddenly not en…

"Notable exception being Tokyo" The fact that the japanese in general have no children at all makes this notable exception not be one at all. Humans are not meant to live on top of one another. To me the correlation between fertility and urbanization is a clear sign that living on the burbs is a plus for quality of life and the perpetuation of the human race. Cars are just a necessary tool for being a human in 2023.

Living in sky scrapers sucks and is not enjoyable. Same with living in suburbia. The sweet spot is densely packed urban areas that are built on the human scale.

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

#438

Post by Maximus9000 »

bronson wrote: post #120
nravic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not OP but I have essentially the same bike (Packa) with kid bars on the back. I throw a big Home Depot plastic storage crate into the bars, then 4 bags of groceries go into the crate. 6+ if you stack and bungee them. Plus another bag in the front basket. If the kids want to go to the store then the crate goes on the bike trailer.

> big Home Depot plastic storage crate into the bars

Nice! That's such a simple solution. Thanks for the tip.

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

#439

Post by xnx »

enqk wrote: post #97
camgunz wrote: post #83

I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…

This has to include some thoughts on how to get vehicles to drastically lower their weights...

Buses and trains are extremely heavy

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

#440

Post by FredPret »

david-gpu wrote: post #409
FredPret wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. Also, air pollution from cars & child pedestrian deaths has never been lower.

What false dichotomy? Cars, even EVs, are the main cause of small particulates in the air of our cities. Cars are the #1 cause of death of children, followed by drowning. Pedestrian deaths are actually on the rise for the past ten years or so in the US and Canada due to the increasing popularity of large SUVs and pickup trucks, which have poor visibility and blunt hoods. It's a disaster for those of us outside the ca…

If you think cars are a disaster, and that Toronto is somehow more car-centric than "most of the developed world", I think you should hop on the next bus to Pearson and go see some of the developed and undeveloped world.

I've lived on three continents, and Toronto is the safest, cleanest city I've ever been in. You could totally make living there without a car work (if not comfortably). There are like 2-3 cities on the entire continent where that is true. In Europe, there are more walkable cities, but you pay heavily for that directly and indirectly. Cars are a big economic boost.

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