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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

#541

Post by rootusrootus »

uneekname wrote: post #425
mattlondon wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? It's like hundreds of thousands more for every "zone" you get closer to the center of London. Surely in your city everyone would just live slap bang in the center if the price difference was less than that if an EV? Wow. In London a basic 3 or 4 bed house on the outskirts will be perhaps £700-1,000,000. Same thing half way in will be £1.5-2mil, anything within a short walk or bike ride of any central…

Well, alright so the cost of living in central London is astronomical. But as you say, > there is no parking in central London anyway so driving to work is not viable. By "closer to work", I didn't mean you need to buy the house closest to the center of London. I meant you can rent (or buy, if you have the capital) a flat near public transit, or bicycle-friendly infrastructure. Of course these options vary significan…

Have you ever tried to rip up a family and move them to a new house as often as we switch employment?

Definitely put some thought into where you live, but it's always a compromise and for a lot of us it's unavoidable that it'll be 15-20 miles of commute.

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

#542

Post by enqk »

xnx wrote: post #439
enqk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Buses and trains are extremely heavy

per passenger? trains also have less friction

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

#543

Post by SamuelAdams »

at_a_remove wrote: post #446
willio58 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. And while everything you said is super important and true, one piece that really makes me pumped about this movement to ditch cars is more around quality of life. If you have to get in a car and drive to a parking lot somewhere to get groceries, commute to work, go out with friends, get healthcare, etc. You will obviously live a less healthy life both physically but also mentally because of it. Walking…

And for those handi-capable folks, what do we do?

And what happens when it is freezing or storming outside? Not everyone lives in LA.

If you need proof that HN is a bubble, look no further than this thread.

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

#544

Post by rootusrootus »

bigfudge wrote: post #45
rglullis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think it's actually just anglo countries. The UK is batshit about cars as well, and I don't think the Aussies are much better.

For all the chatter on HN, Europeans in general drive quite a lot. It's fascinating to hear people rail against cars here, and then step back out into meatspace. I just chuckle at the contrast between the dreamers on Reddit/HN and folks in the real world.

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

#545

Post by rootusrootus »

camgunz wrote: post #95
hackernewds wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

walking 10km? in most US cities that is neither viable nor safe anymore

Well that's the point I think. In practically all of the US you can't even take a sidewalk where you want to go. It gets even worse if you want things like walk signals or to avoid huge intersections, or even mass transit at all.

"Practically all of the US" includes nowhere I've lived, and I've moved around a fair amount. Some places are worse than others, but sidewalks are very much a thing more often than not.

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

#546

Post by vel0city »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #424
willio58 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If some people need to use cars for mobility or business reasons, that is fine with me. Definitely. For stuff like that, emergency services, delivery, trash collection, etc. larger vehicles on streets are totally fine and I think most would agree. I don't even necessarily think we should ban all cars, but we should definitely stop incentivizing them by heavily subsidizing car infrastructure with city budgets funded…

worth visiting an old city like Rome. I was shocked by how walkable it was. It was maybe the second night we were there, we causally strolled around after dinner and just happenstance managed to walk by all the major attractions. That's no mistake but honestly when you experience it's so magical. To create a tech analogy I remember the days before Google when search when would have 20 buttons and could take regex and…

> I was shocked by how walkable it was.

I don't see why it would be shocking. It was a city for nearly 3,000 years before cars arrived.

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

#547

Post by rootusrootus »

paddy_m wrote: post #181
camgunz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's the point I think. In practically all of the US you can't even take a sidewalk where you want to go. It gets even worse if you want things like walk signals or to avoid huge intersections, or even mass transit at all.

Not only that, our built environment is uninviting to walk in because it's built for cars. When have you ever walked by a parking lot and said "Oh my god, that parking lot was amazing, I want to spend time around it"? Yet we require by law parking lots to be built everywhere in America. We have legally compelled property owners to build something ugly. Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is the busiest shopping d…

> Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Drive around, notice how on the busiest shopping day of the year, most commercial parking lots still aren't full.

Sounds heavenly. But in reality, my wife (who actually likes going out on Black Friday, I don't know why) will be circling the lot waiting for a spot, any spot, even at the outer edge. It's nuts.

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

#548

Post by sevensor »

nradov wrote: post #531
tomcar288 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent almost an entire year e-biking to work 7 miles and back 7 miles. I can tell you, all the issues you mentioned are correct. I think, if we had dedicated bike lanes that were away from the main roads, at least we can address the safety issue. that would go a long way towards getting me back to commuting on an e-bike. One more big issue for bikes is the cost of it. I've commuted almost 1100 miles on my ebike and…

Most bikes come with the cheapest possible tires and inner tubes. If you're going to ride a lot then it's worth buying something more robust, even if they're a bit heavier. Continental Gatorskin tires are pretty good, and you can also get puncture resistant tubes with thicker walls and internal liquid sealant. It also helps to carry a CO2 inflator with a few cartridges. Much faster than a hand pump.

I have thousands and thousands of miles on my bicycle tires. The cheap tires on my commuting bike kept wearing out, and I eventually switched to a high-quality replacement with a high latex content. I haven't had to replace the tires since, and the visible wear is minimal. I cannot recommend good tires strongly enough.

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

#549

Post by david-gpu »

FredPret wrote: post #517
david-gpu wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived in three countries as well, and Toronto is neither the safest or cleanest city where I have been. So much for personal anecdotes, then. You yourself admit that once you bought a car in Toronto "Life became 10x easier" , so which way is it? As for living there without a car, that's all I've ever done, so I'm quite familiar with the pros and cons. As I said earlier, I have no doubt that it would be conveni…

- The point of my anecdote is that Toronto is a wonderful place to live, with and without a car, and you're capable of describing cars in Toronto as a "disaster" you need a sense of proportion. - Life without a car in Toronto is tolerable if you live downtown because it's a big, kind-of-dense city. Buying a car makes it much better. - Cars unlock a huge amount of economic activity - employees and customers can now re…

> Toronto is a wonderful place to live, with and without a car

> Life without a car in Toronto is tolerable

> Buying a car makes it much better / Life became 10x easier [with a car]

> Buy a car. I promise you'll love it

So, according to your experience, life in Toronto without a car is "tolerable" and it becomes "much better" or "10x easier" with a car.

If driving a car makes such a difference, isn't that all the evidence you need to argue that Toronto's car-dependent urban planning is, indeed, a disaster for everybody without a car?

> Cars unlock a huge amount of economic activity - employees and customers can now reach many more businesses, and haul more stuff back and forth, much faster than walking/cycling/bussing

That is only true in a car-dependent city where car traffic is facilitated at the expense of all other modes of transportation. This isn't theory, it is how it works in most of the developed world.

In a city that is designed to facilitate the throughput of people rather than the flow of private motor vehicles, having a car or not doesn't make much of a difference because other alternatives are just as fast and convenient.

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

#550

Post by Reason077 »

willio58 wrote: post #117
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…

Fully agreed. And while everything you said is super important and true, one piece that really makes me pumped about this movement to ditch cars is more around quality of life. If you have to get in a car and drive to a parking lot somewhere to get groceries, commute to work, go out with friends, get healthcare, etc. You will obviously live a less healthy life both physically but also mentally because of it. Walking…

> ”Cars our LOUD. Even electric cars unfortunately”

While it might be true that there isn’t a huge difference at highway speeds, EVs can make a massive difference to noise levels on city streets! When cars are crawling along in city traffic, engine noise dominates.

As electric vehicles have started to become dominant on central London streets, this has been really noticeable. Sometimes I’ll see queues of cars waiting at intersections but notice how remarkably quiet it is - because they’re all EVs or hybrids! Other times, there’ll be one or two old diesel taxis in the mix and it really stands out how noisy they are in comparison.

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