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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

#291

Post by epistasis »

seryoiupfurds wrote: post #247
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that continues to happen is urban residents with limited understanding of the world outside their bubble think a future without cars is anything but a laughably naive fantasy driven by an entirely imaginary utopian ideal.

Getting around without a car is perfectly enjoyable if you live in the right neighborhood in the city. The war on cars is mostly about building more neighborhoods like that.

Or even legalizing a neighborhood like that.

The reason we dont have walkable neighborhoods is that we outlaw them nearly everywhere. Trying to build one requires not only planning and getting the money but changing the law where you try to build it.

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

#292

Post by concordDance »

gemstones wrote: post #233
concordDance wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only problem that self-driving cars will ever solve is where to put VC money in a zero interest rate world. We've had freight trains and mass transit for centuries. They solve stress from a 30 minute daily commute. Public transport is never door to door and there are always changeovers and cancellations, while self driving cars on demand can be door to door and is far less dependant on whether there's a labour…

In my walkable neighborhood you know how this problem is solved? The same way it was solved for centuries, high foot traffic incentivized a small grocer to pop up within walking distance. People in the neighborhood generally take jobs in the neighborhood, because there is high foot traffic, so there are jobs. Even doctors and nurses can get in on that, because it’s dense enough that a hospital is easy walking or biki…

Let's say I work in reinsurance. How many reinsurance companies do you think are within walking distance?

It's an odd fact of life that as countries get more developed the people in them more heavily specialise. This is one of the reasons cities have much higher wealth production per capita than towns.

If everyone is very unspecialized (e.g. "general practitioner" rather than "expert in non-hodgkins limphomas") then walking and biking could work okay, there should be a couple of jobs in range (having alternative employment options is vital for healthy employee-employer relations). But that's just not how an advanced global economy works.

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

#293

Post by david-gpu »

frognumber wrote: post #78

Death and pain. That's what e-bikes and mopeds bring to my city. The infrastructures is designed for pedestrians, cars, and mass transit. Bicycles are being retrofitted. It's completely NOT designed for dozens of oddball vehicles which are coming up. The people riding them aren't as competent as cyclists (which isn't a very high bar) and cause unsafe situations all the time. That's my city. Yours might be different.…

> Death and pain. That's what e-bikes and mopeds bring to my city.

Could you kindly share how many people have died at the hands of these dangerous e-bikes and mopeds? And how many have died due to crashes with cars?

In my city cars drivers kill and injure people disproportionately, according to the official stats that are published every year [0].

[0] https://www.york.ca/media/76976/download

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

#294

Post by concordDance »

epistasis wrote: post #284
concordDance wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big factor is that the urban population is much larger and tends to vote for things that make sense in their context, but any laws would also apply outside it. So those in the countryside might be badly effected by a car ban imposed by urbanites. It's a similar effect to the way policies tend to get made that are good for the middle class but bad for the poor.

This is exactly reversed, people in cities bend over backwards to adapt laws to work for people in rural areas, fund massive infrastructure efforts for rural areas, etc. Why do we have such good and extensive roads in rural areas with such tiny tax bases? Because cities pay for it. Telephone services, electricity, broadband... all these are hugely expensive and inefficient in rural areas and need to be funded by the…

I take it you're American? (Pretty much no one else days "we" to include anyone they're talking to)

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

#295

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

Glide wrote: post #208
dv_dt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to reduce carbon emissions I think you would meet with widespread resistance. If you promote an idea of a higher quality life that is possible w/o cars and explore that - in the end I think you'd end up removing many more cars than the first approach.

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.

Riding a bike is not fun if you're doing it to commute - having to do it in all weathers, in traffic that feels unsafe, even if you don't feel like it and got poor sleep etc. It's really fundamentally not the same.

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

#296

Post by dv_dt »

houseatrielah wrote: post #229
dv_dt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to reduce carbon emissions I think you would meet with widespread resistance. If you promote an idea of a higher quality life that is possible w/o cars and explore that - in the end I think you'd end up removing many more cars than the first approach.

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…

Sure, but I'm not sure that's at the root either. Suburbs exist in part due to subsidy decisions on automotive infrastructure. And they're in a stress point in the return-to-office work remote debate now, because even with subsidies on highway infrastructure the commutes to get back to city centers are a major time waste. Offsetting 2-3 hours of family life with commute time is a major quality of life negative.

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

#297

Post by bluGill »

dublinben wrote: post #64
baryphonic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I grew up we went to a grocery store 5 miles away, even though the closest was only 2 blocks. Once in a while we walked to the close store, but it was so much more expensive than the farther away one that we just about paid for the entire cost of the car just on the grocery savings.

I can't control the prices of the local store, and so it is efficient to have the ability to choose other stores and thus force them to compete on price.

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

#298

Post by rootusrootus »

thelastgallon wrote: post #2

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…

> (5) Mass transit (can be public/private) transportation: Electric trains

This depends quite a lot on ridership. E.g. a typical MAX train in Portland, filled at perhaps 10% capacity aside from a few narrow time periods in the morning and evening, loses out on efficiency to a Honda Civic with four people. Trains are heavy even when they are empty.

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

#299

Post by Moldoteck »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #123
hurryer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care if they don't wear helmets?

Because if they suffer a serious injury they are going to drain hospital resources from people who did not cause their own disease/injury, possibly become a permanent disabled person on the public dole, and in general raise the cost of health care.

Imo it's the opposite))) a helmet can protect from fatal injuries, meaning hospital does not need to treat the rest if the person dies. Having a helmet means less chances to die bc of head injury but more chances hospital will treat your broken bones. Anyway, helmet helps only for light accidents, with most car accidents ppl will die regardless, there are even some stats that with car accidents a helmet somehow gives green light to autodrivers to drive more aggressively

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

#300

Post by Angostura »

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…

> EVs will not get there. Banning gas/diesel cars gets there.

So we can have EVs as long as we ban petrol/diesel cars?

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