TL;DR: Due to being smaller and lighter, electric bikes and mopeds require significantly less energy to move themselves around than an electric car. The article starts with a headline about “oil demand” but then spends much of the rest of its length harping on consumer monetary costs instead. I could have said that in a lot fewer words. Actually, I just did.
Also, in SE Asia and other places where the primary mode of transport is a small motorbike, as it happens these small motorbikes actually pollute a lot for their displacement due to having basic uncomplicated engines, often not running very well, and lousy or absent emissions controls. ICE vehicles are also at their worst fuel consumption/distance traveled ratio when they’re idling or crawling around urban areas at low speed. Replacing these with electric versions just makes sense.
Full disclosure: I own a gas guzzling truck, a fuel efficient car, seven motorcycles, and an electric bicycle. I use different tools for different jobs, as appropriate. If you’re looking for a magic bullet, you will probably need it in a few different calibers.
I need to kill an elephant. What should I drive?
A Sherman?
If you’re looking for a magic bullet, you will probably need it in a few different calibers.
That’s a clever way to put it and I like it
If you’re looking for a magic bullet, you will probably need it in a few different calibers.
This is an excellent phrase and I’m going to have to start using it
This article is vastly understating the potential benefits of e-bikes. Like-for-like replacements for car trips are only the tip of the iceberg; the real benefit of e-bikes is that the more people that use them, the less car parking we need. That means we can put back all those buildings we destroyed when we razed our cities for the car.
Fuck more buildings…make parking lots into parks and green spaces
Why not both? More housing and more parks. Win win.
that’s kind of assumed to happen if you packed people into tighter and tighter densities
My only problem with ebikes is there’s no chance in hell I’m consistently driving on the road with cars.
With how convenient these are, I hope there’s more push to add protected bike lanes in road heavy places to increase adoption.
Get an electric scooter, Vespa size. It’s super convenient.
To clarify - I’m not going on the road in anything but a car
Protected lanes or paths only for me on any form of bike/scooter
Chicken :-)
Looks like your problem is not with ebikes, but your city’s infrastructure.
It is, and we have some of the best in the country at that. It’s just takes a long time to make a place meant for cars into meant for bikes
We aren’t no Netherlands.
Goddamn I love my ebike. It’s still very much a bike, but it changes the equation. I can ride a nice big heavy comfortable cruising frame, pull my kid in a trailer bike, get up steep hills that would otherwise stop me, and go 4x as far before I’m tired. It is just a total game changer. I’ve rediscovered the joy of riding my bike like I haven’t known it since college. I’m older and creakier than ever but my bike enjoyment hasn’t diminished - it has increased.
Same! I live on the top of a big hill, so leaving my house on a bike was never the issue, but I always dreaded the ride home. Now I own an ebike and I regularly use it to go into town for groceries. In fact, I just added a second basket so I can buy three full bags of groceries in one trip. I find myself actually looking forward to errands now.
Whaaaaat? You mean electric last-mile micromobility cuts down on emissions in a significant way, just like people had been saying for years? Who would have thought?
Car-brain finds small electric vehicles are more efficient, in shocking study.
When I was younger and more invincible around 2005, I bought one of these crappy Ebay engine kits for a bicycle. One thing I noticed is that it wasn’t really any slower from home to work than a car, because I could go around traffic. An E-bike would have been great. A lot of them get around on 500 watt or 750 watt motors, which is considerably smaller than an electric car’s motor.
I’d have one now, but it’s hard to ride one when I have to carry a kid with me most places.
I’d have one now, but it’s hard to ride one when I have to carry a kid with me most places.
I got an e-bike because I needed to carry a kid (actually, two) around with me. FYI, cargo bikes are a thing:
There is no way the kids sitting on the back of the bike in that picture are safe…
It will never not be funny to me how scared some people are of any transportation that’s not a car.
Nah this is completely right though. Soon as she stops those two kids are gonna bonk heads together, the smaller one needs a bike seat at the very least, and the toddler probably needs one as well. You could still do that with a bike like this, so it doesn’t discount the point entirely, but the image itself is a pretty stupidly conceived piece of work.
It’s fun how the preview image for the article has two kids being carried around. But I can understand if you don’t see that as safe in your area, etc.
I love my Bafang too but be careful of regulation depending on your country, an e-bike is 250W so of you put a more powerful motor you get in the moped category with different rules (helmet, back mirror, insurance…)
First and foremost, people can afford them.
Second, they are more fun and you get to avoid all the traffic.
Third, cheap to run, no need to pay insurance, taxes, parking.
Fourth, anyone can ride it even children, no drivers license needed.
And so on…
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Ebikes need secure destination parking or they lose usefulness
Also safety. In my area the bike lanes are just paint and some streets don’t have sidewalks.
I know drivers are idiots but in my area bikes are supposed to ride on the streets. Could get a ticket for being in the sidewalk.
Same where I live, too. But I ride on the sidewalk anyway. No one has ever said anything about it in decades and I’d rather not get killed.
i just dont understand how usa and europe still has this super high bike thievery
Great income disparity, and the bikes are worth thousands, so valuable targets.
Is this some universe where people forgot bikes exist? How are electric vehicles better than riding a bike?
They are much better for the shareholders.
For people with disabilities and chronic injuries, yes they are better and provides accessibility. Don’t forget that people with disabilities exist in this universe too.
Less effort? I don’t know where environmentalists got the idea that the average guy is a cross fit three time gold medalist, most people want effortless traversal
This is the problem with bikes. When the car dominated it lead to bikes being a sport thing only. My Grandfather rode a bicycle everywhere. To the shops, to his mates, to the pub, definitely to work (he said the gates opened at 5pm and all the bikes rolled out into the road). He also smoked like a fucking chimney. Everyone did back then. So no, the problem is not environmentalists having unreasonable expectations on the human body, its modern people having become lazy and weak - even to the point where they wont investigate how people used to get by.
You’d be surprised how easy biking is. Plus the more you do it the easier it gets.
easier to steal too, which why prefer folded bike so I can take it to my office instead of parking it outside for easy theft
I would love to have a Brompton or something like that for the same reason. Or easier to take it to other cities to ride.
It also makes you less fat, and smarter. Yes, exercise actually makes you smarter. Maybe we should push people towards exercising, and let them discover bikes by themselves?
I’m a cyclist myself and a few members of my family went out and bought ebikes before they would even go on casual kid friendly rides with me on their traditional bikes. While I appreciate the ebike making people more confident biking I feel like the people I know with ebikes could have literally just used a traditional bike and in a month they wouldn’t find it hard.
People with disabilities would benefit. We get it. You don’t approve of them having something that could possibly benefit them.
I didn’t mention people with disabilities. I’m very pro people with disabilities buying and using ebikes. What I am attempting to get across is that a lot of people would do great with trying to cycle before dropping big money on an ebike.
Right so everyone with chronic injuries are just too stupid to work it out! Of course. So simple! /s
Or that people with disabilities exist and probably benefit from e-bikes too.
Cyclists have been telling the media and the public this for 50 years (we used to have electric milkfloats here in the UK in the 1960s to 1990s). And they were demonised and gaslit for it.
Proponents have been fought tooth and nail since electric vehicles were invented, and it was the public who was gaslighted- not they. Why try to change the minds of those who know they are right, when you can just change the minds of people not to listen to them…
“You can fool some people all of the time, and all people some of the time, but you can not fool all people all of the time.”
No matter how you feel about them, when your mate shows you his new electric car you still greet him with a request for a pint of semi skimmed.
these are feasible in cities that you wouldn’t want to drive a car in anyways. probably not so good for commuting around Boise Idaho
Boise is a college down that is VERY bike friendly. Nearly 200miles of bike lanes and trails.
I’ve never actually been there I don’t know anything about it
Love to see this!
On a related note: Feel free to stop by !micromobility@lemmy.world
If you’re not that wealthy you might be able to afford a car but not want to buy a car and an expensive e-bike. A car is useful for short distance trips in bad weather, longer trips that might not be the majority of your travelling, and transporting stuff that won’t fit on a moped (or an e-bike unless you get a trailer… or bigger stuff than that.) In that case you’re going to buy the one tool that covers your needs.
On the other hand, a car has far greater maintenance costs. The car has license, insurance, maintenance, gas, parking, etc., whereas an ebike is basically free in comparison. Electricity to power an ebike is pennies, and maintainance is a few basic tools and a new tire or inner tube on occasion.
With all the money saved, you can just rent a car for the handful of days the ebike genuinely is not sufficient.
Yeah, which is why it’s the reasonably wealthy people who have cars and not bikes. But that includes almost everyone in developed countries.
E-bikes are kind of a red herring here anyway; there’s little practical use-case for them that isn’t already covered by unpowered bicycles unless you live somewhere very hilly. (Even in moderately hilly places you get used to hills quite quickly). It’s not unreasonable to do a shopping run on a bike as long as the shop isn’t far away… But if it is, an e-bike won’t help you get there in a reasonable length of time.
E-bikes are kind of a red herring here anyway; there’s little practical use-case for them that isn’t already covered by unpowered bicycles unless you live somewhere very hilly. (Even in moderately hilly places you get used to hills quite quickly).
I got a cargo e-bike specifically because I got tired of hauling two kids up hills in a trailer pulled by my regular bike.
Not sure what electric cars has to do with this topic. But I guess someone wanted to start a fight between car people and non car people going by the extreme cross posting.