cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/565171
Electric bikes make it possible to easily travel around town for less than a penny per day — literally.
I was wondering how they were going to suggest unassisted bikes were less efficient, but he just pretended those don’t exist I think. Though I may have missed something as the I lost interest while he explained to me what an ebike was and waffled on some more, and ended up skimming.
I know some people have asserted leg power is less energy efficient than an ebike, and frankly I don’t believe it, but that’s a whole other discussion. But of course they’re less resource-intensive than cars, does anyone suggest otherwise?
The more I look at the article the more it’s kind of annoying me. He did just over 1k miles per year? That would be a commute of under 2 miles, for instance, or about 10 minutes. As apparently a piece promoting ebikes I think it’s missing the mark and implies they’re useful for people who have almost no travel needs and could easily be walking.
Oh dear, I’ve been negative. Sorry if this rubs anyone the wrong way. But this article just strikes me as out of touch and up itself and not helpful for getting people on bikes and ebikes.
it’s probably hard to calculate the difference in energy used between battery and manual since people have such different diets. edit: to clarify I mean energy it takes to charge a battery vs grow and ship food.
Very true, but I had a bunch of other areas of skepticism too when I saw that asserted. It assumed everything you needed for riding was extra energy requirement, ignoring the fact your metabolism burns a whole lot just sitting still, and doing X calories of exercise work doesn’t mean you need kX extra food calories (k being whatever multiplier for our body’s metabolic efficiency rate).
The data I saw also only considered the electricity used, ignoring the cost of manufacture, decommissioning and disposal.
It also ignored that most of us need to find ways to exercise in our lives, and if we avoid it for transportation we need to find it elsewhere - they certainly don’t include the energy cost of working out at a gym or going for a run ;).
It’s just my estimation, not hard reasoned data, but I just can’t believe that considering the totality of the system, ebikes have lower energy use than an unassisted bike. But ebikes are still way better than any personal motor vehicle option.
