Bikes sound like a great idea until you decide to live in the hills/mountains, or a place where it rains/snows often, or you need to buy more than 4 bags of groceries, or you live in a desert, or you are moving furniture.
eBikes really take the sting out of hills.
I live where it snows a lot, winter tires are a must, but so long as bike lanes are properly cleared it’s not really a problem (big IF I know), until it gets to -25C or colder the cold isn’t really a problem (you warm up fast peddling, I normally find myself unzipping my jacket).
My cargo bike is enough for me to take 2 weeks of groceries for 4 people. The largest thing I have transported has been a fridge (which funnily enough couldn’t fit in my EV). the bike is rated for 200Kg, but I would bet it can take more if you don’t mind going a little slower. I have also transported lawn mowers, bar stools and a rocking chair. For anything bigger than that 30bucks on a uhaul is more than worthwhile, although I look forward to electric uhauls.
Yeah, I live in Montreal which gets like 90 inches of snow annually and can get down to the -20s Celsius regularly in the winter. And yet I (and many others) still bike throughout the winter. Turns out having good protected bike infrastructure and plowing it regularly in the winter makes biking perfectly practical even in the middle of a cold, snowy winter.
In fact, two of the best cities for biking in North America are Montreal and Minneapolis, both very cold and snowy in the winter.
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles, and the battery efficiency is very adversely effected by high heat (deserts) and low heat (snow) .
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles,
The comparison is not between regular bikes and e bikes but between e bikes and cars. E bikes win this.
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
A 3000€ gaming machine will be better in any task than a 500€ office pc. But as long as the office pc is sufficient, why spend the extra money?
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you’d prefer to use a purely pedel bike go right ahead, but I find having a boost for heavy loads and hills makes biking preferable in situations it otherwise wouldn’t be. My battery is a 0.8kwh battery, which is more or less 15 iPhone batteries strapped together. My car is a 65kwh battery, literally 100x bigger for only 10x the range. While hard to find info, my understanding is my car is one of the more efficient ones out there too.
battery efficiency
Never comes into play, my bike has a 40km range with no load and no pedaling so typically even in winter the battery is far bigger than most trips I would take. There is also a longer range option (I think 100km) and you can quick swap the batteries if you really wanted to marathon. I do take the battery inside in winter as starting it warm does help it alot. I probably would be more hesitant to take heavy things in particular if I didn’t have the battery.
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
Well no, if you look at my comment I do own a car (bolt euv). I literally couldnt take the fridge in the car, i had to go home and grab my bike which could carry it. I use my bike because my city has good infrastructure that makes it quicker than driving. No need to hunt for parking, and the exercise is nice. Being able to use it while lightly intoxicated is also a plus.
Lifecycle emissions of ebiking can be a couple times lower unless you eat very green. Its been regularly over 100F here and I wish it was a desert so I didn’t have to also deal with humidity: I’ve ridden in thunderstorms and think its nicer than riding the middle of the sunny summer days. Either way, still better than driving in traffic. For moving large things, a car is not any better. And driving around a moving van every day would be a huge waste when you can just use them when you need them and drive a much better vehicle (a bike) when you don’t.
Please tell me more about how easy it is to move furniture with a VW Polo!
Right lol, you either use a truck or rent a uhaul for that kind of business.
Exactly. And in a hilly/mountainous area, you get a bike with multiple gears (21 gear bikes are not a rarity even in the north german plains where I live) or with electric motor support. If you need to get a lot of groceries you either do groceries more often or get a cargo bike. For bad weather there’s clothing.
Nobody says a bike is perfect for everyone. But the vast majority of people live in urban environments and don’t need to haul tons of cargo daily. Bikes are a piece of the puzzle and if only those people had a car who actually need one often it could be a huge piece.
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You picked a subcompact car, rather than a vehicle that any person with more than one braincell would pick for moving furniture, such as a truck.
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You 100% will have a better time doing everything else I said in even a subcompact like the Polo than a bicycle.
One thing that would go a long way in helping with that would be if we improved the quality of urban schools / parks to the point where fewer people felt like they had to move to the suburbs to start families.
Yes, that would help, but that would require major reworking of large areas. Additionally, having a large density of population all living on top of each other presents its own unique problems.
Really, its a situation where different people and places need different solutions. Some can use public transport and bicycles, and some cannot. And unless the Earths population becomes so large that every square inch of the planet is as dense as a place like Kowloon, cars will continue to fill a use that bicycles and public transport can never fill.
And unless the Earths population becomes so large that every square inch of the planet is as dense as a place like Kowloon, cars will continue to fill a use that bicycles and public transport can never fill.
Cars didn’t exist until 200 years ago and didn’t gain the depandance they have now until 60ish year ago. Cars will cease to exist sometime in the future.
We’re living in a small bubble in history where cars exist, the question is if we want to gradually reduce dependancy on cars now, or wait for the forceful bandage removal.
but that would require major reworking of large areas.
Yes, that’s precisely what will be required. There’s no getting through this without implementing massive changes to our way of life. Everyone wants there to be some kind of easy get-out-of-jail-free card, but that’s not how it’s going to be.
Most of the people spouting the “everyone should ride a bike” stuff don’t have to feed a family of 4+ people.
I keep getting really confused reading comments like this, then remembering “Ah, yeah, probably an American who doesn’t have a small supermarket with all the everyday stuff literally next door”
Sorry that I live in a state with a size as big as your county, and a city with a population as large as a lot of countries.
In order to get everything that close you’d have to stack people on top of each other in slums like the kowloon.
I would much rather drive a mile to the store than to live in a little box stacked on top of other people.
But I guess we should just tear down hundreds of cities like mine and start all over to make them bike friendly. 🤣
How many people live in a desert? How many people live in the hills/mountains? Most people don’t.
Nearly every person in South California, which is an incredibly high density of population? The entire bottom half of California is practically a desert, literally home to one of the hottest deserts in the entire planet the Mojave which contains the appropriately named Death Valley.
How about the people that live in parts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, much of southern Texas, and New Mexico? And thats just in the United States. What about people in other continents like Africa and Asia? Large areas of those continents contain entire countries whose borders never leave desert or hills and mountains. Nearly the entire Middle East and top half of Africa is desert. A large part of Australia is desert, its like more than 50% of the continent. 1/5 of the entire land area of Earth is a desert.
Yeah fuck them. If they dont do what I do then then can go to hell am i right. Pls like and subscribe, 5 likes and ill turn into the hulk and rip my weiner off
“Bikes don’t work for some people, therefore why bother? Let’s all just drive.”
“Most people”, where? Because most people in, let’s say, Norway, live in areas with hills and mountains. The US isn’t the whole world you know.
You have no idea how people in Europe live. I live in Germany. Norway has 5 urban people for every rural living person: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/urban-population
