I editorialised the title as the original was clickbait, but the video itself is quite good. Interestingly, e-bikes are claimed to have lower emissions than acoustic bikes, although it likely depends on diet (the author didn’t specifically compare a vegan diet between the two types but did indicate that vegan + electric is the most carbon efficient form).
Diet is a huge component of most people’s footprint. If you start biking 12 hours more a week (how much I would need to if I wanted to switch from my ebike to my acoustic for commuting*), you are going to eat a lot more. If a significant amount of those calories is coming from the standard beef you’d get at a US supermarket, its no surprise you’d be better off using a coal-charged ebike at similar speeds**. So much fossil fuels go into producing that. Tomatoes are worse than chicken apparently though.
*I’m not in good enough to bike at work in under 1.25 hours multiple days in a row and still be in good enough condition to do my job, especially if there are headwinds.
That is just patently false. You will eat slightly more. The majority of everyones calories goes toward keeping your heart beating and existing. It takes an extreme amount of working out to shift that needle and two hours of cycling won’t do that. If you have access to a public gym with the equipment that can track calorie burn go see how much it takes to burn 100 calories. Body builders with extreme workouts can double their calorie intake but that is way more than some extra hours cycling. This is why when I did the napkin math I found the standing desk with relaxing over lunch will burn more calories than sitting and walking vigorously during my lunch.
According to my HR monitor, I typically burn about 750-1000 calories/hr when doing cardio exercise for 1 hour. Like, a 3 hour session, I might burn 2400 calories. My basal metabolism when sitting and standing is about 120 calories/hr.
Even with an electric bike, I sometimes burn like 500 calories/hr. During actual bike rides, its more like 700 calories each way.
Reading through some sites, 0.5kcal/h seems to be average that when biking leisurely on a normal bike.
700cal/h would mean that you could cycle for 300h with 500ml of coca cola.
Dude man. I think your monitor is off. Burning 1000 extra calories a day is killer. Also intense cardio is way more of a workout than commuting cycling which is more on the level of a brisk walk if that. EDITED - I have been thinking about it and you may be. I will tell you that the typical person will not usual do more than an hour of cardio so you likely may do a killer workout and those are people who work out. Riding a bike on a per mile basis will brun less than a leasurely walk but will burn more on a per time basis. My wife with her ski machine thing burns 100 calories in 20 minutes and that would be with excertion way beyond commute cycling. Likely a person using an e-bike compared to sitting in a climate controled electric car will burn more calories additionally than what they burn on an e-bike compared to a non electric bike just do to temperature, sitting more actively and upright, and exposure to the elements.
