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Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

More interestingly is that the EV does not help solve congestion. They take up the same space as an ICEV.

Raleigh now sell more electric bikes than normal bikes. That's where the real 'revolution' is occurring.

If you live in a city and your commute is in the 0-5miles range, they are simply the fastest way of getting to work during rush hour. You might not like the idea of a hot sweaty cycle ride to work. Neither did I.

Seriously pop to your local bike shop that sells these things and try one. In my case, I've stopped using buses and taxis, sold one car, and gone down to a one car family. It's saving me a fortune.

Would definitely recommend the mid-drive over hub-drive eBikes. They produce more torque. If you live in a hilly area, try and get a bike with at least 60nm of torque. Some top out at 90nm. Just means you can cycle up those 1 in 2 hills one handed.

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> You might not like the idea of a hot sweaty cycle ride to work.

You don't have to exert yourself until you start sweating. Cycling at around 10 mph is equivalent to walking at a brisk pace (3.5-4 mph) [1]. On really hot days you'll be less sweaty cycling because of the breeze (except if you're wearing a backpack). If you live in a really hilly area, you might break a sweat on the uphills.

[1] http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicine/sportsme...

They might be comparing cycling in a hot humid place with driving inside an air-conditioned car. In that case, you are going to sweat more outside than inside.

In that case, an E-bike is little help.

Everybody is different, some people sweat a lot more than I do, for sure.

I agree with this. I live in a very hot place (summer highs typically around 100F), and I don't sweat on my morning bike commute unless I want to. On the way home, it can't be helped, but at that point I'm going home and it doesn't matter.

"...except if you're wearing a backpack..."

Tangential, but as a long-distance touring cyclist, it always saddens me to see riders with large backpacks, especially in hot weather. I know that a rack and a pannier did not come standard with the bike, but those riders would have a much better experience if they used panniers!

It allows more airflow, but more importantly, it takes the weight off your body and puts it on the bike.

The numbers in that study make absolutely no sense as anyone who has exercised will tell you.

Bicycling at 12-13mph same level of energy expenditure as push-ups? Nope.

Running at 9 min/mile more exertion than push-ups? Nope.

> The numbers in that study make absolutely no sense as anyone who has exercised will tell you.

I've exercised, they make sense to me.

> Bicycling at 12-13mph same level of energy expenditure as push-ups? Nope. > Running at 9 min/mile more exertion than push-ups? Nope.

I agree that to me bicycling at 12-13mph or running at 9 min/mile sounds easier than push-ups. But that is because push-ups exercise a much smaller muscle group, that is much easier exhausted (and that is much less trained in my case). I can run at 9 min/mile for hours, but will exhaust my chest muscles before 50 push-ups. That doesn't mean that energy wise one is harder than the other. My heart rate during push-ups or pull-ups doesn't surpass 140 bpm, which is about the same as when running 9 min/mile.

If you look at the physics: your center of gravity moves about 20cm up and down during a push-up (in 1 second). During running your center of gravity moves up and down 10 cm twice-thrice a second.

Indeed, EVs don't solve congestion. But they solve a lot of problems associated with congestion, as in toxic exhausts and noise. Self-driving electrical vehicles could greatly reduce congestion, as the throughput of roads could be improved (less distance between cars, optimal driving without human errors).

For sure we should strongly look into alternative approaches which would reduce or eliminate congestion, but until they are deployed, people are going to be dependent on cars - we should make those cars as environmental friendly as possible.

Are the cars made to be the same size as the gasoline cars more environmental friendly at all, once we consider all the environmental effects of producing them, providing the energy, and finally handling the waste at the end? Has anybody performed a whole honest evaluation?

> producing them, providing the energy, and finally handling the waste at the end

All of those produce environmental effects that for EVs are now:

    - local instead of spread out
    - largely decoupled from the vehicle

This is a huge architectural change because we're factoring environmental effects out of the vehicle, which allows for accelerated improvements without changing the car itself as well as economies of scale resulting in better environmental efficiency. Switch from coal to nuke and all currently running EVs stop emitting a lot of CO2 at once. Switch to wind+solar and they're suddenly all nuke-waste-free too. The same car could change to more recyclable battery tech (swappable batteries, battery rental...) over the course of its life and become progressively cleaner. So even if it provides an increase right now (which it doesn't, plus we're just living on a huge carbon credit card anyway) it certainly won't on the medium to long term.

Electric vehicles has to be the best example of why you should keep your objects loosely coupled :)

Yes - Elon Musk has quoted quite a few times that even if all electricity is generated via Coal then a Tesla still produces less CO2 than a Prius.

Plus things are improving all the time with electric. That's one of the wonderful things - decoupling of energy usage from generation. You can switch the coal to solar, you can't just switch the diesel for something else that doesn't pollute.

Plus with the Gigafactory they can start doing very efficient battery recycling because they built the batteries (there was a quote somewhere in the speeches given at the Gigafactory opening)

Obviously Tesla is biased, this Green Car Report article [0] (probably still biased, but seems pretty acurate) reckons on 292 g/mi of CO2 for a Tesla:

> We've arrived at a number for the real-world effective CO2 emissions of a Model S of 292 g/mi. Admittedly, that's lot higher than Tesla claims on its website.

> But worse than a Grand Cherokee? Hardly.

> The V-6 Grand Cherokee's official EPA CO2 number is 479 g/mi when fitted with the smallest engine offered, a 3.6-liter V-6. The more powerful V-8 model logs in at a whopping 592 g/mi.

You then have a separate wired article raising most of the questions you're asking [1]

As far as I see it though, all of the aspects of electric cars can be improved from mining of the minerals to recycling - but you can't recycle oil and there's very few improvements that you can make.

[0]: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084440_does-the-tesla-m...

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not...

How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. That wasn't honest at all.

I also can't take Musk's claims for even being close to honest.

The environmental effects of producing such small devices as cellphones is known to be significant. With the cars it's completely new orders of magnitude, which can result in non-linear responses, even if we know the good estimates for the smaller batteries. Do we?

Something probably produces a similar amount of CO2 indirectly if the same mass is produced/moved. The only benefit of electric is the 80% efficiency of the motor. Wind and solar is not producing more energy than it requires to be built. If you sum up all the energy required to build and power a tesla, from the fuel of the mining equipment for lithium, aluminium and steel etc, to the person driving the drills cats food, everything is net negative. The only energy added to the planet is sun rays, the only way this energy is stored is through photosynthesis, we have consumed millions of years of sunshine in 200 years. At the current rate we only have 50 years of fission material left. The only viable solution is to lower your standard of living willingly, before you are forced to. In this case that means buying a bike (non-electric if you live in the city) and working from home. Both of these are actually improvements of standards, but you could also live smaller and eat less.

Not sure if you mean the CO2 claim or the battery recycling claim.

CO2 claim is open to argument I guess, but the battery recycling is pretty certain. They will definitely have battery recycling at the Gigafactory and it makes perfect sense to be able to recycle their own batteries better. They've got all the schematics of how they were built and so can more easily pull them apart.

>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated.

Very easily. Batteries are very simple and have about a dozen input materials, usually from single sources. They are some of the most easily analyzed products in the world. There's a steel jacket with a plastic gasket, a cathode material (in Teslas this comprises lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminum), an electrolyte mixture (common, safe liquids like ethylene carbonate or dimethyl carbonate), a separator (one of many common plastics), and an anode mixture (around 55%/45% natural and synthetic graphite, possibly with a few percent silicon). Every one of those materials is extremely common, readily available, and highly recycled or recyclable. Almost all steel and aluminum is recycled, and plastic can easily be recycled. The electrolytes are just small carbonates, used in a ton of industries. Nickel is the biggest threat by far- per pound cobalt is slightly worse, but there is 5.3x[1] as much nickel in a battery.

If we switched to 100% electric cars using Tesla sized batteries, they still wouldn't use as much nickel as the stainless steel industry does. There is no comparing the byproduct during manufacture. Lithium battery production is just great.

For recycling the worry is solely that the nickel and cobalt will leech from broken batteries into the water supply. This doesn't happen with stainless steel because well, it's stainless. Luckily nickel and cobalt are also the most valuable part of the battery, and are quite valuable to recover through shredding and incineration. The scrap value of nickel alone in the battery is more than the scrap value of steel in the car, so recycling is virtually guaranteed.

>I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown.

Are you sure you have your facts right? A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. It continues working long after and can even degrade slower. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more, for well kept batteries- recycling wouldn't even be an issue in that case. At that price buying used batteries would be almost as cheap as buying gasoline for generators.

[1]: http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Shee...

> A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more

The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects.

Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced.

And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries?

Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl...

My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

>The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase.

On the one hand there is something to your intuition: 50% is a near-maximum price that basically assumes people will be buying batteries for the grid/home. This could be for solar, or people could want stationary batteries at home to keep a quick top-up charge for their car. Alternately companies could buy extra batteries to top up their electric fleet, or to supplement solar, or to take advantage of off-peak demand.

On the other hand the actual resale price is basically irrelevant. The scrap price of a car is a few hundred dollars, so a battery would have to fall to like 5% of it's own value to not be worth recycling. At that price you wouldn't be able to sell the things fast enough.

The volume isn't a real problem. There's a 20+ year lag time before enough cars are being recycled to make this an issue. IF used battery supply ever exceeds demand -very unlikely, given the always falling cost of solar- there is pleeeeeenty of time for recycling to start. The short and long term problems are very different. The absorption mechanisms that seem insufficient at high volume are a bridge to the recycling that seems immature.

>That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects.

It would pull down the price of used and other secondary batteries. Normally this would increase the price of a new commodity, but batteries are supply-constrained and their price is set by the number we can make. It would also pull down the price of new batteries, since they would have fewer buyers at the higher price point. More likely the lower demand would have no effect at all.

>Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced.

I dearly love this stuff, and explaining it (I'm an electrical engineer). There are a bunch of reasons for the difference! The biggest one is actually heat- your laptop gets super hot in use and uses the batteries as a heat sink, but an electric car very carefully cools its battery (unless it's a Leaf). A battery at 60C can drop to 60% of its original capacity after just 3 months. This kills laptops dead after just a few years even if you keep them plugged in every second you own them.

The second biggest is depth of charge. The average daily drive is around 30 miles, or 10-20% of an electric car's battery. Most trips are just short errands or commutes, not long drives. You may not deep discharge your laptop, but a battery will do 5,000 cycles if you discharge it to 85%, and 1,000 if you discharge it to 50%. The best results are with normal discharges under 20%, which nobody does with a laptop but almost every single electric car does. A <10% DoD will last for tens of thousands of cycles.

I really can't overstate how dramatic the difference is. Batteries as we currently use them are very badly mistreated, and when they are kept in <90 F conditions they last 2-3 times longer. When used lightly they last 3-4x longer. Both situations happen naturally in a car. Even in very hot climates the hot days never get anywhere near to the temperatures in a laptop or phone.

>And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries?

Currently more lithium is used to make ceramic glazes than batteries. Collecting and reselling the hundreds of different kinds of batteries from junked laptops is a healthy, profitable business in Asian countries. There simply aren't enough batteries to warrant real recycling though.

>Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits."

The EPA mileage calculation is based on a set ratio of city/highway miles (35/65 IIRC). Obviously that does not reflect reality perfectly. It is also a description of ideal driving habits, which of course people do not follow.

That link is wholly ridiculous. Its rejecting the EPA data as over-optimistic and then comparing it to... EPA data. I'm gonna go ahead and say that those ratings are also optimistic.

Your quote appears nowhere in the article, which says that the Model S emits 228g per mile, just shy of two hybrids.

The grid will continue to add renewables. Hybrids will be very quickly left behind. Plus, this is a massive luxury car- the model 3 will have much lower consumption, being a smaller car.

>My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

That's not an argument- it's a character attack. That's not a counterpoint to actual information.

> Your quote appears nowhere in the article

Oh, yes it does. You obviously haven't read it.

> That's not an argument

Of course it is, because even the value which you quote is not what Musk claimed, the whole text behind the link is exactly about how.

That is: Musk provably cooks what he shows in order to sell it in more ways, some of which I've mentioned too, and the different values were proven by the actual users of the car, even by the author who wanted to defend Musk.

I think it's also worth mentioning that the EPA rating of the Tesla is 0.

So the 479 g/mi for the Cherokee is just the emissions.

- Model S CO2 = 0 (EPA) + 292 (other factors)

- Cherokee CO2 = 479 (EPA) + ? (other factors)

Those other factors aren't going to be zero for the Cherokee

If you don't believe this to be true, just state it honestly and people can correct your claims.

Don't "just ask questions" and then when someone wastes their time responding as if you were genuine, claim that you already know that people have done research but you don't believe it.

Yes tremendously. Even if we just burn gasoline at power plants they are still much more efficient. When you start to add in renewables as a source of power for EVs the environmental impact is tremendous. Buy an EV for your next car if you can.

Definitely thinking of an EV but they are for the rich folks atm. I'll wait for a sub 30k self driving Tesla.

The average price for a new car is 34k nowadays. A used Model S is at least 40k[1]. Tesla has a pre-owned up for 50k. The cheapest new Model S, with all rebates + estimated gas savings, is 56k.

If Tesla really pulls off the Model 3, it's a game changer. It'll start the clock ticking until everyone can afford a (used) electric car.

[1]: https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Tesla-Model-S-d2039#lis...

[2] 85kWh, no less: https://www.tesla.com/preowned/5YJSA1DN1DFP16592

Averages can be misleading in highly skewed distributions...

The 2017 Bolt is competitively priced: $37k MSRP. Still qualifies for ~$7k tax refund. Could potentially negotiate the price down a tad at a local dealership.

> Self-driving electrical vehicles could greatly reduce congestion

They could. But they could also greatly increase congestion because travelling with car will be a lot more convenient. Especially if the car can drop you of at your location and find a parking spot itself.

I think the only way self-driving cars will reduce congestion is if the cars are shared both per ride and over the day.

Given the phrase "rush hour" exists in the English language, I think they can only reduce congestion by sharing over the whole day if workplaces are successfully encouraged to shift their starting hours away from the usual 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as it seems to be). This will, of course, also work for human-driven cars.

Almost all the incentives are for the status quo. I don't see anything which will radically change this.

>workplaces are successfully encouraged to shift their starting hours away from the usual 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as it seems to be).

This could only possibly work for internationally-focused firms, firms that operate around-the-clock, or firms that do not need contact with other firms and contact customers outside business hours. That is a very small subset.

Business hours are excellent for everyone involved in terms of work-life balance and coordinating business. They are not a good thing to sacrifice and it would only be a stopgap measure anyway. If you need to move a ton of people all at once, you need public transportation. BUILD MORE TRAINS

/swiss

Work life balance is an interesting point I had not considered.

Mainly I was trying to make the point that self-driving cars won't make much difference to this specific problem, but I don't seem to have communicated that very well given the replies.

This is why I think a shift to remote work culture is more likely to be a major reduction of congestion than self-driving vehicles ever could. It's just too bad a remote work culture seems less likely, because it isn't a technical problem but a political/social problem.

Pollution in the UK is measured using NOx, PPM10, and PPM2.5

Pollution from brake and tyre particles is something that will not be tackled.

I do think the key is lack of choice. People feel, given the design of our roads, that they have no choice but to get into a steel box and drive around.

Better (automated) driving could actually reduce wear too, especially with some regenerative braking in the mix.

Oh, but we very much do have a choice - you can also get into an aluminum box and drive around.

Do they actually help noise of busy roads much? The impression I got was that the constant white noise living near a busy road was mainly tyre and air, not engines.

Buses would get a lot quieter though.

They probably wouldn't reduce the white noise from highways much, but they'd certainly have an impact on the break-through noise from rapid acceleration, loud exhaust, etc.

Yes. My house has a minimal setback. Noisiest vehicles are motorcycles, heavier trucks, and modded cars.

Normal cars are fairly silent, and HEV/EVs are almost completely silent.

The proposed? Legislation to have noise emitters on EVs might change this.

Most toxic emissions form todays cars are not from the tailpipe. Most of it is brake pad dust. Electric cars dont help that.

I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is then electric cars will definitely reduce the problem. They use regenerative braking for a large percentage of their braking power, which means that the brake pads are used much less.

NOx completely comes from combustion, fine particles both from combustion and brake pad dust and tires. The fine particle load is greatly reduced by going electric, one has also to take into respect, that the fine particles from combustion are much smaller and consequently more dangerous than brake and tire dust.

Unfortunately, the average American commute is 15 miles one way, and American corporate offices tend to be located in areas where bike/pedestrian friendliness is barely a consideration. I love biking and would be happy to bike for an hour each way, but every time I've mapped out a commute, there's been a stretch or too that's too dangerous.

These days, straight roads scare me more than intersections. With the amount of distracted drivers out there, I'm not biking on any road without a spacious shoulder or a sidewalk.

I've noticed that in my neighborhood in Austin, most of the cyclists ride on the sidewalks. I've been thinking about getting a bicycle but this fact doesn't inspire confidence.

Unless there's a dedicated bike lane, it makes more sense to cycle on the sidewalks than the road (if the road speed limit is 35mph+)

A cyclist has the same protection from injury in an accident with a car as a pedestrian, but the pedestrian is far less likely to be injured by a bike than a car (if there is an accident)

Studies have shown that riding on the sidewalk is considerably less safe than riding on the street (due to link rot, I can't find the studies I'd read, but google brings up plenty). Cars do not expect bicycles to be crossing intersections from the sidewalk, so your risk of being hit by a car goes up considerably unless you come to a complete stop at each intersection you cross. I've never met a bicyclist that does this as it will break your momentum considerably. Whats more, pedestrians and dogs often walk into the way of sidewalk operating bicyclist. Please don't do this.

My experience confirms that. I've done a lot of riding on the road with cars but the only time I was hit by a car was when I was riding on the sidewalk and crossing the road.

Bikes/electric bikes seem like a good idea until sadly, one bad incident with a reckless driver. I'd absolutely bike/ebike in SF if not for the continuous stories of friends and friends of friends getting hit, getting run off the road, or having close calls.

Bay Area drivers are much more agrressive and hurried and distracted than a decade ago and I am concerned for my fellow cyclists and pedestrians. (My friend almost got hit last week in downtown MV in the crosswalk when a car ran a red. In downtown! And we were at the other side of the intersection)

Vote for bike lanes, traffic calming, traffic violation enforcement, and cities built for humans instead of cars, whenever you can.

I've never seen specific enforcement of crosswalk rights-of-way in the Bay Area, despite it being such a target-rich environment. The crosswalks across Castro (Mountain View's "Main St.") are generally observed, probably because they are numerous. In contrast, crosswalks across El Camino not at traffic lights are death traps (like just West of Halford, where there was a fatality a month or two ago).

I had no idea non traffic light cross walks even existed on el Camino! (I generally consider el camino to be a death trap overall)

And you might get "doored" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674533

as a working bike messenger, there's so much i could say about this, but i'll keep it to one thing.

PROCEED AS THOUGH YOU ARE INVISIBLE TO CARS, AND YOU'LL BE FINE.

postscript:

IF YOU MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THE CAR DRIVER, THEY'LL RECOGNIZE YOUR HUMANITY, AND WILL BE LESS LIKELY TO KILL YOU.

> Make eye contact with the car driver

Yes, definitely, I did this at every traffic light I came to in London after someone told me this.

I don't know about 'recognizing my humanity' but making eye contact with other drivers is a very good way to verify that they have seen you. I cross a mini-roundabout on my commute to work, and it is surprising the number of drivers who have not seen me because I am obscured by the strut at the corner of their windscreen, or they are looking elsewhere.

I don't ride in front of a vehicle until I think they have seen me.

As a motorcyclist, listen to this guy... and I'll add one more:

If you are wondering if the motorist you are observing is dumb enough to do that thing you suspect they may do in the face of logic and physics, they are. Assume the worst, always have a path out.

And smile. Its worth the extra dilligence to have fun with it.

I prefer Neal Stephenson's advice in Zodiac: proceed as though all drivers can see you AND ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU.

That's the best advice for both bicyclists and motorcyclists. As for regular motorcycle commuter, "the next driver is a psycho who's trying to kill you" attitude along with "stay out of the blind spots"[0] saved me more than once (or more likely, does few times a week).

0. http://www.bike.bikegremlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/c...

You're completely right about the Bay Area.

1. We need more bike lanes. Sensible lanes. They don't need to be huge.

2. We need to allow bikes on the shoulders of highways. (Got a ticket as a kid)

3. Personally, although I hate regulations, I would like to see all public buildings, and any new, or remodeled commercial buildings be required to provide showers for all employees whom bike to work. They would get an extra 10 minutes before clocking in.

4. Ride a mountian bike in the city. Don't ride a road bike, unless you're very skilled. I've seen so many guys go down. Bike messengers never seem to get hit, or have much trouble, but they are professional bikers--sorry, but they are, and I know some drive crazy.

5. Give a state credit to all employees whom bike to work. (I don't know how you could verify it.)

6. I put my bike in my truck, and drive to San Fransisco daily. I try to park for free, and bike from there. I only use old bikes. The nice ones are stolen. It's not great, but you get used to the routine. Oh yea, since there a huge problem with cvechicles break-ins, take every thing of value out of the vechicle. Open the glove compartment. Put a kill switch in vechicle. And pray your vechicle is there when you get back. I sometimes leave the door open--just too many broken windows for a radio.

What's the reasoning on riding a mountain bike in your point number 4?

Any bike with wide tires is a good idea for urban riding, which fortunately includes many road bikes (or so-called 'gravel bikes') these days.

At least on the South Bay, I think that drivers are more impatient because the cities have failed to do anything real to improve traffic. They focus on highly visible things, like a new overpass or adding a lane to an onramp, or something of this nature.

Then they'll spend something like $1 billion on a new library or town hall or $100 million on a rec center or whatever.

Meanwhile, the actual road infrastructure cannot support the incredible increase on net new job creation. This makes for traffic jams, everywhere, so people become impatient and increases the number of irrational decisions they make.

I live in the hills, several miles down a very narrow, curvy country road. Nobody goes less than 10 mph above the speed limit, which is genuinely unsafe on this road. They do it because traffic is much lighter than the rest of their commute, and they just want to get home. Of course, they're only shaving somewhere around 28 seconds of travel time off of their total commute while increasing the probability of a deadly encounter with a hapless bicyclist who ignorantly thinks they are riding on a quiet, back-country road.

I am quite certain that the cost of adding a separate bicycle/pedestrian path is quite high, as it would require bulldozing parts of moderate sized hills, and compared with the fanfare of a new police station or city hall, a new bicycle lane for some back road just doesn't compare.

However, knowing the residents of this back road and the town in general, I'm quite certain such a path would generate a lot of real use and potentially save lives. But I'm quite certain this kind of project will not hapen in my lifetime.

You honestly have more power to make this happen than you think you do. Write a petition, see whether you can find any people who think it's a good idea, go to a town hall with your evidence, call a contracting company to ask how much the path would cost/how long it would take, and try to get it into the next municipal budget. You CAN do it. It's been done.

i think people know what you are talking about, but in case anyone is confused by the units of torque: you mean Nm rather than nm.

nm = nanometers

Nm = Newton-meters

I've been thinking of electric bikes recently. The problem is, I would like to have some extra speed (thus range) with less sweat, in exchange for the price & weight & need to charge batteries. In fact, it sounds just amazing. But in Finland, electric assist is legally limited to operate at no more than 25 km/h. That's slower than my normal cycling pace. What a way to ruin a great idea.

Not quite. The 25 km/h limit is just for the bike's classification as a "bicycle"; electric bikes that go faster than that just need to get registered and are effectively treated as mopeds under traffic laws.

Yes, and that's bad. Suddenly you're bound by a lot more regulations, and access to many a path is cut off. It's not a great trade off.

If you're going a speeds significantly above what most cyclists are doing you should be bound by more regulations than cyclists and you probably should stick to the roads and not be allowed to use bike paths.

Why?

We already have large speed differences on (bidirectional!) shared paths and it works out just fine. We have kids and elderly walking at 5 kph, same kids and elderly cycling at 15 kph, and more fit adult cyclists going anywhere between that and >30 kph. Other people stand still. Dogs can be problematic but overall I think it really does work just fine, and I don't think anybody needs to fear for their life. We can adjust our speed.

If anything, forcing cyclists on the roads results in even larger differences in speed. But also mass, and awareness.

S pedelecs are limited to assisting up to 45km/h https://www.emotion-technologies.de/e-bike-typen/s-pedelec/ but fall within 'light moped' categories and as such cannot officially be used on cycle paths in the UK (but can be in Netherlands although there are moves afoot to remove them due to the speed differentials).

Another 'dodgy' option is to 'chip' your ebike and this will usually enable a assist limited 25km/h bike help you up to 45km/h.

What you do find is that people that are regular cyclists find eBikes too slow however on flat roads. Get a hill, and suddenly they come into their own. If you live in a hilly city/town, they really come into their own.

Prior to owning an eBike I would consider avoiding the most direct routes seeking out the flatter shallower gradient routes or finding myself pushing the bike up the steeper direct routes. These days I get to where I'm going at 25km/h and saves me a lot of time.

I still go out on my cyclocross bike when I want to really enjoy a long leisure ride. Ebikes are very boring as leisure rides.

Most of Finland is pretty flat, and the fastest & most direct routes often involve cycle paths already (although in the less well planned cities you might have to randomly move from one side of the road to the other because).

If your bicycle turns into a moped because it has a motor that isn't artificially restricted to operating at under 25 kph, you'll end up having to take the long way and ride among the cars in heavy traffic. My experience is that Finnish drivers are not particularly used to cyclists on these larger roads, because we have shared cycle & pedestrian paths everywhere. These facts would pretty much encourage me to go by car instead.

I think banning an entire category of vehicles because it "can go fast" is the wrong approach, and horribly inconsistent. I mean I can sprint at 45 kph on a cycle path on meat power if I want to, as long as I do not endanger anybody. And we don't ban cars on small city streets even if they can break 200 kph. Why not, say, speed limits?

Doesn't the assist just cut off at that speed? So you can cycle it like a regular bike faster. So what's the problem? Wouldn't it be stupid to have "bikes" which can go eg. 100km/h?

Yes it cuts off, so it doesn't make me faster, except in the few seconds I take to accelerate (or climb uphill, which is not often). So it's really just dead weight.

> Wouldn't it be stupid to have "bikes" which can go eg. 100km/h?

No, why? If I could, I would.

I love the idea of eBikes. I bike commute on a conventional city bike, 5mi each way, every day. I wouldn't mind a boost when there's a headwind or I'm tired. And I would like the help to make a 10 mile trip more practical.

But the price! I looked at some eBikes, and they were often around 4k. That's almost twice as much as a good quality gasoline moped/scooter like the Honda Metropolitan. So it's a tough value proposition to make.

you can DIY one using a kit for under $2k total ($500 bike + $1500ish kit)

That's still far too expensive compared to a motorcycle, that you also don't have to assemble yourself.

That's probably true, from a "bang per buck" perspective. But a scooter needs insurance, plates, gas, oil, costs tax and at the end of the day they are lawnmowers on wheels, so if something goes wrong with the motor, and it will regularly, you probably can't fix it on your own and are stranded. Even if your battery fails or the boost you would likely still have a fully functional bike, just some extra resistance on the pedals.

And legally of course, a scooter restricts you to streets that cars can go on. That might not mean much in an American suburb but even here in a bike backwards German town we have pedestrian zones where bikes are explicitly allowed, one way streets with exemptions for bikes.. being able to use bike-legal paths can make for a more direct, faster route.

I take your points. One quibble here is that in my state, motor scooters do not need insurance, plates, or tax as long as the engine volume and top speed are below certain values.

I built one a couple of months ago, it is very practical and huge fun as well. I'm not sure I sweat less as I tend to ride it flat out everywhere.

We have also gone down to one car.

That's why I would like to see a hybrid of a electric van and Uber as a new city bus. The bus should have 6 doors and separated passenger space. So each passenger would have its own private space. Travel time should be much shorter due to using fast lanes and low number of bus stops. During rush hours the bus should take 5 passengers (6 with self-driving technology). Because of small size it should economic enough to use the bus only for one passenger, even in suburbs. Uber like software should be used for costs optimization, for example you could wait for the bus in front of your house or walk 500 meters closer to the main road to save $5. All needed technology already exists. No need to dig tunnels.

PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

PS2. I don't want to discuss how many days per year someone can ride an e-bike to work. Some sort of public / car transport is and will be needed. There is no much innovation in public bus transport therefore I described the idea about electric van / Uber hybrid.

    PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are 
    only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in Berlin and you definitely see lots of people on bikes between march and october (8 months of the year). Not much different in Amsterdam or Copenhagen I believe (quite possibly better).

They have special machines in Belgium that clean the snow off all of the bike paths - and yes, then people do cycle.

> PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I lived in southern Sweden and while bike ridership did go down in winter, it was still very high. My city even prioritized snow-clearing/sanding of bike paths (they have special mini bulldozers).

edit: the numbers I found were that in Sweden 30-40% of trips on a bicycle were done in the winter half of the year, so about 30% lower ridership than in the summer[0]

[0] http://www.trafa.se/globalassets/rapporter/rapport-2015_14-c...

> 6 doors and separated passenger space

> small size

These are conflicting requirements. The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van, only a little smaller than a normal bus.

I'd love to see someone try the commuter multi-drop-mini-bus system; it's implemented informally in various ways already that don't have multinational branding. Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace, but potentially useful in other places.

> The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van

Depends on the mini-bus layout. 7-seater VW Touran (4527 mm long) has 5 doors. So maybe it possible to build 5 m long van with 6 doors, with 2 on the back.

> Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace

Dedicated lanes and some regulations will be needed. For example mini-bus shouldn't be allowed to enter crowded routes unless it has 3 passengers. So two people would have to wait 5 min for the third passenger and so on. Or it can be used to transport people from suburbs to subway stations in cities like London.

In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in southern Sweden and not only is April-October (7 month) perfectly bikable for everybody, a whole lot of people happily bike year round. In areas that get more snow/ice people can get studded tired for their bikes.

I live in the south of Germany (that's central Europe) and cycle to work year-round. Cycle paths are cleared of snow just like roads. All you need is a winter jacket, a beanie that goes beneath your helmet, and a pair of (leather) gloves against the wind. That's just standard winter gear, nothing specific to cycling. Rain pants are a good idea when it's snowing or as an extra layer of insulation, and every serious cycle commuter has a pair anyway.

I cycle to work in New York, colder than much of Central and Northern Europe, year-round. The main issue is that the city doesn't do a great job of clearing its many new bike lanes of snow.

Maybe such service is possible, surely ridewithvia and ford's chariot are doing something similar, and it looks successful, altough it may take a long time to scale.

But

1. How do you solve the personal space problem of a vehicle(a cost effective) and convince a big car company to make you vehicles ? that's not an easy problem.

2. I haven't yet seen such shuttle powered by electricity - not sure the tradeoffs(charge time, ride time, vehicle cost) are attractive enough for shuttle drivers.

I would totally ride a bike as part of my commute except for one small problem: I have to cross Lake Washington eastbound to go to work and westbound to come home and at odd hours. Transit service drops to hourly after 8:30pm and the bus only carries three bikes at a time. So far, I've noticed that 1/3rd of the time, in nice weather, I'd be fine and could load my bike on the bus; another 1/3rd, I'd be at the 10:30pm trip and it would be full so I'm waiting for the 11:30pm trip that isn't full; and the last 1/3rd, the 11:30pm trip is full so I'm stuck either leaving my bike or not getting home. (I see these because I still take Transit to work by using two buses each way. I'd rather ride my bike for one of them...)

Maybe this just means that I should work on getting in shape so I can just ride a route that takes me across the lake...

Do the buses let you take fold-ups on to them? Can easily get mine onto buses and trains in the UK.

Could you rather make the commute easier for yourself, by moving or changing where you work?

Congestion can be addressed by privatizing bus services. No, seriously.

Every country and city seems to love to nationalize something. In the U.S. every city has done that with bus services. But if you look around the world you'll find places like Buenos Aires that have not done this and have a thriving bus industry that can get you from very close to point A to very close to point B in much less time than buses in the U.S. and with fewer transfers.

But now consider something like Uber/Lyft for _small_ buses: routes need not be set in stone. You pre-arrange every day where and when to get picked up and dropped off. This can probably get much closer to the travel times that private cars can deliver.

Bikes are not the answer, incidentally. Only a small proportion of the population in the U.S. will use them, and only a small proportion of the population in American cities lives 0-5mi from work. We don't build high pop. density cities in the U.S. anymore. The re-zoning plans in Austin (to give one example) call for adding in the next decade just one third of the housing Austin needs, thus increasing sprawl -- this happens because of NIMBYism, and the story is the same just about everywhere that isn't already a high pop. density city. Besides, bikes are scary and dangerous to a very large number of people.

EVs solve part of the problem. Self driving taxi (SDT) fleets solve a large part of the rest. Things you don't need in a SDT world include store parking lots, personal garages and driveways, commuter parking in the daytime, and one car per person.

EV+SDT gets you a world where enormous amounts of space can be released for either urban development or rewilding, and where you can breathe the air. It also gives you, conveniently, a world where it's much safer to cycle. SDTs will not drive dangerously, and they don't have blind spots.

Energetically, eBikes also uses the least amount of energy to get somewhere.

I have a car mostly for a handful of 60km ride each year. It is well within range of what eBikes do now (you can check trips with ebikemaps http://ebikemaps.com/). My current car may well be my last one.

Or you can get a scooter/motorcycle and not be limited by range or speed while still having the mobility and still save a ton of money compared to a car. This is even more of a niche (lower range and utility, the only upside is that you can store it indoors - but parking a motorcycle isn't as hard as parking a car).

They may not solve congestion, but they should lower it, even it it's by a tiny amount. The reason is simple - electric cars don't have to visit gas stations which sometimes adds few miles to the miles traveled every month. i.e on my way to work I have just one gas station. When I have to fuel my car, (usually once a week) I have to take a different route that's about 1/2 mile longer than my usual route. That's about 25 miles /year. If we multiply this by 260mln passenger cars on the roads we get 6.5 billion miles. Let's go little further with this.. if set avg fuel economy for all of these cars at 20 mpg we get 325000000 gallons of fuel saved each year when all of the cars are electric. Funny how small little thing can have big impact.

Of course this is just a guesstimate.

To me, bicycles have all the downsides of a motorcycle except for cost and reliance on fossil fuels. Motorcycles are in my opinion safer in a city setting IF you ride with self control and vigilance (motorcyclists seem to self-select for unnecessarily-risk-taking types of people, but you don't need to be among them), due to the convention of wearing more protection Most bicyclists wear just a half helmet, if that. A loud exhaust can also make you more noticeable to cars, I'm not going to say loud pipes save lives but in close proximity an exhaust can be the difference between a car noticing you and not. Not to mention you get to wherever you're going much faster since you can ride at car speeds and still lane split.

To be fair, the speed plays an important factor during an accident, as accidents at higher speeds tend to have dramatically more severe consequences. The bicycles rarely reach normal motorcycle operation speed, and while motorcyclists tend to use better helmet, not that many of them actually follow ATGATT religiously (mostly those that have been in accidents themselves).

Generally though I'll agree with you that motorcycles are safer in cities than bicycles, but for a different reason -- motorcycles, unlike bicycles, generally ride along with car traffic on roads, and so car operators are more likely to see them, as they only appear where car drivers expect other cars. Many bicyclists have an unfortunate habit of riding on a sidewalk, which is very, very dangerous. Having brighter head and tail lights on a motorcycle, and blinking indicators definitely helps too.

It's a bit of a second order effect but EV buses are more pleasant to ride than the ICE equivalent, and share much of the same tech as the EV cars, so they share e.g. battery cost reductions.

This has been the wettest 7 months in ages here in the pacific northwest. There are a few die-hard cyclists out though.

I've often thought about something like this for my around town type errands.

I've always thought there is no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothes ;)

In all seriousness, an eBike lets me get anywhere I need to in 20 minutes or so. As long as I wear a rain coat, only the front of my trousers get wet.

My bike has mudguards and panniers. I've gone with the Ortlieb classic panniers as they 'roll' at the top. Between two I can get one layer of a large supermarket trolleys worth of goods into them. Although the last minute pack of 9 loo rolls was more of a challenge but because the tops unroll you can just wedge them in.

It's very 'sensible' practical bike aimed squarely at the function of 'living without a car in a city'.

I've contemplated buying a moped that counts as an e-bike where I live, because it can only go 25 kph. Do you see any downsides to such an e-Moped vs buying a classic e-bike? (Besides the fact that I can't tread if the battery is empty)

It's probably less appropriate to ride it while drunk. Cyclists don't seem to like them, as they're bigger and tend to be driven without much consideration.

I live in Copenhagen.

(I haven't seen any e-mopeds here, only petrol ones.)

The benefits of exercise are pretty significant. Even assisted biking is still more biking than none.

True, I'm still considering an e-bike for this very reason.

If you want a real workout (and I do this on my way home from work sometimes) I turn down/off the assist and you're suddenly cycling a 20+kg bike up a hill.

As a cyclist I'd personally ask you to go with an ebike rather than a moped, just because they take up less space on the path. With enough mopeds, the bike roads can be almost as scary as the car roads.

In the UK you can drink and ride an eBike ;)

However the key is that cycle paths are legally off limits to mopeds (in the UK).

You'll also find parking a lot easier with a eBike.

Belgium allows mopeds and small engined motor cycles on cycle paths and I think it makes sense to do so.

It doesn't really increase the likelihood of killing cyclists but it does lower the likelihood of killing moped riders who are typically younger people

> I've always thought there is no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothes ;)

So you're saying you're Norwegian?

Could be Swedish too, that's very close to an idiomatic expression in Swedish: "there is no bad weather, only bad clothes" ("det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder", it even rhymes in Swedish).

Unfortunately, while this works for too cold- it does not for too hot.

I wonder if a special outfit could work for that? Shade the head and shoulders, ventilate maximally otherwise. The airflow is useful for cooling, though stops working after a certain point, then you need evaporation.

I agree but only partially. I noticed most people who complain about hot weather dress very badly.

The trick is ample light colored linen clothing that covers as much skin as possible. It might seem counter intuitive to cover your whole arms and legs, but linen is actually very good at evaporating your sweat and keeping you cool while protecting you from the sun.

Amsterdam is as rainy a city as any (though not too many torrential downpours) and people bike around through the weather. With the proper attire it's easy to bike through it. You'll sometimes see bikers with an umbrella, though I don't know if that would work at e-bike speeds

People are also extremely crafty about carrying all sorts of improbable objects (I saw a dining table once!) in a way that wouldn't be out of place in Indonesia. It's very refreshing to see some 3rd world ingenuity in the 1st world.

I hope that as e-bikes become more popular people keep the speeds low; otherwise it will become unsafe.

For reasonable speeds, like that of a city bike in high gear, an aerodynamic umbrella works plenty well:

https://www.senz.com/en/

That's pretty clever. I wonder how much of a difference it makes.

They work great. I cycled regularly with one in Amsterdam. It's like a sail - it stabilizes itself in the correct vertical position as you ride. Holding one gets pretty effortless.

I just bought one. Looks perfect.

> People are also extremely crafty about carrying all sorts of improbable objects (I saw a dining table once!) in a way that wouldn't be out of place in Indonesia.

I find it easier to carry heavy objects while cycling than while walking, because the upper body can be much more stable, less bobbing. The speed difference is negligible though, because you really don't want to outrun your severely encumbered braking.

What I truly hate about the bicycle push is that some of us cannot ride bicycles for very legitimate reasons including medical problems or a job that requires a vehicle.

If 50% of the people driving cars switch to (e-)bikes that will be better for everyone. Including those still using cars.

The issue in my area is that the "push" is coming through social engineering tactics, such as reducing road capacity and granting special privilege on existing roads to bicyclists.

If the change in road infrastructure were to occur after the bicycles became a more popular mode of transportation, that would be fine, but doing it before makes the whole situation miserable, especially for those of us who simply do not have the option of switching.

The other thing I hate about the bicycle push is the self-righteousness of many involved and the complete lack of consideration for people who cannot ride bicycles for various legitimate reasons, plus they are down-voting cowards.

Lack of consideration? I don't know what consideration you want but the roads are completely car dominated so there's no consideration necessary in my opinion.

I usually ride to work 4 days a week, and drive 1 day, depending on weather. I'm a driver but I still want proper separated bike paths. And I can't be the only one. People are scared to ride and I don't blame them. It's scary riding on a road with so many tired/oblivious/terrible/selfish drivers who actually don't follow the road rules even while driving a deadly weapon.

I can't understand why it's so difficult to provide facilities actually. Bike paths don't have heavy vehicles ruining them so need way less maintenance than normal roads.

A bike path for 2 way traffic only takes the width of a single car lane. You could just make one road per suburb one way, and there you go. I'm oversimplifying but I'm not a town planner, I'm just a dumb commuter.

At least where I live, it's laughable that you'd be complaining about a "bike push", as there are no real facilities for bikes at all. Just crappy unconnected paths that never get you to anywhere useful. You always have to go on a road with cars to get anywhere.

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