A few concrete arguments for e-bikes
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- $3300 + $1000 for upgrades/maintenance to cover 4k km works out to $1/km which is fairly expensive. Longer use will obviously amortize the cost further and the resale value of that bike is at least $2k, but still, I could buy a motorcycle/scooter and gear for similar money.
- Any US city I've lived in, riding such a bike to anywhere where I'd be leaving it out of sight for >5min is a non-starter because of rampant theft.
- Riding a sustained 20mph with a bicycle helmet without first developing the requisite skill to go that fast on a regular basis exposes you to much higher risk. Similar to if your first car had 400hp and no active safety features.
That is very sad.
How can people exist in such an environment?
That being said, cities still have more things to do than most alternatives unless you really like outdoor activities. And the dating scene is much better in cities. And physical workplaces are nearly all near cities. So a lot of Americans work around the problems US cities have for those advantages.
I did a similar calculation myself recently.
I sold my car for a profit given I was driving very little. The furthest I’d been driving most of the time was 3 miles away / 6 round trip.
I looked into an e-bike but it seemed to make more sense to get a motorcycle. The bike, title transfer, helmet and some gloves wound up being less than $3k.
I also decided it was probably safer to ride with traffic at 35-40mph than be riding on the side of the road at 20mph tops.
In the long run, the motorcycle will likely cost more than the bike, considering gas, insurance, and maintenance expenses.
Also, for 6 miles, it might not be worth to have an e-bike. I do ~17km round trip on a so-called "fitness bike", and after some training I go faster than e-bikes. :)
> I also decided it was probably safer to ride with traffic at 35-40mph than be riding on the side of the road at 20mph tops.
This is a good point. I chose a longer trip, but way safer with separated lanes for cycles.
Disclaimer: I rode motorcycles for ~10 years, now I'm full bicycle for commuting, and we use a long-tail e-bike to carry the kids around the city. We still have a car for family WE trips (main blocker!) and weekly groceries.
Gas cost is nominal - premium, $6/gallon and 130mpg with a 1 gal tank.
Insurance is equally nominal - $20/month for single motorcycle for a clean record driver in their late 20s/30s with more than minimum coverage
Maintenance - a wash. Bikes are cheap/easy to maintain yourself and are more complicated in their E versions I'd imagine.
$1000 for inner tubes, break pads, and chain grease is not a reasonable estimate.
$1000 would probably also include things like cassettes, chainrings, chains and brake discs. Depending on the system on your bike this stuff can get quite expensive.
Quite probably there was something wrong with that previous pack already that caused a self discharge rate so high that the pack had gone completely empty.
The best way to store them for long term is to charge to either 3.7 or 3.9 V / cell (depending on whether you want to check them in 3 or in 5 months).
FWIW, I would encourage anyone who isn't certain enough about it to buy a $3,000 bike to start with a cheaper Chinese model to decide if it is for them. There are things I don't love about this bike, but it definitely has me sold on electric assist bikes given the hills I have around me and my knees, and when it comes time to replace it, I expect I will get a nicer model.
It's not really that "sustained" in reality. Sure you need to be careful, but it's not like you are going to risk flying off your bike if you hit a pebble.
There is a hell of a lot of bike snobbery coming from the roady groups when it comes to ebikes and they act like if you don't put in the physical conditioning necessary to ride that fast you have no business on a ebike.
The whole thing is pretty silly.
Grandmas and mothers and kids have been riding 50cc scooters all over the planet for decades in public roads in speeds in excess of 30mph without having their faces explode.
> - $3300 + $1000 for upgrades/maintenance to cover 4k km works out to $1/km which is fairly expensive.
If you a DIY sort, which you should if you are considering using bicycles as viable transportaation, then a reasonable ebike that will handle 20-40 thousand miles can be put together for under 2 grand.
Much less if you don't mind replacing throttles that wear out or having ugly wiring.
The expensive part is the battery. That is the heart of the bike. Everything else is almost incidental.
If you are worried about theft a used mountain bike and a 200 dollar kit will get you were you are going just as well as a 4000 dollar bicycle. The expensive part, the battery, you take with you.
The thing about calculating per mile costs is:
1. e-bikes are on a downward cost track, interrupted by COVID supply chain issues. But, recently, you can get a Giant e-bike for under $2000, which is very reasonable. Lightness is expensive. As long as you do not need to lift your e-bike, costs can continue to come down.
2. They are for local journeys. I would not commute from the exurbs on an e-bike. Up to 10 miles is a reasonable distance.
Especially if you are towing a burley or have panniers or aren't in full spandex. The wind resistance really adds up.
Ebikes are such an effective and useful form of urban transportation that very efficiently leverages what battery supply we have for cheap and FUN travel. To the point that the government should make this the "summer of the ebike" and offer a $500 rebate on e-bikes this summer.
When I lived in a downtown, I could not wait for bikeable weather to come (midwestern winters). A city shrinks by a factor of ten over walking, and when you consider you often can park right by your destination for free, while cars almost always have a 10-15 minute penalty for finding parking and walking from the parking spot.
The convenience range of an e-bike that can do 250-300 watts over a regular bike is probably 20-30 miles further, especially when often bike routes can be more direct.
And an ebike gives the horsepower to cart around rain gear.
For things like watching marathons, parades, and festivals (as long as you aren't THAT GUY trying to walk his bike through shoulder to shoulder crowds), they are unmatched. You get so much more of the experience.
Of course so much of this is because people don't bike, maybe things would change if a lot more people did.
If you are ever doing the tourist thing in Washington DC, their city is perfect for their bike share service. It was AWESOME. Being able to go monument to monument, smithsonian to smithsonian, to the zoo, to the hotel, to restaurants, was amazing on a bike with no hassles with car parking, the roundabouts in cars, or dealing with the metro schedules and line transfers. Bonus: you can go to Georgetown easily which doesn't have a metro.
Manhattan/NYC SHOULD be like this, but it wasn't in the same league as DC last I did it. Brooklyn was still not well served.
Manhattan/NYC would be much better with an ebike. It would shrink Manhattan neighborhoods by a huge amount.
I drive a used Lexus which costs me less that 30 cents per mile all up.
Cost per city journey, including parking, would be a more enlightening comparison. And if you substituted an e-bike for those journeys your car costs per mile would drop.
30 MPG on highway 18 MPG on city streets with medium traffic (Denver Metro)
So yes city uses twice the gas. But average is 24MPG.
I bike (no battery) and it is super efficient for 5-10 miles. My point was ebikes make no sense economically.
Gas: 15 cents
depreciation and repairs: 5 cents (bought for $4k(180k miles), no repairs (3 years), lasts 300k-400k if driven with care
maintenance: 1 cent. $50 oil change every 6 months
Insurance: $50/month. 5 cents
parking: 0 cents free on the street (live and work in suburbia) even in city find street parking and walk half mile (Denver/Boulder)
you could go even cheaper buying a camry.
Sure, that's all the maintenance the average car needs over its lifetime. Totally reasonable comparison.
For a Japan made Lexus RX, that's true 90% of the time. In my case it's 100% true. There really is no other maintenance.
> There is no Reliability Rating for the Lexus RX330 due to insufficient data.
and instead quotes average for midsize SUVs.
Sure everything breaks down eventually. I presently have 2 RX330s. The way it works is buy for less than 5k (~150k miles). Drive for 100k miles and sell for $2k. which turns out to about 3cents per mile. these cars have great reliability. 300k is safe mileage before repairs become uneconomic.
Previously I had a Scion xb which i drove to 375k miles and only disposed because it needed a new catalytic converter. The only repair i did on it was replacing alternator ($100 plus one hour). that car was even cheaper per mile and used less gas.
If a car wears out eventually so does a bike.
I just want to say, as someone who just got into mountain biking, this is a shockingly expensive sport and these machines are requiring surprising amounts of maintenance. The cheapest full-suspension bike I found was $1250 lightly used, and I promptly had to go spend $130 to have just the rubber of the front tire replaced (tubeless wheel - $70 part $60 labor). I admit I got boomed by the seller and should've asked for money back when when he told me the tire was needing repairs, but the bike shop I went to did not have low prices beside tune-ups or installs
What I would leave to a pro is the suspension maintenance and break fluid replacement.
Note I did say tubeless - I bought the bike to ride trails and I understand these to be more durable. If it took the guy at the shop an hour to put a tire on, have him describe it as not fun, requiring specialized tools, and say it'll last a year if I maintain it a bit, I can assure you I'm not going to DIY that.
The transmission is simple, just a rear derailleur with 12 speeds, I am glad for this, it seems very well built and I don't expect issue, but I would be hopeless to fix it were it to severely break.
The brakes are extremely critical on steep and rocky trails so I will also leave this to the professionals. Overall, I don't think becoming a bike mechanic is a trivial venture, and given the relatively high stakes nature of trail riding I prefer to have it done at an expert level.
Brakes are pretty straight forward, a bleeding kit is $20 ish, and if done right lasts quite a bit longer and feels better than the store bleeds. More importantly less air = more consistent braking. Sure store bleeds help, and how an improvement. But they don't seem to spend the time to get all the bubbles out. I just spend a few extra minutes applying negative pressure to the brake fluid and watch till the bubbles stop coming out of solution and end up with a bleed better than I've had at the last 5 bike shops I've used.
Sure it's a bit messy, but doing it when it's nice out on a driveway or sidewalk isn't a big deal. A set of allen wrenches, a bleed kit (hose + syringe), and the right fluids (some bikes use mineral spirits, others use brake fluid). From what I can tell even the first attempt based on watching an expert (like an SRAM brake engineer on youtube) will go better than most bike shops will do for ya.
Bike mechanics are crazy fast at doing decent work, but not hard to beat if you have the time. Do buy a torque wrench or two though.
Well it's most that you can run lower pressures without snakebites, but generally the durability is similar if you use the pressures appropriate for each. Tubeless tires can be a pain occasionally, especially if using a bike pump. It's a pain, and a compressor can be a huge help. I do it myself, not to save the occasional bike mechanic fee, but so that I could fix things whenever I need without scheduling a trip to the bike shop (if they are open).
What happens to your bike after 4k km?
Sure, purchase price, but not cost to own.
Don't forget the total cost to own. Gas, Oil, Oil changes, license, registration, insurance, etc. Also exercising while commuting makes it a daily activity, doesn't require a gym membership, and can save you a few hours a week of trying to get exercise elsewhere.
Around here (southeast Michigan, US) it's very common to see folks on eBikes riding on sidewalks or non-motorized trails at speeds that far exceed those on human-power bikes. The speeds afforded by eBikes, even pedal assist ones, makes them a whole different thing from traditional human powered bicycles. Some/many are effectively just electric motorbikes (throttle control and all) that fly under the radar because they happen to also have pedals and no traditional "motor" noise.
I feel like I'm somewhat grumping about something that I realize there's no practical solution for, but it's quite difficult when I'm walking on a sidewalk and someone comes flying by at 20 MPH (capped speed for most eBikes). Folks on human power bikes rarely reach these speeds, and those that do are usually more experienced riders who'll be doing so in the road, not on a sidewalk or hiking path.
Heck, while I was typing this comment I saw someone ride the path through the suburban park across the street from house on a throttle-control eBike, helmetless, going full speed, swerving between walkers. That's a recipe for disaster.
I recognize this is an law enforcement issue more than anything, but at the same time it's pretty unlikely that policymakers and enforcers are going to do anything about it because they've got other priorities. Whether due to ignorance or lack of concern, it seems we can't depend on folks to do the right thing, and thus it's frustrating all around.
Plenty of cities have built cycling infrastructure. That's the solution, not law enforcement.
To note, the sidewalk I mentioned above while writing the earlier comment parallels a local cycling route. It's a 25 MPH residential street that also has wide paved shoulders, with sharrows, signed as a formal bicycle route. I ride it almost daily, and it's a great route to ride. There's no reason to ride a bicycle on the barely-two-person-wide sidewalk there except out of ignorance.
Law enforcement can say "You can't ride that here!" but if a reasonable alternative path doesn't exist that doesn't really solve anything.
A two-way bike road for various types of bikes is way cheaper than a road expansion to carry the same number of people via cars, but we still view that as an "extra expense" while we don't hesitate to rip up a road to expand it from 2 to 4 or 6 lanes for cars.
If you look back at when cars or bikes were first introduced you’ll see the same complaints about dangerous behaviors and being incompatible with horses. For cars, it’s not wrong because at the time traffic laws were incomplete, there were no street signals, and people didn’t even stay wide when making left turns.
The practical solution is to reallocate usage of the street to prioritize all modes of transport. i.e. Take a car lane and replace it with proper 2-way concrete barriered bike lane.
They're on the sidewalks because they don't feel safe riding in the street, and who would with huge trucks blowing past you at high rates of speed. But if you give them some infrastructure and someplace safe to ride, they won't be forced to dive through pedestrians on the sidewalk.
The road the sidewalk paralleled is great (for the area) cycling infrastructure. 25 MPH, low traffic, sharrows, signed Bicycle Route, and with wide paved shoulders.
What I mentioned above was more likely out of ignorance than fear.
On one hand, I know having more people riding is broadly a good thing because it increases demand for infrastructure, makes drivers more aware that they should be looking out for non-car stuff, etc... but on the other hand, I can't help but be a bit grumpy as a long-time muscle powered bike commuter that these new electric ones with throttles make it really easy for casual riders to throw all of the normal convention and expectations about how bikes move and behave out the window, often to the annoyance or risk of people around them.
A decade ago there was never any expectation of being passed at a high rate of speed while climbing a bridge or hill, nor many riders who were capable of racing up to a tight gap or turn only to slam on brakes and floor it out of there, burning momentum in the process. Stuff with throttles mixed with stuff without throttles mashes together two very different ways of riding.
In the park I mention above, the street next to it is 25 MPH, has sharrows, and also has a very wide pretty much unused paved shoulder as well. Except for ignorance, there's no reason for eBike riders to be using the only-about-two-person-wide sidewalk.
In the past the speed came with skill which developed through experience. Now that speed is often at the press of a throttle (or setting the assist to high) there are more folks at high speeds without the developed skill or etiquette.
Heck, at one of the local parks that I work with (volunteer cycling advocate who develops trail systems), they are trying to figure out what to do about eBikes on their paved walking/running/biking loop which parallels the park road. In the past the mixed use was fine, as most riders on the loop were going slow; families/kids/whatever and coexisted just fine with walkers. The faster riders would be out on the road, going roughly the same speed as the cars.
Now that eBikes are becoming popular, the less-experienced folks are sticking to the path, but at higher speeds, causing issues with the walkers. Walkers being clipped by bikes is not unheardof on these paths in the past, but it's becoming much more frequent now that the walker-rider speed delta has increased.
(For reference, ~8-12 MPH was common for human-powered riders on these paths. eBikes roughly double the average speed.)
The issue is Stroads [1][2]. Infrastructure caters too much for cars. If we had real streets, this wouldn't be an issue.
I was just in Nashville, and they have scooters you can use. It felt 10x more dangerous than me biking at high speed in NYC. Even though there was a bike path, it was next to cars going 50mph, not fun, nor safe.
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/3/4/the-stroad.html
It's neither. The actual reason is lack of biking infrastructure.
Putting a "Share the Road" sign and/or painting some bicycle symbols on a narrow path right next to cars going 50 mph does not constitute infrastructure, nor does it make the road any safer for cyclists.
And even if there was better cycling infrastructure, we'd still need a way to keep people from riding bikes on the sidewalks. Without enforcement, no amount of infrastructure will stop that.
And that's never going to happen either. What are you going to do, have a police officer for every bike path next to a sidewalk?
While I never rode on sidewalks when using a standard bike, I'm much more confident in traffic on an e-bike. It's just much easier to deal with stop-and-go traffic on an e-bike.
On a regular bike, I was never entirely comfortable riding on the road. You're either riding in traffic and holding up a lane of cars, or you're too close to parked cars and risk being doored.
With e-bikes, I can easily keep up with traffic in the city, even in stop-and-go traffic conditions, or at traffic lights. On an e-bike, I have no problem at all pretending I'm a car, and obeying traffic laws exactly as I would in a car.
One thing that pisses me off from time to time, is that some (especially older folks) seem to overestimate themselves riding these - or rather, they underestimate the speed of seasoned 'manual' riders. They overtake other people last moment while coming my way and endanger themselves, others, and me. There were many instances where I had to brake hard or even go off-asphalt because of such maneuvers from people presumably aged 60+. The question I ask myself is: what to do about it. Willingly crash into them is out of question, since that'd probably fuck them up for good, considering their advanced age. But there's also nothing else to do other than brake or get out of the way, which can be immensely frustrating.
Well, yeah, but the nice thing about somebody being in any kind of not-car is you can talk to them like a normal person. Half the issue with shitty drivers is that cars bring out the obnoxious asshole in most people behind the wheel.
If any part of your regular bike riding is for fun/exercise and not e.g. set commute trip, electric does not definitely mean less workout. It may mean less workout, but I'd argue that more likely it means you rides are longer and you ride faster, thus the total workout being at least the same. And this not even taking into account that with assistance you likely also ride more often.
I think the reason is I feel much less need to keep a reserve of energy so I can get home without getting exhausted.
Slap it on your head when you slap your ass on the seat; even short slow trips can still result in a crash.
First thing the Doctor asked the old man was "Were you wearing your helmet?" Upon receiving the affirmative, he replied "Good, if you weren't I wouldn't numb you up for these stitches."
Head injuries among pedestrians are WAY more common. If I had been this patient I would have rebutted by asking the dr. about his walking helmet.
We've taken these bikes on, long trips on a trial, grocery runs, trips to the gym, and even on dates. These things are a ton of fun, and I can safely keep up with cars on many, not all, city streets.
I think ebikes can effectively replace cars for many trips, they cause minimal wear to city infrastructure, require much less space on roads, cause a lot less traffic, and generally improve the health and well being of people in a city.
I think we need an ebike revolution as much as we need an electric car revolution.
https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-bikes/pro...
My son, who rides in a seat on the back, has a rain cover that provides shade when it's not raining and that we can zip an enclosure onto when it is to keep him completely dry.
If it's a heavy rain and we can't wait it out we'll take the car. But we mostly use our e-bikes as it's easier/quicker/more fun.
When I started commuting via ebike I was convinced I would take the bus or drive on rainy days, but in reality I’ve found that riding in the rain (with rain gear) is still vastly more enjoyable than sitting in traffic.
I live in a city famous for its rain.
Accidents can happen just as easily when you're going five blocks for your cheese and wine as they can on longer trips. When on an e-bike: wear a helmet, always, to the point that you are no longer thinking about it and it is as automatic as snapping your seatbelt in place in a car. Don't be person that ends up dead three blocks from home.
A childhood friend's father used to ride his road bike around the neighborhood and one evening he mistakenly rode into a construction pit where the barricades had been stolen by neighborhood kids. He face-planted into the asphalt on the far side when the front of his bike was abruptly swallowed by the pit. His cycling lid did absolutely no good for him, had his broken jaw wired shut, eating burgers through a straw for months.
Another friend more recently had his front end wash out crossing a slightly muddy intersection riding to the googleplex via skyline. At first he thought he only suffered some rash, until days later he noticed a horizontal crack in one of his canines. Tooth struck the asphalt in the chaos, turned into a year of implant surgery b.s.
The full-face cycling helmets are no less comfortable, and would probably have moved the needle in both of those scenarios despite being casual on-road accidents.
My buddy has the same one, we just came in from a trail ride an hour ago. I just asked him and confirmed no complaints from either of us...
[0] https://www.bellhelmets.com/bike/p/super-3r-mips-mountain-bi...
You need NTA 8776 approval for those.
One thing I have mixed feelings about is the fact the people riding e-bikes aren't required to get a license to operate them on public infrastructure. People who want to operate motorcycles on public infrastructure typically have to pass tests (often after taking classes) to qualify for a license. In the classes they teach you about how 2-wheeled vehicles with a motor on the back wheel can get finicky under a variety of situations. The author of the linked article learned that lesson the hard way. I've learned that the hard way even on a leg-powered 2-wheeler. (One lesson: Treat any wet piece of metal on the road as you would a cluster of tiny marbles.)
One e-bike rider who would often pass me on a trail (usually well above the 15mph speed limit) on my morning commute just kept on blasting through corners as the weather gradually turned colder through the fall season. One morning there was enough frost accumulated on the pavement that I saw him slide right out on a patch of frost while he gunned the throttle around a corner like he probably did for the past ~100 times on his commute.
Another co-worker of mine was cycling in to work for a while. Part of the commute went down a steep hill. I warned him that, when he sees that the grass is frosty in the morning, he should probably take another route that's not so steep. Sure enough, on the first of said frosty days that year, he showed up to work with a messed-up elbow. He told me he remembered what I told him, but he thought, "Okay, so the grass is frosty. The road looks okay, I guess. How dangerous can it be? I'm sure it will be fine." It wasn't.
The thing about traction on a bike: You've got it, over and over and over again, until suddenly one time you don't. And the instant you lose traction, you're generally gonna have a bad time.
Unless someone somewhere has drilled that into your head in the form of a class or test or whatever, you're not going to know when you need to slow way down and possibly dismount. Or avoid a specific route altogether. Or swap out for studded tires. Or even maybe take the bus that day. You'll be likely to just keep doing what's always "worked" up until then, to your peril.
The weather thing yeah I don't see how it's going to help. If they drastically increase ridership, then I guess it could make high quality winter gear more practical and affordable? I'm not really expecting anything on that front though.
I have joined the club, all of my around town travel is now on 2 wheels. It's awesome.
1. You don't have to be licensed to bike on a road, but you do for motorized vehicles. This doesn't make sense.
2. Bikes can't keep up with traffic. I have to sit behind bikes trying to get up the SF hills daily, and either have to perform semi-dangerous passes or wait while cars back up behind me.
3. Bikes break road laws way more frequently than cars. Blowing through red lights and stop signs like they don't exist, which is dangerous for the biker, the cars, and especially pedestrians trying to cross the road.
E-bikes with a biking test/license would solve most of my issues.
There will always be people who cannot afford to drive. Others are making a conscious decision to impose the enormous burden on everyone that is inherent to driving. And this is how you want to treat them.
Sorry not sorry - that is appalling and I'm glad I'm not in that country.
I support (mostly by voting for and donating to candidates who support these):
1. Free public transportation.
2. Expansion of public transportation.
3. Proper bike lanes (which properly separates bikes from cars, if we're going to have bikes on the road anyway).
4. Higher wages, so people can survive in the meantime.
All those address your concerns without ordinary bikes sharing the road.
All I'm saying is that bikes sharing the roadway with cars doesn't make sense to me for the reasons I wrote above, and that I'm surprised more people don't feel the same way.
So no you don't support them.
As you suggested in reply to a sibling comment, more bike lanes make sense. Parking on some roads could be converted to bike lanes. Perhaps it makes sense to lower the speed limits for cars, also.
The reason why cyclists use the road is because it's often the only option. Even when there are bike lanes, many times they're right next to parked cars (dangerous), or cluttered with trash bins, garbage, or whatever else.
I think you're starting to get my point. They're not the same, and don't belong together on the same roadway. We can't ban cars, so we should ban bikes.
Cyclists sharing the road with cars is not the only option. Not biking at all is a very valid option.
Yes
> should ban bikes
No
You can build bike infrastructure. Until then bikes will share the roads, and drivers will have to live with it.
An escooter has all the bad things without the good thing