That being said I wish someone would make an enclosed bicycle/motorcycle that costs less than $2000. Something like that which can go 30mph and had space for 2 days of groceries would be enough for me to eliminate my car all together.
I'm cobbling something similar now with a Class 3 cargo ebike, but rain sucks =/
The idealist in me says that electric ebikes could eliminate most of Americas problems in one swoop:
- Pedal assisted ebikes result in exercise. America is up there in obesity.
- America is also up there in cardiovascular unhealthiness.
- Americans have an average distance of 15 miles to work. 30mph + 60 mile range would allow you to comfortably get to work in approximately 30 minutes and give you enough juice to do it round trip, twice.
- Lower speeds result in fewer accident fatalities. America is up there in the number of road deaths. Lower speeds and smaller vehicles would lower this.
- Bike infrastructure can be used for walking. Walking is good. This promotes accessibility for a large range of people, notably children and elders.
- Bikes require less space to park, a lot less. This extra space can be used to build more housing. This additional housing will increase density, making bikes only more viable (compared to being in traffic in a car).
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EVs are better than ICE, certainly. But I fear it will exacerbate some of our problems.
- The CapEx for EVs will discourage walking infrastructure.
- EVs can accelerate faster, much faster. I fear this will result in more accidents.
- EVs are much heavier than their equivalent ICE vehicles. Hopefully this doesn't result in EV accidents being more likely to have a fatality.
Ideally we'd just begin to phase out cars ideally, as opposed to transition to EVs from ICE, but I suppose baby steps are warranted here.