I don't see how I could use a bicycle reliably in my hilly town that gets significant snow fall every winter. Could I please have some kind of electric tuk-tuk instead?
Plenty of decent ebikes available in the $1000-$2000 range. I don't think that counts as "very expensive" - for a lot of people that'll be 6 months or less of gas usage
Most reasonably sized cars get > 30 these days. $1500 is 9,000 miles of fuel, or an average of 51 miles per day for 6 months. If you're commuting that far, then a bike probably isn't going to work anyways.
Let's say you can afford to live within some reasonable commute distance of 10 miles from your office, which is 2x the average bike commute distance, and 30 minutes at max legal ebike speed. That $1500 will get you 2 years of commute fuel, if you consider the seasons prevent you from driving for 3 months of the year.
But back to the numbers: I just typed in "average miles driven" to get my numbers, but you're right that's not exactly realistic. So taking your numbers, and settings aside other savings that not driving 5200miles/year will get you, two years of gas still doesn't count as "very expensive" imo.
Cars are extremely expensive, so if we're comparing car replacements we should look at the total cost. Some sources are [1], [2], if you're curious how expensive cars can be on average.
I don't think this math is right either. If I live 30 minutes from work by bike, the additional monthly housing costs will be over 10x what what my car payment + insurance + charging is, over the next 10 years, compared to 30 minutes by car.
And, using average car cost is not useful for something like this. That average includes luxury cars, sports cars, and new cars. You can choose to buy outside all that. I think most people would consider sacrificing their personal transportation, for a car and public transport, as a significant quality of life reduction, so luxuries of the car world would not be included when trying to make a rational comparison to a bicycle. I've never paid close to that average.
Ebike (amortized over 5 year): $2000/(5*12) = $33.33 $150/year maintenance $20/year electricity (made this number up... it's small whatever it is)
Which works out to about $47/month.
Cost of a car:
Car payment: $300/month Insurance: $1500/12 = $125/month Gas: $62/month (your estimate) Maintenance: $500/year (again just spitballing - this is low from my experience but idk what the average is)
Comes to: $529/month
The difference $529-47 = $482. Now, idk where you live, but the cost of living a 30min bike ride out from downtown vs a 30min drive is definitely not 10x that $500ish monthly cost. For most people in most areas it's going to be in the range of 1x to 5x. You can quibble with my numbers if you like, but I'm definitely somewhere in the ballpark for most people. You might spend a little less on the car and more on maintenance, or more on the car and less on repairs, etc.
And of course none of this takes into account your time. I've always tried my best to live under 20min commute from work, with my best being 5min, and to me saving that time has always been worth the smaller living spaces I've had to accept to get that. When you're talking about dense cities, that last 10-20min of your driving-commute is usually related to traffic and parking - which you can bypass freely by riding. I suspect if you live 20min drive out and 20min cycle out you're talking about the same distance.
No. This assumes you're buying a new car every 5 years, which is ridiculous when comparing to relying on a bike and public transit.
> Most people in most areas it's going to be in the range of 1x to 5x.
The original comment was:
> Cars are extremely expensive
So it seems that you're agreeing that a bike costs 1x to 5x more than a car, if commute times are held constant, and housing is considered, correct? This was my only point, that, if you calculate the math in a wholistic way, a bike is not cheaper.
No, I don't agree. Because I believe that the relationship between drive time and cycle time is not usually directly proportional - see my point about 20min commutes.
I'm serious. It's peak drive time and I just put a 30min drive into google maps (4pm right now) and it gets you 12-15km from downtown depending on where you put the pin. That's around 30-35min by ebike. Add a few minutes to walk from the parking lot (we haven't even talked about parking costs) and you're describing the same distance.
All in all we're trying to make an apples to handgrenades comparison here - you can't hold everything else constant and live in two different places. My point is cycling is cheaper for many distances, less time consuming for short distances, and has plenty of fringe benefits. It does require spending more on housing to live closer to where you work, which if that's the city center, may end up either being more expensive overall, or requiring you to live in a smaller home. If you want to live near the city center, that might end up being worth it when you consider all the factors. If you want to live outside the city, it's probably not going to be worth it - in which case I'd urge you to live somewhere suburban but with a good transit system since our planet can't actually sustain this much driving anymore.
Seriously though, a cabin probably won't even add too much weight, make it out of corrugated plastic or something. We already have the technology.
#legalize_tuk-tuks
https://www.golfcartreport.com/top-golf-cart-cities-in-the-u...
Personally I wouldn't mind zipping around in this instead of doing manual labour in an awkward position just to move around.
Amusingly enough many of the laws are old enough that they are written with "cc" mentioned, below 60cc is a "moped" above is a "motorcycle". Those rules will have to be updated to account for various traction devices.
Cold weather is difficult, you need to protect yourself from the cold but you also need to deal with heat and sweat from biking, so your clothing requirements actually change depending on what point in the bike ride you're on.
Visibility is reduced due to high snowbanks, so you're likely coming to a complete stop more often than you otherwise would. That's a good argument for electrics and regenerative braking obviously.
Road salt and ice are a big problem, since bikes have components exposed. Components like chains, brake lines, the steering yolk, etc. Those are probably not made for the weather here and will more or less dissolve if you use most bikes during the winter. I'm sure there are some that are alright, but it's an additional research task.
I think it's solvable, and a personal vehicle that can solve that will probably do quite well if they can hit the right price-point, but I think that vehicle ends up looking more like a golf cart or a kei-car than a bike.
Are kids supposed to self-transport as well
Both are enclosed electric trikes with two wheels in front.
The PEBL can be winterized by adding a floor and it has reverse.