Comment by abricq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abricq | Hacker News Reader

This news literally makes me so happy. I can't wait to see it propagating around the world ! Riding a bike it better for your health, for the environment, makes cities much safer places, better for your mood as well & even better for your wallet. For people who have the chance to work reasonably close to their work, it's THE perfect solution.

I bike to work every day since 4/5 years, in Switzerland. Since roughly 18 months, I have seen a huge change in the behavior of car drivers: they are much much nicer to interact with. Before COVID, I had dangerous interaction with drivers several time a week, and had to be in constant vigilance for them not considering me as part of the traffic. Now, it has been reduced to maybe once a month. Sometimes I don't even believe how well people respect us now, considering how it was just 3 years ago. And most of the time when I confront people that did something dangerous, they are sorry and feel bad about it (it really wasn't like this a few years ago...)

I ride an e-bike and I'm very fond of it, but it's a transitionary solution. What will propagate in cities within twenty years is almost all EV's with covered roads (no poisonous gases) and 'cars' that take up a half of a current lane and can carry three people at most. The car market will split between 'long distance' similar to today's cars and 'city cars' that are tiny compared to today. This will happen because EV's can happily scale to a much smaller size than ICE cars can and consequently will be much more practical.

>EVs can happily scale to a much smaller size than ICE cars can

No, they cannot; in fact, small size is their primary weakness. Compact car-sized EVs currently get about 200-250km of range at best- they're physically unable to carry enough battery power to make them viable. Gas-powered subcompact cars get 2-3 times the range of the comparable electric and have a significantly smaller TCO. They aren't an upgrade, and will never be an upgrade.

Where EVs shine is in the inherently energy-wasteful lifted station wagon (SUV/crossover) market segment that's overwhelmingly popular today (to the point where a significant number of manufacturers have abandoned standard cars entirely), mainly because those vehicles are big enough to hold the number of batteries needed to get a somewhat-competitive range with their similarly-sized gas counterparts. Yes, this means we burn even more natural gas at night to charge those land yachts up to the point it's kicking out more emissions than encouraging subcompact gas cars would, but out of sight, out of mind, right?

> Compact car-sized EVs currently get about 200-250km

What qualifies as compact? A Chevy Bolt will comfortably go 400km. More if it were strictly used at city speeds.

I noticed that as well. I guess many people took up cycling as a leisure activity when COVID hit and suddenly noticed how dangerous cars are for them on their bicycles.

Critical mass is an important factor. Previously, I've been biking almost alone in the winter here in Norway. The later years we're multiple cyclists at every intersection. So I used to be the "edge case" drivers forgot about, to being one of many the drivers now have to constantly be aware of. It also feels a lot safer biking in a train of 5 people than alone.

Interestingly I recently visited Seattle and rented a car there. I did what I always do—yielding to bikes when turning right—and the bicyclists actively thanked me for yielding and avoiding cutting in front of them. I was a bit dumbfounded as to how this behavior isn't common enough.

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