280M e-bikes are slashing oil demand far more than electric vehicles | Hacker News Reader

280M e-bikes are slashing oil demand far more than electric vehicles

arstechnica.com

68 pointsgrammers45 comments

> Of Perth’s 4.2 million daily car trips, 2.8 are for distances of less than 2 km.

Sometimes I get a bit more hopeful and then I read stuff like that... two fucking kilometers...

That explain why my city is in constant traffic jams, roads full of 2 tonnes cars displacing a single individual as far as the eye can see. Good thing they'll soon be electric cars, that surely will make it very sustainable and clean

Note that "trip" in transport lingo (I'm not sure if Australia has more nuance here) usually means goings from A to B, and disembarking from your vehicle.

So if you drive 20km into town, stop to fuel up, then make quick stops at several locations to shop or run errands most of those "trips" might be quite short, even though the total journey might not have been practical except by car.

The article discusses this. It's talking about a "commuter trip". As it points out, this is pretty similar for other wealthy nations. In the US, for example, 60% of drives cover a total distance less than 10km.

Uhh, EV's are not as clean as you think, please read https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majorit...

Do you live in Perth or WA? It's pretty damn warm out there, 2km outside the car is not very comfortable the majority of the time.

I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic about traffic jams of EVs as far as the eye can see being an improvement.

That's nice... my comment was regarding the "clean and sustainable" part and what city he lives in, not about the traffic.

That part was also clearly sarcastic...

Okay... Sorry that I don't come to the internet to infer sarcasm and whatever other inflections you're assuming from written text...

As already pointed out I think the parent post was sarcastic.

But the tire dust problem isn’t inherent to EVs. There are EV fleet owners that report a very similar tire wear with their ICEVs and EVs. It depends on what model you have.

EVs can be the same weight as an ICE car if you don’t need long range. EVs can be gentler on the torque than ICE in eco mode. There’s no jerk in the torque from changing gears.

I think EVs are heavily biased towards heavy weight right now because car makers are pushing their expensive heavy SUVs that give them their highest margins first. And they’re slow to provide options for battery sizes, to streamline early production. Our family had a certain size and range requirements when getting a new car, because of kids and other things, and we ended up with a bigger car with a bigger battery than what we strictly needed because there was few to no options that perfectly matched what we needed.

For those of us that cares about the environment and reducing car dependence, you also gotta keep in mind that some of us are making an effort to drive less. I’m using an e-bike to work in the summer time. We got a bike trailer so we can take the kids on local trips with just bikes. Maybe our car gives off more tire dust than an ICE car per km driven, but then we don’t drive all that much anyway. (If we had a really good car sharing program in our neighbourhood maybe we wouldn’t even need a car)

Yeah, don’t think you save the planet because you drive an EV, you gotta push for other even more sustainable options too.

Despite whatever sarcasm I missed, thank you for replying more specifically to the tire dust article and your perspective as a EV owner.

It's an interesting article. I am at odds with supporting full push to large electric vehicles in the wake of articles that have also been posted recently on HN: https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majorit...

I don't see any issues with the electric bicycles being relatively light compared to electrics mopeds and cars.

I would love to see a full and impartial comparison of all this EV vs Gas stuff, from the methods used for extracting the raw materials to the emissions and to the fact that the ocean is the main source of earths oxygen.

It's insane that countries are fighting petty wars over land claims when the earths environment is seemingly at a point of no return.

I live in a suburb of a cold midwest US city, electric cars are not popular here because of cold weather. People always drive large pick-ups or Harley in the summer. But electric bikes are very common here. All types of types of them, including the ones that have no paddle and the paddle assist ones. All are very common here. If I hadn't bought a expensive road bike recently I would have bought an electric bike already. My only problem with them is they are not "bikes" as in exercise, they are a means of commute.

Which is precisely the point for decarbonization.

The government should be providing a 500$ subsidy to e bikes for the next 10 years. Everyone should have one.

An e-bike with a kid trailer is really useful.

The mass economics of ebikes is a lot better thancars. An e-bike needs like 1-2kwhr. A car needs 100 kwhr.

If people use the ebikes, the environment impact improvements are maximized for current global cell production with ebikes.

The identification of bikes with "exercise", as a separate thing from daily transport, a kind of mobile gym, seems specifically American. Most other places this is a subset of uses, and only bike nuts do that. Everyone else just uses bikes to get around.

And it's been reported that e-bikes with pedals help elders get more exercise, going to the grocery store or visiting their friends, than is the norm in older age groups.

So by all means, keep your mobile gymnasium bike. But consider gettng an e-bike, maybe with a carrier, basket, and saddle-bags, as well.

It’s not specifically American at all. Such a phenomenon can be found anywhere with a car culture. If you see someone cycling in the Arabian Peninsula for example, they are usually the lycra set. Ditto for white people in most of South Africa.

I refuse to use bike as daily transportation on the grounds that I'm neither a kid, who's too young to get a drivers license, nor an Asian immigrant working as Uber Eats delivery guy. Riding a bike, other than recreationally, is beneath my dignity.

I’m not sure if you’re being serious but if so this is the exact kind of social mind virus that needs eliminating for car-dependency to end

You at least gotta admire the candidness to say the quiet part out loud.

What I think is really funny about this take is it's the ultra rich CEO's that are taking their bikes to work. The hallmark of being actually rich is not having to worry about appearances any more. As far as social signaling goes cars occupy a space where you have more money than a college kid but not actually wealthy.

Yes, that explains why warm countries like Norway are electric car leaders: https://electrek.co/2023/10/20/cratering-motor-fuel-sales-in...

No possibility of bias in an article from "electrek.co".

> My only problem with them is they are not "bikes" as in exercise, they are a means of commute.

Have you tried one? They can be quite fun for exercising!

I am a biker for > 15 years. Mostly Mountainbike in the past, but more Road and Gravel recently. I initially also expected e-bikes to be more for commuting, and less for exercising. After my parents bought e-bikes and I took them for a spin I however think they are awesome for exercising too. On these bikes I usually have a higher average heart rate per hour than on the regular bike, and burn more calories. I think this happens because its just so much fun and motivating to get up a hill with > 20km/h.

But it might depend a bit on the terrain: If the terrain is mostly flat and the bike has a low speed limit (e.g. 25km/h in the EU), then the e-bike will feel more of a chore than the regular one. Also the e-bikes battery should be sized well enough that it can sustain a long exercise ride (which would be 3-4 hours for me).

Related recent post with 711 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304485

I live in the US, mid-atlantic region. This moment its 44°F and a wind chill of 25°F. My commute was 39miles each way. Quite often I experience jams and slowdowns such as 10mph on a 65mph highway, with headlights and heater on, or max AC in the summer when its mid 90°F. E-bike on some of these roads are illegal. If they weren't, they be death magnets.

My town has many e-bikes and scooters, mostly rentals. They litter the sidewalks and streets, sometimes are left in the roads. More often than anyone admits, the local youths throw them into the harbor - Boston Tea Party-style. You might go directly to the store and back, but you aren't making multiple stops as the few-as-they-are miscreants would steal your store #1 goods while in store #2. Or just take your bike, leaving you to shop and then rent another bike, all before explaining to the e-bike vendor that it wasn't you who mysteriously lost the GPS signal when your bike vanished at waters edge.

I'm a fan of EVs. But I'm not giving up my ICE vehicle. The 7 day electrical blackout at my home years ago convinced me of that. And people in dead EVs sitting in a blizzard in Texas a few years ago. With giant wind generators offline due to ice on the right, and oilfield pumps stopped for political reasons on the left.

What's nifty about an e-bike is that they're cheap enough to co-exist with your car. I still have my trusty Honda, but I also do many trips by bike now. I fill up with gas way less often, don't have to deal with traffic and parking, and get a bit of exercise to boot.

> explaining to the e-bike vendor that it wasn't you

Perhaps things work differently where you live, but in my experience this is not really a problem, because the rental app asks you to take a picture after you've parked as evidence that you parked correctly. Whatever happens after that is not your responsibility.

You don't leave the meter running while you're in the store, unless it's a very short visit; the bike will automatically end your rental and lock itself. You just unlock it again when you're done shopping, and whatever happens in between is, again, not your responsibility.

The headline makes perfect sense from a purely first principles perspective. If your grid is dependent on oil, replacing gas cars with electric cars won't change anything. However, if people start using bikes rather than cars, there's a lot of savings in not having to drag a 1 ton metal cage around with you.

Makes me wonder why there's still no "Tesla of e-bikes" or an established company trying to grab hold of the market.

No need. Ebikes are already highly commoditized and popular and available from many manufacturers.

There was no need for a time to subsidize the development of evokes not work hard to market them as a luxury good to try to get a foothold in the market, as with Tesla.

Ebikes are just a much more naturally highly valuable product and need less shilling. They sell themselves. I mean the amount of mobility and utility you get for the price is unmatchable by any other vehicle

A reasonable quality new ebike around these parts is about as expensive as a reasonable quality secondhand car.

And:

1.fuck riding a bike on the road here, half of Tasmanian adults are the type of functionally illiterate arseholes who'd intentionally drive too close to a cyclist for shits and giggles

2. The weather is crap nine months of the year

So the payback period is way too long.

Where are you getting a car for <$2k?

> 1.fuck riding a bike on the road here, half of Tasmanian adults are the type of functionally illiterate arseholes who'd intentionally drive too close to a cyclist for shits and giggles

I feel like that is most of Australian drivers, however, I am glad I live in Melbourne and not Sydney. NSW roads are chockas and also, they literally try to kill you there, just for passing them while they are sitting banked up in traffic.

> A reasonable quality new ebike around these parts is about as expensive as a reasonable quality secondhand car.

Sure, but not only are you comparing a new bike to a used car, but the maintenance and per mile fuel costs will be much lower, so after the first ride you will already have saved money.

I have absolutely no idea what "Tesla of e-bikes" is supposed to mean, but perhaps you're thinking of something like Rad Power Bikes?

https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/reviews/rad-power-radrun...

https://electricbikereport.com/rad-power-bikes-reviews/

(Not that I personally endorse either Rad Power Bikes or Tesla.)

Van Moof was the Tesla of e-bikes, now we're past that stage and into "everyone and anyone is building e-bikes in a crazy range of shapes and sizes to fit almost every usage and they just keep getting better and cheaper" stage that we're just about to enter for larger Electric Vehicles.

We probably need the exact opposite, retrofit kits to use existing bikes instead of creating a huge amount of soon to be e-waste.

All these new fancy e-bike company use proprietary everything, which means in 10 years (about 5 years after they filled for bankruptcy) you won't be able to fix anything

That already exists.

You can buy kit to electrify your bike on amazon and alix

What does "Tesla of e-bikes" even mean? It is definitely not the quality stamp you think it is:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-model-3-is-the-car-...

I simply meant a company that's leading the rise of electric bikes and has a sizable chunk of the market.

Surely e-bikes are electric vehicles?

Not in a meaningful or non-misleading way.

I disagree. I bought a plug in hybrid in August. It's my first ever car. I am 56 years old.

All my life to date, my primary vehicles have been bicycles or, for a few years in my 20s, motorcycles.

A vehicle means a machine that carries people or cargo. Some definitions include an engine, but that would disqualify railway carriages, for instance, or horse-drawn carts, which I submit are indubitably vehicles.

A bicycle is a vehicle, and an electric bike is 100% a vehicle by any definition.

The headline could be better written as:

"Electric vehicles are transforming road transportation, but they aren't the vehicles you expected."

I don't think it's fair to break down set phrases into their components and use them as if their meanings are mere sums of their components. It is undescriptivist.

You are of course free to think that.

I think it's totally fair and I think you're wrong, but hey, whatever.

They really need to subsidize the shit out of ebikes. The more people ride the better our roads will be for bikes

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