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The world's 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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If you're not that wealthy you might be able to afford a car but not want to buy a car and an expensive e-bike. A car is useful for short distance trips in bad weather, longer trips that might not be the majority of your travelling, and transporting stuff that won't fit on a moped (or an e-bike unless you get a trailer... or bigger stuff than that.) In that case you're going to buy the one tool that covers your needs.
What if you need to move? You better just buy a whole cargo truck in case you need it.
Unsurprisingly there is a cost-benefit analysis going on. How often do people use their cars to do something that would be difficult by e-bike? For many of them, quite often. How often would people get use out of a cargo truck that they can't use their car for? Almost never.
Sure, some people have cars unnecessarily. Many people could use and afford a bike but don't have/use one. But there's an obvious behaviour going on here which means that electric cars are important.
Almost never.
Really? Average commute distance in the USA and in the UK is 20 miles each way, which is going to be about 1h20 on an e-bike going 15mph. I would imagine that millions of people buy groceries regularly that is too bulky to transport by bike without a trailer, and I think that if you do allow a trailer, millions of people are still transporting bulky items like flat pack furniture, appliances, waste etc several times a year.
All of that amounts to more frequently than "almost never".
E-bikes should be able to hit their top speed of 20 miles per hour fairly easily though. However, I think a 20 mi commute on an e-bike is pretty far, although it is still doable. Even on my 7 mile commute sometimes driving can take over an hour and a half.
That kind of distance, mass transit if available may be a better option.
Why does the bike get the lousy speed limit, a car going 15mph will take just as long.
Because in my country they are limited to 15mph by law. In the USA they are limited to 20mph, which would be 20 minutes faster, and still much longer than the average American's commute, which is 27 minutes. In the context of the original post, there will still be many people whose commutes have stretches with much higher speeds possible, for whom the difference would be even greater, so even there "almost never" is clearly wrong.
Maybe there are people advocating for electric motorbikes, rather than electrically supported push bikes, though I don't see them. But of course the faster you go on any kind of bike the more dangerous it is - riding an ordinary bike is pretty safe, and the exercise benefits mean it's overall good for public health. But encouraging more people onto motorbikes, even zero-emission ones, could easily be a public health disaster due to the inevitable increase in fatal accidents. Cars are much safer per mile travelled, which again goes to the above context.
First of all, "needing" a car to buy groceries is doing it wrong.
Second, bulky items aren't an excuse either.
Given that many people don't live in the Netherlands I think we can ignore that in this context.
The trailer the post mentions (you realise I mentioned trailers, right?) is neat and all but I don't think it really changes the overall point
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