One of the most common questions I hear from people considering an e-bike right now, during a period of soaring…
“Can a vehicle that doesn’t use gasoline as its propellant save you money on gasoline by not requiring you to buy gasoline?”
My god, its like we are accelerating towards a singularity of pure stupidity
Every mile you ride a bike instead of driving a car is a mile that you don’t have to pay for gas to travel. It’s that simple. Doesn’t work for everyone because some places are actually hostile to cyclists and are built exclusively for cars. But I used to ride a scooter on the highway 10 miles to get to work of the 5 times I’ve been hit by something, only one of them was on the dangerous part of the commute.
Still kicking ass carfree and laughing at the people who spend half their paychecks on gas and car payments and insurance and mechanic bills and toll bills and you get the idea.
I got an escooter almost a year ago. I did not use it a lot at first, but slowly I started to take it to the store more often. Then my wife got an in office job. I gave the scooter to her and ended up getting myself a larger one. I ride it all the time now. And now that we both have one we have started to go places together on them.
We do both still have our cars, where we live (rural New Mexico) it would be fairly difficult for us to totally do away with them, plus I have not figured out how to transport our dogs with the scooters yet.
How often are you transporting dogs, could you just pay someone (like a taxi driver) to do it when needed? Even if you have to offer extra for the dogs.
Every day. We take them to a hiking trail by the river every morning. And the vet is 54 miles away.
As far as a taxi, that is 80 miles away.
54 is a good number. Nicely divisible by 9.
Driving a dog to walk it just seems strange to me, but I guess some people have to.
I would rather drive the two miles to walk with the dogs in the woods with a dirt path, shade, wildlife, and no roving packs of aggressive dogs
I dream of moving somewhere where I don’t need a car permanently. I used to live in a city where it was impossible to ride to a grocery store on a sidewalk or a bike lane and to cross the surrounding highways is literally impossible (unless you’re sprinting across 10 lanes) without a car.
Unfortunately it’s not quite 1:1. Depending on your location, a lack of bike infrastructure might have you biking significantly farther than you would have driven.
On the flip side, though, in some places you’re able to take shortcuts on a bike where cars can’t go.
Or avoid traffic that would have left you going slower than you are on the bike.
Riding on a bike and passing cars that are stuck in traffic is a magical experience. 10/10 would recommend. A feeling of simultaneously combined moral, physical, and practical superiority that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Plus, you’re riding on a bike, and riding a bike is fun.
It might not last long, but for those few minutes where your bicycle is outpacing car traffic, you feel like a god. A god powered by the envious stares of fat, bored motorists.
It’s the opposite for me. Taking a car would add like 15% of distance to my commute with an eBike.
The answer is obviously “yes.”
Unless you’re charging your ebike with an inefficient, poorly-tuned gasoline generator, obviously yes.
And even then, honestly. You might have to be burning an oil drum for heat while you wait to be less efficient.
Coal fired steam engine to charge it.
Honestly would be kinda cool to charge a bike with a steam engine though.
If you power that steam engine with wood or other natural (non-fossil) fuel, then it’s also carbon neutral … and might even be more environmentally friendly than charging it from grid power, since grid power may include coal and natural gas power plants.
Sorry, but can someone point out why this isn’t the dumbest most obvious article I’ve ever read?
I understand that isn’t possible for everyone and/or everywhere, but the biggest saving is not even having a car in the first place. Not just the actual price of the car (and it’s depreciation), but the monthly/yearly costs associated with owning one. Insurance, taxes, maintenance and possibly repairs.
It has been a very long time since I actually owned one, but at least here (EU) it can easily be like 150€ a month and you haven’t even driven a single kilometer. I’m pretty sure it’s physically impossible for me to use up 150€ in electricity with an eBike in a month, and there isn’t even any fuel accounted for.
I’d love to completely get rid of my car, but, alas, it would mean the end of my social life since the buses rarely run past 9 and the roads are too dangerous to cycle.
One thing I think we could do, though, is move towards making those fixed expenses of car cost sensitive to mileage. For instance, lets mandate availability of insurance-per-mile instead of insurance-per-month; because the temptation to USE a car in a car-dominated infrastructure is pretty constant and severe.
Yeah that is where the largest savings can come from. Never learnt to drive because of the costs involved with car ownership. Couldn’t afford it then and now I would rather buy something else. Could go on 4 cruise holidays a year with the money saved just by not having a car.
Even the bus costs a fair bit compared to a bike, but still cheaper than owning a car. Sure, fuel to go to work might cost less than a bus ticket. But a bus ticket doesn’t require me to buy a depreciating asset - well, other than enough clothes to not scare other passengers.
Obviously? Who is dumb enough to think that is a question to ask.
“How much am I likely to save by riding a bike” might be a better question to go for. For me, just as an alternative to the bus it’s about £120 a month saved. Or enough to buy a couple of replacement bikes a year.
Yes, I haven’t bought gas in weeks! My tank is still full.
Keep in mind that the $17 figure is not per month. That is
So in this example, the fuel savings alone are about $500 (€430) annually.
Glad to see the article is not AI generated?
Depends entirely on how much you ride it…
Huh? No it doesn’t.
So if you buy one and take it home and park it in the garage forever it’s going to save you money? LOL
And if you want to go the pedantic route, the headline asks “can”, not “does” an ebike save you money. So regardless, the answer is always Yes.
LOL no, it cannot save you money if you don’t ride it.
Yes it can. You just choose not to let it.
…huh?
That isn’t riding it at all
Yes, that’s correct, well done!
Well, it doesn’t as long as the amount you ride it is more than 0.
If you buy an ebike and then it just sits in your garage and never goes anywhere, that’s not saving you money on gas. (And that’s a more common scenario than you might think.)
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I mean, that’s how it is here too. I bet we can’t find 5 countries where the police will investigate and retrieve your stolen bike.
6400km this year? Hmmmm. If I ride to work at least 300 days this year, that would rack up ~2700km. That’s a 10min commute. I would have to go absolutely everywhere to hit that number.
For me it’s closer to 4000km a year just in commuting. Maybe up to 1000km from everything else at a push. Shops are closer and other bike rides are far less frequent than commuting to work is.
Duh
That’s a terrible title given Bettetidge’s Law but at least the answer here is very obviously gonna be “it depends”
