An ebike for longer (10-20km), or hilly, or carrying stuffs trips, or very hot days.
A trailer for groceries.
And I don’t like to exercise! But I clearly saw an improvement on my physical and mental health.
My wife as her car for longer trips or when we have to move all family.
Thing is we have a fairly good bike infrastructure (bike lanes everywhere and some bike roads), but not good enough for kids or people who are afraid to share road with cars.
We need more bike-friendly roads (low speed on separated lanes), and make people conscious that car is not mandatory most of time.
I live in one of the most dense cities in the world. I own an ebike, electric scooter board, and an ICE Toyota sienta(basically a shrunken Senna). All 3 vehicles serve a purpose.
Within 10 minutes? Walk.
Between 10-20 minutes walk, electric scooter board
From 20-30 walk, e bike
Over 30 min walk, car.
In-between these, I take the bus or subway, if the stop is close to the station.
Basically, every vehicle has a purpose. Adding an ebike might be good to have in addition to your ICE vehicle.
Which city? Because for most of the densest I’d say 30 mins would be way to bother with a car, and if you’re actually living in the city you wouldn’t even own a car but maybe taxi makes sense for some journeys.
I see so many ebikes and escooters pop up is there a reason for this? Are people getting them because there’s some incentive out there or is it because they’re just a cheap way to commute?
Hard to comment on incentives without knowing what part of the world you’re in, but yeah they’re much cheaper than cars, less effort to use than standard bikes, and in cities can be the fastest way to get around a lot of the time.
Let’s not forget the scooters are very compact, you can easily bring one into the office, shop, bus. A bicycle needs to be locked outside, often exposed to the wearher and could be stolen. I’d say it’s more of a factor than bicycle costing more effort to move around.
Bicycles also have more moving parts, needs more maintenance i assume than electric scooter that has a direct drive motor with no chain or gears.
To echo the OP’s reply below, there are a lot of different reasons combining right now to make them popular.
One of the factors that has improved the most over the last 5 years is how much more access people have to safe and cheap optons. Buying a cheaper e-bike even just 5-6 years ago had you gambling on components and hoping your battery and charger were certified and sourced reputably. And, while you could order online, the experience wasn’t always great.
Nowadays it seems like almost everything has certified chargers and batteries, and the overall build quality of cheap bikes and scooters (bikes especially) has improved as well.
Combine that with being able to order a bike or scooter online, ship it to your door in just a week or two, and get going with minimal assembly and adjustment. Boom, that’s an attractive option, even before you hit incentives. E-bikes and scooters are so insanely cheap to own and operate compared to a car (even a super cheap car) so it just makes a ton of sense that people would choose them.
No, electric unicycles are great. They’re fast, powerful, easy to store and carry onto public transit, controlled completely handsfree, and fun to ride.
Are they different from traditional unicycle? I’ve seen a guy go around on a wheel with steps just below the axle on either side, mostly enclosed in a fender of sorts, but never anything with a seat.
Yeah there’s a local guy that uses something of the same general design. 50mph is pretty scary though that’s unexpectedly high. I’ll have to look in to how they handle on hills in either direction and if there is somewhere local I can test ride one.
How long did it take for you to get half-decent with it? I have little to no balance, I can’t even rollerblade or ice skate, you think it’s worth trying to learn?
It seems so practical which is why I wanna keep trying to learn.
I won’t lie to you, the learning curve can be steep at first. It took me two to three weeks of practicing a half hour to an hour almost every day before I got it. Like you, I have no experience roller blading or ice skating.
The journey from starting to staying on it for more than five seconds is the longest part, from that to effortlessly flying down the street is much faster.
It’s like learning to ride a bike but you didn’t do your falling when you were a little kid. And you will fall. Always ride with at least a helmet, wrist guards, and knee pads. And if you’re gonna ride anywhere cars can get to you, that helmet should be an ECE 22.06 rated motorcycle helmet.
All that said, I still think it’s worth it. It’s my main mode of transportation, it’s very practical and fun, and at this point riding is second nature to me.
I would recommend looking for a used entry level EUC on craigslist or something first rather than going for the biggest, fastest wheel right away.
Thanks for the response! Mind answering a noob question? Like where did you practice, an empty parking lot or…? Cuz even with helmet and gear, if you did fall, was it OK?
Yeah, an empty parking lot. You might think a field of grass would be better, but in my experience the unevenness of the ground makes it harder to learn more than the softness boosts confidence.
Your falls when learning in the parking lot will be a lot more stumbling and dropping the wheel than anything serious. The wrist guards are especially important because most people’s reflex when falling is to catch themselves with their hands, and that can be a problem even at low speeds without guards. You will also bang your ankles on the pedals, which is painful but not seriously damaging.
First, work on just controlling the wheel with one foot while standing on the ground with the other. Roll it back and forth, get a bit of a feel for how it moves.
You’re going to want to try and hold onto something when you first try to get both feet on the wheel. In my opinion, this is a dead end and doesn’t really help.
Get out away from obstacles and work on stepping your second foot up. The movement you should be going for is a single smooth unhurried step while leaning slightly forward, don’t try to rush. This part can take a while and can tire you out more than you’d expect. It’s okay to let the wheel fall (that’s part of why a cheaper, lighter secondhand wheel is ideal for learning), and it’s okay to take breaks. Getting frustrated doesn’t improve balance or smoothness.
When you manage to get both feet on the pedals, keep your knees bent slightly, your back straight, and your eyes up. Especially at first your balance, and the wheel responding to your balance, will tend to go where you’re looking. Look at the ground, you’ll go to the ground. Look forward, you’ll go forward.
Superfreighters are among the most efficient form of transport. It can be more eco friendly to import even fresh water than using difficult to access water. Same goes for exotic fruit, like tomatoes etc.
Yet they contribute more to emissions than cars ever could. A single trip across the world outputs more emissions than all the cars in the world in a single year. Except there are dozens of those ships making trips daily.
In other words you taking your bike over your car makes virtually zero difference in the grand scheme. If everyone stopped driving cars over night the effect it would have would only be a tiny percentage of what shipping freighters contribute.
Mate, you should leave your emotions out of these kind of discussions. It’ll just have the opposite effect of what you’d like. Please stick to the facts.
Electric bikes have become really popular and common here in Denmark. I only have around 5km to work, so no need for an electric one, but if I had perhaps 20km to work, I’d buy an electric bicycle instantly.
I have 30km to work and it’s along high speed roads. Electric bike is unsuitable and will eat about an hour each way. With the shifts I do I can’t compromise my precious home hours.
Some people need traditional cars and I’m one of them. I won’t share my job but before you say I should move job I really can’t lol.
My dream vehicle: electric tadpole velomobile. Efficient, stable even in winter conditions, weather protection. Unfortunately unaffordable at the moment, prices starting at around 9000€. Plus living in a condo storing one safely while not in use is a difficult endeavor.
Yeah someone in my building lost their fancy mountain bike, eventhough it was behind a thick locked door that only people with a key thingie can get inside with.
I’ve honestly been considering giving up my car for an electric scooter for the summer - my wife will keep her car, so we can still go to places with the family, but I don’t need a car for my work commute. At the same time, I’m too lazy to wake up early enough to walk.
Helps that I live in a medium sized European town. Escooters and bikes are very viable - and you can rent them for a low fee too, from multiple providers (I do wish they didn’t each require their own app, but of course they do).
Do it! Just think of all the insurance, gas and repair money you’ll save.
I’d personally advise for an e bike rather than a scooter since it’s more versatile and allows you to put bags on it to transport stuff, but that’s personal preference of course.
Try out a rental and see how you feel about it. Keep in mind that even a bike with worse specs will probably be better due to not being used and abused by tons of people and proper bike fit also makes things infinitely better.
I’ve taken the local rental scooters a bunch of times, they’re great utility, but quite worn. I used to cycle a bunch, but for short distances I actually prefer the scooter.
Except you’re being hyperbolic for the sake of cherrypicking.
I’m talking the Nissan Leaf at 40kwh and even on the lower end of ebike batteries at 400Wh, we’re still not at the claimed rate. This is why it heavily depends because the Hummer EV is closer to 200kWh and some ultra lightweight ebikes could be 200wh or less. All currently on the market, being sold, and something you might see on the road unlike a Citroën 2CV
E-bikes are probably around 100 times more economical than e-cars so it makes sense that they are much more impactful simply because so many more people can afford them.
The raw electricity usage is ~25 times lower for E-Bikes. And that is not counting in the 2 ton weight difference with all this steel, battery cells, electronics etc.
The initial cost too. U can get an ebike for like 1500€ but u gotta pay like 60000€ or more for an electric car. Also insurance, maintainance, parking, etc
Yeah, BYD is massively subsidized by the government, mainly to try to destroy the western EV market. I’m really on the fence on that one. On the one hand, I’d like our car Industry to be a bit more disruptive and come up with cheaper solutions (fuck SUVs, the German car Industry is just making huge luxury cars that are way too expensive, both capex and opex wise). On the other hand, I don’t want Winny the Pooh gaining influence on the west.
The lower weight and size also has significant external benefits, because roads need less maintenance and don’t need to be as big (that means less taxes for the owning classes in the back).
100 is a bit much, a good ebike can cost several thousands. IMHO the main driver for adoption is the availability of dedicated infrastructure. I can afford an EV but chose to use a bike because the infrastructure is excellent where I live and it allows me to avoid traffic and congestion.
100 is a bit much, a good ebike can cost several thousands
Right, but it has much lower ongoing costs (less electricity or fuel, no/cheap insurance, no registration, minimal maintenance). 100 times cheaper is probably a bit hyperbolic, but not by that much.
Maybe its a bit much but as i said in the other reply, you need:
a parking space
insurance
maintainance
eventually very costly battery replacement
All of these are either not necessaey or muuuch cheaper for bikes. These are also recurring costs that together could pay for a whole new e bike every few months.
We need to push for easier ebike carriage and charging on trains, also investment in lowering the cost of home delivery through an efficient postal service otherwise most people will still see a benefit to owning a car.
Of course families with kids are hard to convince entirely but with safe and comfortable cycling infrastructure they can be a lot less car dependent especially if bike to rail to bike is easy and affordable.
My old shitty car cost 2,5 times as much as my really nice ebike. Both bought used. I used to pay around 200€ a month for fuel and there is also insurance. My ebike right now costs me about a handful of euros in fuel each month and I don’t have to take extra time for exercise out of my day. So a hundred times more efficient isn’t even that high.
They’re limited to 20km/h. Where I live they are allowed on the roads just like human powered bikes, but they prefer to be on separated paths just like HPVs
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