cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/565171
Electric bikes make it possible to easily travel around town for less than a penny per day — literally.
Wouldn’t normal bikes be even more climate friendly?
Inb4 “I live in a very hilly area”. I mean for regular flat cities.
I was expecting the article to talk about how e-bikes might make a person choose to bike over take their car for short to medium length trips. In that case, there might be a tipping point where e-bikes could be more climate friendly than regular bikes just because they end up getting used more and take cars off the road.
I love ebikes but walking, cycling on a regular bike, riding on a skateboard, and all other unpowered means of travel are all still more climate friendly than ebikes. Ebikes are just less bad than something powered by an ICE.
Yes, but also no - if an ebike is replacing a car trip, it’s using 2 orders of magnitude less resources. As an example, this morning I had to take my kiddo to her summer camp, and it’s about 5 miles one way. I’m relatively fit, but without electric assistance I’d have driven.
Here in the US, we’ve built ourselves into a bunch of low-density suburbs - e-bikes represent an incredible opportunity to reduce carbon emissions now, without needing to demolish entire communities and rebuild them more densely.
