• alyaza [they/she]M
    link
    fedilink
    32 years ago

    i wouldn’t know since this isn’t my area of expertise, but intuition suggests to me this would be because e-bikes still allow for all of the features of a regular bike, while also having a higher potential top speed and allowing for users to take breaks as needed for tiredness without stopping (which increases the overall distance they’re able to cover). is my intuition correct, people who have qualifications here?

    • @sexy_peach@feddit.deOP
      link
      fedilink
      32 years ago

      I think it’s mainly because they are rode more often and/or further. So much more that it offsets the additional battery and motor over a traditional bike.

    • Chris Remington
      link
      fedilink
      22 years ago

      IMO, this is up there with the difficulty surrounding the concept of sustainability.

      That Wikipedia entry is extensive and I don’t expect anyone to attempt to unravel everything into soundbites.

      I’ve grappled with this in the past, along with many others, with the use of the conservation of mass as an example.

      It’s been a long time since I’ve delved deep into this subject and I’d be interested to see what the academics have come up with this past decade.

  • Arthur BesseA
    link
    2
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    This graphic is ridiculous on several levels. For one thing, comparing bikes with planes is nearly meaningless as they’re obviously primarily used at vastly different scales of distance.

    But just focusing on the first two items, the source explains ebikes beating bikes with this gem:

    About three-quarters of cycling’s greenhouse gas emissions occur when producing the extra food required to “fuel” cycling

    It seems to me that the vast majority of bicycle use is probably people in cities making trips which aren’t anywhere near long enough to actually cause them to eat extra food vs if they used an ebike instead or even if they didn’t travel that day.

    I do kind of want an ebike but imagining that in its whole lifecycle it could emit less CO2 than my normal bike just seems absurd. (Also, the concept of personal carbon footprints was literally created by the PR firm Ogilvy & Mather on behalf of British Petroleum…)