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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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NGL I'm really close to convincing myself to buy an electric bike
In all honesty I'll probably do it this spring once there's less ice
The cycling infrastructure sucks where I'm at so weather is something I have to factor for
But even riding it only 2-3 days a week it'd pay for itself surprisingly quickly in gas savings
How far do you travel and how much is your gas that you're going to save 5 or $600 quickly on 2-3 days a week?
It is reasonable to save $5/day on gas alone. So $1000/5 = 200 days, or 100 weeks. That is just on gas savings alone, you will save on maintenance costs as well.
If you can get rid of a car completely, then there is much more because you are not paying insurance and license fees (these are generally fixed costs that you pay even if you don't drive), and most people don't have a paid off car so even more savings (plus the income from selling the car).
Note that I said sell one car, not all cars. Most families have more than one car, so bikes can enable you to keep one car for those trips where the bike won't work, and be majority bike. (this is important to point out as you don't want people to feel like there is a war on their cars)]
I haven't tried to quantify the health benefits of a bike, but they are there too.