adamtki

I need to mention one of the merits of using an electric bicycle.

Electric bicycles are more energy efficient that regular bicycles in my opinion because the energy used to charge the battery is more efficiently made (and more carbon neutral) than the energy used to provide the food we eat to power the bicycle.

Here's a paper that can give you the details of this conclusion.

https://www.ebikes.ca/sustainability/Ebike_Energy.pdf

alexanderaf

My conclusion on the matter...




The human body is meant to be pushed. We are meant to be conditioned physically to keep ourselves strong. Automobiles provide a means of transportation by convenience, but have quickly stormed their way up to the point where we strictly depend on them. They have almost completely replaced bicycling and walking. Now the perception is that biking and walking are unsafe...why? Because you might get hit by a car. People are 'locked' in because a majority of the people don't want to walk or bike on a highway with traffic doing 55 just as they leave their neighborhood. Our society took a wrong turn!

However, it went that direction because of the availability of cheap fuel. It was convenient, but with the recent advent of high gas prices that is no longer a reality. Now people are feeling 'trapped' financially, because they still need a car to get by. Wouldn't you like to have a choice on whether you could drive or walk to the grocery store? Or do you really want to drive more? Do you think the urban sprawl and the societal layout we have today is acceptable?

We should push for change!

I have a bike designed for commuting. It's a Giant FCR3, and it is very efficient. It has thin, high psi tires which take much less effort than a department store bike to travel in. I don't take a physically exhausting 12 mile commute to work, I allow myself more time and take a relaxed pace. The moderate exercise is enough to completely keep me in shape and alleviate stress. A suggestion...keep one car in the family and have one member use it to get to work and pick up the kids from school after work. The other can use the bike and use the car in situations when they really need it.



I'm not trying to force people on bikes here, I would just like people to know we don't always 'need' our cars. If we think we absolutely need one, then living with high gas prices taking more and more out of the family budget will always be a reality. We should demand change...maybe not a rapid change, but a change over the next decade to have the option to live car-free or not. Possibly move closer to work or work closer to home in the next decade. Demand better awareness of bicycle rights to be on the road to motorists, and teach motorists how to share the road responsibly. Lobby for bike lanes or wide curbs, or a sidewalk to walk on. With enough voice, something will get done!

josephjhaney

With all the talk of these super efficient cars, I think I'll have to start up my GEO METRO when I get home and drive it around the block, just so I can remember what it feels like.

BTW- Metro- 45mpg, waaayyyyyy before it was cool. I am not green, I'm cheep. Super cheep. I haven't put gas in my car since feb, and don't think I'll need to till the fall (all I do with it is tow our Jon boat to go fishing). I ride every day to work, and oddly enough I've been eating less this year than last, and I still gained a few pounds this spring. So much for the "need more food" bs. The body becomes more efficient, not less, no one seems to be making that argument.

Joe

Fribley

No matter what the consumption of energy is in either a bike or a car it really basicly comes down to this:

My weight plus my bikes weight plus my backpack ~300 lbs (i post in the clydesdale forum also...)

Weight of a Prius with me in it ~3200 lbs

Energy sent to move ~300 lbs 1.5 miles to work WILL ALWAYS BE < (thats a less than symbol) Energy spent to move ~3200 lbs 1.5 miles.

You could break this arguement down in millions of ways but this simple basic fact will always remain the same.

Plus if you use her figure of 30 calories per mile for a cyclist, then you can only compare that to calories avalible in gas, as she stated 30,000 per gallon.

30,000 calories get a Prius 45 miles a gallon 30,000/45= 666.6 calories per mile for the prius.
She has already told us its 30 calories per mile for the bike. By my count thats 22 times more efficient.

Read what she says at face value and it makes little sense. She is comparing "fossil fuel calories" to standerd "calories''. While cleverly leaving out the "fossil fuel calorie" count of a gallon of gas. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry can tell you thats like comparing apples to oranges, you can only make comparisons when you are useing the same labels for both items. Please tell me i am not the only one that sees this??

evblazer

I tried to read that thread I really did.
If a prius gets 666.6 calories per a mile which seems reasonable if you are putting a small transportation penalty in there for the oil.
Then you take a bicycle gets 30 calories per a mile

She is saying per some article a bicycle on an average diet really gets 300 calories per a mile, transporation costs growing the beef etc. So is twice as efficient.

Which if you use her numbers really makes the bike not look so great. I mean you can fill up your gas tank and move 3200 lbs for only twice the cost calorie wise of moving a bicycle that weighs 10 times less.
3200 lbs / 666 calories = 4.8 calories per a lb.
300 lbs / (30 calories x 1000% energy input) = 1 calories per a lb.

From this we must conclude that we are less efficient then almost any motor vehicle on the road. Get off your bikes you $@#(
*KIDDING*

tjspiel

I have to eat regardless of whether I ride an electric bicycle or a regular bike. Also the energy used to charge batteries is made in a wide variety of ways, one of the most common (burning coal) is not at all carbon neutral.

adamtki

You'll eat less if you ride an electric bike. It may not be enough for you to notice. Energy has to come from somewhere! I switched between the two types of bikes fairly often and can tell the difference.

I never claimed electric bikes were carbon neutral. I'm stating that the electricity used to charge the battery generated LESS carbon than the energy used to produce and transport the extra food you need if you used a regular bike.

Don't get me wrong. Regular bikes are great, especially in place of a car. I'm just trying to educate those who aren't aware of an electric bike's benefits, especially an overseen one like this.

cooker

Too Hard To Read.

adamtki

First time I've seen someone capitalize the first letter of every word in a sentence in a post!

anthegreat1

It's a stupid argument. I eat the same amount if not less than I did when I drove to work everyday. The body unlike a machine can adapt to different conditions. A couple of times I've gone to work in the morning without eating breakfast. Besides you get exercise from riding a bike not from driving a car.

huhenio

I had two beers and nachos for a 10 mile round trip.

Should GreenPeace be involved?

huhenio

no one really cares

Asymmetriad

My appetite is way less during months when use my bike to commute every day.

crhilton

Quit educating people, you sound like you have a serious case of tunnel vision and it makes bike advocates look bad.

Eating might use more energy, but more of that energy is able to go back into the same ecosystem it came from. There's no cycle with oil, coal, or nuclear fission. It's just a fuel we've found, use up, and then try to find more. With food you eat, you crap, your crap make better soil, which turns to food, which you eat. Eventually you die, and even that can, theoretically, make better soil.

Now we've made many decisions which hamper the quality of the process: We eat 2-3 the healthy amount of meat, we eat more than we should, we prefer the cheapest meat and not the best meat, we bury our dead in cement and fill their bodies with deadly chemicals.

I'm not advocating changing burial methods. I'm not even advocating a change in diet (here). Actually, I strongly think that moderate exercise is the ticket to diet change: Your body craves what it needs, so make it need good sources of food and it'll crave them (You also have to learn a bit to interpret the signals).
What I do advocate is using the simplest, most natural, wheeled transportation device ever implemented: The Bicycle. Anything else is human kind presuming it knows nature better than God does.

I also advocate using the most natural form of transportation: Walking. Which is less efficient than cycling.

I also think we should keep our roads, our cars, and public transit. How much would it suck if you could only get around by biking and walking. How would the handicapped get to work? Or those who truly must travel distances: Farmers, politicians, speakers, etc.


Again, if you want to minimize human energy use you need to eliminate humans.

crhilton

<irony>Why yes, you could have sat around and done nothing but figure out how not to pro-create. Wouldn't that have been more environmentally friendly?</irony>

Lamplight

I'm not going to try and figure out how much food I buy per mile I ride, or the total cost of manufacturing, owning and operating a new Prius in comparison. All I know is that going car-free for me included getting a new job closer to home so I could do that, so in that sense I'm saving several thousand dollars every year, most of that in gasoline. But what really matters is that I'm now healthier than I was before, calmer than I was before, and overall I'm simply much happier than when I drove. No Prius can give me that, period. And that's what matters to me.

Eriol

not even worth my time to post on that forum. "Figures lie and liers fig" You can make the numbers say whatever it is you want.
How about those that drive to the gym to workout. Using her numbers they would be the number one cause of the oil "crisis" =)

znomit

A cyclist getting along at a reasonable pace of 16mph goes through around 500calories per hr.
This is the energy in a 25c pack of ramen noodles.
So for the equivalent 4$ gallon of gas you can travel 256miles.

I dont know how many calories you burn pushing the prius the extra 200miles, I guess you'll need to fill the boot with chocolate though.

huhenio

I eat all kinds of meat, fish, and other stuff.

make it 20 dollars of food and 10 dollars of beer for 300 miles and call t good

HeIncreasesMe

My appettite goes up when I exercise. That includes biking. I make sure to carry food w/ me like fruits, energy bars, and water..because I get hungry immediately after execising.

capolover

I don't think that is how calories and energy output works with humans.

https://www.hpathy.com/healthtools/calories-need.asp

If you eat a 500 calorie meal you're burning that when you're sitting at a desk, reading a book, or breathing. It's not just a lump sum that you subtract for exercise, its a pool of cals/building blocks that lets you live. The food you eat goes into the energy you use to bike, but it's going into a lot of other things too.

So if you weigh 170 and eat 2000 cals a day you're going to burn a good bit going to work, working, walking around at work, sleeping, ect.

That's the issue in America. People eat too much food and don't work out enough.

I don't think this person knows enough about how nutrition works to make any bold statements on calories used.

adamtki

True if you grow your own food with natural fertilizers and rainwater.. but for almost everyone, that's just not the case. You fail to realize that it takes energy (coal, gas, etc) to grow, fertilize, process, transport, and prepare our food.

capolover

It does for everybody, even prius owners.

They are still going above and beyond that by putting energy in their prius.

madengr

This claim is absurd.

Gasoline energy content is about 131E6*Joule/Galllon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline

Assuming a Prius is 60 MPG

(131E6*Joule/Gallon)*Gallon/(60*Mile)=2.18E6*Joule/Mile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie
Note the difference between calories(cal) and Calories(kcal), the latter being the units for food energy

There are 4.18E3 Joule/kcal:

(2.18E6*Joule/Mile)*kcal/(4.18E3*Joule)=521 kcal/mile

Do you burn 521 Calories in one mile? Maybe more like 50. Not to mention the internal combustion engine is only 20% efficient so it's really more like 2500 kcal/mile. Her claim is probably off by a couple orders of magnitude.

1 Prius is more like 100 bikers. You could even estimate it in terms of horsepower (given they are cruising side by side) since a fit cyclist can sustain about 1/2 HP, and Prius is 78 HP.

capolover

finally, somebody brings the math.