Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car

Maybe the most surprising thing here is that regular biking is still twice as efficient as e-biking even given our mediocre metabolic efficiency and a physique that isn’t exactly designed for the bicycling motion.

Yeah, micro mobility is great on paper when you’re young and live in an accessible city with flat topography. Years ago I became (and still am) a bicycle commuter and I am ENTIRELY SICK OF IT. I want a fucking car. I am tired of biking in the rain and the snow and the cold. It fucking sucks.

Also If I didnt have the ability to purchase an e-bike recently I’d be fucked with the terrain of the place I am currently stuck living (and even that doesn’t quite cover the situation).

Also I am tired of minor injuries compounding year over year due to the simple fact that I am using my body as both the engine and support structure to move myself, vehicle and cargo around just to live.

It was fun 10 years ago but now I’m just like give me a fucking cargo van.

Really had to drop that car speed down to make a meaningful chart huh?

Looks like trains are about 50wh/km

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/most-energy-efficient-mode-zero-emission-urban-transport-kmeť

I couldn't find any info on planes, but that'd be interesting to see how massive that would be too.

Let me just travel 30km to the shops by foot and carry shopping home another 30km back again

This data needs to be normalized by speed or realistic range/day. Otherwise it's pretty meaningless.

The car is correctly represented, about 0.15 KWh / km is what one gets.

However, the positioning of the e-bike looks strange to me. I've looked at previous studies and the e-biker has always been first in efficiency - because the efficiency of a motor far exceeds the efficiency of human digestion and muscles, while weight and speed remain comparable to an ordinary cyclist.

I think someone has calculated food energy incorrectly, or assumed that e-bikes move faster than they do. :)

While I like this chart, it's useless without the tradeoff. It also needs to map speed to time spent. What is being given up for improved efficiency? The inflection point is how you move people from point A to point B.

This would be much more efficient if it had other transportation as well.

Like non-electric cars, trains, subways, etc.

It's not too hard to get their efficiency as well.

NEXT DAY EDIT: Should've looked, there's actually a handy chart showing the energy efficiencies of a whole bunch of vehicles and modes of transport just straight up on Wikipedia. This article. Comparing the km/MJ column, we can see:

Walking 4.55

Velomobile with enclosed recumbent: 12.35 (there wasnt a figure for just regular biking)

Solar car: 14.93

Tesla Model 3: 1.76

General Motors EV1: 1.21

All combustion engines are below 1, but here's a few:

VW Passat: 0.33 Cadillac CTS-V: 0.17 Renault Clio: 0.42

There's a whole bunch of other stats though so I suggest checking the table

END EDIT

This should be shown in Km/Wh so the more efficient the modes of travel show as bigger bars.

Now do one where you A) normalize this to the same trip distance (not speed, so that these choices for a single trip become meaningfull) and B) convert the kWh into CO2 emissions, including the emissions in growing and transporting the various power and food production methods used (coal to solar, locally produced veggies-air shipped beef)

Energy efficiency and carbon footprint are very different things - pretty sure the carbon footprint of 15 big macs (8500kcal) is substantially greater than 1L of gasoline (let alone an electric grid equivalent)

Interesting. I've never owned an electric car, but just guesstimating based on those numbers, my daily commute would cost something like 25 cents in electricity. Not too shabby.

I did buy an ebike a few years back and watched to see how much the bill went up, but frankly never noticed any change. At 2 cents per day, it's basically a rounding error relative to other electrical usage, so that makes sense to me now.

Thanks a lot for linking the source!

Cool, now do the same chart but instead of energy use time.

This should include gas cars too which are ungodly inefficient

EBikes are awesome. I live in a hilly area where riding is tough. EBikes allows people of all ages and abilities to get out. Even with the assistance you still burn calories... as long as it's assisted peddling and not the illegal bikes I see delivery guys riding.

I ride road bikes but when I get older and less capable I'll certainly invest in an ebike.

The solution has always been better cities and better mass transit. EVs are a distraction.

Yeah but what about if a person is a massive hambeast? Ain’t no cycles going nowhere under that strain.

Or what if they are a massive douchenozzle chud fuckwit?!? It would emasculate them to not have the largest most unnecessary truck possible?!?

Keep in mind that although an electric bike might use more energy input than a regular road bike, it uses a much cleaner type of fuel. Even the most dirty coal power plant in the world has a significantly lower CO2 output per watt hour than the food you are eating to power a bicycle. Even if you are vegan

Now do it at the same speed.