Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car
Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7273195
Not trying to be that guy, but do the bike and walking numbers include the energy from the calories you eat, or the energy needed to produce that food?
I don't think they need to, most people already eat more food than they need to whether they walk or drive. I'd wager the average person wouldn't need to change a thing in their diet and would overall only improve their health by walking more.
I've read that unless the person riding the bike is vegetarian, the ebike actually has a lower carbon footprint than the normal bike. They're still both far better than the car (ice or EV).
I wondered that too. I imagine it would be very inaccurate to include that as the amount of calories needed would vary wildly person to person. For example, I burned around 2000kcal to cycle 100km in hilly terrain at the weekend, while a friend burned roughly twice that on the same ride.
Fuck cars, but was it really necessary to compare at such different speeds? Air resistance is a big factor and a proper electric bike can go 45kmh as well. Or the car can drive 25kmh
a proper electric bike can go 45kmh as well.
There's some debate about that. E-bicycles above class 2 (with assistance/drive at over 20mph) are not allowed on a lot of bike lanes, so they're more like electric mopeds
It depends where you live. Here the limit is 400W. Which is probably not quite enough to hit 45km/h in ideal flat conditions.
Yes, they are handled differently in a legal sense. This comes with some small changes to usability of e.g. bike lanes, but in terms of practicality it's basically still a bike.
Would still be a better comparison, since this is focused on energy consumption. Or just have the car drive slower, as per my other suggestion.
The fact remains that cars are faster than bikes. Driving a car usually means going faster and hence wasting more energy. Sure, plenty of people deal with distances that necessitate such speeds to be practical in daily life, but that's a different problem to be solved.
I think the speeds are the average speed of each transport type, so it's fair.
The different speeds are to make sure the graph pushes the agenda of the creator. All of them going the same speed would decrease the disparity between walking and driving.
You got lies, damn lies and statistics.
And this is one of those.
It wouldn't change that much actually. Modern cars are really aerodynamic and the comparatively high weight of electric cars emphasizes the rolling resistance in relation to the air resistance.
This Wikipedia page (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrwiderstand) has an example where 77% of energy goes to air resistance, 23% to rolling resistance - At a speed of 200kmh. Which means rolling resistance requires 5x more energy to overcome than air resistance at 50kmh. (77% -> 77 energy units -> multiply by (50/200)^2 = 1/16, as air resistance depends on speed squared -> 5 energy units, but rolling resistance is independent of speed so it doesn't change (still 23 energy units))
I really like this graph because it helps visualizes scale. Sometimes, people knock e-bikes by saying they are less efficient than acoustic bikes. While that may be true, it's another example of, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good." As shown here, e-bikes are literally the 90% solution. I really don't think it's worth sweating the potential energy efficiency differences between e-bikes and acoustic bikes. What's really important is reducing car usage.
Acoustic bikes? I think analog may be more fitting here but honestly I'm not sure. I've just never heard acoustic referenced outside of sound.
Acoustic is funnier than analog, and I'm not sure if it's any less accurate than analog. In analog clocks, the passage of time is represented in an analogous rotation of clock hands. In analog sound, the change in voltage on a wire is analogous to the pressure waves you hear as sound. I don't know what is analogous to what in biking.
Also, the opposite of analog is digital, and ebikes are not digital bikes.
It's a joke. Based on e-guitars / acoustic guitars
It's... "manual" bikes, right? Or am I taking crazy pills?
You can make anything look bad by removing the next bad comparison though. Like if a pickup truck were there, everything would look good. Remove the car and add a scooter, windsurfing, rollerblading, and rolling downhill, and the e-bike looks bad.
True, but the comparison in this case seems reasonable nonetheless. I just wish they had included fossil fuel cars, too
Not really. The F150 Lightning's efficiency is ~270Wh/km city which means a small EV is only a 50% improvement vs 95% for ebike.
Also, this graph is helpful given our current situation. Maybe once we're mostly at the 95% better than an F150 Lightning solution (e-bikes), it might be worth being concerned with energy efficiency, but we're not there.
This chart ignores one very important detail. Exercise is good for you. Those bars should be negative since it's good energy expenditure.