In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, electric cars are superior to internal combustion engines, which waste most of the energy they burn in heat. This is true in the Midwest where we get ~80 percent of our electricity from coal. The improvement is even greater in the Pacific Northwest, where hydro power rules (though hydro has other impacts, of course).
Some people have calculated similar comparisons for electric bikes. You can use the Google and find plenty. While I haven't see a manufacturer make a specific claim, at least in the nerd literature there seems to be a consensus that electric bikes achieve something like 1,000 miles per gallon or better. Note that at least one model of the new Trek e-bike has a Prius-like system that recharges the battery on downhills, so not all of the juice comes from the grid. So even if the nerd estimate are off by a factor of 10 -- not likely given the background info of rigorous study on cars -- e-bikes seem to have a lot of potential in addressing climate change. The chances that the effect from pure bike riders defecting to e-bikes would outweigh the new, motor-vehicle-replacing trips seems slight, when the multiplier on the replaced trips is so high. That doesn't mean there aren't issues about whether these should be treated as bikes or as motor vehicles. And I personally will keep pedaling. But we need every tool in the toolbox on the climate issue, and this looks like a good one. ________________________________ From: robert paolino <[email protected]> To: bikies <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, February 3, 2010 5:11:35 AM Subject: Re: [Bikies] NYTimes: An Electric Boost for Bicyclists] Richard Schwinn [email protected] wrote on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:03:04 -0600: > Agreed on the power plant issue - but it's still less than the impact of > a car. I'm not sure that I agree on the power plant issue. How much electricity do these use? Might it be less than some of the computers (excluding those of you using solar-powered laptops ;-) ) being used to engage in this online discussion? And if by the time these come into widespread usage, might even that small amount of electric consumption be generated by renewable sources? Or could electric-assist bicycles be developed that at least partially recharge the batteries by pedal power? Or maybe a bike like this should be able to be charged only by what you have put into pedalling. But even if charged by plugging in, it's a far better use of the electricity than that used by all the compulsive mobile phone-blabbing morons out there, nondriving or driving (including the one in the white minivan on Tuesday who stopped at the red light on Webster at Washington, at which point I began to walk across Webster only to have Motorolamouth turn right on the no turn on red intersection. At least one of us was paying attention at the time (me).) I guess I don't see why the idea of electric assist bikes has some people so upset. If they operate on electric assist within the same range of speeds of a regular bicycle, how is it any more a hazard to other bicyclists? That would make it different from allowing faster and polluting mopeds on bikeways. (Oddly enough, several months ago, I saw someone using a moped that actually had operable pedals, and he was actually pedalling it, not using the engine....not exactly something you see every day.) In Wisconsin, it's probably a moot point, at least for now, as electric bicycles aren't legal on public roads. Nonetheless, several years ago during BtWW, someone from MGE was offering demos on an electric assist bike. I tried it and wasn't impressed. It was rather heavy and clunky and while being pedalled normally performed less well than my 1981 Schwinn I've had since I was a teenager. (The small frame size of the electric bike, clearly made for someone with much shorter legs, probably didn't help.) I tried the electric assist going up the hill on North Hamilton and while it was a novelty for the moment, it didn't make me want to run (drive) out and get one. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
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