Cycle versus car - false economy?

[All uphill]

Do a weeks of shopping after school pick up? How do manage that on a bike?

My bike is a toy/hobby, it's an expense I can live without - and I might actually sell the eBike now, don't fancy £500/bill every 2 years for a battery I cannot even get hold off at present .

The car is a different matter, this morning I have school drop off, need to pick up a parcel on the way to work, than get some food shopping done after work, before getting to school for pick up......without a car it's simply impossible.

Looking at reducing my overall monthly out goings, selling the pedal bike (and not spending any more ££ on bike stuff) is actually the most sensible thing to do for me.

Panniers, trailer, cargo bike. All cheaper than a car.

In a similar situation to you I would probably be tempted to buy a car, too, because our infrastructure is so tilted towards that transport option, but I would resent having to choose the expensive, unhealthy and polluting option.

 

[gzoom]

Panniers, trailer, cargo bike. All cheaper than a car.

Sadly we don't live in Amsterdam where bike is king. I've got panniers on my eBike, but I wouldn't consider a trailer or cargo bike for 1 second on UK roads.

My car isn't exactly slow or small, but even last night commuting home on the same road I use my bike on, when doing 60mph on a twisty country road, I had a queue of traffic behind even. Someone was even overtaking people, bare in mind the current road conditions.......someone doing 80mph on a B road vs any cyclist there is only one outcome .

I feel vulnerable enough on a pedal bike, slow it down/make it even bigger with a trailer or plastic tub and it's a no go for me. I don't mind taking personal risks but I do have some form of self preservation, and no chance would I ask my family to risk their lives using pedal bikes on UK roads.

The biggest surprise for me on these car vs bike debates isn't the cost of a car because that really is as essential to us as clean water, heating etc, but how costly/expensive pedal bikes are. My eBike genuinely costs MORE to maintain than my car.

Is the cost of motoring too cheap or is cycling just an expensive hobby?

 

[Jameshow]

Sadly we don't live in Amsterdam where bike is king. I've got panniers on my eBike, but I wouldn't consider a trailer or cargo bike for 1 second on UK roads.

My car isn't exactly slow or small, but even last night commuting home on the same road I use my bike on, when doing 60mph on a twisty country road, I had a queue of traffic behind even. Someone was even overtaking people, bare in mind the current road conditions.......someone doing 80mph on a B road vs any cyclist there is only one outcome .

I feel vulnerable enough on a pedal bike, slow it down/make it even bigger with a trailer or plastic tub and it's a no go for me. I don't mind taking personal risks but I do have some form of self preservation, and no chance would I ask my family to risk their lives using pedal bikes on UK roads.

The biggest surprise for me on these car vs bike debates isn't the cost of a car because that really is as essential to us as clean water, heating etc, but how costly/expensive pedal bikes are. My eBike genuinely costs MORE to maintain than my car.

Is the cost of motoring too cheap or is cycling just an expensive hobby?

I very much doubt that...!

 

[vickster]

.My eBike genuinely costs MORE to maintain than my car.

How much did your Tesla cost to buy though (or lease?)

 

[gzoom]

I very much doubt that...!

Which bit the maintenance cost?

5000 miles on the eBike, £230 service, £450 needed for new battery = 13.6p per mile.

45,000 miles on the EV, £900 service, fuel = 3p/mile charged at home, x2 set of tires = 3p per mile. Total costs = 8p/mile.

So the eBike costs nearly 70% MORE to run per mile than the EV, the maths doesn't lie.

 

[gzoom]

How much did your Tesla cost to buy though (or lease?)

You are missing the point, I cannot live without a car, but can live happily without a bike. So if I have both, looking at sums it makes zero financial sense to use the eBike vs the car.

What really interesting is our EV is actually one of the more expensive ones, a smaller more efficient Nissan Leaf would cost 5-6p to run per mile all in.

The cheap maintenance/ownership costs of EVs is why you cannot get a 'bargin' one. Even a 10 year old Leaf still costs £4-5k.....give my eBike cost nearly £2k and the my next eBike will be around the £4-5k mark, a used Nissan Leaf blows the eBike out of the water interms of been cheaper, safer to own/run as a form of transport!!

 

[vickster]

You are missing the point, I cannot live without a car, but can live happily without a bike. So if I have both, looking at sums it makes zero financial sense to use the eBike vs the car.

What really interesting is our EV is actually one of the more expensive ones, a smaller more efficient Nissan Leaf would cost 5-6p to run per mile all in.

The cheap maintenance/ownership costs of EVs is why you cannot get a 'bargin' one. Even a 10 year old Leaf still costs £4-5k.....give my eBike cost nearly £2k and the my next eBike will be around the £4-5k mark, a used Nissan Leaf blows the eBike out of the water interms of been cheaper, safer to own/run as a form of transport!!

Shopping deliveries?
Your children cannot walk or take public transport to school (presumably you’ve chosen to school then somewhere this isn’t feasible?)
Didn’t you commute to work by bike? Get a cheaper ebike (you surely don’t have to spend 4.5k?) or a wholly human powered cheaper bike?
it seems your life is designed around the car, your choices have necessitated one, your choice ultimately

 

[Jameshow]

I guess if you compare ebike to e car the economics are tilted.

However a normal bike Vs an ice car the bike will win hands down.

Like 95% on here I need a car.

I tried 500miles in a weekend on the bike and it wasn't easy!

 

[annirak]

The calculus is different for me than for many. My commute is measurably shorter by bike than by car. By bike, it's 6.9 miles & 40 minutes each way. By car, it would be 7.6 miles. The time taken by bike is typically shorter than by car. I have frequently passed a classmate of Miss Annirak's (in a car) on the way to school at a junction near our house, and arrived at the school (3.5 miles away) before her. Miss Annirak averages about 10-12mph.

I don't own a car. That's a big hump to get over. I could stump up £4000 for a used petrol car... or rebuild of my commuter bike for round about £400. Add into that insurance, which is astronomical because I haven't owned a car in 10 years, petrol, gym membership...

Mrs. Annirak also enjoys her cycle commute of about 4 miles (she hates being stuck in traffic, and there's plenty of traffic to go around in this area). The school run is reasonably straight-forward. We're teaching Miss Annirak (9) to live an active lifestyle: she cycles too. Little Miss Annirak (4) currently gets by in the comfort of a trailer.

Under normal circumstances, I rarely take a taxi. I use a trailer to haul bulky goods if necessary. I use home delivery quite frequently, including for the weekly shop (at a cost of about £4). However, Mrs. Annirak was recently injured (wet leaves on the bike), and has been recovering; this has meant a month of bus fares and taxi rides. A car would have eliminated those. This changes the accounting substantially, but probably not enough to justify the purchase of a car, assuming Mrs. Annirak will be able to resume commuting by bike in the new year.

 

[Petrichorwheels]

Emissions - I believe there's a very interesting study, that compared an average car pollution to that generated while cycling, depending on what the cyclist ate to fuel the ride. I do believe cycling was always better than taking a solo car ride but things looked very different when you had a passenger - e.g. two people in a car had a lower environmental impact than, let's say, one bloke on a bike that ate a sandwich with imported cheese.

Do you have a source for this? Find it rather hard to believe.
With all our concerns are we going to enter the new year with "just stop cheese" demos?

 

[Petrichorwheels]

Like 95% on here I need a car.

I doubt that's true to be honest james.

 

[annirak]

Do you have a source for this? Find it rather hard to believe.
With all our concerns are we going to enter the new year with "just stop cheese" demos?

Sounds to me like it's ignoring embodied carbon. It's rather hard to make the same argument once you look at the emissions required to manufacture a car.

 

[Mike_P]

If you do a weeks shopping in one go then using the car is probably necessary but if you shop more frequently then doing it by bike or ebike with rucksack and panniers easily is a practical option and depending on how many different stores you have within sensible range should in itself cut expenditure as the stores bank on people doing a full weeks shop and different items are IME far more expensive in all.

 

[annirak]

5000 miles on the eBike, £230 service, £450 needed for new battery = 13.6p per mile.

Sounds like you got a manufacturing defect or a rubbish e-bike. Batteries should last FAR longer than that. Try warranty instead of replacement?

45,000 miles on the EV, £900 service, fuel = 3p/mile charged at home, x2 set of tires = 3p per mile. Total costs = 8p/mile.

So the eBike costs nearly 70% MORE to run per mile than the EV, the maths doesn't lie.

Sure, but the assumptions do. You may have spent that much, but that does not imply that it's the same for everyone. Folks I know with e-bikes have been running them for years with minimal upkeep cost other than charging.

 

[Dadam]

Do you have a source for this? Find it rather hard to believe.
With all our concerns are we going to enter the new year with "just stop cheese" demos?

Agree. At the end of the day the car motor, be it ICE or EV has to accelerate 2 tonne or thereabouts of metal up to cruising speed. That energy then dissipates in the form of heat in the brakes. EVs with regen braking do recover some of that. The 30 second "research" I did suggests around 70%, which was more than I though to be fair, but even so, 30% is lost and that's a lot of kinetic energy. At 10m/s (about 22mph) in a 2000kg vehicle that's 30,000 joules lost in heat to the atmosphere.