Benefits of Electric Bikes
In many respects, e-bikes are a much better alternative than electric cars. They are far cheaper to build, buy, and maintain than electric cars. Even if you pay 3,000 to 5,000 for a better-quality e-bike, that’s only a fraction of what you’ll likely pay for a new electric car. A new Tesla in the U.S. will cost you from 48,190 to 67,190, depending on model.
E-bikes are more equitable and inclusive than cars, providing a relatively cheap form of transportation for those who cannot afford to buy or maintain cars. You may think that everyone owns a car, but that is not the case. About nine percent of American adults. or 23 million people, do not own a car, and that percent is considerably higher in many urban areas. For lower-income families, even if they own a car the cost of maintaining it is getting increasing difficult. A Bankrate survey found that 63 percent of Americans do not have enough savings to pay for a 500 car repair bill. Add to that the high costs for auto insurance and gas.
E-bikes also take up less space on roads and in congested big cities. Electric cars won’t help congestion in major cities; greater e-bike adoption will. Plus, e-bikes are far healthier for drivers and can reduce a nation’s healthcare costs and improve productivity.
No one is suggesting that electric bicycles are going to replace cars, SUVs, and light trucks. They remain the best option for traveling longer distances or hauling heavier cargo. There’s still a strong case to be made for electric-powered cars and light trucks to replace the gas-guzzling, high-polluting vehicles that dominate the roads today.
Electric or gas, cars play an important role in transportation planning, but we are far too dependent on them. The majority of car trips in urban areas are for short-distance errands that could easily be managed on an e-bike. A study by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that 69 percent of car trips are for two miles or less, a distance easy to cover with an e-bike. For most people, electric bikes are a viable option for commuting or running errands for even slightly longer trips, ranging from three to five miles.
Is an E-Bike the New Second Car?
For many families, especially those living in urban environments, it is reasonable to assume that an electric bike may at least be able to replace their second car. E-bikes are far more practical and versatile than traditional bikes. You can buy lightweight, folding e-bikes perfectly suited for carrying on trains and commuting to work in downtown business districts. You can buy larger, heavier e-bikes designed for carrying small children to school or parks, or for hauling cargo. The possibilities are endless.
Think how much money a family could save by using e-bikes instead of a second car. First, the cost to buy an e-bike (or two) is far less than the cost of buying a second car, even a good used one. Imagine how it could improve a family’s expenses to not be saddled with a large monthly car payment. Second, the family will save money on their auto insurance by removing one car from the policy. Next, with an e-bike there are no more worries about the price of gas – or even gas shortages. Finally, the annual maintenance cost for an e-bike is tiny compared with that for a car.
Beyond the financial benefits of electric bikes, riding an e-bike more and driving a car less means better health and fitness. If enough people made the switch, it could have a significant impact on society as a whole. bike riding would mean reduced obesity rates, improved heart health, fewer people diagnosed each year with Type 2 diabetes, and more. Traffic fatalities would also be reduced.
Then there’s the potential benefit to the environment. Right now, emissions from gas-powered cars and trucks are a significant contributor to the rise in greenhouse gases, which scientists believe is causing global warming and catastrophic disruptions to our weather patterns. Just look at the heat wave currently being experienced his summer across much of the U.S., the UK, and Europe, accompanied by unprecedented drought and fires.
How to Motivate People to Use E-bikes
Encouraging more people to rely less on cars and more on cycling needs to be a higher priority for governments worldwide, including North America. For the most part, in the U.S. and Canada riding a bike is still viewed as primarily a recreational or exercise activity. While attitudes are changing in some cities and regions, in general bicycles are not yet viewed in North America as a serious means of transportation that should be actively promoted with significant transportation and infrastructure spending.
Here are two ways governments can help with the transition to e-bikes as a serious component of transportation planning:
– Financial incentives
The federal government offers tax incentives of up to 7,500 for the purchase of qualified new electric cars. but nothing for electric bikes. It’s time for this policy to change. If you want to encourage more people to ride e-bikes for transportation purposes, then offer tax incentives for buying an e-bike. President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation includes tax incentives for e-bike buyers but as of the publication date of this story it has yet to pass in both houses of Congress.
Given the federal government’s lack of action, some cities have moved ahead with their own incentive programs. Denver, for instance, has a highly successful e-bike purchase price rebate program. It offers 400 rebates for all Denver residents, 450,200 for income-qualified residents, and an additional 500 rebate on the purchase of cargo e-bikes.
Canada’s status is similar to the U.S. The Canadian federal government offers tax incentives for electric cars but nothing for electric bikes. Some of Canada’s provinces have stepped up with their own programs. E-bike buyers in Nova Scotia can get a rebate of up to 500. Business owners in British Columbia can qualify for rebates of up to 450,700 for purchase of a cargo e-bike.
According to Electrek.co. several European countries offer incentives. France, for instance, offers a generous rebate program where they will pay citizens the equivalent of nearly 3,000 U.S. dollars to buy an e-bike. To receive the rebate, the person must turn in an older-model gas-powered car to be scrapped.
#2 – Safer biking infrastructure
No matter what incentives the government offers, we will never see a wide-scale move toward bicycling as a transportation option until we build a connected infrastructure of bike trails and lanes where people feel safe to ride. This won’t happen until state/province and federal governments make this a priority and shift needed transportation dollars from car-centric roads to build more and safer bike infrastructure.
Too many cities take the easy way out by merely painting a white line next to the edge of an existing street and labeling it a bike lane. They are then surprised by how few people use the lanes. Seriously? Not many cyclists are going to feel safe riding their bike in a narrow lane just inches away from motorists whizzing past at 30 to 50 mph. Families don’t feel safe using bike lanes. Nor do senior adults. Children can’t use them to commute to school.
Cities need to do their homework and be more creative when it comes to building bike travel infrastructure that people will want to use. Protected bike lanes are one alternative. In contrast with a traditional bike lane, protected bike lanes add a physical barrier between the cyclists and nearby motorists. Ideally, they also add extra width. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but the photos accompanying this story will give you a few examples.
Separate bike trails, where possible, are the best alternative. With bike trails, interaction with motorists is eliminated or minimized. In most cities, the most workable solution will be an integrated network of multi-use trails and protected bike lanes. Where mass transit is available, bike routes should be developed to allow commuters and other riders to easily use a combination of cycling and trains to move about the town and region.
A growing number of North American cities, including Vancouver, New York City, Portland, and Austin, are making real progress toward building out safe and effective bike infrastructure. Unfortunately, they are still the exceptions. Most North American cities are only timidly approaching this need, devoting far too few dollars and resources to do it right.
For city and state planning officials who want to learn more about how to build safe bike infrastructure that the public will use, here are three excellent resources:
Make Cycling a Priority
Sure, electric cars like Tesla are pretty cool. I get that. My next car purchase will likely be electric-powered or at least a plug-in hybrid. Still, rather than fixating so heavily on electric cars, maybe we should be talking more as a society about electric bikes. We need to regard cycling as a serious transportation alternative that helps solve many of society’s problems, rather than as merely a form of recreation.
It may be trendy these days to show off your new electric car, but why not really impress your friends by showing up with a new Rad, Trek, Pedego, Gazelle, or whatever brand of e-bike you prefer? E-bikes are the future for environmentally friendly, healthy, inclusive, cost-effective, short-distance urban transportation.
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Electric Cars vs Bikes: What Are the Key Areas to Look at When it Comes To Sustainability?
If you’re looking for a new vehicle, it might be time to consider an electric model. These are environmentally responsible alternatives to cars that use fossil fuels and represent a significant step forwards in protecting the world around us. However, choosing between an electric car and a bike is a difficult process in itself. In this article, we compare the two, discovering the key areas that can help you to choose the most suitable option for you.
Why sustainability matters
Sustainability is playing an increasingly important role in all of our lives. Temperatures recently exceeded 40°C for the first time ever in the UK, a clear sign that climate change is having a tangible impact. By becoming more sustainable, we can limit the levels of damaging emissions that we produce and slow down the process of climate change. Preventing climate change at home starts with making more sustainable consumption decisions.
Transport emissions in the UK fell by a staggering 19.6% in the first year of the pandemic, proving that how we travel plays a significant role in the amount of emissions we produce. Choosing an electric car or bike would allow users to cut down drastically on the emissions created by burning fossil fuels, but which one is best for you? This depends on a few factors:
Size
One of the most visible differences between the two types of transport is their size and capacity. A bike is inevitably a lot smaller than a car, which is ideal for reducing your emissions. Not only do more bikes fit on the road, saving a lot of space, but you don’t need as big a garage. Parking and storage are easier, and you can use any spare garage or driveway as a hobby space or even a small eco-friendly garden.
Energy requirements
The amount of energy each of the systems requires varies significantly. After all, a car is made up of more than a tonne of metal, so of course, the amount of energy it uses is significantly greater than a bike. For instance, an electric car costs around 160 times more to charge than an e-bike. If you don’t need to transport many items or don’t need to drop children off at school, a bike is ideal, which could make it a good solution for commuting to work or the gym.
Range
The range of both transport methods varies significantly. Current electric cars can travel hundreds of miles on a single charge since they have large banks of batteries making up a significant amount of the car’s weight. On the contrary, an electric bike has a smaller battery – whilst this is ideal for bike storage. it means that you will have a significantly lower range. For people with long commutes or that travel a lot, this makes a car an ideal option with a bike thriving in a short-range urban environment.
Author bio: James Ritter
I am a digital consultant with a particular interest in sustainability, and have advocated for content focussing on both local and global environmental issues. I majored in creative writing at university, and am always eager to expand my knowledge around different subjects.
Forget Tesla and Electric Cars. E-Bikes Are the Future of Transportation.
Since the federal government failed to deliver on e-bike incentives, states and cities are stepping up to get Americans riding on two wheels.
Tony Ho Tran
Deputy Editor, Innovation Tech
There was a time—an instant really—when it seemed like e-bike advocates had captured lightning in a bottle.
The E-BIKE Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) in 2021, was placed in the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed by the House of Representatives in 2022. It would have rewarded constituents with a 30 percent tax credit (up to 900) on the purchase of new electric bicycles that cost less than 4,000—a potent incentive for Americans to choose an environmentally friendly, low-cost alternative to driving cars.
It was popular. It was good for the Earth. It would have helped low-income Americans. So, naturally, the Senate killed it. In the end, the E-BIKE Act was removed from the final version of the IRA after a surprise agreement between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—an unfortunate victim of old-fashioned Washington backroom politics.
“That would have been a really incredible moment had it been part of the bill that was ultimately signed into law and passed by the Senate last summer,” David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, told The Daily Beast. “But it got killed in the negotiations between Schumer and Manchin, which was really frustrating and disappointing.”
Despite the letdown, Zipper and other transportation policy experts see a bright future for e-bikes. While electric car companies like Tesla and vehicles like the Ford F-150 Lightning dominate the headlines, the two-wheeled variety is slowly making its way up the road—and is even on pace to overtake EVs this year.
“The future transportation revolution is already here—and she arrived on an e-bike,” Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation and chair of the National Association of Transportation Officials, told The Daily Beast. “They’re a great alternative to driving. They don’t require parking. They’re less expensive. They’re really changing how people are getting around and I see it every day when I walk or bike in the city.”
The surge of e-bike adoption might be a surprise, especially when you consider the stratospheric highs that EVs have hit in recent years. Since 2020, the electric car market has tripled—having gone from 10 million to 30 million on the road in 2022. Those numbers are only set to rise as countries like China double down on EV production, and the U.S. expands its EV presence through tax credits and charging infrastructure.
Electric cars are hotter right now than they’ve ever been—but they’re not the only electrified transportation method set to boom. While the E-BIKE Act didn’t pass at a federal level, advocates have been heartened to see that states and municipalities are beginning to lay the path for an e-bike revolution. And it’s coming even faster than they thought.
“It takes a few months to put together a legislation package even in the best of circumstances usually, but already in the last couple of weeks, there have been proposals put forth,” Zipper said. In the months surrounding the passing of the IRA, states like Vermont, New York, and Oregon have introduced e-bike rebate programs. Cities like Washington D.C., Nashville, and Austin have introduced proposals in the past few weeks alone.
It’s a trend that doesn’t seem like it’s going to go away any time soon either. E-bike sales outpaced EVs and hybrid cars in both 2021 and 2022. That trend is only expected to grow even more in 2023 and beyond as incentive programs get introduced, the wider public embraces micro mobility, and governments reckon with climate change.
“It seems like there was a lot of attention coming from the states and cities where leaders are particularly concerned about climate change, and rather dubious about the value of having autocentric urban areas,” Zipper adds.
Electrifying the Rockies
Nestled in the thin air of the Colorado Rockies, the city of Denver is setting a trend for the rest of America. In 2022, the Mile High City implemented an e-bike rebate program that grew out of a 2020 vote to increase sales tax to fund 40 million a year for climate change initiatives. When it was introduced, there was a lot of hope from climate change and e-bike advocates that it would be at least a modest success—but that wasn’t the case.
Instead, the program completely blew the doors off even the most optimistic expectations. Denver’s e-bike rebate program was so popular that the September round of the rebate program was claimed in nine minutes of its opening. By the end of 2022, more than 4,700 e-bike rebates were issued with nearly half going to low-income residents. And by all accounts, it’s been successful in its goal of reducing driving. In a survey, 71 percent of those who rode e-bikes said it helped them cut down on their car usage.
The rebate itself wasn’t complicated. The program allowed Denverites to save 300 when purchasing an e-bike, and low-income residents to save 450,200—not that different from other rebate programs. However, where Denver really set itself apart was how it issued the rebate: point-of-sale. Instead of having to wait until tax season in order to apply their e-bike credits, Denverites were able to redeem the rebate as soon as they purchased the bike.
“You actually get the rebate when you show up at the store, so you don’t have to wait until you’re filing your taxes a year later and remember to claim credit for that thing that you bought six months or a year and a half ago,” Zipper said.
He added that Denver’s push to include low-income residents also helped ensure that the “program helps address equity” and provided a framework for other cities and states to do the same. “I give Denver credit for improving on what the [Inflation Reduction Act] initially had.”
For Sadik-Khan, it’s a clear indication of the high consumer demand for e-bikes. She points to the fact that more than half of all trips in the U.S. are less than three miles. “That’s 15 minutes on an e-bike without breaking a sweat,” she said. On top of that, nearly 60 percent of all vehicle trips are less than six miles away from drivers’ homes.
“We saw Denver burn through 9 million in subsidies in six months for purchasing e-bikes,” she said. “I think that’s an indication of the pent up demand for them. As car dependent as the United States is, we have the greatest capacity for growth in the e-bike market.”
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
But there are speed bumps on the road to our post-car utopia. For one, EVs still suck up a lot of the oxygen when it comes to the future of transportation. Despite losing 700 billion in market value, Tesla still dominates the headlines and conversations around electric. The EV market is set to boom even more as legacy car makers like Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Toyota roll out new electric cars and products.
Federal and state governments have also enacted lucrative tax credit programs for consumers looking to purchase electric vehicles as well as ones for automakers to churn them out at a healthy pace. When it comes to electric, cars are what both producers and consumers are thinking about the most—and there’s a reason for that: As a culture, we’re car obsessed—and that obsession comes through in the way that we design our cities.
For more than a century, our transportation infrastructure has been molded to prioritize automobiles and not really much else. We’ve sacrificed pedestrian- and bike-friendly city design in order to make sure that cars have the roads they need to travel to where they need to go and parking spaces for when they get there.
This has resulted in infrastructure that is fundamentally unfriendly and, often, outright hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. Despite making up just 1 percent of all trips in the U.S., cyclists make up 2 percent of all fatalities involving a motor vehicle crash—and even more are injured each year. Pedestrian deaths are on the rise too, with many public safety experts pointing to the growing physical size and number of cars as a major factor.
Many of these deaths can be prevented with better infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and car-free roads for pedestrians. However, this is also a much bigger political lift than enacting a rebate program.
“A rebate program is something that’s a benefit to some people and neutral to others,” Zipper explained. “When you rearrange the street to create more protected space for those who are biking or using a scooter, there’s going to be a group of people in any city who are going to feel that as a net loss to them because they’re losing parking or their travel lane became narrower. So even though that’s very much the right thing to do, there’s going to be more push.”
Even rebate programs like the one in Denver aren’t perfect—with its biggest flaw being how easily it can be exploited by corporate greed. This is something we’ve seen played out already: After the IRA was passed providing Americans with a 7,500 tax credit for EVs, companies like GM and Ford coincidentally announced that they would raise the for specific electric models by 6,000 to 8,500.
The fear is that the same thing could occur with e-bikes. Not only would it immediately hurt and disincentivize consumers, but it would also cause policymakers to reconsider future e-bike credits. “These rebate programs are going to quickly lose popularity if the bike manufacturers and retailers just end up ing the rebates for themselves,” Zipper said. “This is something that I’m hoping that academics and for policy analysts are keeping a close eye on.”
The Future on Two Wheels
In spite of the potential pitfalls of rebate programs and stubborn politics, the e-bike revolution is rolling. Sure, it might not be happening at the federal level—but cities and states are steadily pedaling the rest of the U.S. there.
“Forward looking cities are looking at e-bikes and doing everything they can to help it along,” Sadik-Khan said, “because if even a fraction of cars in cities shift to e-bikes, we’re talking about tens of millions of trips possible in a fraction of the road space, and without the noise and punishment that millions of car trips take out on roads.”
The real question is not if but when it’ll finally get recognized and boosted at a federal level. While the E-BIKE Act’s exclusion from the IRA was disappointing, Sadik-Khan believes it’s only a matter of time before we see federal incentives arrive. After all, bikes are cheaper than cars by a massive margin. It’s much less of a financial headache to provide funding for e-bikes than it is for EVs.
If and when that happens, and there is even more reason for every day travelers and commuters to go electric, we might find that breaking our toxic relationship with cars can be truly as easy as riding a bike.
Ebikes reduce consumption and waste
Disposal is yet another issue to consider when you are comparing the environmental impacts of a vehicle. While neither a bicycle nor car will last forever, cars and trucks are more difficult to decontaminate and dispose of. When you consider that the average American owns over 9 cars in their lifetime, and there are almost 330,000,000 Americans, disposal of these vehicles is a huge environmental issue.
Replacing parts on a vehicle, like tires is also an issue. Did you know that over 200 million tires are purchased each year? In addition to the environmental cost of manufacturing all these tires, there is also the issue of disposing of the old tires – an estimated 2.6 million tons per year.
Sure, many tires are recycled into new products, but that still costs the environment – the tires have to be transported, a processing plant uses fossil fuels to chip them into pieces, then the pieces have to be transported to the next plant that will use fossil fuels to process them into the new product. What comes after that? You guessed it; the new product has to be transported to distributers, stores, and consumers. While recycling is great, this particular cycle is extremely wasteful.
You’ll need to replace your electric bike tires as well, but if you ride on good-quality touring tires, you won’t have to replace them for up to 4,000 miles. Plus, since bicycle tires are smaller, they take fewer resources to manufacture and recycle.
Ebikes reduce noise pollution
Unless you have an all-electric car, you can’t get quieter transportation than riding an electric bike. According to Purdue University, just one passenger car going 65mph produces 70 decibels at 25 feet away (the same as a vacuum cleaner,) while one diesel truck traveling at 40mph produces 84 decibels at 50 feet away.
Noise from one car may not seem bad, but the noise level from a busy road can really add up. Researchers in London found that even moderately loud traffic levels, over a long period of time, can raise your stress hormone levels and blood pressure. They estimate that this increase in stress can raise your risk of death by 4% over those in quiet areas.
Ebikes reduce wildlife deaths (and pets!)
The number of animals killed each year by vehicles is staggering. Some estimate at least 1 million animals are struck by a vehicle each day, but some say that’s a conservative guess. It’s difficult to get an accurate figure because state agencies only track large animal deaths such as deer, elk, foxes, and cougars. Most state agencies don’t track animal collisions that involve smaller animals like turtles, hawks, rabbits, squirrels, or even pets.
Using an electric bike for transportation, even part-time, instead of a car can reduce this alarming trend and benefit the environment in big ways:
- Significantly reduce your carbon footprint
- Reduce air pollution in your area and other parts of the world
- Reduce the noise pollution that you contribute
- Protect your local wildlife and pets
These positive impacts are only part of the benefits of having an ebike. In the next couple of articles, we’ll show you the financial and health benefits of choosing an electric bike over a traditional vehicle. In the meantime, if you have any questions about ebikes, feel free to get in touch!
