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Not workable somewhere like Florida with high humidity. I'm sometimes drenched in sweat just walking from the car to the building, I can't even imagine riding a bicycle to work.
I do have a 250cc scooter that I sometimes ride, but even that I don't ride as much as I used to. Too many people nowadays texting and not paying attention.
It's true that there are few places in developed countries where there's significant heat and humidity, *and* significant bicycle commuter usage. There are developed countries with significant bike usage with less sweltering weather or at least drier summers, and there are developing countries with significant heat and humidity with decent bike usage, but very little in terms of both sweltering weather and significant bicycle commute usage aside from Taiwan and southern Japan as far as I know. Maybe some of the developed Caribbean islands, but I'm not sure.
That being said, weather aside, it's also the way development is laid out in much of this country where things residential and other uses are separated in large blocks from each other so a lot of people are quite a distance away from work, retail, and restaurants, and there isn't a great emphasis on making convenient and safe bicycle infrastructure in most parts of the country. Biking does increase the easily coverable distance up to several miles over walking, but on top of that, there's the obesity issue of being physically fit enough to do that easily which biking would help, but is also a hindrance to adoption. E-bikes sort of help with that in making it a bit easier which I guess are sort of electric vehicles.
Scooters are fun! There's a system / brand of e-scooters in Taiwan called Gogoro that's pretty good where there are battery stations where you can easily swap your batteries for charged ones. Battery swapping for e-bikes and scooters makes a lot of sense since the batteries are small so they can be stored somewhat vertically in very tight spaces in battery swap stations, they don't use a ton of power per mile, and the result is batteries that are quick and easy to swap by hand rather than having a heavy, complex system to swap as it would be for electric cars. Gogoro's been expanding to other countries, but no word on making it to the US thus far.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-31-2021 at 10:58 AM..
As long as the EV charging stations run on solar energy, things should work out ok-ish. Being dependent on hydroelectric will get dicey, when winter snows turn to mere rain, due to a warming climate, and electricity generation plummets.
I prefer hybrids, as long as petrol production holds up...
In a few years, electric vehicles may cost the same as their combustion-engine counterparts.
BATTERIES HAVE come a long way in 30 years. In the early 1990s the storage capacity needed to power a house for a day would have cost about $75,000. The cells themselves would have weighed 113kg (250lbs) and taken up as much space as a beer keg. Today the same amount of power can be delivered at a cost of less than $2,000, from a 40kg package roughly the size of a small backpack.
Why should a battery be compared to an ICE? A battery is used to store the electricity that powers an electric motor.
That said, I have no idea how expensive an EV's electric motor is. Now, a new motor replacement (labor and parts) for my 2012 Corolla costs from $2,500 to $4,000, but I don't expect having to replace the motor within the next 10 years or more. In fact, I have never had to replace the motors for any of the vehicles I have owned, except for the one on a F-150 truck. This was back in the '80's.
A few years ago I bought a 2005 Silverado that had an odometer reading of 184,000 miles. The odometer now shows a couple of hundred miles over 211,000.
Why should a battery be compared to an ICE? A battery is used to store the electricity that powers an electric motor.
That said, I have no idea how expensive an EV's electric motor is. Now, a new motor replacement (labor and parts) for my 2012 Corolla costs from $2,500 to $4,000, but I don't expect having to replace the motor within the next 10 years or more. In fact, I have never had to replace the motors for any of the vehicles I have owned, except for the one on a F-150 truck. This was back in the '80's.
A few years ago I bought a 2005 Silverado that had an odometer reading of 184,000 miles. The odometer now shows a couple of hundred miles over 211,000.
An electric motor is much, much cheaper than an internal combustion engine. They are making this comparison because battery cost currently makes it more expensive to build an EV than an ICE vehicle. With battery costs dropping, this will not be the case for long.
All good points. The aluminum in one ICE 4-cyl engine block is enough to make 14 bicycles.
Here in parts of California local governments have been increasing accommodations for bike transportation: bike paths/lanes, bike rentals, multi-mode (bikes on buses/trains/trolleys), bike parking garages, getting workplaces (gov't and private) to provide bike parking facilities.
Yes, they did and there isn't a single day that goes by that I'd like to punch them right in the nose for it as a pedestrian. Bicyclists are a pure disease in the city. They consider themselves both cars or pedestrians when it suits them blowing red lights and stop signs, riding on the sidewalk and generally being annoying as hell. Of course not every bicyclist is like this but the majority are.
There are plenty of times when I see an idiot bicyclist riding on the sidewalk in GGP while there is a perfectly good bike lane available for them right beside it. And they get really upset if you don't let them through even though I'm not obligated to do so on a sidewalk.
So if bikes are your best solution I strongly suggest you try again because it's an awful one and I really wish it would cease to exist along with my local government who enabled it.
An electric motor is much, much cheaper than an internal combustion engine. They are making this comparison because battery cost currently makes it more expensive to build an EV than an ICE vehicle. With battery costs dropping, this will not be the case for long.
Yes, I imagine that an EV motor is cheaper than "some" ICE, but comparing a battery to a motor doesn't make sense. A discharged EV battery should be compared to an empty ICE vehicle's gasoline tank. A battery, regardless of kind is a device used to store electricity and once charged, this electricity is used to energize the electric motor.
Availability of the material needed to build batteries-plus supply and demand, will dictate the price. Since the materials needed aren't renewable (just like petroleum), as they become scarce the cost will increase.
Yes, I imagine that an EV motor is cheaper than "some" ICE, but comparing a battery to a motor doesn't make sense. A discharged EV battery should be compared to an empty ICE vehicle's gasoline tank. A battery, regardless of kind is a device used to store electricity and once charged, this electricity is used to energize the electric motor.
Availability of the material needed to build batteries-plus supply and demand, will dictate the price. Since the materials needed aren't renewable (just like petroleum), as they become scarce the cost will increase.
Two lists. The functional one where one could claim a link between the gas tank and the battery. And the other is the list of component costs where batteries may well be similar to the ICE.
And note it is reasonably clear at this point that we are going to see some very large reduction in battery costs over the next decade. And if that happens it likely dooms ICE.
Yes, I imagine that an EV motor is cheaper than "some" ICE, but comparing a battery to a motor doesn't make sense. A discharged EV battery should be compared to an empty ICE vehicle's gasoline tank. A battery, regardless of kind is a device used to store electricity and once charged, this electricity is used to energize the electric motor.
Availability of the material needed to build batteries-plus supply and demand, will dictate the price. Since the materials needed aren't renewable (just like petroleum), as they become scarce the cost will increase.
Right, there's not a completely direct comparison for a battery electric EV and an ICE vehicle. There's is not a very good direct comparison for the alternator, catalytic convertor or tailpipe/exhaust for an EV either. There's also not a perfect comparison for the battery, because unlike with the size of a fuel tank, the battery does a lot in determining how much power the vehicle can deliver to the wheels at any point. There's also actually an advantage with a fuel tank bordering on empty versus a battery bordering on empty because an almost empty fuel tank means the vehicle is carrying less weight which is not true for the battery. Ultimately, for the consumer what will matter is what vehicles best fit how they use their vehicles and the budget they have.
There is a definitely supply and demand market forces at work with batteries and batteries for all sorts of uses have become more popular which has prompted a lot of demand and a push towards finding a greater supply. One thing that helps with all that is that battery improvements have meant the materials necessary per kWh of storage capacity have greatly been reduced and therefore helps a bit with meeting greater demand without the directly proportional increase in supply. Thankfully, the hundreds of pounds of materials that a BEV uses for its batteries lasts for a good decade or more generally, has second use potential after use of a BEV, and has some ability to be recycled. Now compare that to the average use case for gasoline in an ICE vehicle which means consumption of thousands of pounds of gasoline in a *year*, and after consumption has no reasonable second use or recycling to help those economics. Generally when you burn that gasoline in your tank, that's it--no more real direct usage for economic benefit. In fact, there's a reasonable argument that there are negative economic repercussions overall after the burning of the gasoline.
Yes, I imagine that an EV motor is cheaper than "some" ICE, but comparing a battery to a motor doesn't make sense. A discharged EV battery should be compared to an empty ICE vehicle's gasoline tank. A battery, regardless of kind is a device used to store electricity and once charged, this electricity is used to energize the electric motor.
Availability of the material needed to build batteries-plus supply and demand, will dictate the price. Since the materials needed aren't renewable (just like petroleum), as they become scarce the cost will increase.
This is ridiculous. The context is vehicle purchase cost. Today, an EV is expensive because batteries are expensive. The point is pretty basic. Battery prices have been dropping quickly and are projected to continue dropping.
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