this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities (theconversation.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.

The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will not feed in fast enough to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years. Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I agree with you that better mass transit is needed as much or more than bike infrastructure, but I want to check one of your assumptions.

I bike 9 miles to work every day in 38 minutes, the car trip is 20-25 minutes due to traffic. The key is an e-bike. I've put 3k miles on the bike and at this point it has paid for itself and then some. Cars are expensive to drive, maintain, and purchase. My wife and I share a car and I supplement it with an e-bike. Considering she was considering getting an expensive new car before we started sharing, we've probably saved $40-50k in the last 3 years by removing a car from the equation. (Cost of car, insurance, maintenance, energy use per mile).

E-bikes use such a tiny amount of electricity, I'll probably only use two tanks of gas worth of energy in it's lifetime, maybe less.

Over the course of the next 15-20 years, repeatedly buying and maintaining one less car will likely shave several years off retirement and the biking will keep me healthy in the meantime.

Edit: Like you I overestimated the burden of riding a bike before I tried to make it work. Now that I'm doing it, it's almost entirely a positive outcome.