Why the plug-in bicycle beats the plug-in hybrid

Or take it a step further and stop commuting. It's even better to live where you work and shop. I don't need a plug-in anything to get around, unless it's plug-in boots in the winter.

Tom

 

Hi Crichman,

96 Prius? Where are you located ? Japan ? Or maybe Trollhatten, Norway ?

 

You know that walking is more environmentally friendly than an electric bicycle, right? :madgrin:

 

And apparently he wants hostile traffic.

 

It all depends on what you want, an apple or an orange. If your desire is automotive transportation, then Prius wins. If your talking the least amount of impact to the planet and getting from point A to point B? Then your best choice is a standard bicycle powered by an organic vegetarian. But the title of the article isn't Why a regular Bicycle beats a plug- in Bicycle.

 

All I saw was comparisons of battery capacity. I didn't see anything like an intelligent comparison of energy cost per seat-mile or anything like that.

I used to bike commute a few days a week, in season, about 30 miles a day round trip. Commuting by bike means powering your commute with food calories. The typical US diet is fossil-fuel intensive. When I finally worked through the arithmetic, based on the average US diet (mix of foods), my weight, and so on, I came up with about 66 mpg-equivalent for bicycling. That's in line with other estimates, as here:

Bicycling wastes gas? Yes, if your fuel is meat

Bottom line is that, if I ate the standard US dietary mix (I don't) and my weight were stable, I'd get about the same "mileage" commuting by bike or using my PHEV Prius.

So, the efficiency of the human-powered portion of an ebike depends on what you eat.

OK, then how does the electrical efficiency compare to the typically-cited 4 miles per KWH in a PHEV Prius, or 0.25 kwh/mile?

Based on the data here:

Which Has Lower Emissions Per Mile: An Electric-Assist Bicycle or Electric Scooter? : TreeHugger

I come up with 0.08 kwh/mile for a lightweight electric scooter. (I chose the scooter because I couldn't easily find an electric bike ad that listed the range in all-electric mode. I see electric bikes quotes a lower KWH per hour but (based on all of five minutes' search) all of them involved pedaling. Whereas I want a measure of electrical efficiency.)

If that's about right, then the electric scooter (my proxy for the efficiency of an electric bike) uses about one-third the electricity per mile that a PHEV Prius uses. OK, and I see these headlined at "200 miles per gallon", which would be in the same ballpark (about 3x what the MPG-equivalent of a PHEV Prius.)

So, for the solo commuter, OK, the lightweight electric scooter is better. But three in a Prius is about break-even relative to three on scooters.

Again, no free lunch.

A vegan on a bicycle is about as efficient as it gets for point-to-point commuting. Beyond that, you have to do the arithmetic to calculate the efficiency. I think I'll stick to an un-assisted bike.

Edit: I see Electric Me beat me to the punch regarding vegetarian bicyclists.

 

What he posted was sort of a forgone conclusion, as sad as it sounds. Think about it... To get from point A to point B, you have the choice of taking a car (3042 lbs for the Prius) or a Bike (lets be very, very generous here... include a battery and a motor, some other stuff strapped on for fun, maybe a kid sitting on the handlebars... 200 lbs).

Which one is going to require more work to move around? I'll give you a hint... it's the one that weighs less. It's the same reason some motorcycles can achieve gas mileage surpassing the Prius. They simply have less to haul around, less actual work to do to get from point A to point B.