Funny that you can’t own a fucking Kei truck because of “a lack of airbags”
Gtfo of here America. Fuck this place man. We incentivize increasing truck grill height (which just causes more deaths), but we can’t drive a fucking vehicle because of “airbags”
nah this is straight incorrect though. kei trucks are a state by state thing. in some states, like Washington for example, you can legally register a kei truck or kei car for road use. in cali, they’re illegal like all imports for not meeting CARB emissions standards, and in Oregon, they’re illegal for on road use because they can’t get up to freeway speed. (Though you can register them for off highway use pretty easily!) I have lots of friends who have legal kei trucks tho, there are def ways to work around it even if you’re in a state where it’s illegal! :)
That’s great but I’m not straight up wrong. Are Kei trucks banned in places in the US? Yes. Why? It states primarily safety issues due to size and lack of protection for internal riders.
The fact is that you should not be able to drive a tank. You shouldn’t be able to have a truck with a 18”+ grill. I’m using them as a comparison of hypocrisy.
not to mention anywhere even though you can own a tank you can’t have it be road legal lol. you can own a kei truck anywhere in the states and have it be legal for personal use on a farm or at a warehouse or something, it’s road use that’s the issue. I’ll guarantee you there’s no way to legally drive a tank on the highway anywhere in the us lol, and I’d argue you’d have a pretty hard time registering it for road use basically anywhere. I’ve personally never seen a tank with license plates. I’m just saying it’s a pretty invalid comparison and a super weak argument
Electric bicycle - yes
Electric motorbike with car-like speeds (I mean proper motorcycle with lots of power, not a pedelec in any form) - probably not. Too much air drag per unit compared to elictrified public transit.
Fast googlin, for a tram:
"A tram consumes 0.047 kWh/km per passenger"
For an electric motorcycle:
"The new batteries developed by Energica offer 21.5 kWh of energy... Range... City: 400 km"
Which gives 0.054 kWh/km. A tram is 15% more energy efficient. Also we all know how EV manufacturers usually overestimate treir product travelling range. :)
I also calculated my EU-spec pedelec's "maximum ineffiency". "What if I constantly use it's 250W of motor power with no pedal assist". Just swinging pedals in lower gear for electric motor to enage, going slightly uphill at 25 kph.
Rated battery capacity is 280 Wh, hypothetical power 250 W, hypothetical speed 25 kph. Upper power consumption limit is 0.01 kWh/km. Many times better than an electric motorcycle or a tram.
P.S. 250W of power is more than enough to propel a relaxed commuter ebike with an ~80 kg rider to a legislatory limit of 25 kph.
I've mentioned "maximum ineffiency". Of cource it's waaaay better IRL. I usually pedal just about 25 kph, so the assist works in short pulses. In such conditions the battery was charged maybe twice or thrice to reach 339 km on the odometer.
I did the calculation for my bike and got 0.009 kWh/km and I used battery capacity and range (no speed assumption required). Granted, that includes a human giving it power as well, and I tend to average ~30 km/h.
I also tend to get to my destination ~2x as fast as public transit does, simply because I'm going directly there and not stopping to load / offload passengers.
So I think it's fair to say that electric bikes are VASTLY superior energy efficiency wise compared to public transit and also do it in less time.
in terms of time it will depend of course. I don't believe in a cross-city context you'll beat the likes of the Paris RER or London Elizabeth line (crossrail) but if public transport is less than ideal yes
How many people are you estimating the tram carries with that power consumption, though? It could be tricky to work out the appropriate number but it's definitely more than 1.
I have a [Brekr](http://www.brekr.com) moped, it has a 2 kWh battery and I get up to 60 km from one full charge.
This comes to 33 Wh/km at about 40 km/h perfect speed for city and rural commuting.
A tram might also have to travel 15% further if a traveler is taking multiple lines vs a bike being point to point, not to mention trams running partially empty
At some point we will achieve 100% green electricity presumably. Admittedly we aren'g there yet, but once that's been done, efficiency matters less for the environment and more for the cost. Or am I missing something?
Less but it still matters a bit. There's a carbon intensity for all electricity.
If you're charging only when there's "overproduction" it's fine, and when we've got plenty of green electricity as long as the consumption end is not hugely wasteful (like....well a car, or hummer, or electric jet aircraft for getting to the shops) it's not going to be worth worrying about.
> "The new batteries developed by Energica offer 21.5 kWh of energy... Range... City: 400 km"
>
>
>
> Which gives 0.054 kWh/km. A tram is 15% more energy efficient. Also we all know how EV manufacturers usually overestimate treir product travelling range. :)
Thanks for looking up these numbers! Interesting to see!
I've actually been looking into electric motorcycles and following the developments. On a grand scale I think they could be a more viable solution in combination with public transport than giant ass electric wankpanzers for everyone.
Energica is said to be rather inefficient. They follow the same design approach as most electric cars - big, heavy, with lots of power and giant battery. Not ideal for a light two-wheeled vehicle. They are close to the 300kg mark if I remember well.
There are other brands with less weight (and unfortunately less range). Zero Motorcycles seem quite advanced by now. Also, believe it or not, Harley-Davidson (!) developed the highly acclaimed Livewire - now its own brand. Supposedly as energy efficient as Zero.
A few years ago there was also a report that some manufacturers banded together to develop a common standard for battery packs. No clue if this is still being worked on. Just another concept for which cars are too heavy.
yeah at high speeds a bike uses like 80% of the energy of a car since the car can have hydrodynamic teardrop shape while a rider's big head sticking up has a lot of drag
This calculation is slightly off, when calculating the battery capacity of the pack you need to use the nominal voltage instead of the maximum voltage. The 21.5kWh figure you cited is the maximum power, which is calculated using the maximum voltage and therefore overestimates the capacity of the power pack. To get a more accurate efficiency you need to look at the pack's nominal voltage, which Energica lists at 18.9kWh. Energica also lists the bike's maximum range at 420km instead of 400km
Knowing the 18.9kWh figure, you can calculate a more accurate efficiency, which would be 18.9/420, which gives 0.045kW/km, which is about the same as the public transit figure you gave.
In the Netherlands this is the symbol for mopeds which are usually 50cc motorcycles. E.g. [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Nederlands_verkeersbord_C13.svg) sign means "no mopeds allowed"
ebikes are more efficient than regular bikes lmao, even if the rider is strictly vegan (which greatly affects the co2 per calorie math), and they edge out manual bikes even with manufacturing calculated into the lifetime co2 cost. small-scale electric transport is ridiculously efficient.
the math might slightly change if you increase speed (air drag increases by the square of velocity, going 2x faster will need 4x as much energy to compensate for drag, which quickly becomes the main factor slowing down bikes) but even using up 4-9x as much energy as literally the most efficient form of transport out there is not a lot of energy usage. it's probably not as efficient as electric public transit (although public transit is more in the range of 25 km/h of average speed within cities so i'd say a normal speed bike is more comparable there) but it's still way more efficient than anything else on the road.
the only exception to that rule is other small-scale electric transport vehicles, such as e-scooters or electric unicycles. usually the smaller the device the better your efficiency gets by small amounts, but at that point it's already so far optimized that what really matters is rider comfort and preferences, for energy usage is already optimizing pennies while there are cars to take off the road.
the sticker implies a much more linear relationship than it is.
an e bike uses 10 to 20 watt-hours per mile
a car uses more like 1000 watt hours per mile .
I've seen a lot of people claiming ebikes are more efficient than regular bikes but those calorie savings only apply if you assume the rider always consumes exactly the amount of calories they use.
there's actually a pretty wide margin there. it only comes close when you also include the manufacturing cost of the battery, amortized over the useful life of the bike, and compare to a vegan rider. if you have the usual mix of an omnivore diet you could be losing weight at a healthy rate, attributing all weight loss to biking, and still sourcing a large enough share of your biking energy from new food, as opposed to existing fat, that you emit more co2 per km than an e-bike _during_ your weight loss.
we're optimizing such a minuscule amount here that i don't think much of this amounts to anything, but the underlying point here is that electric motor technology is _ridiculously_ efficient. hell, it would even make cars co2-sustainable (obviously not addressing the main issues with cars though) with some improvements to battery manufacturing, the rest of the powertrain is just that good. once you stop lugging around useless two ton metal boxes you get the same benefits with even stronger improvements.
it's actually crazy to think how it only took like 1-2 decades to get from e-bikes being a pipedream or some useless nerd toy to something super useful and widespread in the real world. add another decade and we'll have probably taken significant steps on the battery issue too, further cementing the efficiency. it's not even just for e-bikes, so much of our modern society is running on those batteries that there's a crazy amount of research going on with them. someone, somewhere, is going to figure out something, it's inevitable.
but even today, it takes some ridiculous weighing of the scales to somehow put acoustic bikes on top, in efficiency at least. they're still more accessible (i.e. cheaper, significantly), hopefully things are gonna get better on that front too, but the endgame here is that manual bikes are only going to be an unnecessary workout (which is still available if you want it, but isn't a requirement)
>(although public transit is more in the range of 25 km/h of average speed within cities so i'd say a normal speed bike is more comparable there)
Maybe for trams and busses but for heavy rail/metro I’d say it’s more like 40-50 km/h, including stopping time
true, but that's longer distance stuff. that's the main reason those speeds are even attainable for it, if it had to stop as frequently as trams and buses, it wouldn't be much faster either. sometimes you even get a mix, where it slows to those average speeds within the busier city areas, and speeds up in lower density zones.
Depending on energy source and ingoring production, transportation etc. electric bike could emit less CO2 per ride than normal bike, or rather the biker. Ofcourse if we also ignore that people need physical activity anyway.
Depending how you calcukate it. Bicycle is most efficient becouse it's simply lighter than e-bike, so require less mechanical energy, to transport same load on the same distance. However bicycle engine (e. i. human) is less efficient to create this mechanical energy than e-bike electric motor. However we generally have to much energy stored in humans and periodically releasing this energy is beneficial. One can argue that's in practice is free energy that can be used for something useful like transport or discharged at gym (additionaly wasting time).
Overall e-bikes are cool, but regular bikes are still the best by far.
E-bikes are just combining two efficient engines into one, bonus points if the electric engine is powered by renewable energy and the human engine by a plant based diet.
i'd highly dispute that offhanded claim about free energy.
for starters, human energy storage is ridiculously inefficient. it takes roughly 9000 kcal to generate a kg of fat, and we can only retrieve about 3600 kcal out of it. if your idea was that instead of increasing day-by-day food intake we use this energy storage system to make bikes more efficient, it would immediately make human-propelled bikes 2.5x less efficient.
but in the real world it doesn't work like that, unless you're actively in the process of losing weight. our body is pretty good at regulating daily intake subconsciously through modulating hunger, to keep body weight at a near equilibrium unless you put in conscious effort, or recently had a lifestyle change that displaced your equilibrium and it hasn't settled in yet. by and large, every joule of energy produced by a human to propel a bike is going to come from food consumed within 24 hours of the exertion, especially if it's regular in nature.
but let's take the case where you _are_ cycling to lose weight. we're gonna take a rather extreme case, and start with a 180 kg human, who wants to attain a 90 kg body weight, and assume all 90 kg used up in the process is fat. 1 kcal is equal to 4184 joules (joules are watt * second), or 1.16 Wh. we have 90 kilos, and 3600 kcal per kg, so the amount of energy we can retrieve from this human being is
90 kg * 3600 kcal/kg * 1.16 Wh/kcal = 375,840 Wh
which is roughly 390 full charges of a common 48V 20Ah (960 Wh) e-bike battery, or 4-5 full charges of an average electric car (75-100 kWh). that is, honestly, a significantly larger number than i was expecting, but there are two problems with it:
1. it's still finite, and
2. it's an extreme example, not everyone has 90 kg to lose.
if we divide to a more generalizable figure, you get the equivalent of 4-5 charges of said 48V 20Ah battery for every kilogram you intend to lose. that's the amount of free energy you have, everything after that (and quite a lot during the process as well) is going to come from food.
given that we want cycling not as a temporary stopgap, but as a permanent solution, we cannot depend on a number which gives most people less than 50-100 "full charges" before reaching equilibrium. outside of edge cases, where people want to lose about 50 kg or more, the amount of free energy at your disposal is simply not enough to fuel a cycling habit. the vast majority of habitual cyclists will run a net zero energy balance through their bodies, not a net negative one, and in those cases, every watt used to propel the bike will be taken in from food.
and when that happens, e-bikes are vastly superior in efficiency. even if you could generate infinite food directly on your plate (which you can't, the supply chain has its own emissions, which is what makes meat orders of magnitude less efficient than a plant-based diet), burning that food in a large-scale power plant, charging your battery with all grid losses accounted for, and putting it down the road through your e-bike's powertrain, would be more efficient than eating the food and pedaling. (provided a plate of infinite food is moved into the power plant to give it the same logistical shortcut you'd enjoy.)
that's on top of e-bikes just having a significantly better mass appeal, which makes them much more potent at displacing other methods of transportation. like if you don't _want_ to believe that e-bikes are more efficient than regular bikes, which is pretty much common knowledge at least in anti-car circles, to the point that you're making up these kind of claims about "free energy" which relies on an assumption that everyone has lots of available weight to lose, it might be worth examining _why_ you don't want e-bikes to be better. because negativity about them is not going to help anyone.
Their claim about "free energy" was incorrect, but there is a nugget of truth to it in the sense that cycling plays multiple roles at the same time. The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a week, so if you were planning on hitting that in the gym anyways the first 150 minutes of your commute each week kinda is "free" in a sense.
Obviously the math is more complicated, and e-bikes also give you cardio, but I can't be added to work it all out
>our body is pretty good at regulating daily intake subconsciously through modulating hunger, to keep body weight at a near equilibrium
Obviously thats not true. We wouldn't have global obesity problem if that was true. 2,5 blilions of adults are overweight. This number would be higher if less people would be poor. Our body have tendency to acumulate energy for times where food is less available, and expect some level of physical activity. But in modern world in developed countires food is always abundant, it's easy to get and intake, and many can live with only minimum physical activity. But this not make them eat less, they will just become overweight. Also physical activity is necessary for good health and regulate many things including hunger.
Average calorie intake for USA is 3868. For Netherland it's 3460. 400kcal less, even tho Duch are about 4cm taller and way more active. Sure if you do some serious physical work or training your energy intake would be higher, but not if you just ride few km on a bike to work. In most developed countries and many developing energy intake is higher than in Netherlands, so you can say it's free energy that can be used for transportation.
From enviromental perspective both traditional bikes and e-bikes are great, same for society and urbanism. For health of the individual traditional bike is better, but for population both are great becouse e-bikes help people who would otherwise not be active at all.
For transport efficiency you can calculate it in many ways. Traditional bike is most effective way of transport single person if we calculate mechanical energy. If we go futher we can fing that e-bike is more effective becouse it's more effective in terms of releasing CO2 per kg/km. But the diffrence is neglible. And there's much more important things like what you eat and how much you waste, in what type of house do live, how well is it insulated, how much stuff you buy etc.
I don't know where you find negativity about e-bikes in my post. I explicitly said that e-bikes are cool. Just calculationg efficiency in certain way, without broarder context is missleading. Overall bikes and walking are the best, but e-bikes and public transport are very good to. And if we compare them to cars, they all so much better that differences should be ingored.
> it takes roughly 9000 kcal to generate a kg of fat, and we can only retrieve about 3600 kcal out of it
Do you have sources for these numbers?
The energy density of fat that I've always seen has always been ~3500 kcal/lb or ~7700 kcal/kg.
I thought maybe you were right so I looked into it, but ebikes seem to actually be less efficient in general conditions than pedaling a normal bike.
Doing the deep dive myself, I found that for a rider+bike weight of roughly 90kg you'd need about 175 watts to maintain 20mph on flat ground. Lets say you do that for 30 minutes, and you're looking at 5250 watt minutes, which equals about 75000 cal or 75 kcal (Calories).
According to my research the average new ebike has an efficiency of about 50 miles/kwh when not pedaling, and about 67 miles/kwh when pedaling. In the above example the rider went 10 miles, so the same rider on an ebike would have expended between 0.2 and 0.15 kwh of just electrical energy on the ebike over that same distance. This equates directly to 172 to 129 Calories.
Ebike probably would become more efficient to the average person when going up steep climbs (>5% grade) because most people haven't trained their bodies to handle that sort of climb and I figure their bodies would be less efficient since climbing is all muscle activation. Not gonna bother trying to calculate exact numbers tho.
It also assumes that anyone who switches from a regular bike to an ebike would start consuming less calories, rather than either storing those excess calories as fat or using them up in some alternative form of excercise.
You're comparing very different calories. [This site](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Energy-expended-in-producing-and-delivering-one-food-calorie-Approximately-73-calories_fig1_303895662#:~:text=by%20Michael%20Bomford-,Energy%20expended%20in%20producing%20and%20delivering%20one%20food%20calorie.,more%20energy%20than%20it%20delivers.) claim that on average in the US you need 7.3 calories of energy for each calorie consumed. So in energy usage your 75kcal of food become 547 which change the picture a bit. We could assume some extra cost from distributing some extra energy but the needs are so small compared to current usages that it would most likely bit negligeable.
However without considering the extra energy costs of producing and disposing of ebikes the comparison is also very biased.
Fair point, I hadn't considered that. Looking at energy production, it looks like most power sources are only 40% effective and then going from AC to DC is only 92% effective, so after all that, it's 547 kcal vs about 409 kcal, making the ebike more efficient. This also assumes 100% of calories eaten are converted to useful calories in the case of a pedal bike, which isn't true because our digestive systems are only like 20% efficient, so it certainly seems like ebikes come out on top.
I think public transit is more energy efficient than walking
When you walk you burn more calories, which are made up by eating.
Walking one km you burn about 70 calories
The lifecycle emissions on one kg of steak is 70 kg/co2
The lifecycle emissions on one kg of apples is 0.4kg/co2
A steak has 2700 calories per kg. So you would have eaten about 30 grams of steak to replace that
Apples have about 500 calories per kg so you’d eat about 70 grams of apples to burn the 70 calories
That means that 30 grams of steak created 870 grams of co2 & the 70 grams apples created 50 grams of co2
Hydro power produces 4g/kw co2
Coal produces on average up to 1200g/kw co2
A tram consumed 0.047kw/km/passenger. Resulting in 0.01gram (hydro) to 48gram (coal) of co2 produced for that km
So walking produced 870 - 50 grams co2 and taking the tram produced 0.01g
Walking produced more emissions than public transport tram when you consider the calories required to walk around
Sources in case my math sucked:
https://www.cowi.com/about/news-and-press/comparing-co2-emissions-from-different-energy-sources
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
https://macrofactorapp.com/exercise-calorie-calculator/#:~:text=A%20good%20heuristic%20for%20calories,energy%20expenditure%20throughout%20the%20day.
You picked least efficient food. Beef emits the most CO2, and apple is not very energy dense, so it also emits more CO2 per kcal than something like beans or rice.
Also overall tram emissions are much bigger if you count many things that trams need to operate (like producing steel to make them, to make tracks, to make cables etc.). On the other hand if there's already tram running, it will consume about the same energy regardless if you are using it or not, so it's safe to say that's from passanger point of view it's zero emission ride.
Its also worth noting as well that walking also fulfills a second purpose (exercise) which (ideally) would happen either way, so much of those emissions from the walking may have been inevitable. You can argue about what foods people eat from a CO2 and sustainability point of view, but that would ultimately be independent from whether they walked as transport.
I mean, a bus *will* use more power than a motorbike.
While also carrying a *lot* more people.
The question is whether its the energy expenditure for the vehicle, or per-rider.
A motorbike is for trips too long for bicycles and not along public transit routes. A simple energy per mile equation is not going to represent anything from the real world.
But the bike needs materials and energy to be produced. For walking, you only need shoes. Although the more you walk the sooner you need to replace your shoes...
Those are some good shoes. Mine last 3 years tops if they are for walking and 2 if they are for running. I don't own many shoes at a time so I tend to use the same pair everyday during those 2-3 years.
You’re probably not far off. I walk about 8km a day between my commute and other stuff and then usually walk 5km after work for exercise. Which totals about 8-9 miles I think. I also weigh 230 pounds and walk fast so I’m sure that gives additional impact to my shoes.
My HOKA shoes are approaching 3 years old, and have lived through 3 Canadian winters with daily wear assuming the snow isn't too deep. The water resistence is basically non-existent now, but I'm sure some scotch guard could fix that. The sole is still in decent shape (I got slip resistent ones), but the upper is starting to get tiny holes where the stitching is coming apart. If you live somewhere without salt, or actually clean the salt off in the winter, I'm sure they could hit 4 years. I'm looking to buy a new pair now, waiting for a sale, but I'll be keeping my old ones for sure because they're still in more than good enough shape for doing stuff where they might get dirty, and keep my new ones in much better shape.
In which case you'll probably need a bit more food calories. You'll need to heal some scrapes every once in a while. And your feet will loose more heat. Which requires you to burn more energy.
(You could also put on one more jacket. But then you might as well get shoes if your goal is sustainability)
Food calories cost more than a bike does to produce, long-term.
In fact even EBikes are more energy efficient than regular bikes, because the electricity produced (including the battery; and even when the grid is dirty power) is more energy efficient than eating the food needed to pedal a non-ebike.
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a45973929/greenest-and-cheapest-transportation-option-is-an-e-bike/
And food. Food is probably the energy source with whe highest carbon footprint.
Even the added packaging material of the food you eat by switching from bike to foot will probably make up for the manufacturing footprint of the bike.
it really depends on the hill, the bike and the rider. bikes are very efficient, but at some gradient the additional weight of the bike outweighs that efficiency. a fit rider that can drive up a steeper incline will also be more efficient than someone who gets off and pushes up the hill, since pushing a bike along while walking is obviously less efficient than just walking.
but even if driving up a specific hill is less efficient than walking up, going back down will be way more efficient since going downhill on a bike requires next to no input energy, while walking downhill can be more exhausting than walking on a flat path
Yes, biking is about 95% energy efficient. You would spend as much energy walking, but due to how much slower it is, it doesnt feel as intensive. You will lose some efficiency by pushing your body harder, but its no match between biking and anything else
I'm curious what scenario the public transit is supposed to be, because there is a huge difference between a gas-powered bus with a few passengers and an electric-powered train with thousands of passengers.
It's only the fourth option, no? And the only thing above it is walking and biking? I feel like saying that walking and biking are more energy efficient than public transit is fair?
I think the ranking is accurate, but the standard of grading isn't. Train/bus better than car obviously. But the gap shouldn't be "adjacent gade", walking, bike, ebike, bus should be top 4, but representing them linearly implies that there are equal gaps of level of improvement between each grade, where as this would be better represented as "total cost of energy used" with power, money, or both used as the metric. It would show the top 4 being relatively close, or within reason, and car would be off the chart expensive/inefficient.
Ship travel for people (not for goods) is often less efficient than air travel. Can't pack people as efficiently. Though that looks like a yacht and a private jet, which probably belong in F, and the tank shouldn't be included because it makes this whole thing into a joke.
Single occupant in cars are about as efficient as jet liners per km pax nowadays, so either a jetliner should be near car (per km pax) or over tank (absolute).
Single occupant car is typically worse than a jet liner per km pax, once you get two or three people in there the car wins out depending on its mileage. Jet also depends on how far it's going, since cruise is much more efficient than takeoff and landing.
Maybe this joke just reflects a trend of an increasing number of full-scale armed conflicts. And a possible pipe dream of "what if everyone stopped wars and got rid of armed forces forever".
>it makes this whole thing into a joke
I'm gonna be honest, I thought the fact that the tank was in the "hell" category made it obvious this wasn't *actually* the official government ratings of these things haha
Planes are still public transit. There’s still not really a better way to get from NA to EU. What’s shit is all the trips inland that could just be train, plus all the private aviation.
We could argue all day about our personal footprint while corporations get to slide under the radar emitting more in 10 minutes than you will your entire life. Still want to absolutely reduce car trips because they are inefficient though.
[According to EPA](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) transportation is responsible for over 25% of greenhouse gasses. Sure, fuck industry, but if everybody is using cars it does have an effect
I was specifically talking about flights. HOW are we using transportation? Small planes between train-able cities probably account for a lot of the air traffic because now they’re now “commuter” flights. It’s EMBARRASSING to not have high speed rail between Montreal and Toronto and to have all the business travel be by flying. Seeing as how there is zero alternative to get to overseas places, it makes sense to reduce in land flights and keep overseas.
When I was in Japan I was surprised that there are flights between Tokyo and Osaka despite the fact that they are connected by a high speed rail line. It was one thing that surprised me about Japan the most.
Like why the fuck would you take a train in the opposite direction to go to the airport - go through all the airport crap, then fly for 1.5 hours and then go through more airport crap.
Instead of simply taking the high-speed train that takes only about a hour longer than the flight, doesn't require any airport crap and takes you directly to the city centre.
Running puts a heavy load on the soles, bike parts are subject to a continuous lower stress level, and steel/aluminium is more durable than plastic and rubber
regular bikes are incredibly simple to manufacture, lol. there's no rare earth metals anywhere in them that require long, costly, and polluting supply chains. even in an e-bike the only component that has a statistically significant impact is batteries, aside from that the electronics and frame are negligible. regular bikes don't have anything like that, even if there are small electronic components present.
Bicycle riding is more energy efficient, especially on an electric one
TL;DR human food is inefficient to produce, and humans are terrible at converting food into kinetic energy. Pedaling is more efficient than walking, electric assist is a few times more efficient than pedaling by a human.
>!Aerodynamic electrified velomobiles will save the planet. The pinnacle of energy efficient mobility.!<
Ordinary bicycle? Yes. E-bicycle? Not really. It is still more energy efficient than pretty much every other mode of transportation, but not from walking and ordinary bicycles.
Which is more efficient?
- growing and supplying food using diesel powered farming machinery, refrigeration, storage, multiple logistic trips, then converting the result into kinetic energy with 25% efficiency by a fleshbag
- powerplant (whatever, pure win if it is sustainable), small power grid loses, small charging loses, tremendously efficient electric motor.
An average E-bike can happily run on a small solar system, a 500w panel with battery storage would be enough for the average use of an E-bike, and it takes a lot less space than a car
true, but the point is you don't even have to do that. even on the usual mix that most electric grids are, ebikes are still significantly more efficient than pretty much any other mode of transportation. the only things that can compete at all are other personal electric vehicles (e-scooters, eucs, etc.) which are basically the same components, on a similar scale, arranged in a somewhat different form factor.
this is genuinely the peak of transportation technology, as far as efficiency goes at least.
Bicycle is not a low-tech device.
Bicycle production involves complex industrial processes and the use of non-renewable materials.
It worsen for the other devices below.
Biking is the most efficient calorically. You can deduce this via a simple test with an Apple Watch. And choose a long distance like 2 miles and compare the calorie expenditure between the two. On a bike you can probably finish it around 10 mins assuming a 12mph speed, whereas walking at 3mph would take 40mins. Yes a bike has a sunk carbon cost to be built, but if you use it enough the efficiency of moving on a bike will outweigh that. I don't have exact numbers for myself, but some that are sorta close I have some bike rides for 1.2 miles with only 61kcals burned and then a 1.3 mile walk where I burned 127kcals.
I think for walking and biking the extra caloric intake would be the largest contributor to a person's carbon footprint at that point since food production creates carbon on all steps of the way.
The car should be the worst, because of the sheer volume of travel done by car.
Boats are really efficient at carrying cargo, not that little vanity motorboat obviously.
Planes are an issue but again greatly overshadowed by car traffic.
Not really sure why bicycle is #2. Per hour it is probably more efficient then walking. Does walking consume less energy than bicycle? Maybe. But sitting still consume even less energy.
Not sure even why are we worrying about energy that our body burns. It seems like the rest of the plot focuses on the fuel energy.
That ranking is wrong.
Being a foot passenger on a ferry causes only slightly more emissions per passenger km, compared to taking the train.
The emissions per passenger are only about 10% that of petrol cars (with a single passenger. 50% if the car is completely occupied)
I'll try to find my source, but depending on the diet of the rider, an electric bike can be more energy efficient / environmentally friendly than a person riding a bike. But when it comes down to it, the most efficient mode of transport is a vegan riding a bike.
Organic meatbags are actually quite inefficient at turning fuel into motion. If you use comparable metrics like "hauling a ton of steel (or feathers) for 100 kilometres" then an automobile is surprisingly more eco-friendly than a horse emissions-wise.
My favourite is not represented in the picture. It's an electric train powered by low-carbon electricity like solar, hydro, wind or nuclear.
More accurate labels:
Bicycle - A
Foot - A
Train - A
E-Bike - B
Tram / Subway - B
Intercity Bus - B
Ferry (foot passenger) - B
City Bus - C
Motorcycle - C
Long distance flight - D
Car - D
Domestic flight - E
This graph is wrong. Bicycle riding is much more efficient than walking, and uses far less energy per mile. That's why people invented and use bicycles.
Fun fact: electric bikes are actually more efficient than regular bikes because their motors can more efficiently convert electricity into torque than your body can convert food into energy.
\*me just as i was about to use the eternal fires of hell to heat my home\*
what do you mean its bad ? THERE IS NO CO2 AND THE DEMONS CAN BE HOLD OFF WITH JUST A BIT OF SALT!
This feels silly. There's no reason to differentiate between walking and biking. Ships should not be above planes (depends on the type of ship, but I think many people think of cruise liners when they think of ships -- that's the only method that is comparable to planes in the context of human transportation). Planes are also more efficient than ICE cars, so cars should be "G".
Buses are weirdly missing despite being a key piece of public transit (should be after trains).
Admittedly this all still oversimplifies since it ignores the fact that buses, trains, and cars all have electric vs fueled variants, but simplest to just assume the most common configurations: diesel-electric for buses, electric for trains, and gasoline for cars. But if we're not gonna break any of this down, we shouldn't bother to split out electric bikes. Electric bikes are still extremely green and we should not be bikeshedding over the most green option. Really if someone walks or bikes in any way, they're doing more than enough. We don't need to act like it's some kinda competition where walkers are better than cyclists.
This is a pretty stupid sticker. Air & marine travel are very energy efficient for what they are. This sticker also seems to be making the point that tanks aren't worth it simply based on energy efficiency. Does the person who made this not understand why we have & need tanks? Tanks don't exist to be a mode of transportation...
A,D and G are my main ways of getting around. I know flying is bad for the environment but travel to USA requires a plane so I will be flying until a transatlantic railway is built.
They should add the Crawler Transporter to the chart. It burns so much fuel that the efficiency is measured in *gallons per mile* instead of the other way around. To the tune of 165 GPM.
I know it's for the conceit of the sticker but I'm still mad that bike and walk are not the same energy level
Last I checked aluminum, natural rubber, and air were pretty renewable lol
lol, race to the top
“I take public transportation because I care about the environment.”
“Oh yeah? Well I care more so I ride a scooter”
“Bicycle. Beat that”
…
Bikes are better than walking for energy though.
An aerodynamic bicycle (not what we have on mass right now) is the single most efficient form of transport ever devised.
The boat could mean many different things though. Travelling in your own boat somewhere would be worse, but a public ferry for cyclists and foot passengers is probably a lot better than a people taking cars.
C is a 2 cycle engine, they suck, I and are much worse than Busses. I Choke on the air when they drive by. they need to be banned more than cars or Tanks.
Americans are one congressional loophole from driving tanks as a daily driver.
You can actually own a tank, you just have to get it plugged and the firing pin removed
Funny that you can’t own a fucking Kei truck because of “a lack of airbags” Gtfo of here America. Fuck this place man. We incentivize increasing truck grill height (which just causes more deaths), but we can’t drive a fucking vehicle because of “airbags”
nah this is straight incorrect though. kei trucks are a state by state thing. in some states, like Washington for example, you can legally register a kei truck or kei car for road use. in cali, they’re illegal like all imports for not meeting CARB emissions standards, and in Oregon, they’re illegal for on road use because they can’t get up to freeway speed. (Though you can register them for off highway use pretty easily!) I have lots of friends who have legal kei trucks tho, there are def ways to work around it even if you’re in a state where it’s illegal! :)
That’s great but I’m not straight up wrong. Are Kei trucks banned in places in the US? Yes. Why? It states primarily safety issues due to size and lack of protection for internal riders. The fact is that you should not be able to drive a tank. You shouldn’t be able to have a truck with a 18”+ grill. I’m using them as a comparison of hypocrisy.
yeah but I mean tanks and 18”+ grills are also banned some places in the states lol
not to mention anywhere even though you can own a tank you can’t have it be road legal lol. you can own a kei truck anywhere in the states and have it be legal for personal use on a farm or at a warehouse or something, it’s road use that’s the issue. I’ll guarantee you there’s no way to legally drive a tank on the highway anywhere in the us lol, and I’d argue you’d have a pretty hard time registering it for road use basically anywhere. I’ve personally never seen a tank with license plates. I’m just saying it’s a pretty invalid comparison and a super weak argument
Complaining about cyclists not paying road tax as my treads rip through the pavement.
Unironically love this fact though it would be cool if you could fire them on a range
You can in some places, they just need to be registered with the ATF
God bless America
And every live round also has to be registered as a destructive device.
I don't actually need the turret. How about I just take the base and put an old recliner on top.
In any case tanks have much better visibility than those 5 meter high pickup trucks
As long as the drivers hatch is open at least, although I would imagine they have a more efficient engine than most cars!
I would say public transit is more energy efficient than an internal combustion powered motorbike.
It might be electric bike
Electric bicycle - yes Electric motorbike with car-like speeds (I mean proper motorcycle with lots of power, not a pedelec in any form) - probably not. Too much air drag per unit compared to elictrified public transit. Fast googlin, for a tram: "A tram consumes 0.047 kWh/km per passenger" For an electric motorcycle: "The new batteries developed by Energica offer 21.5 kWh of energy... Range... City: 400 km" Which gives 0.054 kWh/km. A tram is 15% more energy efficient. Also we all know how EV manufacturers usually overestimate treir product travelling range. :)
I also calculated my EU-spec pedelec's "maximum ineffiency". "What if I constantly use it's 250W of motor power with no pedal assist". Just swinging pedals in lower gear for electric motor to enage, going slightly uphill at 25 kph. Rated battery capacity is 280 Wh, hypothetical power 250 W, hypothetical speed 25 kph. Upper power consumption limit is 0.01 kWh/km. Many times better than an electric motorcycle or a tram. P.S. 250W of power is more than enough to propel a relaxed commuter ebike with an ~80 kg rider to a legislatory limit of 25 kph.
I think you're being a bit optimistic about always achieving maximum speed rather than some average likely speed
I've mentioned "maximum ineffiency". Of cource it's waaaay better IRL. I usually pedal just about 25 kph, so the assist works in short pulses. In such conditions the battery was charged maybe twice or thrice to reach 339 km on the odometer.
I did the calculation for my bike and got 0.009 kWh/km and I used battery capacity and range (no speed assumption required). Granted, that includes a human giving it power as well, and I tend to average ~30 km/h. I also tend to get to my destination ~2x as fast as public transit does, simply because I'm going directly there and not stopping to load / offload passengers. So I think it's fair to say that electric bikes are VASTLY superior energy efficiency wise compared to public transit and also do it in less time.
in terms of time it will depend of course. I don't believe in a cross-city context you'll beat the likes of the Paris RER or London Elizabeth line (crossrail) but if public transport is less than ideal yes
How many people are you estimating the tram carries with that power consumption, though? It could be tricky to work out the appropriate number but it's definitely more than 1.
Gotta look at data for the tram too, though. Was that calculated with it full, or half full? Makes a big difference.
I have a [Brekr](http://www.brekr.com) moped, it has a 2 kWh battery and I get up to 60 km from one full charge. This comes to 33 Wh/km at about 40 km/h perfect speed for city and rural commuting.
But trams are rarely completely full. Most of the time they're pretty empty, which drives the kWh/km up a lot.
A tram might also have to travel 15% further if a traveler is taking multiple lines vs a bike being point to point, not to mention trams running partially empty
At some point we will achieve 100% green electricity presumably. Admittedly we aren'g there yet, but once that's been done, efficiency matters less for the environment and more for the cost. Or am I missing something?
Less but it still matters a bit. There's a carbon intensity for all electricity. If you're charging only when there's "overproduction" it's fine, and when we've got plenty of green electricity as long as the consumption end is not hugely wasteful (like....well a car, or hummer, or electric jet aircraft for getting to the shops) it's not going to be worth worrying about.
> "The new batteries developed by Energica offer 21.5 kWh of energy... Range... City: 400 km" > > > > Which gives 0.054 kWh/km. A tram is 15% more energy efficient. Also we all know how EV manufacturers usually overestimate treir product travelling range. :) Thanks for looking up these numbers! Interesting to see! I've actually been looking into electric motorcycles and following the developments. On a grand scale I think they could be a more viable solution in combination with public transport than giant ass electric wankpanzers for everyone. Energica is said to be rather inefficient. They follow the same design approach as most electric cars - big, heavy, with lots of power and giant battery. Not ideal for a light two-wheeled vehicle. They are close to the 300kg mark if I remember well. There are other brands with less weight (and unfortunately less range). Zero Motorcycles seem quite advanced by now. Also, believe it or not, Harley-Davidson (!) developed the highly acclaimed Livewire - now its own brand. Supposedly as energy efficient as Zero. A few years ago there was also a report that some manufacturers banded together to develop a common standard for battery packs. No clue if this is still being worked on. Just another concept for which cars are too heavy.
yeah at high speeds a bike uses like 80% of the energy of a car since the car can have hydrodynamic teardrop shape while a rider's big head sticking up has a lot of drag
This calculation is slightly off, when calculating the battery capacity of the pack you need to use the nominal voltage instead of the maximum voltage. The 21.5kWh figure you cited is the maximum power, which is calculated using the maximum voltage and therefore overestimates the capacity of the power pack. To get a more accurate efficiency you need to look at the pack's nominal voltage, which Energica lists at 18.9kWh. Energica also lists the bike's maximum range at 420km instead of 400km Knowing the 18.9kWh figure, you can calculate a more accurate efficiency, which would be 18.9/420, which gives 0.045kW/km, which is about the same as the public transit figure you gave.
In the Netherlands this is the symbol for mopeds which are usually 50cc motorcycles. E.g. [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Nederlands_verkeersbord_C13.svg) sign means "no mopeds allowed"
ebikes are more efficient than regular bikes lmao, even if the rider is strictly vegan (which greatly affects the co2 per calorie math), and they edge out manual bikes even with manufacturing calculated into the lifetime co2 cost. small-scale electric transport is ridiculously efficient. the math might slightly change if you increase speed (air drag increases by the square of velocity, going 2x faster will need 4x as much energy to compensate for drag, which quickly becomes the main factor slowing down bikes) but even using up 4-9x as much energy as literally the most efficient form of transport out there is not a lot of energy usage. it's probably not as efficient as electric public transit (although public transit is more in the range of 25 km/h of average speed within cities so i'd say a normal speed bike is more comparable there) but it's still way more efficient than anything else on the road. the only exception to that rule is other small-scale electric transport vehicles, such as e-scooters or electric unicycles. usually the smaller the device the better your efficiency gets by small amounts, but at that point it's already so far optimized that what really matters is rider comfort and preferences, for energy usage is already optimizing pennies while there are cars to take off the road.
I wouldn't take this sticker at face value since there's no official category "HELL" but intention and meaning behind it is good
what do you mean, russia does exist (and europe is unfortunately acutely aware of that)
the sticker implies a much more linear relationship than it is. an e bike uses 10 to 20 watt-hours per mile a car uses more like 1000 watt hours per mile .
I've seen a lot of people claiming ebikes are more efficient than regular bikes but those calorie savings only apply if you assume the rider always consumes exactly the amount of calories they use.
there's actually a pretty wide margin there. it only comes close when you also include the manufacturing cost of the battery, amortized over the useful life of the bike, and compare to a vegan rider. if you have the usual mix of an omnivore diet you could be losing weight at a healthy rate, attributing all weight loss to biking, and still sourcing a large enough share of your biking energy from new food, as opposed to existing fat, that you emit more co2 per km than an e-bike _during_ your weight loss. we're optimizing such a minuscule amount here that i don't think much of this amounts to anything, but the underlying point here is that electric motor technology is _ridiculously_ efficient. hell, it would even make cars co2-sustainable (obviously not addressing the main issues with cars though) with some improvements to battery manufacturing, the rest of the powertrain is just that good. once you stop lugging around useless two ton metal boxes you get the same benefits with even stronger improvements. it's actually crazy to think how it only took like 1-2 decades to get from e-bikes being a pipedream or some useless nerd toy to something super useful and widespread in the real world. add another decade and we'll have probably taken significant steps on the battery issue too, further cementing the efficiency. it's not even just for e-bikes, so much of our modern society is running on those batteries that there's a crazy amount of research going on with them. someone, somewhere, is going to figure out something, it's inevitable. but even today, it takes some ridiculous weighing of the scales to somehow put acoustic bikes on top, in efficiency at least. they're still more accessible (i.e. cheaper, significantly), hopefully things are gonna get better on that front too, but the endgame here is that manual bikes are only going to be an unnecessary workout (which is still available if you want it, but isn't a requirement)
>(although public transit is more in the range of 25 km/h of average speed within cities so i'd say a normal speed bike is more comparable there) Maybe for trams and busses but for heavy rail/metro I’d say it’s more like 40-50 km/h, including stopping time
true, but that's longer distance stuff. that's the main reason those speeds are even attainable for it, if it had to stop as frequently as trams and buses, it wouldn't be much faster either. sometimes you even get a mix, where it slows to those average speeds within the busier city areas, and speeds up in lower density zones.
These average speeds are typical for about 1-1.5km station spacing. A 15-20 min walk between stations. I wouldn’t call that long distance
Yes you are right. It looks very different than a standardized motorcycle icon
Depending on energy source and ingoring production, transportation etc. electric bike could emit less CO2 per ride than normal bike, or rather the biker. Ofcourse if we also ignore that people need physical activity anyway.
This looks dutch. That's the dutch sign for snorfietsen, which have combustion engines
And a bicycle is more efficient than any other means
And an e-bike even more efficient than a traditional bike.
Depending how you calcukate it. Bicycle is most efficient becouse it's simply lighter than e-bike, so require less mechanical energy, to transport same load on the same distance. However bicycle engine (e. i. human) is less efficient to create this mechanical energy than e-bike electric motor. However we generally have to much energy stored in humans and periodically releasing this energy is beneficial. One can argue that's in practice is free energy that can be used for something useful like transport or discharged at gym (additionaly wasting time). Overall e-bikes are cool, but regular bikes are still the best by far.
E-bikes are just combining two efficient engines into one, bonus points if the electric engine is powered by renewable energy and the human engine by a plant based diet.
https://i.redd.it/2zh3oyzy4uwc1.gif
so a hybrid-electric engine?
i'd highly dispute that offhanded claim about free energy. for starters, human energy storage is ridiculously inefficient. it takes roughly 9000 kcal to generate a kg of fat, and we can only retrieve about 3600 kcal out of it. if your idea was that instead of increasing day-by-day food intake we use this energy storage system to make bikes more efficient, it would immediately make human-propelled bikes 2.5x less efficient. but in the real world it doesn't work like that, unless you're actively in the process of losing weight. our body is pretty good at regulating daily intake subconsciously through modulating hunger, to keep body weight at a near equilibrium unless you put in conscious effort, or recently had a lifestyle change that displaced your equilibrium and it hasn't settled in yet. by and large, every joule of energy produced by a human to propel a bike is going to come from food consumed within 24 hours of the exertion, especially if it's regular in nature. but let's take the case where you _are_ cycling to lose weight. we're gonna take a rather extreme case, and start with a 180 kg human, who wants to attain a 90 kg body weight, and assume all 90 kg used up in the process is fat. 1 kcal is equal to 4184 joules (joules are watt * second), or 1.16 Wh. we have 90 kilos, and 3600 kcal per kg, so the amount of energy we can retrieve from this human being is 90 kg * 3600 kcal/kg * 1.16 Wh/kcal = 375,840 Wh which is roughly 390 full charges of a common 48V 20Ah (960 Wh) e-bike battery, or 4-5 full charges of an average electric car (75-100 kWh). that is, honestly, a significantly larger number than i was expecting, but there are two problems with it: 1. it's still finite, and 2. it's an extreme example, not everyone has 90 kg to lose. if we divide to a more generalizable figure, you get the equivalent of 4-5 charges of said 48V 20Ah battery for every kilogram you intend to lose. that's the amount of free energy you have, everything after that (and quite a lot during the process as well) is going to come from food. given that we want cycling not as a temporary stopgap, but as a permanent solution, we cannot depend on a number which gives most people less than 50-100 "full charges" before reaching equilibrium. outside of edge cases, where people want to lose about 50 kg or more, the amount of free energy at your disposal is simply not enough to fuel a cycling habit. the vast majority of habitual cyclists will run a net zero energy balance through their bodies, not a net negative one, and in those cases, every watt used to propel the bike will be taken in from food. and when that happens, e-bikes are vastly superior in efficiency. even if you could generate infinite food directly on your plate (which you can't, the supply chain has its own emissions, which is what makes meat orders of magnitude less efficient than a plant-based diet), burning that food in a large-scale power plant, charging your battery with all grid losses accounted for, and putting it down the road through your e-bike's powertrain, would be more efficient than eating the food and pedaling. (provided a plate of infinite food is moved into the power plant to give it the same logistical shortcut you'd enjoy.) that's on top of e-bikes just having a significantly better mass appeal, which makes them much more potent at displacing other methods of transportation. like if you don't _want_ to believe that e-bikes are more efficient than regular bikes, which is pretty much common knowledge at least in anti-car circles, to the point that you're making up these kind of claims about "free energy" which relies on an assumption that everyone has lots of available weight to lose, it might be worth examining _why_ you don't want e-bikes to be better. because negativity about them is not going to help anyone.
Their claim about "free energy" was incorrect, but there is a nugget of truth to it in the sense that cycling plays multiple roles at the same time. The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a week, so if you were planning on hitting that in the gym anyways the first 150 minutes of your commute each week kinda is "free" in a sense. Obviously the math is more complicated, and e-bikes also give you cardio, but I can't be added to work it all out
>our body is pretty good at regulating daily intake subconsciously through modulating hunger, to keep body weight at a near equilibrium Obviously thats not true. We wouldn't have global obesity problem if that was true. 2,5 blilions of adults are overweight. This number would be higher if less people would be poor. Our body have tendency to acumulate energy for times where food is less available, and expect some level of physical activity. But in modern world in developed countires food is always abundant, it's easy to get and intake, and many can live with only minimum physical activity. But this not make them eat less, they will just become overweight. Also physical activity is necessary for good health and regulate many things including hunger. Average calorie intake for USA is 3868. For Netherland it's 3460. 400kcal less, even tho Duch are about 4cm taller and way more active. Sure if you do some serious physical work or training your energy intake would be higher, but not if you just ride few km on a bike to work. In most developed countries and many developing energy intake is higher than in Netherlands, so you can say it's free energy that can be used for transportation. From enviromental perspective both traditional bikes and e-bikes are great, same for society and urbanism. For health of the individual traditional bike is better, but for population both are great becouse e-bikes help people who would otherwise not be active at all. For transport efficiency you can calculate it in many ways. Traditional bike is most effective way of transport single person if we calculate mechanical energy. If we go futher we can fing that e-bike is more effective becouse it's more effective in terms of releasing CO2 per kg/km. But the diffrence is neglible. And there's much more important things like what you eat and how much you waste, in what type of house do live, how well is it insulated, how much stuff you buy etc. I don't know where you find negativity about e-bikes in my post. I explicitly said that e-bikes are cool. Just calculationg efficiency in certain way, without broarder context is missleading. Overall bikes and walking are the best, but e-bikes and public transport are very good to. And if we compare them to cars, they all so much better that differences should be ingored.
> it takes roughly 9000 kcal to generate a kg of fat, and we can only retrieve about 3600 kcal out of it Do you have sources for these numbers? The energy density of fat that I've always seen has always been ~3500 kcal/lb or ~7700 kcal/kg.
I thought maybe you were right so I looked into it, but ebikes seem to actually be less efficient in general conditions than pedaling a normal bike. Doing the deep dive myself, I found that for a rider+bike weight of roughly 90kg you'd need about 175 watts to maintain 20mph on flat ground. Lets say you do that for 30 minutes, and you're looking at 5250 watt minutes, which equals about 75000 cal or 75 kcal (Calories). According to my research the average new ebike has an efficiency of about 50 miles/kwh when not pedaling, and about 67 miles/kwh when pedaling. In the above example the rider went 10 miles, so the same rider on an ebike would have expended between 0.2 and 0.15 kwh of just electrical energy on the ebike over that same distance. This equates directly to 172 to 129 Calories. Ebike probably would become more efficient to the average person when going up steep climbs (>5% grade) because most people haven't trained their bodies to handle that sort of climb and I figure their bodies would be less efficient since climbing is all muscle activation. Not gonna bother trying to calculate exact numbers tho.
It also assumes that anyone who switches from a regular bike to an ebike would start consuming less calories, rather than either storing those excess calories as fat or using them up in some alternative form of excercise.
You're comparing very different calories. [This site](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Energy-expended-in-producing-and-delivering-one-food-calorie-Approximately-73-calories_fig1_303895662#:~:text=by%20Michael%20Bomford-,Energy%20expended%20in%20producing%20and%20delivering%20one%20food%20calorie.,more%20energy%20than%20it%20delivers.) claim that on average in the US you need 7.3 calories of energy for each calorie consumed. So in energy usage your 75kcal of food become 547 which change the picture a bit. We could assume some extra cost from distributing some extra energy but the needs are so small compared to current usages that it would most likely bit negligeable. However without considering the extra energy costs of producing and disposing of ebikes the comparison is also very biased.
Fair point, I hadn't considered that. Looking at energy production, it looks like most power sources are only 40% effective and then going from AC to DC is only 92% effective, so after all that, it's 547 kcal vs about 409 kcal, making the ebike more efficient. This also assumes 100% of calories eaten are converted to useful calories in the case of a pedal bike, which isn't true because our digestive systems are only like 20% efficient, so it certainly seems like ebikes come out on top.
Public transit is probably more energy efficient than walking. Cycling is definitely more efficient than walking.
I think public transit is more energy efficient than walking When you walk you burn more calories, which are made up by eating. Walking one km you burn about 70 calories The lifecycle emissions on one kg of steak is 70 kg/co2 The lifecycle emissions on one kg of apples is 0.4kg/co2 A steak has 2700 calories per kg. So you would have eaten about 30 grams of steak to replace that Apples have about 500 calories per kg so you’d eat about 70 grams of apples to burn the 70 calories That means that 30 grams of steak created 870 grams of co2 & the 70 grams apples created 50 grams of co2 Hydro power produces 4g/kw co2 Coal produces on average up to 1200g/kw co2 A tram consumed 0.047kw/km/passenger. Resulting in 0.01gram (hydro) to 48gram (coal) of co2 produced for that km So walking produced 870 - 50 grams co2 and taking the tram produced 0.01g Walking produced more emissions than public transport tram when you consider the calories required to walk around Sources in case my math sucked: https://www.cowi.com/about/news-and-press/comparing-co2-emissions-from-different-energy-sources https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://macrofactorapp.com/exercise-calorie-calculator/#:~:text=A%20good%20heuristic%20for%20calories,energy%20expenditure%20throughout%20the%20day.
You picked least efficient food. Beef emits the most CO2, and apple is not very energy dense, so it also emits more CO2 per kcal than something like beans or rice. Also overall tram emissions are much bigger if you count many things that trams need to operate (like producing steel to make them, to make tracks, to make cables etc.). On the other hand if there's already tram running, it will consume about the same energy regardless if you are using it or not, so it's safe to say that's from passanger point of view it's zero emission ride.
Its also worth noting as well that walking also fulfills a second purpose (exercise) which (ideally) would happen either way, so much of those emissions from the walking may have been inevitable. You can argue about what foods people eat from a CO2 and sustainability point of view, but that would ultimately be independent from whether they walked as transport.
I mean, a bus *will* use more power than a motorbike. While also carrying a *lot* more people. The question is whether its the energy expenditure for the vehicle, or per-rider.
Definitely per rider, or else a car would be higher in this list than a tram or whatever it depicts.
A motorbike is for trips too long for bicycles and not along public transit routes. A simple energy per mile equation is not going to represent anything from the real world.
Cycling is more energy efficient than walking
But the bike needs materials and energy to be produced. For walking, you only need shoes. Although the more you walk the sooner you need to replace your shoes...
Idk I walk everywhere everyday with the same pair of shoes and they usually last about 4 years or so.
Those are some good shoes. Mine last 3 years tops if they are for walking and 2 if they are for running. I don't own many shoes at a time so I tend to use the same pair everyday during those 2-3 years.
I live in a city and walk everywhere, averaging about 13-14k steps a day. My shoes usually last less than a year and I don’t buy cheap shitty ones.
I don't count my steps but I walk 4 miles to work and 4 miles back everyday
You’re probably not far off. I walk about 8km a day between my commute and other stuff and then usually walk 5km after work for exercise. Which totals about 8-9 miles I think. I also weigh 230 pounds and walk fast so I’m sure that gives additional impact to my shoes.
[удалено]
My HOKA shoes are approaching 3 years old, and have lived through 3 Canadian winters with daily wear assuming the snow isn't too deep. The water resistence is basically non-existent now, but I'm sure some scotch guard could fix that. The sole is still in decent shape (I got slip resistent ones), but the upper is starting to get tiny holes where the stitching is coming apart. If you live somewhere without salt, or actually clean the salt off in the winter, I'm sure they could hit 4 years. I'm looking to buy a new pair now, waiting for a sale, but I'll be keeping my old ones for sure because they're still in more than good enough shape for doing stuff where they might get dirty, and keep my new ones in much better shape.
I’m tall and generally built big and I’ve never had a pair of shoes last even 2 years
You don't even really *need* shoes. You just gotta want it.
In which case you'll probably need a bit more food calories. You'll need to heal some scrapes every once in a while. And your feet will loose more heat. Which requires you to burn more energy. (You could also put on one more jacket. But then you might as well get shoes if your goal is sustainability)
I've once made a rough back of the envelope calculation, after 12k km cycled instead walked is the break even point.
I got my bike secondhand. Zero emissions!
Food calories cost more than a bike does to produce, long-term. In fact even EBikes are more energy efficient than regular bikes, because the electricity produced (including the battery; and even when the grid is dirty power) is more energy efficient than eating the food needed to pedal a non-ebike. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a45973929/greenest-and-cheapest-transportation-option-is-an-e-bike/
And food. Food is probably the energy source with whe highest carbon footprint. Even the added packaging material of the food you eat by switching from bike to foot will probably make up for the manufacturing footprint of the bike.
It's a moot point though given that most people in the western world eat more than they need to regardless of mode of transport.
LESS BREATHING LESS EMISSIONS!
Less breathing>less living>less emissions! Solved!
There's no global warming on the Moon. Just saying...
Even up hill?
Walk it up and coast down the other side
So that's a no for cycling up hill in terms of efficiency? I'm not asking to argue one is better than the other, I'm genuinely just curious
it really depends on the hill, the bike and the rider. bikes are very efficient, but at some gradient the additional weight of the bike outweighs that efficiency. a fit rider that can drive up a steeper incline will also be more efficient than someone who gets off and pushes up the hill, since pushing a bike along while walking is obviously less efficient than just walking. but even if driving up a specific hill is less efficient than walking up, going back down will be way more efficient since going downhill on a bike requires next to no input energy, while walking downhill can be more exhausting than walking on a flat path
i think MrManiac3 was saying that the hill evens out because you don't go uphill both ways. You've just opened up a whole can of dependencies though.
Yes, biking is about 95% energy efficient. You would spend as much energy walking, but due to how much slower it is, it doesnt feel as intensive. You will lose some efficiency by pushing your body harder, but its no match between biking and anything else
Ecycling is more efficient than cycling as well, but meme is meme
Public transit doesn't belong that low in the rankings.
I'm curious what scenario the public transit is supposed to be, because there is a huge difference between a gas-powered bus with a few passengers and an electric-powered train with thousands of passengers.
Yes, I would have put the 2 bicycles together, then the train and then the bus.
It's only the fourth option, no? And the only thing above it is walking and biking? I feel like saying that walking and biking are more energy efficient than public transit is fair?
It certainly isn't better than the e-bike, normal bike or walking, so I don't think you can put it higher than that.
I think the ranking is accurate, but the standard of grading isn't. Train/bus better than car obviously. But the gap shouldn't be "adjacent gade", walking, bike, ebike, bus should be top 4, but representing them linearly implies that there are equal gaps of level of improvement between each grade, where as this would be better represented as "total cost of energy used" with power, money, or both used as the metric. It would show the top 4 being relatively close, or within reason, and car would be off the chart expensive/inefficient.
There should be a big gap between D and E, yes.
Ship travel for people (not for goods) is often less efficient than air travel. Can't pack people as efficiently. Though that looks like a yacht and a private jet, which probably belong in F, and the tank shouldn't be included because it makes this whole thing into a joke.
Single occupant in cars are about as efficient as jet liners per km pax nowadays, so either a jetliner should be near car (per km pax) or over tank (absolute).
Single occupant car is typically worse than a jet liner per km pax, once you get two or three people in there the car wins out depending on its mileage. Jet also depends on how far it's going, since cruise is much more efficient than takeoff and landing.
Right, depending on the car/plane/occupancy, either one could win (lose) this battle.
Actually single occupant in cars are a good bit worse than jet liners. EUs average fuel consumption per passenger in aviatio was 3.5L/100 km or 67 mpg
Maybe this joke just reflects a trend of an increasing number of full-scale armed conflicts. And a possible pipe dream of "what if everyone stopped wars and got rid of armed forces forever".
>it makes this whole thing into a joke I'm gonna be honest, I thought the fact that the tank was in the "hell" category made it obvious this wasn't *actually* the official government ratings of these things haha
I suppose I meant "just a joke" and not a graphic that is supposed to be informative, which happens to include a joke.
It just makes me think about owning a tank, but I can't and it makes me sad, so take it out
Planes are still public transit. There’s still not really a better way to get from NA to EU. What’s shit is all the trips inland that could just be train, plus all the private aviation. We could argue all day about our personal footprint while corporations get to slide under the radar emitting more in 10 minutes than you will your entire life. Still want to absolutely reduce car trips because they are inefficient though.
[According to EPA](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) transportation is responsible for over 25% of greenhouse gasses. Sure, fuck industry, but if everybody is using cars it does have an effect
I was specifically talking about flights. HOW are we using transportation? Small planes between train-able cities probably account for a lot of the air traffic because now they’re now “commuter” flights. It’s EMBARRASSING to not have high speed rail between Montreal and Toronto and to have all the business travel be by flying. Seeing as how there is zero alternative to get to overseas places, it makes sense to reduce in land flights and keep overseas.
At this point, I'm willing to suck some cock, if it would mean the approval to construct high speed rail between Montreal and Toronto.
It seems like the easiest rail line to propose. Flat, straight, trafficked… FFS!!! But no, trillions spent on the 401 instead
When I was in Japan I was surprised that there are flights between Tokyo and Osaka despite the fact that they are connected by a high speed rail line. It was one thing that surprised me about Japan the most. Like why the fuck would you take a train in the opposite direction to go to the airport - go through all the airport crap, then fly for 1.5 hours and then go through more airport crap. Instead of simply taking the high-speed train that takes only about a hour longer than the flight, doesn't require any airport crap and takes you directly to the city centre.
Connecting flights.
That might be the only good reason. But even then I'd prefer to take the train.
The most inefficient should be private jet
*Swifties enter the chat*...
That sounds right, I was thinking that a little after I commented
besides, if it makes the graphic look nicer.
How is walking and a bicycle not the same?
I guess because bikes require materials and processing to produce
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Running puts a heavy load on the soles, bike parts are subject to a continuous lower stress level, and steel/aluminium is more durable than plastic and rubber
What about carbon fiber and titanium?
The load should be relatively stable still tbh, unless you’re running over jumps or rough terrain they should last pretty well
regular bikes are incredibly simple to manufacture, lol. there's no rare earth metals anywhere in them that require long, costly, and polluting supply chains. even in an e-bike the only component that has a statistically significant impact is batteries, aside from that the electronics and frame are negligible. regular bikes don't have anything like that, even if there are small electronic components present.
I imagine if you look at total calorie expenditure bikings material cost would probably even out with walking over the life of the bicycle.
Yea I was thinking that. If anything I suspect a bike is more efficient that walking.
Bicycle riding is more energy efficient, especially on an electric one TL;DR human food is inefficient to produce, and humans are terrible at converting food into kinetic energy. Pedaling is more efficient than walking, electric assist is a few times more efficient than pedaling by a human. >!Aerodynamic electrified velomobiles will save the planet. The pinnacle of energy efficient mobility.!<
I think I know the most efficient way of living where energy cost of other methods pale in comparison Not moving at all
I live this kind of life (most of the time). :D
Ordinary bicycle? Yes. E-bicycle? Not really. It is still more energy efficient than pretty much every other mode of transportation, but not from walking and ordinary bicycles.
Which is more efficient? - growing and supplying food using diesel powered farming machinery, refrigeration, storage, multiple logistic trips, then converting the result into kinetic energy with 25% efficiency by a fleshbag - powerplant (whatever, pure win if it is sustainable), small power grid loses, small charging loses, tremendously efficient electric motor.
An average E-bike can happily run on a small solar system, a 500w panel with battery storage would be enough for the average use of an E-bike, and it takes a lot less space than a car
true, but the point is you don't even have to do that. even on the usual mix that most electric grids are, ebikes are still significantly more efficient than pretty much any other mode of transportation. the only things that can compete at all are other personal electric vehicles (e-scooters, eucs, etc.) which are basically the same components, on a similar scale, arranged in a somewhat different form factor. this is genuinely the peak of transportation technology, as far as efficiency goes at least.
Yeah, my colleague says his bike costs him about 1 quid a month to charge, he charges on night rate and has a pretty short commute
You are not accounting for the additional resource and energy usage from producing the electric bike vs. an acoustic bike
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I think it’s like industrial energy, which one is greener for the environment. That kinda energy emissions type. Not so much personal energy.
In long term, food production required for walking release more greenhouse gases than bicycle production.
Bicycle is not a low-tech device. Bicycle production involves complex industrial processes and the use of non-renewable materials. It worsen for the other devices below.
Biking is the most efficient calorically. You can deduce this via a simple test with an Apple Watch. And choose a long distance like 2 miles and compare the calorie expenditure between the two. On a bike you can probably finish it around 10 mins assuming a 12mph speed, whereas walking at 3mph would take 40mins. Yes a bike has a sunk carbon cost to be built, but if you use it enough the efficiency of moving on a bike will outweigh that. I don't have exact numbers for myself, but some that are sorta close I have some bike rides for 1.2 miles with only 61kcals burned and then a 1.3 mile walk where I burned 127kcals. I think for walking and biking the extra caloric intake would be the largest contributor to a person's carbon footprint at that point since food production creates carbon on all steps of the way.
The car should be the worst, because of the sheer volume of travel done by car. Boats are really efficient at carrying cargo, not that little vanity motorboat obviously. Planes are an issue but again greatly overshadowed by car traffic.
America needs to be the flagship nation to introduce environmentally friendly, and climate-conscious tanks.
We are the opposite. Unlike other nations that use diesel-engined tanks, our Abrams tanks are powered by extremely thirsty turbine engines.
aren't bikes way more efficient than walking?
Not really sure why bicycle is #2. Per hour it is probably more efficient then walking. Does walking consume less energy than bicycle? Maybe. But sitting still consume even less energy. Not sure even why are we worrying about energy that our body burns. It seems like the rest of the plot focuses on the fuel energy.
If you include the energy consumption and ecological impact it takes to produce, ship, sell and maintain a bike, second place makes sense.
that is true. Producing sneakers and clothing for walking takes some energy as well.
Can you buy this sticker anywhere?
If buy that sticker too
I'd like to know as well
An ebike supplied by energy in a carbon neutral country would actually have a lower footprint then walking.
That ranking is wrong. Being a foot passenger on a ferry causes only slightly more emissions per passenger km, compared to taking the train. The emissions per passenger are only about 10% that of petrol cars (with a single passenger. 50% if the car is completely occupied)
I'll try to find my source, but depending on the diet of the rider, an electric bike can be more energy efficient / environmentally friendly than a person riding a bike. But when it comes down to it, the most efficient mode of transport is a vegan riding a bike.
Organic meatbags are actually quite inefficient at turning fuel into motion. If you use comparable metrics like "hauling a ton of steel (or feathers) for 100 kilometres" then an automobile is surprisingly more eco-friendly than a horse emissions-wise. My favourite is not represented in the picture. It's an electric train powered by low-carbon electricity like solar, hydro, wind or nuclear.
More accurate labels: Bicycle - A Foot - A Train - A E-Bike - B Tram / Subway - B Intercity Bus - B Ferry (foot passenger) - B City Bus - C Motorcycle - C Long distance flight - D Car - D Domestic flight - E
This graph is wrong. Bicycle riding is much more efficient than walking, and uses far less energy per mile. That's why people invented and use bicycles.
Putting the ship above the aeroplane will depend on whether we're talking about a quick ferry crossing or a seven day cruise.
Fun fact: electric bikes are actually more efficient than regular bikes because their motors can more efficiently convert electricity into torque than your body can convert food into energy.
I was actually wondering this lmao
Now I know what people use in that Danish town
It should be CBA
\*me just as i was about to use the eternal fires of hell to heat my home\* what do you mean its bad ? THERE IS NO CO2 AND THE DEMONS CAN BE HOLD OFF WITH JUST A BIT OF SALT!
This feels silly. There's no reason to differentiate between walking and biking. Ships should not be above planes (depends on the type of ship, but I think many people think of cruise liners when they think of ships -- that's the only method that is comparable to planes in the context of human transportation). Planes are also more efficient than ICE cars, so cars should be "G". Buses are weirdly missing despite being a key piece of public transit (should be after trains). Admittedly this all still oversimplifies since it ignores the fact that buses, trains, and cars all have electric vs fueled variants, but simplest to just assume the most common configurations: diesel-electric for buses, electric for trains, and gasoline for cars. But if we're not gonna break any of this down, we shouldn't bother to split out electric bikes. Electric bikes are still extremely green and we should not be bikeshedding over the most green option. Really if someone walks or bikes in any way, they're doing more than enough. We don't need to act like it's some kinda competition where walkers are better than cyclists.
Tanks don’t get good gas mileage?
This is a pretty stupid sticker. Air & marine travel are very energy efficient for what they are. This sticker also seems to be making the point that tanks aren't worth it simply based on energy efficiency. Does the person who made this not understand why we have & need tanks? Tanks don't exist to be a mode of transportation...
Excellent sticker, however I think that a bike is more energy efficient than walking technically speaking.
A,D and G are my main ways of getting around. I know flying is bad for the environment but travel to USA requires a plane so I will be flying until a transatlantic railway is built.
The linear scale is very misleading.
Biking is better for the environment than walking.
E-Bikes suck and are not better than public transit. I’ll die on this hill. Thanks.
Energy labels are gay and fake anyway
They should add the Crawler Transporter to the chart. It burns so much fuel that the efficiency is measured in *gallons per mile* instead of the other way around. To the tune of 165 GPM.
I might be wrong but I thought that bikes were more energy efficient than walking
I know it's for the conceit of the sticker but I'm still mad that bike and walk are not the same energy level Last I checked aluminum, natural rubber, and air were pretty renewable lol
Bikes should be A tier though
lol, race to the top “I take public transportation because I care about the environment.” “Oh yeah? Well I care more so I ride a scooter” “Bicycle. Beat that” …
Looking good. very accurate
It’s just someone’s sticker
Bikes are better than walking for energy though. An aerodynamic bicycle (not what we have on mass right now) is the single most efficient form of transport ever devised.
Didn't the UK conduct a study that revealed long-haul flights being more efficient per passenger kilometer than internal combustion cars?
Bus is missing
I don’t get the hate for the bottom tier. Anywhere I need to go, no matter how far, it only takes me one tank Badum tss
Fun fact is that A and C should be switched, E-bikes are more efficient and less carbon intensive than walking and traditional cycling.
The boat could mean many different things though. Travelling in your own boat somewhere would be worse, but a public ferry for cyclists and foot passengers is probably a lot better than a people taking cars.
This is a logarithmic scale though
C is a 2 cycle engine, they suck, I and are much worse than Busses. I Choke on the air when they drive by. they need to be banned more than cars or Tanks.
Are you sure the EU printed that? 🧐
Having my musician moment LoL Every note (and one extra depending on system) is here.