e-car or e-bike

A few months ago I decided to look into buying a used Nissan leaf.  For $4-6k one can get a 2012-14 Leaf with about 70% battery pack life left and around 100 miles per charge.  With a little upgrade one can increase that range to 200miles.  

I could use WinSol so!ar and battery system to charge the Leaf and meet 80% of my driving needs.  I would still keep my current AWD SUV for winter and super long distance (SLC, Oregon+) trips.

And then I read a WIRED article about e-cars being a big problem. 

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-i-used-to-love-cars-heres-what-drove-me-away/
https://eu.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2019/10/23/european-countries-like-germany-italy-and-netherlands-e-bikes-now-make-up-nearly-quarter-all-bike-sa/4022117002/

And it wasn't about hydrogen or any fuel, but about the car itself and how we've been snookered by politicians and corporations into believing that all we need to do is get a zero emission car and our environment will love us for it.  
There was a comparison between an e-car and an e-bike and it wasn't even close!!
Then in talking to my friend in Stuttgart Germany who uses an e-bike, I was even more convinced that I just drop the idea of a Nissan leaf.  But there are issues.

My method will be to put the e-bike into my SUV and drive it to the closest city/bike path and do all my visits, errands on the e-bike all day long.

Issue #1. Being an old fart, I dread riding my road bike on city streets.  I just can't react as quickly anymore to all the cacophony of movements and directions and speed as I used to in my you get days.  And there aren't as many bike friendly places in The USA as there are in Europe...although it's getting better.  Maybe I'll hang out in Davis at first...one of the most bike friendly citiesmin the USA.
Issue #2. Where do I charge an e-bike on the road? Do I carry a long extension cord with me? Can I plug into anyone's outlet? How long will it take?  I've solved part of that by retrofitting my SUV with a solar panel and battery system. I could a
So swap out the e-bike battery with a fresh one.

Issue #3. Payload.  How will I transport groceries, library books, etc around. Maybe a backpack, or pannier bags, or a special bike basket in front+back.  But I'm not going to be able to transport construction materials...like 80lb cement bags, cinder blocks or 8+ foot 2x6s




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

best recycling uses - Vietnam

Image
I am constantly impressed with our ingenuity.  And that's why I am a bit optimistic about our future on this planet.  While technology will not be solving most of our issues, it can contribute in a positive way.  In the 70's the term 'appropriate technology' became a buzz word.  To this day we are still trying to define what that means.  The best example of good appropriate technology is LED light bulbs.  They last a long time (until most manufacturers downsized their run hours from 100,000 hours to 20,000 hours - gee, I wonder why? ) Here's another one:  using our discarded plastics as road beds.  Not that we need more roads, but those colored (especially green) plastic bottles that can't be recycled back into something useful are being Vietnam to build roads.   Turns out that other Asian countries have also done this... when will the USA and Europe start doing that? I also found an interesting link on Vietnam's supermarket packaging....
Read more

upsides of COVID19

Image
The two greenest periods of the last 20 years was Y2K and the 2008 recession. We had global reductions in CO2 levels, less miles traveled and cleaner air and water during those two downturns.  But that's nothing compared to what were starting to see with this COVID19 downturn+.   With human animals confined to their nests and caves, the outside world is becoming more accessible to wildlife, way cleaner air and water, and a small healing of our planet has begun. One of the most heart warming stories was the sighting of a red fox in Yosemite. ' the park said that it was the first time the fox ― a distinct subspecies of the more common red fox ― had been seen on a camera south of Tioga Pass Road since its surveys began in 2011. ' https://news.google.com/articles/CBMifWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFvbC5jb20vYXJ0aWNsZS9uZXdzLzIwMjAvMDQvMTAvc2llcnJhLXJlZC1mb3gtb25lLW9mLW5vcnRoLWFtZXJpY2FzLXJhcmVzdC1tYW1tYWxzLXNwb3R0ZWQtaW4teW9zZW1pdGUvMjM5NzQ4NjQv0gEA?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen...
Read more

Life or Money

Image
You decide.  Don't let the talking heads and politicians decide.   Do we protect human life or our economy? We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to decide this question and spark a tipping point for the future of our human race.  In the next few weeks we will resurrect our economy.  Any way we do it, it will cost human lives.  We don't yet have a full grasp about what COVID19 can do.  We don't know if asymptomatic people can become symptomatic, we don't know if there are variations of the virus strain, we don't know how rebound cycles may or may not occur.  In other words, it's way too early to expose millions of people to an unknown new virus strain.   We do know that COVID19  is more deadly than the common flu.  We do know that merely speaking at someone (without a mask) could transmit the virus.  We've finally agreed that face masks are essential in public areas (even I needed a lot of convincing).   -...
Read more