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Energy efficiency of active travel (walking, cycling, ebike) compared to an electric car
(slrpnk.net)
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7273195
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Fuck cars, but was it really necessary to compare at such different speeds? Air resistance is a big factor and a proper electric bike can go 45kmh as well. Or the car can drive 25kmh
I think the speeds are the average speed of each transport type, so it's fair.
The fact remains that cars are faster than bikes. Driving a car usually means going faster and hence wasting more energy. Sure, plenty of people deal with distances that necessitate such speeds to be practical in daily life, but that's a different problem to be solved.
I agree.
But if it's a different problem to be solved the comparison is useless from the get go.
Plenty of people drive short distances that could already be travelled by bike or walked. That doesn't require any new solutions. Reminding those people of how wasteful it is to commute by car is a good way to approach that problem imo.
The different speeds are to make sure the graph pushes the agenda of the creator. All of them going the same speed would decrease the disparity between walking and driving.
You got lies, damn lies and statistics.
And this is one of those.
It wouldn't change that much actually. Modern cars are really aerodynamic and the comparatively high weight of electric cars emphasizes the rolling resistance in relation to the air resistance.
This Wikipedia page (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrwiderstand) has an example where 77% of energy goes to air resistance, 23% to rolling resistance - At a speed of 200kmh. Which means rolling resistance requires 5x more energy to overcome than air resistance at 50kmh. (77% -> 77 energy units -> multiply by (50/200)^2 = 1/16, as air resistance depends on speed squared -> 5 energy units, but rolling resistance is independent of speed so it doesn't change (still 23 energy units))
There's some debate about that. E-bicycles above class 2 (with assistance/drive at over 20mph) are not allowed on a lot of bike lanes, so they're more like electric mopeds
Yes, they are handled differently in a legal sense. This comes with some small changes to usability of e.g. bike lanes, but in terms of practicality it's basically still a bike.
Would still be a better comparison, since this is focused on energy consumption. Or just have the car drive slower, as per my other suggestion.
It depends where you live. Here the limit is 400W. Which is probably not quite enough to hit 45km/h in ideal flat conditions.