Electric Bike Sales Booming Because of Soaring Gas Prices – IOTW Report

Electric Bike Sales Booming Because of Soaring Gas Prices

Saturday, 26 March 2022, 19:54 BFH Uncategorized 25

Bidenomics

25 Comments on Electric Bike Sales Booming Because of Soaring Gas Prices

  4. I just bought another Mountain bike last week. (Son keeps stealing mine)
    NO lights,
    Bright Orange,
    Hydraulic Disc Brakes,
    Front & rear Full suspension, 160mm
    12 speed rear,
    Single front,
    Yuge Knobbie Tires,
    & IT WILL NEVER SEE THE ROAD!
    (I don’t like bothering people who have places to go & things to do)
    Dirt Only!

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  9. I always thought a cute pink Vespa would be fun. But I wouldn’t want to be limited at 30mph. A bigger motorcycle won’t work for someone who couldn’t even pick up a tiny motorcycle in my youth; wouldn’t even try it now!

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  18. The vast majority for whom e-bicycling would work as an alternative to driving, or taking the dreaded public transit, have already bought an e-bike, or they simply cannot afford one.

    Most people impulse buying e-bikes right now will likely park them after they realize they just aren’t feasible for them.

    I would have liked a hybrid, but I can’t afford one. Same for an all-electric for doing short trips. I made sure I had 220 voltage to my garage when I did some major remodeling a few years back, in the event I was able to get one. The next guy can use it, if I ever sell.

  19. The fact that you have to put a battery on a bike for power when you have GOD given self-propulsion devices is indicative of a doomed fat-assed society.

    Seriously, a standard bicycle doesn’t require much energy to move at a nice clip.
    An ‘E’ bike is likely far more dangerous as well, due to higher speeds that are obtained.
    So you end up with faster bikes on trails where they weren’t designed for, let alone the idiots on them don’t know what the hell they are doing.
    These speeds on street will just get motherfuckers killed…

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  20. All we got are the gas powered bicycles. Dudes with DUI’s drive them. Cuz’ it takes a while to get from point A to point B in Arizona.

    Also, this is dirt bike land. Nobody is gonna’ get a lectric bike except retired folks because Arizona is all hilly and trail oriented.

    People drive those side by sides out here. Grocery shopping, hardware store runs…they’re everywhere. I’ve even seen them on the trails.

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  21. LBS, You are very muck correct.

    Take a company like TREK or GIANT.
    They make the Pedal Bike & an E-Bike in some loosely similar bikes.
    The E-Bike is heavier and on the Climbs with electric assist really helps the rider. They can catch us and smoke us in most areas EXCEPT in braking, Rock Gardens & Jumps. (generally)

    They cannot turn remotely as easily, they really don’t jump as well, & the suspension does not respond as well in rock gardens.

    Like life, there are trade offs.

    The only thing is I don’t like seeing young guys on the E-bikes on the trail. BUT, when someone is a bit older, that little bit of extra assist keeps them outdoors & engaged. And that is All Good.

    I have 2 American Made IBIS RIPMO AF’s. 1 Orange (German components) & 1 Silver (Japan Components)

    My kid stole the Silver one from me.

    3

  22. Kcir, most mountain bikes are +/- 24 gears.
    How many people use more than 3?

    SO MANY riders do not understand how to gear down with more RPMs to get up a hill.
    My own brother had an issue with this concept.
    Dumbass struggles every time and I keep yelling at him.

    I love riding up a steep hill.
    Same when I run, something about the different effort.
    Less power required just more cardio.

    To me, if you need an electric assist you are simply making excuses.
    There are 80 year olds that can blast up a steep hill.
    Might as well get a moped.

    I suppose e-bike riders also buy their wives dildos when they have ED…

    2

  23. I think the problem I have is that they are trying to say e-bikes are an alternative for transportation.
    They really can’t fit that application.
    Cities, towns, communities are not set up for bikes to be used safely in a sea of cars as trucks.
    They simply are not.
    Perhaps when biden* kills fossil fuels bikes will be a necessity?

    Bikes are good for neighborhoods and exercise.
    If you never got on a bike but bought an e-bike what does that say?

    I go for 40 mile mountain bike rides and I have to be very creative getting around and making it home alive.

    Love bikes but I know how irrational the driving public is.
    Motherfuckers will run you down for the audacity of riding on THEIR road!
    See Al’s comment to know what I mean.
    Irrational as hell.
    Seriously, how many here have lost more than a few seconds in their lifetime due to a cyclist?
    Z E R O

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  24. @ LocoBlancoSaltine

    There’s a few cyclists alive now because of me taking a few extra seconds. One time I was sitting at a red light, to my left was a building right against the sidewalks, you couldn’t see if any thing was coming from that way until you got into the intersection. When the light turned green, for some reason, I didn’t take off right away and a cyclist came flying thru the red light from the left and missed the front of my truck by no more than two feet. Had I taken off a second sooner that guy would have either been a pancake or Mr Darwin would have t-boned my truck.

    Another time in the middle of nowhere going around a blind curve with a narrow bridge at the end, I came out of the curve and there was Mr Darwin again stopped in the middle of the road and bridge having a drink from his water bottle and admiring the scenery. I hope he’s still cleaning his pants.

    It isn’t just cyclists. More than once I’ve had to go to the edge of the shoulder because some oncoming driver moved over into my lane to pass a bicyclist riding on the shoulder in his lane.

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  25. Purchase an EV that runs on batteries and save the planet, right?
    Tesla said it best about batteries when they called it an Energy Storage System. That’s important.

    They do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, diesel-fueled generators or minerals.  So, to say an Electric Vehicle (EV) is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

    Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see? If not, read on.

    Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

    There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc
    Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

    All batteries are self-discharging.  That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

    In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.

    But that is not half of it.  For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.

    Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.

    In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.

    The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.

    Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.

    A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk.  It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

    It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.”

    Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?” And the Chinese just bought most of these mines!

    I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

    The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicone dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

    Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.

    There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent.  “Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.

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