Why don't you walk, ride a bike, or build a cheap EV?
 

Going with the data off of the How many miles do you commute every day poll I made a while ago about average commutes for people. It shows that 28% of voters (15 people) are within reasonable biking range (0-10 total miles miles per day, or 5 miles one way). Additionally, 49% of EMers who voted (26 people) have a commute that is within reasonable cheap home brew EV range (0-25 miles or less, 12.5 one way).

My question is, why don't we have more people biking and/or building EVs? It kind of seems like a no brainer to me. Bikes are cheap (check your local craigslist), and its been shown that $1k and next to no knowledge of cars can get you a cheap EV. Why aren't we seeing more walking, biking and EVs? I dug and found out there are 31 biking entries, so maybe we are already doing great in that area.

I'm not trying to point fingers here. I'm honestly wondering why there isn't more going on. I know there will be things like winter weather to deal with that eliminates walking and biking for half the year for a lot of us, but the EVs can deal with that. This is really for the 49% who have a shorter commute, but what stops you from doing one of these options?

I'm in the 10 to 25 mile range. As for the EV option, I've been too busy to build one and I live in an apartment with no outdoor outlets. Last spring I road my bike a few times until the bike was hit by a car--I wasn't on it at the time.

In the final days of my old Hyundai, I was walking quite a bit. It was a good workout, but it took a long time. But, not as long as public transportation, which is unpredictable at best out here.

I do - or I should say did WRT commuting, since I telecommute now, but in past jobs I mostly biked. Previous job was 5 miles, with a steep climb of about 700 ft at the end, which sure got the blood pumping for work. Was neat, though: the last mile was through the employer's private wildlife preserve. The one before was 16 miles, but mostly level.

As for why not an EV for the non-work driving, one of the places I regularly hike/ski is 17 miles, with a 4500 ft elevation gain. I'd sure like to be able to afford a set of batteries that'd handle that, without weighing so much that I need a second set to provide the energy to lift the first that distance.

I think the aim of the question though was to find out why - for people whose lives it would easily fit - there isn't more interest in alternative methods of getting around.

Good question. Riding bikes is incredibly more fun than driving, and more challenging. Builds charachter, buns of steel, at-work energy levels, at-home energy levels, etc. If I could I would. I used to and would like to again someday.

The main reason for me is time and convenience. I go from 5am to 10pm flat out almost daily with work and other must do's.

I'd like to someday build the 911 project into an EV. Though some say it's heresy, I still want to. Problem is the cost and packaging to get a 60 mile round trip. Local EVers say were just not quite there yet with battery technology, at least the kind of technology that home brew conversions are made of.

My commute is 5.6 miles each way but I'll offer my answer anyway. I wouldn't mind biking that distance, but there happens to be a mountain right in the middle of it, which would be grueling to say the least. As for an EV, I live in an apartment building, so even if I were able to build one somehow/somewhere I have no place to plug it in. Another suggestion would be public transportation, but there is no bus I could take that lands close to my work.

Edit: It is also very cold here in the winter, and it tends to snow, like right now for instance. I find that no matter how much I bundle up riding a bike becomes uncomfortable below about 35*F.

I drive exactly seven miles to work. It burns me up that I am too chicken to bike to work.
I would need to go through the bad part of town, as well as cross several busy intesections ... at 3:45 A.M., sice I work the early morning shift.

I too live in an apartment, so not EV friendly here !

One more thing : The bus doesn't run at 4 in the morning and the folks I work with are not carpool friendly.

Most of the year, I try to park & ride (the bike). One parking location gives me 12 miles one way, another 17 miles, and a third, 25 one way. Have to build up after the winter off. The rest of the time I ride a motorbike, but even that gets old in the winter. Would be cool to have a bike rack on the motorbike tho' ... I've seen some that have done it.

A mountain? In Massachusetts? Sure there is :-)

http://tiee.ecoed.net/vol/v1/experim...oke_range2.gif

Commute is from Easthampton to Holyoke. ;)

Bonsai mountains :-) From the Wikipedia page (Mount Tom (Massachusetts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) ): "Mount Tom, 1,202 feet...".

I am very sorry that Mt Tom does not meet your demanding standards for a mountain. [/sarcasm]

An 8% grade for 1 mile is more than I, or most people (even cyclists) for that matter is willing to tackle on a bike every morning.

no brainer? yes. You said it.

here is a no brainer story for you:

disabled man drives old sube. walking gimp and terrified of electricity (internal combustion babble =done yet?)smallest engine and one of the oldest, designs: world record holder, set to a conservative 14 second quarter and 38-60mpg...with dual range awd.

extinct now......

garage next to the parked old sube has odors all day long from the modern mishap called automotive engineering.Fuel injection == Retard.

one 13 inch wheeled fuel injected neighbor tells a 24 inch four door ford landlord: the old sube smells like gas.

the four door ford landlord goes out of his way to confront disabled man with world record holding design ecobuggy with dual range awd and 38-60mpg (who is recently enthused for the upcoming 18 inch blizzard) that: does the old sube have a gas leak?

Once again integrity in the name of four door fords god is challenged by a 13 inch wheeled fuel injected neighbor to bother a world record holding einstein because of a retards fuel injection...

put integrity where truth is, and scare the falsities away...the omen that crushes everything....shamefully the wrong things...


"why don't we all drive fairy tales?" could have been the question.

real engines once existed. marketing is killing us all with permanently....Breakable...expendible...purposely misguided gadgets for the cheap expense to sustain billions in profit. I hope the real crushing continues.

Wow. Well that clears things up!

Ummmm....yeeaaaahhhh.... http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...miley_rofl.gif

Years ago I selected my house such that it be within decent bicycle commuting distance from work. Someday I should calculate an estimate of how much fuel I saved. I biked year around, through nasty winters and all, and I have the frostnips to prove it. Biking is great though. Plus it allowed me to eat like a horse (which I love to do) and not get fat.

I yoosta go through snow with 10-speed touring bikes but have found the fat tire mountain bikes to be more snow friendly... although care must still be exercised on ice.

My interest in EVs comes and goes. My hangup is winter operation, where I take it battery capacity goes down the tubes. An EV to me might be like another motorcycle- gotta park it for several months every year. Then it sorta gets "toy" status.

Sorry, but where I live, 1200 ft is a hill. Coincidentally, it's pretty close in size to these hills The Santa Teresa Hills which I used to ride up most mornings, back when I worked in the Bay Area. Never worked out the exact grade, but it's about 1.3 miles, mostly in my lowest gear. Now I'll grant you I never had to do it in the snow, so I'll let you slide on that.

Sliding is what most Bay Area folks do on snow anyway... ;)

Me: I have 2 cars. No room for more. You're not getting either one I currently have away from me, either! No outdoor outlets, because I have to park on the street.

Bike? Love to. The Boss won't let me. She says that it's far too dangerous (I tentatively agree if the bike is powered, but I feel that a bicycle is safe enough) around here unless you have a lot of metal around you. And I ain't hauling several hundred pounds of metal on a bike.

So instead my commute barely warms up my commuter car. Even more so, now that I turn the engine off for as much of the commute as I can!!

-soD

I am a stay at home dad so walking is mostly out of the question with a 2 1/2 year old.

When the weather warms I will get a bike trailer for the toddler.

EV? Do you know how many gallons of gas I could buy for the $$$ used in making a low cost EV? Let's say gas was $4 a gallon again and I could build a EV for $4000, that 1000 gallons could be used to drive my Geo Metro at least 50,000 miles! This is not factoring in the slightly (?) higher electric bill.

I'm in the EV range, but it's just not practical right now. I commute to my school, and I'll be living in apartments for at least the next year and a half, and I'm paying for school with student loans, so there's really no room in my budget for an EV. I'd love to build one, and hopefully I'll have a chance to once I graduate, but until then, I'll get by with small cars.

Only if it's not designed properly for cold weather use - like the 3 cheap car EV's on this site. (And the CitiCars too.)

I know of people who drive EV's year round in Ottawa and Montreal, with insulated (and optionally heated) battery boxes. An EV that's used as a commuter - ie daily - will retain heat from charging/discharging to keep the pack comfortably warm in properly designed boxes.

I suppose it depends on where you have to ride: almost all of my commute was on either a dedicated bike path or the employer's private road. (Though I did come close to hitting deer a couple of times, coming down the hill at dusk.) But I never had any close calls even in the other biking I did around there. Can't say the same for driving, though :-)

One of my neighbors has a Bug E. I should go talk to him about it.

I'd build a cheap EV - but it wouldn't be cheap enough right now. I'm in the paper-logistics stage though.

I'd ride a bike - but everything is at least a 10 minute drive, and it's all country. And cold.

I'd walk, and I do - to the post office, or the store across the street. - See above. And it's cold.

Guess I fall into category 3!

Actually, the whole EV thing has been working out pretty well.

I used the car to go to and from work 3 days last week. The one day I went from home to work to home to work, in VERY cold weather and it just started looking like the pack was running low.

So even paying the cold penalty, the vehicle still did what I needed it to do! :thumbup:

I bike to my first job as often as I can. The two reasons that I don't bike all of the time are:
Time--ending first job at 2:OO, cummuting 13 miles and being presentable by 3:00 is tough. If I don't have a 3:00 appointment, I ride.

Ice-- As is the case with a lot of you, ice on the road is a real danger, especially on 2 wheels. I'm really hoping to have a 3 wheel hpv built by next winter.

Why I don't ride/walk/EV:
1) distance - I'm in the "not a good fit" category @ ~23 miles each way
2) cost - even taking public transit is 2x cost of driving
3) safety - you wanna bike through Newark, NJ? And that doesn't include the roads!

I'd telecommute, but it's a dangerous economy to be heard and not seen. If I had my fiance's 3-4 mile commute, I'd bike it.

Sell me a civic conversion kit for $1000 that won't need new batteries in a year and i'll stop burning gas to get to work. Till then, time and money keep me driving. I would be curious to see if the "cost" of those cheap ev's is what is stated, or if that is just the value of the parts on the car. Ie - stories of destroyed couplers, burned out electronics... do those go in the budget?

I don't own a more efficient car because I'm poor. My 13 year old car costs me about $1000/yr in fuel, mantainence, and depreciation. I doubt that an EV could outperform those figures. Even if it could save me money, I probably lack the capital to do the conversion.

I'd like to buy a (P)HEV, but I can't justify the expense right now.

When I lived in a college town (Columbia, MO - where AndrewJ lives now) I rode my bike to school/work every day, in all types of weather. Basically everywhere in town I needed to get to was within 2.5 miles and not too many small hills. I was broken in when I was doing an engine swap in my mustang and my other car had electrical trouble for 6 months, and I liked it so much from that period that I kept doing it.
Like FrankLee said, it's good for your body. I lost 50 pounds.

I do find it easy to let the various conditions others may have to contend with slip my mind. My home is on the flatlands; I can bike for miles and my biggest enemy is wind and cold. Just came in from a bike ride on the West coast and wow- I get more winded in 1/10th of a mile going up the many steep grades here than I do after miles on the flat back home. Also, brake failure- on a bike or a car- back home wouldn't be that big of a deal- I'd drive it home anyway and make repairs there. I could never do that here. Good strong brakes are a MUST. This hilly warm place is perfect for hybrids and there are a lot of them out here! Back home, hybrids really don't make much sense.

(scoffing at Frank Lee for his apparent fortune in the West Coast adventure)
PSHHHH.. ;)

Terrain is definitely something to take into account when deciding what type of conveyance will benefit you most... obviously, you weigh out the pro's and con's of each plausible conveyance.

Frankly, I'm sure we'd all love to have a Tesla Roadster, or a Tesla FamilySUV (dunno, check in like... 2045), but for the $109,000 you could buy enough fuel to last the rest of your life, given current prices.

Everything is a compromise... how far you're willing to take that compromise to see a positive result is up to the individual.

It's all in what you're used to: most of my riding has been in the west (though I don't suppose you can quite call the Sierra Nevada the West Coast), so I thought I was in pretty good shape. Then I spent a couple of weeks riding around Yorkshire & the Lake District. And a couple of years later lived in Switzerland for a while, and would be sweating up some mountain road, only to be passed by a cheery gray-haired Swiss granny type, apparently carrying home the week's shopping.

For me it's pretty much money. Almost any EV I've seen has ample range for my needs, but is way out of my budget.

I found this one for $800!

http://gallery.me.com/benhdvideoguy/...12220011130002

Planning to use it as my fun summer car!

And with the economy right now, as it stands, it would take me almost a year to save $800. Yeah, really.

And was that $800 before or after it was made drivable?

2 words homebrew biodiesel.

And I compromise by driving the tdi over a supra.

I ride the ebike about 5% of the time; drop in the bucket I'm just full of excuses to drive and almost always do.