[emn13]

"Despite the intuitive sense that electric bikes would require more resources than regular bikes, life-cycle analysis shows that they actually consume 2-4 times less primary energy than human riders eating a conventional diet. This conclusion is largely due to the considerable amount of transportation and processing energy that is associated with our western food system."

And obviously, caveat lector: there are huge assumptions going on here, because the "real" cost of stuff like food and batteries aren't trivial to calculate at all. It's not like you can feed em both the same resources anyhow, so at best this is an analysis that the efficiency is sort of comparable. In 2004.

[bscphil]

> And obviously, caveat lector: there are huge assumptions going on here, because the "real" cost of stuff like food and batteries aren't trivial to calculate at all. It's not like you can feed em both the same resources anyhow, so at best this is an analysis that the efficiency is sort of comparable. In 2004.

This is what I was thinking as well. My naive guess is that the extra energy expended to build an electric bike blows the efficiency improvement completely out of the water. It would take a truly enormous amount of usage to make up the difference in the expected lifetime of the battery (which then has to be efficiently recycled, else it's yet another environmental hazard).

Of course the real issue is the fact that I can't travel even 1km toward my workplace on a bike without seriously fearing for my life. Cities in the United States are extremely unfriendly to bikes.

[benj111]

Yes, does it take into account the energy cost of the ambulance that comes to collect you after you had a heart attack after getting fat because you didn't burn off what you were eating....

On the other hand, from what I understand in the Netherlands, ebikes help older people keep cycling for longer so ebikes are still good?

I would guess overall, the difference between bike and ebike is a rounding error compared to not riding at all. Both environmentally, and from a health pov.

[makapuf]

In any case I definitely know nobody who ate more because they rode a bike. Some might get a bit more exercise or will get a bit less fat but I m firmly against the assumption that you'll et more if you ride in current wester societies.

[kasey_junk]

My eating logs show a dramatic calorie increase when cycling to work vs not. Eye balling looks like ~20% increases are common

[benj111]

When I cycled to work I did eat more, but that was 30+ miles a day up and down hills. It was also on an ebike (whatever that proves) and I would say it was more carbs than air freighted fresh veg and meat, so not the most carbon intensive food.

But yes I don't think most people eat their full extra cycling energy expenditure when they take up cycling.