It's marginal gains all the way here but genuinely if you're an omnivore the E-Bike might work out more enviromentally conscious
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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traingang
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A cargo ebike (Aventon Abound LR) is the best thing I've ever purchased, with 3000km of distance ridden in under a year.
Travel is now fun instead of stressful. My commute is mostly along a bike trail where I get to watch wildlife. It isn't lined with animal corpses like the roads, people are generally nice to each other, and I see a lot more of my city with more time to think about it.
Every time I leave the house I'm exercising. I'm burning 70% of the calories of a normal bike, but riding more often and further. I don't get sweaty or feel exhausted. When I show up to work in the morning I'm awake from the little physical puzzle on my commute, can work 10 hours in the sun, and bike home just as refreshed.
No car expenses. My car was under $20k new. Yearly registration is $300, yearly insurance premiums $1200, any minor repair starts at a $500 deductible. I could buy a new good-quality ebike every year for the same cost, and each of those bikes has a lifespan of around 16,000km with the maintenance that I can cheaply/easily do at home. It costs me less to recharge my battery for a year than it does to refuel my car once and I could buy a new battery for the cost of refueling my car 17 times.
32kmh is fine. In town my transit times are about the same as driving, but then I save time on parking. It's slow enough that I have good reaction times and can watch my surroundings, but fast enough that I can be anywhere I need to in under half an hour.
No cops. If you get an unclocked e-moto like those Surrons the cops will harass you, but they don't target cargo bikes. I hate how driving my car means so many opportunities to mess up with some minor traffic law, which locally is now enforced by camera too.
No risk of killing. If I hit someone at top speed I could kill them, but I have way more situational awareness and a much better braking distance/turn radius than in my car. I don't have to worry about potentially killing an animal, or even scaring them with my quiet motor. If I have to swerve and ditch, wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet and skid gloves, it's at a speed that I can walk away from.
If you live in a city with decent biking infrastructure, ebikes feel like the future in a way that I haven't seen since the debut of smartphones. It cut out the most stressful part of my day and replaced it with little adventures that make me feel like a kid exploring the neighbourhood again.