The pest that is the best: E-bikes are saving the world, two wheels at a time.
If you live in New York City, you probably think they’re the worst varmint there is. Worse, even, than pizza-eating rats in the subway.
Yes, they’re e-bikes, which have become ubiquitous in the Big Apple as they rush around delivering food and other goodies to homes across the metropolis. And the riders on them break every traffic rule imagined — zipping along sidewalks, crossing against red lights and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
But, New Yorkers, you should not be too harsh — because, according to a new study, the world’s 280 million+ electric mopeds, scooters, motorcycles and three wheelers displace four times as much demand for oil as all of the EVs on the road. Their popularity is already cutting demand for oil by a million barrels of oil a day — about 1% of the world’s total oil output, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That’s as opposed to there being about 25 million electric vehicles on the roads, less than 10% of their two- and three-wheeled counterparts.
New York’s e-bike epidemic aside, most of this comes from the Far East and Southeast Asia, with a large majority in China. For instance, if you’ve ever been to Vietnam, you will know the swerving seas of two-wheelers that whiz along the French-designed boulevards of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon).
Why have they become so popular? Well, it’s not modestly-paid Chinese or Vietnamese families sitting around and fretting about the environment. It’s because they are cheap to buy and cheap to run. After all, a piston-powered scooter, for instance, is a complicated machine compared to an e-bike, making the latter cheaper to buy. And then charging it is much less expensive than filling a scooter or moped with gasoline.
If you commute about 12 miles a day, 5 days a week on an e-bike, your charging costs would be about $15 a year, a tiny proportion of what you would spend on a gasoline-propelled equivalent.
And, if, as is common in Vietnam, you carry the whole family on your two-wheeler — six people is not an uncommon sight — the per-person price is a biking bargain.
