New Lights (stolen link from Treehugger.com)

Treehugger is one of the 4 sites i visit many times per day. today i found this post and thought it might be useful for some of you ebikers!

(not to mention commemorate my first $100 of car replacement credits - (i keep a log of how much i'm saving by ebiking to various places - just passed $100 - now at $102.73)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/how_to_be_seen.php

the lights look cool and have intergrated indicators!

Very cool product! I like 'em & might just buy a set. Thanks for the tip.

Your statement made me curious. How do e-bikers tally their savings? Do you use them to justify your investments, or just as a feel-good thing?

For instance: is that $100 after paying of the e-bike investment, or is that the gross savings before expenses? Is that from petrol savings only, or are you considering wear & tear and mileage based depreciation?

I'm keeping a similar tally for pedalling to work and back. Right now I'm taking credit only for the gas savings. I figure when I get up to the price of a kit I'll buy one with the savings and pay for the batteries & charger as an advance on future savings.

If the cost of gas keeps going up I should be able to buy a complete kit sometime next month

OneEye said:

Do you use them to justify your investments, or just as a feel-good thing?

Click to expand...

I qualify/rationalize all my expenditures... they must hit at least one of the following targets:
make me money
save me money
help the planet

My ebike hits all the targets in various ways.

OneEye said:

Your statement made me curious. How do e-bikers tally their savings? Do you use them to justify your investments, or just as a feel-good thing?

For instance: is that $100 after paying of the e-bike investment, or is that the gross savings before expenses? Is that from petrol savings only, or are you considering wear & tear and mileage based depreciation?

Click to expand...

Hi OneEye,
well the way i do it is to have a small spreadsheet on my phone (its a pocketpc one). I have worked out aproximately what my car uses in petrol per klm, and also put an AVERAGE price for petrol (it hasn't changed much here at all) at $1.30 AUD per L. so using these i can work out $ per Klm. I then also have worked out the cost of oil i spend at services (but not the actual charge itsself). I service the car every 8000k, and spend $50 - again easy to work out.

I then work out how much i save by riding the roadbike in k's and hte ebike (i want to keep them separated to see which i use more).

Everytime i use the bike to replace the car - be that commuting or whatever I add the distance i would have had to travel by car to the apropriate distance cell. The rest automatically updates. I did add one more thing - a "parking fees saved" cell - which simply adds a $ figure in that cell to the total amount.

So in summary, my system tracks:
( (distance saved on road bike+ distance saved on ebike) * (cost of petrol per klm) ) + ( (distance saved on road bike+ distance saved on ebike) * (cost of petrol per oil) ) + parking saved

it only takes into account
petrol
oil saved in services
parking fees saved

i've also kept a tab of how much i've spent on ebiking related capital costs - i won't be watching maintenence or anything like that (since cars have similar costs), i also didn't inlclude registration or insurance since i still own and will own my car.

I did the same thing, except I only calculated parking. 8$ for a full day (ouch) at 5 days a week. 40$ a week. Everyday I ride the bike to work/class (both downtown) I save 8$, not including gas or wear and tear.
Just parking, so I definately come out ahead of that.

The lights seem awesome though, I wonder what it would take to rig a 12V DC converter to the system battery and run normal moped/motorcycle indicators.

For me the breakdown works like this for the daily work commute (in loonies):

Car
- gas 5
- parking 20
- wear and tear on car 5
- half hour each way in summer, 45 in winter when more traffic on road
- if i get in late (say after 8:30am) it is very hard to find a spot to park in any of the public lots.

Bus
- 6 bucks
- hour to hour and a half each way, bus doesn't run some hours when I need to go or come home

Bike
- 30 minutes there, 50 back (mostly uphill)
- 1 buck a day maintenance

Ebike
- 18 minutes there, 22 back (408 rear, 48volts).
- 2 - 5 bucks a day maintenance (just a guess)
- I still try to pedal hard comming home. It is enough to maintain a better fitness level then the few months before when I only biked once a week at best due to time constraints.
- I have a better parking spot than any of the VP's in the big office tower I work in With the car, I have to park five blocks away to get the 20 dollar rate or pay 35.00 a day to get within a block of the building.

By far the e-biking is the funest part of the work day. I first took an interest in e-biking just because it seemed like it could be a quicker way to get to work and I could avoid having to pay 400.00 a month in parking. Now it is just too much fun to stop

To be honest, I never gave much thought about the environmental aspects of driving a car before this. I just accepted it as a necessary evil. What else could people do? Now I know better and am keenly waiting to see more and more of ev's on the roads and paths.

Damn 20 and 35$ parking spots! I thought I had it bad when I was paying what Brucey paid.

Thats the only way to really blow the ebike thing up.. stress the fun and practicality. The environmental and energy issues aint gonna get 98% of the people to give em a shot.

exactly - i prefer to calculate it based on klms -as i do a lot of local area runs, which allows me to include going to the shops and back. I just map it out on google maps and record the distance.

I made it to work today in 41mins! thats approaching the time it takes to drive the car!

made the run at 16.1 wh/klm - for a higher speed.