It's all going to depend on your situation, for some people it will be an absolute money saver if it can COMPLETELY replace a car, all year round, for a commuting to and from work.
That is, no car payment, no maintenance, no gas, no parking fees, no insurance etc...
For most, this is a hobby that saves some gas money and car wear, but won't completely pay for itself for a number of years.
I'm sure it provides other intangible (ie health/happiness) benefits in other ways that can't be accounted for exactly.
Here is my situation, YMMV.
I built my commuter for the sole purpose of going to work without my car.
Let's be generous and say my $24,000 car will last 12 years, that's $2000 in depreciation costs per year average. ( I buy cars new and drive them into the ground. )
I commute 24 miles each day to work, city driving, that's about $3 worth of gas here. 260 working days a year, that's about $800 a year in gas, just to drive to work.
Insurance is another $700 a year. I pay for parking and thats $800 a year as well, even if I don't use it every day.
I'm up to $4300 a year now to have a car and drive to work and park, and that doesn't include any regular maintenance or repairs.
Like most people, I can't completely get rid of my car. There are bad weather days here and winter. I sometimes have commitments out of town. I have a girlfriend.
It would be really awesome if I could ditch my car, spend $4000 a year on an ebike fleet and claim a savings!
So What to Do?
Scenario 1:
The best case scenario for me is that I can save $1600 a year in gas and parking fees by choosing to bike in to work each and every work day, even the bad weather ones.
I'll also save 5200 miles of driving on my car which is about 1/3 of my yearly mileage, so let's say that's 1/3 of $2000 (depreciation), or another $600 worth of car wear and tear.
Biking to work every day = Save about $2200.
Scenario 2:
If I decide to ride in on only the nice days of spring, summer and fall, say about 200 days a year, then I'm only going be saving about $600 in gas because I still have to pay yearly parking even if I only use it in the winter months. (
I am looking into this to see if I can get some kind of parking deal.) Save 4000 miles of driving, or about $500 worth of wear and tear cost on the car.
Biking to work only on nice days = Save about $1100.
Now, those savings, either way I do it, also have costs.
I spent $2500 on my eBike. It has to last at least a year of all weather commuting or two years of nice weather commuting before I will start realizing any savings.
All weather commuting through rain and salty snowy crap is considerably harder on bike components, especially electric ones.
It will probably need new chains, tires, tubes, tunes and all sorts of things in that time. Bike shops are expensive, I am getting good at doing all these things myself.
All in all, it is probably less than what comparable maintenance on a car would cost, so I'm not worried about it. (The most identifiable bike part of my ebike is a crappy $300 big box bike.
)
The big ticket maintenance item is that I'm going to need another $800 battery for it after two or three years.
So I will say that eBikes will probably save most people money versus cars, but only over the course of a few years, and all depending on where you live and how you ride and what your mechanical skills are.
If you know nothing about bikes or bike maintenance and put together something crappy or buy a premade ebike, you probably won't save money.
