My gas/money saved log.

[StudEbiker]

In case anyone is interested, I am keeping a detailed log of the amount of gas I am saving by riding the e-bike so I have some idea of how close I am to recouping my investment. My basic commute to work is 6 miles RT and that is the bulk of the miles I am putting on the bike. You can see the info here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pIUDrADv35aTbDLPFV7OuTw

This is just gas only. I still maintain a car so I am not using the $.50/mile deduction number. I am saving wear and tear on the vehicle though. I figure the "real" amount I am saving is somewhere between this number and the $.50/mile number. Anyway, I though it might interest some of you that are considering buying a kit, or for those of you that already have e-bikes for that matter.

 

[morph999]

it says I have to login to see it.

 

[StudEbiker]

It seems to be acting weird for me. Sometimes when I click it it takes me right to it and then other times it asks me to log in. Is there a way to imbed items other than videos? It gives me an html code to imbed, but I can't figure out how to et it to show up in the message.

 

[Sid]

Some questions about your method real quick.

In the first week you state that the price of gas on 4/18 was $2.29, and that you saved $2.29. Does this mean your car gets 12 mpg?

What exactly are you using to determine the amount of money you saved? The money you would have spent on gas for going x miles per week?

 

[StudEbiker]

Some questions about your method real quick.

In the first week you state that the price of gas on 4/18 was $2.29, and that you saved $2.29. Does this mean your car gets 12 mpg?

What exactly are you using to determine the amount of money you saved? The money you would have spent on gas for going x miles per week?

Yeah Sid...sorry about that. I realized later that there are two pieces of info not on the chart, the milage I would expect to get if I drove my car and the base price of the kit I bought. You deducted correctly that 12mpg is the figure I am using for the "amount saved" (in gas) column and the price of the kit is $699.00 for the "percentage returned" column.

 

[johnrobholmes]

After depreciating batteries and electric charge expense VS car fuel and depreciation, I save about $.45 per mile riding the Ebike. I consider it .45 of wear and tear saved too.

So far I am around $450 worth of savings, near enough for a tranny rebuild or new brakes and tires on the truck.

 

[dogman dan]

Nice, my truck , tires can cost $250 apiece. On a good day, it gets 11 mpg, but mostly it gets about 8. It rarely rolls unless I need to carry one ton. I use the figure one dollar per mile for that rig, that's what it has cost so far for the first 10,000 miles. So driving it to work costs me about $30 vs $3 for the ebike.

 

[Gregte]

I use a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure how much it costs to charge my bike battery. For the first 600 miles I spent 80 cents on electricity. That's 7.5 miles per penny. My work is a 10 mile round trip. That would cost about one and one quarter cents worth of electricity. (4 days for a nickel -- $3.13 for a whole year)

I estimate that the replacement cost of the battery might be around 2.5 cents per mile. Time will tell. I may do much better or maybe even worse.

dogman, how is it that you spend $3 to ride your ebike to work? I assume that to be 30 miles according to the other info you posted.

 

[dogman dan]

That is the cost of the motor, the bike, all acessories bought, like panniers, racks, slime in the tubes, seat, crank, handlebars, and a pingbattery. My costs for the first year included frying 3 chargers, one motor and one controller. Hopefully the costs will go down some, as I get a second year out of a lot of this stuff, but 10 cents a mile ain't that bad, compared to about 35 cents for the car, and a buck for the truck. All the extra cost of the first few months was my stupidity or just not understanding how easy it can be to melt a motor.

With a shorter ride, a cooler climate, and a less steep hill to get home, others should be able to do a lot better than 10 cents a mile. If my ride was 10 miles instead of 15, I'd still have the first motor running fine. All the money for ebike experiments is still coming out of what it would have cost me to drive the car, so in a way, you break even on riding an ebike in a very short time. If you count delaying the cost of a new car, or repairs for something, you can call it riding free in just a couple of months. Keeping that car longer after you finish paying for it than you would have saves a fortune.

 

[dogman dan]

Just recalulated eveything I could think of that went into the commuter bike including the fried motors etc, and came up with a total of $1560. And that has been ridden to work or other stuff about 4500 miles in the last 14 months. So that's 34 cents a mile Ouch! Sure not riding cheap yet ! To get to 10 cents a mile, I have to ride another 10500 miles, which should be possible, with a few more sets of tires and brake shoes, etc. But I bet I upgrade the bike before then, soooo. Theoretically the pingbattery will go that distance, but I bet I buy another one sooner too. Anyway, this year it cost me ten bucks to ride to work each day. But then you could consider from now on to be free, since that was all last years money, and now all I am spending is the power which my killawatt says is 10 cents, and work pays for the 5 cents to get me home.

But, nevertheless, it hasn't cost me that much more than driving the car would have been, and like I said, not having to replace it so soon is priceless. The other bikes in the garage are recreational, and I don't worry about what they cost. They are cheap entertainment for sure.