The phrase ‘gotta get my steps in’ has become part of everyday life. But what if there were a simpler, faster way to meet your daily activity needs?

  • krelvar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    6 days ago

    In comparison to owning a car, it’s dirt cheap for sure, but unless you can entirely eliminate your need to own a car, it’s still an additional cost, and most of the US isn’t very good about biking infrastructure. I live in the Phoenix area and we have good bike lanes, but as the saying goes, “paint isn’t infrastructure” - the vast majority of my urban riding is along 45mph roads, and paint isn’t very good at stopping a distracted driver from wandering into my lane.

    I kinda got sidetracked there but my point is, that 1500 is an additional cost to owning a car for a lot of the country. (Again, US focused.)

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      Most of car’s costs are milage related. Wear and tear mostly happen from using it. Some insurance costs scale based on milage. Oil changes, tire changes, gas, other repairs, etc mostly scale with milage. So even if you can’t replace the car, if you offset 3000 miles over the lifetime of the bike, it mostly pays for itself (although after 3000 miles on a weighty ebike, you might also need $400 in repairs/maintenance and maybe like $50 in charging costs?

      But offsetting is a big if. Im certainly lucky where I live (granted I have based where I live partly off having bikeable infrastructure)

      • krelvar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 days ago

        Yeah, that’s fair. I’ve put 2500 miles on my cargo bike since I got it just over a year ago. Bike was $1700, plus various accessories, probably $2500 in total.

        Replaced the tires for $100, a few tubes, maybe $20, and the freewheel for $20. I do my own maintenance so no labor.

        I doubt charging was that much, it’s pretty damn cheap to charge it.

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          I doubt charging was that much, it’s pretty damn cheap to charge it.

          I think $50 may be accurate if you ride uphill both ways and charge it in hawaii. Definitely nowhere near that for normal use.