- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or # to comment.
Source/year?
My quality of life has increased a lot since getting an E-Bike.
California: “Oi!! You got a loicense for that boike?”
AFAIK California doesn’t require a license for ebikes.
deleted by creator
I’m pretty sure that’s New Jersey, where your e-bike has to be registered and insured, if I’m not mistaken.
Our speed limits are lower in Canada. Up to America’s limit, we’d need a license.
Looking it up, it seems Canada has pretty reasonable e-bike regulations. Too bad we can’t have nice things in the U.S.
We also do concerning other components like battery quality (so your bike doesn’t catch on fire)
Unless you live near doug ford apparently. Bike lane makes his commute from the suburbs longer? Gotta go, even when there is a video of him saying how nice and safe he felt on this bike lanes or something along those lines.
He and his brother seem like the most self centered jerks from here where we have plenty of similar ones to compare. Also he “needs” a private plane to travel. Dumbassess leading the charge on every country it seems.
Now I know how to draw a bicycle!
Prove it!
You win! You get a cookie! Just send me your banking information, SSN, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, blood n stool sample, a scrapbook of your foot prints, as well as a sample of your writing, and you will find a cookie in the trash over the next week. I’ve done this literally a trillion times, and half the time it works like 37% of the time, so it’s real, dude. Statistics like that are God, obviously.
Way to go!
Now, I’m going to become an artist!
The intent of your second sentence requires no comma.
Adding the pause after now slightly changes the connotation of the implied meaning.
Now I’m going to become an artist.
Now, I’m going to become an artist, if XYZ.
That pause implies you’re going to follow it up with a conditional clause or similar.
But the path to the top of the mountain is made through regular, consistent effort rather than bursts of motivation and inspiration, but those definitely can help bring you to your destination. Best of luck! Consistency makes the lottery of gaining exposure a sure thing over the long run. The more seeds planted, inside and in medium, the more fruit can be harvested.
The number didn’t really change, just how we reach it 😅 feels a little too real.
What the fuck is this millenial AI persona invasion on lemmy, get the fuck out, stupid robot
If Americans had access to Chinese EVs and had more affordable EV options it would be better. Their range is great now days. They can get up to 350 range depending on the car now. Comparible to gas cars. I think local governments should install charging stations as well to recieve some of the profits and to keep it affordable / voted on instead of it all being privatized again as we KNOW ALL COMPANIES EVENTUALLY JACK UP COST no matter what the product. America never learns.
Yeah, we really need this in the US. Very few people here can use a bike as a primary mode of transportation.
Yeah downtown Lemmy users think everyone should be on a bike. It’s not realistic.
The EV argument against Chinese vehicles is hilarious. Everything is already made in china. And the cars might spy on me? And the Americans won’t? I trust the Americans less than the Chinese at this point, I rather be spied by china
They have them in Europe and Canada just approved Chinese EVs. America is being left behind and it’s gross. Open market my American ass. The lies.
I think everyone should be on a bike, but I don’t blame people if they aren’t, as the infrastructure for it does not exist in a lot of places. As part of thinking that everyone should be on a bike, I also think that the infrastructure for that should be built. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to build and maintain that car roads.
They don’t live in reality. Or their reality is not everyone else’s is a better way to say it.
My rural ass town with not a sidewalk in site?
Yeah the main road through people do 65 on id fucking get splat.
Clever. Thought this was c/fuckcars for a sec.
Where the fuck you buying gad that’s $4009? Is this in 2029 money?
4.009$
$900.40? That’s a weird way to right that ish…
Ah yes, the universal solution that works only for some people, in some places.
Im pretty sure this is not a solution for anyone, as letters cannot be used to make a bicycle irl.
this is brilliant, what a great visual effect
Good job! Have fun with your 40 mile commute.
You take the bike down to the train station and bring it with you on the train. Caveat: Your country needs to have train lines that are actually usable.
My country doesn’t, and I am seriously getting sick of hearing that the forms of transportation we are systematically forced into being called inferior when we have no other realistic choice. Everything and anything is at a bare minimum 15 miles away from me in the Appalachian foothils. Even the very best cyclist would tire easily on these hills in just a few miles. I mean nothing to you personally, but I am beyond sick of the extremely privileged “fuck cars” mentality. I am going full rant here, but I don’t have another fuck to give. If you are able to walk or bike to a location to do whatever you want you are much more privileged than the average American. And the entire ethos around “lol fuck you just walk or bike” is precisely why we got into a fascist state.
I’ve been under the impression that “fuckcars” has always been more about “fuck this system that we have developed that makes cars a necessity” and not about " fuck you for driving a car." It has always seemed more like anger at the system than at individuals to me.
That’s the spirit of the community but, as in all things on the Internet, it naturally has attracted extremists which have impacted the vibe.
Reading literally any single comment in a fuckcars community would prove this to be false
in the Appalachian foothils.
Think part of the ‘fuck cars’ problem is the messaging lacks nuance. For example, the problems nearly do not exist in your scenario. Their problems are mainly around big city centers, and perhaps transit between those big cities. Appalachian foothills hardly have enough traffic or land usage to trigger the usual complaints.
Conversely, mass transit is a particularly terrible idea for Appalachia. Rural contexts in general make mass transit a challenge, but those slopes mean you pretty much have to have roads way too curvy for any bus, let alone getting rail going.
In short, a hellscape of traffic lights and crosswalks with no where to build because you have to split it with cars, I get the ‘fuck cars’ sentiment, but rural and esspecially mountainous areas, well cars are about the only reasonable answer.
Short rant: Your first sentence touches on a microcosm of a much larger problem. Nuance and context are disappearing everywhere. As far as threats to society go, it’s in my number one spot, and we really need more people actively dismantling it like this, so thanks.
Theres probably a bunch more reasons than just transportion culture wars that the us is turning fascist, i would imagine, but yeah that was what i was getting at. Very aware that many places in America only are build for cars.
Which is a damn shame. You shouldnt have yo be forced like that. But u know, money and power, big Industry lobbyism and decades of fearmongering about market regulations and public services, thatl get you a situation like that.
Wasnt trying to be snarky or anything fyi, clarifying because im quite over thinking too much about tone, downside being people sormtime misunderstand my vibes. ✌️
Yeah. I kinda snapped and didn’t intend to be mean. My mental state is not great.
I imagine having to commute for that amount of distance in a car each day is not helping. I hope your situation improves, you do not deserve the pain
No worries comrade, we all crash sometimes (i do at least). Take care ❤️
That’ll increase your premium.
Halp I don’t get the joke
But how else would they feel superior to everyone else?
I once had a 22 Mile round trip bicycle commute and there were absolutely no buses or trains or any type of public transport available from point A to point b. I finally had to quit that job in the thick of winter when snow made bicycling impossible, but before I quit, I got there walking/ running for a couple months.
Sounds awful, sorry you had to go through that
E-bike.
OK, you your $5,000 e- bike stops 3/4 of the way home and it took you an additional 2 hours.
ETA, actually doing the math for my old commute - It would take and additional 12 hours by e-bike. One way.
That’s an impressive commute
If you average 10 mph on a bike, it’d be over 120 miles each way. If you have to spend like 5 or 6 hours each day just commuting, you probably should just move closer to your work.
Looking unconvinced at average bike and bike part price development of recent years.
If you know where to look, you can get a very respectable bike for not a lot of money.
Especially considering that car prices have more than kept pace with bike prices
Bikes are meant to be bought used. They are so dead simple to repair and maintain. All you need is a handful of basic tools and youtube.
Bikes are meant to be bought used.
That’s solid advice for your occasional short range bike.
But when talking about substituting a car for a bike with the thereby associated mileage (which the comic implies), in most cases this will be less true.Main reason for this is that, apart from the frame, bikes mostly consist of wear-and-tear parts.
That is especially true for many used bikes that still have rim brakes and on top may have obsolete parts that are not easy to come by (had that once for my bar-end gear-levers that Shimano decided not to produce any more, because old-fashioned…)Also a used bike comes as it is, so not really optimized for easy maintenance as you could choose a new bike to be.
I have learned by now (after switching to new bikes every few years and ~20000km before), that the most stressless (and also cheap in the long run) path is to buy a custom bike with robustness and easy maintenance in mind.So steel frame, no suspension fork but fat 29’’ tires instead, mechanical disk brake, standard lower mid range components (less optimized for weight, but often more robust), lowest number of gears possible (less finicky and typically less chain wear).
The initial cost when doing so will be higher, but in the long run will pay itself of when doing 5000km+ per year.
I dunno what typical yearly mileage on a bike used for commuting is… mine certainly did not do 5000km when I was commuting by bike. So your experience might be a bit more frequent maintenance than what most people need to do.
But either way, a used bike is still likely to be pretty easy to maintain. Maybe you’re thinking of some specific harder-to-maintain parts? Brakes are a good example; rim brakes wear out quite quickly and are harder to replace the pads on than disc brakes. However, they’re still dirt cheap and they’re still not hard to replace. I, a cack-handed moron, learnt how to do it fairly easily.
Most people that I know live in the range 10-20km from their place of work, with a second peak around 30-40km (the ones that decided for more rural living) 20km being somewhere around the upper limit of what makes practical sense to still do by bike, this would be 4000-8000km when biking to work 200 days per year.
I was around 18km (so 7000km yearly) for most of the past 20 years, but home office since corona reduced that to much more relaxing 3000km/year.Maintenance also depends hugely on whether you drive through the winter or stick to the summer months. Wear during winter especially of the drivetrain is crazy…
Regarding the rim brakes: I was talking more about the wear of the rims themselves. Depending on pad/rim-material combination they worn down after 20000km at the latest, rear wheel often even earlier.
One of the main reason I bought completely new bikes every 3 years until about 10 years ago. Drivetrain components worn down even when changing chains regularly, new wheels to become necessary because of rim wear and suspension fork just a piece of extra nonfunctional weight after three winters.No suspension and easily maintainable disc brakes was a game changer, together with a steel frame and fork, which let me sleep more relaxed because not so susceptible to hidden wear.
A cheap wheel is like £100 new though and easy to replace. So sure, that’s another point in favour of disc brakes, but buying a new wheel every few years is, I would say, not worth worrying about - even if you are doing that kind of distance. (I wasn’t and had to replace a wheel, either I used worn brakes for too long or something got on the rim and wore it down very quickly) so I would still say used bikes are a good shout.
Also, you can pick up a rideable used bike for £200, maintain nothing except the chain, then buy another used bike, and you’ll likely still end up spending less money than if you’d bought new and maintained everything fussily.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying your approach is bad! But for someone considering getting a bike and worried about the outlay (as the OP was), buying used is very much a good idea.
I see it this way: Colleagues riding their car to work typically spend so much more money on convenience extras alone like entertainment system, comfort seating and stationary-heating, while effectively spending less time in their cars than I on my bike, that I see no point in going the complete hardcore way.
Having a bike that leads to less hassle and maintenance time while on top also being tailored to my specific needs and fitted to my stature is more than worth the roughly 30% increase in cost per km, imo.
But I admire all that go the minimalist way!
There is e.g. this one guy who regularly flies past me on an old, much to small 3-gear-woman’s city-bike - completely impressive!
Then there is this other guy riding a custom rebuild three-wheeler, complete with canopy, bike horn and an integrated stereo system blasting Metal music, casually greeting everyone passing, as if riding a Harley. :-)
That’s part of the fun of riding a bike - there is more variation between bikers, as you have much more freedom to still affordably realize your ideal view of it!That’s true, if you’re replacing a fairly nice car with a bike that’s not for racing, you will always save money.
I first commuted by bike in northwest Germany where most everyone bought their bike from a humongous bike market held every month. It was fairly unusual to see anyone riding a fancy bike, compare to the thousands of bike commuters you’d see every day.
What I always thought was funny compared to some other countries, is that you were as likely to get overtaken by a little old lady in a long skirt as by a lycra-clad young athlete. Somehow that seemed to dispel the concerns a newbie might have about their own pace.
Consumerist mind set. Bikes don’t tend to break all at once and you can ride a beater right across the country with a hundred bucks of spare parts. A lot of shit you just don’t need and a proper bike is the epitome of that. Also cars require maintenance too, and a hell of a lot more of it and it’s a lot more difficult and expensive. There is probably a whole order of magnitude number of things that could go wrong with a car at any moment.
Also cars require maintenance too, and a hell of a lot more of it and it’s a lot more difficult and expensive.
Going by kilometer driven/ridden my first car for sure cost me way less to maintain than the bicycle I had at the same time. Of course it was an old bike (10 years old at that point). But then the car was also nearly 30 years old.
Fuel costs put it back in the bike’s favour of course. But in terms of maintenance and repair, over one summer I rode maybe 500-1000 km at most and must’ve put like 200 EUR into the bicycle, and drove maybe 5000-6000 km and put like 100 EUR into car maintenance and repairs.
Bikes tend to be cheaper to maintain because the mileages are significantly less.
Yeah if you discount insurance, oil changes, and gas money; then over a 6th month period you might spend more money on parts for a bike than a car. Maybe.
I literally said the math will change to favour the bike if you include fuel?
Oil change was included in that figure and insurance costs next to nothing if you’re getting liability only (and you can’t really get full coverage on a 30 year old car).
Think over the 4 years I owned that car, I spent a total of 200 euros or less on maintenance and repairs since it sat for the better part of the last 3 years I owned it.
Most of the rest of my cars haven’t been this cheap to maintain, but then again they’ve also done a lot of mileage for me.
My point is that bikes are so much cheaper to maintain in the long run that even if you were doing the same miles, it would come out far cheaper. Just because you have a car that has been cheap to maintain, doesn’t change the simple math of that problem. The average price of bringing your car to the shop once could buy you multiple used bikes from garage sales.
Tell that to my 30 year old Gary Fisher that has 15k miles on it and I, nor 2 bike shops I’ve taken it to can get it running correctly, or find the correct size parts for it.
That’s your fault for buying a gary fischer bike. Thats like owning a british leyland sports car and complaining that none of the local shops have parts for it.
Wow that’s got to be one of the most idiotic statements I’ve ever heard.
“Maybe if you owned a more standard bike, you could find parts for it more easily?”
“Absurd balderdash, I won’t hear of it.”
if you are taking the cost of petrol and using it to buy the bike instead. then the cost for the bike is free as you would have used that money on single use petrol.
I did that math when I bought my bike. “How many times do I have to bike to work to even this out?”
Once I hit it I never touched that bike again.
I just cleaned my brakes for the first time. From a two min video on YT. Bikes are the best
Last I checked you can buy them for as cheap as €50.
Or if you want something that doesn’t break quickly, still only €300-700 total. In ten years I’ve only spent like €100 on repairs.
You’re looking at those higher end one, where the price has always been expensive. If you just want an average bike and doesn’t care about weight and all those snobby stuff and don’t mind adjusting it to fit you, get a generic chinese-made bike. It’s cheap, it’s repairable, it use non-proprietary part, and it’s upgradable.
If you are in Europe just get a Dutch bicycle. Cheap (you can find them in any canal in Amsterdam, just hop in and grab one!), repairable, and will last for years post-canal treatment.
Fucking creative.
