8 ms·

When you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the

by d_sem 4y ago

When you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the opportunity cost of car ownership over e-bike adoption is tremendous. The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year: a figure which blows my mind.(edit: Source bankrate.com, the top hit on google) As a personal anecdote, my household has gone from 3 cars pre-pandemic (2 commuters + 1 back up beater car) down to 1 commuter, 1 e-bike, 1 bicycle. The change has been startling in improved quality of life.

liquidise 4y ago
How is that yearly cost figure derived? I can't imagine it is repairs, gas, tolls, registration and maintenance alone.
- potatochup 4y ago
  That probably includes capital/depreciation? But I agree it seems high
  - askvictor 4y ago
    It seems high as the costs of depreciation are hidden. Also, depending on how the average is calculated, it might include stupidly expensive cars alongside cheapies. But the upshot is that owning a car is expensive.
- askvictor 4y ago
  Depreciation of value would be the most significant cost. Financing costs might also factor into.
- Plasmoid 4y ago
  It could be including depreciation, loan interest, and insurance.
- d_sem 4y ago
  My source is bankrate.com (top google search hit) which doesn't provide an exact line item breakdown. Here are some parameters they consider: - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month - Average repair costs ~ $1,425 - Depreciation of initial investment. (google search returns an average new car - cost to be ~$50,000 USD in 2022) - Gas - Registration
  - ProAm 4y ago
    > - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year > - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month Both of these are crazy high. Maybe not for everyone, but 1771 per year for insurance you should be shopping around or using a broker. And a car payment of 700, that is up to the buyer, but IMHO that is absurdly high.
    - flyingpenguin 4y ago
      Have you noticed how few sedans are on the road? I recently considered switching from a sedan to a cross-over... the sticker shock was upsetting. I make 2x as much as most of my friends and I absolutely refused to buy a cross-over, they all have cross-overs or trucks. Ended up with a Hundai hatchback for 15k less, and bought a roof rack for 1k. When the 4 of us go snowboarding we use my small car instead of their huge expensive cars because I can fit 4 people + 4 snowboards on the roof, while they have to put a seat down for snowboards. I don't know whats going on with everyone, a all wheel drive hatchback with a roof box is probably cheaper than the average crossover, fits FAR more luggage considering you can actually reach into the box, and if you buy a lift kit its just as good at off-roading as some random crossover is (IE: better than you think, worse than you expect)
      - aimkey 4y ago
        Three specific demographics prefer the (from the factory) higher ride height of SUVs: 1) Women 2) The elderly 3) The overweight Women have a say in over 70% of vehicle purchases in the US. So even if the vehicle is for dad, mom (who is 5’4” on average) preferring the higher ride height of the SUV will influence the purchase if she has to drive it occasionally. The elderly and the fat have a harder time getting in and out of lower-riding cars/hatches. The country is getting both older and fatter at the same time. These are the driving forces in crossover dominance.
- ofalkaed 4y ago
  There are a lot of people out there who drive 100 miles a day in a full sized pickup, lots of people with very high insurance prices due to accidents and the like, etc. A guy in the building I work at gets parking tickets at least once a week just out of his own laziness. I know multiple people who do no maintenance on their car until it breaks down completely and they get stuck with an expensive repair bill that could have been easily avoided and then they get a rental for the time it is in the shop. As far as I can tell a great deal of people just throw money at their cars and they are part of that average.
- acdha 4y ago
  AAA has very similar figures with a breakdown. Depreciation is a lot but not everything: https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-YourDrivingCosts-FactSheet-7-1.pdf https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-You...
  - Spastche 4y ago
    used and self financed costs out a majority of those costs
    - acdha 4y ago
      According to their data the cost of financing is $658/annually out of $10k total. I assume you’re thinking used cars will reduce depreciation, but it won’t go to zero and even if it did you’d still be looking at less than half of the total cost since a used car still needs gas, tires, parking, and you’d have more in repairs. Cars are just expensive.
hathawsh 4y ago
Am I well below the average? I spent $22k on a new car in 1999 that I stopped driving in 2022. I would guess I spent $15k on maintenance and repairs, but let's go on the high end and say $20k for that. That means it cost me an average of $42k / 23 = $1826 per year for that car, excluding fuel. In a year that I drove 10k miles, when the car's fuel economy was 24 MPG and the fuel cost $4 per gallon, the fuel would cost me 10k / 24 * $4 = $1667. That's $3493 per year. Why is the average so much higher?
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Insurance, registration, property taxes (in some areas). Not sure if that annual costs includes parking and other things that cost, but aren’t obvious for many people (many of us park for “free”, but we’ve paid for those space through higher rents, mortgages, etc). For the rest of the money, the average new car costs around $50k today. And the average ownership length is about 8 years. Average loan length is approaching 6 years. So, $8333/year to service principal, plus interest, etc. Then only 2-3 years of only fuel/maintenance before starting over again. Plus the majority of depreciation is during those fist few years. On a $50k car, that’s probably $20k of lost value, if not more. Yes, not everybody buys new cars. But, lots of people do, and they spend an ungodly amount of money on them.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    It's hilarious to me that anyone would overlook 25 years of registration fees, considering that Californians literally overthrew their government because of registration fees. Maybe in their jurisdiction it's not that costly.
    - hathawsh 4y ago
      Registration for my 1999 car was only $70 per year and there were no property taxes. Insurance was a more significant cost and harder to estimate, but still not major. Regardless, I agree that these expenses add up fast. If I replaced my regular commutes with a $3000 e-bike that lasts 2 years, and I spent $2k per year on Ubers and rentals for various things that require a vehicle, I would come out ahead.
jareklupinski 4y ago
dont forget to factor in the number of people not hit by those missing cars
rainsford 4y ago
I'd also argue the potential savings and advantages of e-bikes are undervalued because the bike infrastructure in even the best US cities isn't particularly great. I've spent a fair amount of time in Denver, and while there are some good spots and ongoing improvements, the bike infrastructure in the city is honestly a lot worse than you might expect. Better bike infrastructure would almost certainly increase the e-bike value for people who buy them anyways, but even more importantly make them worth it to a lot more people.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Denver is trying. But they have so far to go. I wish them luck and success. The driving culture is strong.
  - zachkatz 4y ago
    Here's a random main street in Denver: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,12.31h,92.44t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1syomvuSdA5h6xaTaYomBYlw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DyomvuSdA5h6xaTaYomBYlw%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D257.9331%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,... Or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,0.86h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ss1-KyeJbKNcEXc5iRxbgcg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Ds1-KyeJbKNcEXc5iRxbgcg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D51.559692%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,... ...or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,199.02h,82.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sl6PP5k4kbs2dugYG4h1xIg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,... You can click around to pretty much any street in the city, and 100% of the space is dedicated to cars. A complete bike network that enables mass cycling is a dense grid that makes basically every street safe to cycle on: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/the-grid-most-important-enabler-of-mass.html http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/the-grid-most-i... This is what trying looks like (Jersey City's Quick Build Bike Network ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC1l8L5aBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC1l8L5aBA Or this (Inside the New Plan to Make Paris ‘100% Cyclable): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris-will-become-100-cyclable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris... Denver is not even really trying.
aimor 4y ago
I previously looked into the average cost per mile of car ownership, after hearing the IRS values it at 58.5 cents/mile, and came up with this breakdown ($7,605/yr): "The average vehicle costs $40k, is owned for 11 years, gets driven 13k miles per year, burns 25 mpg, gas costs $3/gal, insurance is $1500 per year, and the vehicle needs $900 per year in maintenance and repairs." The Bankrate estimate seems high, but not by much. My own cost is 38.4 c/mile.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  This is why I drive a 2002 Saturn despite making $140,000/year.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  I've never really thought cost per mile is very useful, because it favours commuting by car and long distance travel. The more you drive, the lower the cost. I probably spend more per mile on transit, but I can't really compare it because the expenditures are quite heterogeneous. I could factor in the cost of shoes, but car drivers also have shoes, they just don't use them for walking as much. They might also own a bike, but that's rarely factored into transportation methods for car owners. Likewise I only use the train once a week or so; per mile it might be higher, but yearly it's nothing.
sampling 4y ago
Source: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership/ https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...
adam_arthur 4y ago
That doesn't account for the increased chance of death, unfortunately. I'd ditch 90% of my car use for a bike if I felt safe doing it... but most places in the US you really aren't. A quick google search shows bikers are 2-10x more likely to die per mile, though I didn't delve too deeply into it.
- turdprincess 4y ago
  I have bike commuted in the following places without near death: * New York City * San Francisco * Portland * Seattle * Raleigh Durham * Chattanooga TN * Salt Lake City For sure there are some cities where biking is terrible, but I am not sure it’s a “majority”. It also takes some awareness to ride your bike safely in a city, but actually, doing anything in a city takes a bit more awareness and caution. Is it possible that you could avoid death while cycling by improving your cycling skills a bit? You could join a group of (still alive) cyclists to learn the ropes.
  - bsder 4y ago
    I'm glad you managed to avoid the reaper, but every single person I know who decided to commute using a bike wound up in the hospital within a year (Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego). That's like two dozen+ people without a single exception to the contrary. Yes, it's anecdata, but it's quite a lot of anecdata with a strong signal to noise ratio. Bike infrastructure cannot share with cars given the magnitude of the consequences when the two vehicles interact unintentionally.
- WindyMiller 4y ago
  Don't forget to include the health benefits when weighing up risks! More chance of being flattened by an SUV now, less chance of a stroke/heart attack later.
lm28469 4y ago
> The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year And then you read stuff like: "The average monthly car payment is $716 for new cars and $526 for used.", which is more than what I pay for my flat in a EU capital https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-monthly-car-payment https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...
- Chris2048 4y ago
  I live in an EU capital also, and pay 2-3 times that for an apartment.

by d_sem 4y ago

liquidise 4y ago

How is that yearly cost figure derived? I can't imagine it is repairs, gas, tolls, registration and maintenance alone.

potatochup 4y ago
That probably includes capital/depreciation? But I agree it seems high
- askvictor 4y ago
  It seems high as the costs of depreciation are hidden. Also, depending on how the average is calculated, it might include stupidly expensive cars alongside cheapies. But the upshot is that owning a car is expensive.
askvictor 4y ago
Depreciation of value would be the most significant cost. Financing costs might also factor into.
Plasmoid 4y ago
It could be including depreciation, loan interest, and insurance.
d_sem 4y ago
My source is bankrate.com (top google search hit) which doesn't provide an exact line item breakdown. Here are some parameters they consider: - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month - Average repair costs ~ $1,425 - Depreciation of initial investment. (google search returns an average new car - cost to be ~$50,000 USD in 2022) - Gas - Registration
- ProAm 4y ago
  > - Average Insurance ~ $1,771 per year > - Average Car Monthly Loan ~ $700 per month Both of these are crazy high. Maybe not for everyone, but 1771 per year for insurance you should be shopping around or using a broker. And a car payment of 700, that is up to the buyer, but IMHO that is absurdly high.
  - flyingpenguin 4y ago
    Have you noticed how few sedans are on the road? I recently considered switching from a sedan to a cross-over... the sticker shock was upsetting. I make 2x as much as most of my friends and I absolutely refused to buy a cross-over, they all have cross-overs or trucks. Ended up with a Hundai hatchback for 15k less, and bought a roof rack for 1k. When the 4 of us go snowboarding we use my small car instead of their huge expensive cars because I can fit 4 people + 4 snowboards on the roof, while they have to put a seat down for snowboards. I don't know whats going on with everyone, a all wheel drive hatchback with a roof box is probably cheaper than the average crossover, fits FAR more luggage considering you can actually reach into the box, and if you buy a lift kit its just as good at off-roading as some random crossover is (IE: better than you think, worse than you expect)
    - aimkey 4y ago
      Three specific demographics prefer the (from the factory) higher ride height of SUVs: 1) Women 2) The elderly 3) The overweight Women have a say in over 70% of vehicle purchases in the US. So even if the vehicle is for dad, mom (who is 5’4” on average) preferring the higher ride height of the SUV will influence the purchase if she has to drive it occasionally. The elderly and the fat have a harder time getting in and out of lower-riding cars/hatches. The country is getting both older and fatter at the same time. These are the driving forces in crossover dominance.
ofalkaed 4y ago
There are a lot of people out there who drive 100 miles a day in a full sized pickup, lots of people with very high insurance prices due to accidents and the like, etc. A guy in the building I work at gets parking tickets at least once a week just out of his own laziness. I know multiple people who do no maintenance on their car until it breaks down completely and they get stuck with an expensive repair bill that could have been easily avoided and then they get a rental for the time it is in the shop. As far as I can tell a great deal of people just throw money at their cars and they are part of that average.
acdha 4y ago
AAA has very similar figures with a breakdown. Depreciation is a lot but not everything: https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-YourDrivingCosts-FactSheet-7-1.pdf https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-You...
- Spastche 4y ago
  used and self financed costs out a majority of those costs
  - acdha 4y ago
    According to their data the cost of financing is $658/annually out of $10k total. I assume you’re thinking used cars will reduce depreciation, but it won’t go to zero and even if it did you’d still be looking at less than half of the total cost since a used car still needs gas, tires, parking, and you’d have more in repairs. Cars are just expensive.

hathawsh 4y ago

Am I well below the average? I spent $22k on a new car in 1999 that I stopped driving in 2022. I would guess I spent $15k on maintenance and repairs, but let's go on the high end and say $20k for that. That means it cost me an average of $42k / 23 = $1826 per year for that car, excluding fuel. In a year that I drove 10k miles, when the car's fuel economy was 24 MPG and the fuel cost $4 per gallon, the fuel would cost me 10k / 24 * $4 = $1667. That's $3493 per year. Why is the average so much higher?

alistairSH 4y ago
Insurance, registration, property taxes (in some areas). Not sure if that annual costs includes parking and other things that cost, but aren’t obvious for many people (many of us park for “free”, but we’ve paid for those space through higher rents, mortgages, etc). For the rest of the money, the average new car costs around $50k today. And the average ownership length is about 8 years. Average loan length is approaching 6 years. So, $8333/year to service principal, plus interest, etc. Then only 2-3 years of only fuel/maintenance before starting over again. Plus the majority of depreciation is during those fist few years. On a $50k car, that’s probably $20k of lost value, if not more. Yes, not everybody buys new cars. But, lots of people do, and they spend an ungodly amount of money on them.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  It's hilarious to me that anyone would overlook 25 years of registration fees, considering that Californians literally overthrew their government because of registration fees. Maybe in their jurisdiction it's not that costly.
  - hathawsh 4y ago
    Registration for my 1999 car was only $70 per year and there were no property taxes. Insurance was a more significant cost and harder to estimate, but still not major. Regardless, I agree that these expenses add up fast. If I replaced my regular commutes with a $3000 e-bike that lasts 2 years, and I spent $2k per year on Ubers and rentals for various things that require a vehicle, I would come out ahead.

jareklupinski 4y ago

dont forget to factor in the number of people not hit by those missing cars

rainsford 4y ago

I'd also argue the potential savings and advantages of e-bikes are undervalued because the bike infrastructure in even the best US cities isn't particularly great. I've spent a fair amount of time in Denver, and while there are some good spots and ongoing improvements, the bike infrastructure in the city is honestly a lot worse than you might expect. Better bike infrastructure would almost certainly increase the e-bike value for people who buy them anyways, but even more importantly make them worth it to a lot more people.

chitowneats 4y ago
Denver is trying. But they have so far to go. I wish them luck and success. The driving culture is strong.
- zachkatz 4y ago
  Here's a random main street in Denver: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,12.31h,92.44t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1syomvuSdA5h6xaTaYomBYlw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DyomvuSdA5h6xaTaYomBYlw%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D257.9331%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,... Or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,0.86h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ss1-KyeJbKNcEXc5iRxbgcg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Ds1-KyeJbKNcEXc5iRxbgcg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D51.559692%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,... ...or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,199.02h,82.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sl6PP5k4kbs2dugYG4h1xIg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,... You can click around to pretty much any street in the city, and 100% of the space is dedicated to cars. A complete bike network that enables mass cycling is a dense grid that makes basically every street safe to cycle on: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/the-grid-most-important-enabler-of-mass.html http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/the-grid-most-i... This is what trying looks like (Jersey City's Quick Build Bike Network ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC1l8L5aBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC1l8L5aBA Or this (Inside the New Plan to Make Paris ‘100% Cyclable): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris-will-become-100-cyclable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris... Denver is not even really trying.

aimor 4y ago

I previously looked into the average cost per mile of car ownership, after hearing the IRS values it at 58.5 cents/mile, and came up with this breakdown ($7,605/yr): "The average vehicle costs $40k, is owned for 11 years, gets driven 13k miles per year, burns 25 mpg, gas costs $3/gal, insurance is $1500 per year, and the vehicle needs $900 per year in maintenance and repairs." The Bankrate estimate seems high, but not by much. My own cost is 38.4 c/mile.

HyperSane 4y ago
This is why I drive a 2002 Saturn despite making $140,000/year.
brailsafe 4y ago
I've never really thought cost per mile is very useful, because it favours commuting by car and long distance travel. The more you drive, the lower the cost. I probably spend more per mile on transit, but I can't really compare it because the expenditures are quite heterogeneous. I could factor in the cost of shoes, but car drivers also have shoes, they just don't use them for walking as much. They might also own a bike, but that's rarely factored into transportation methods for car owners. Likewise I only use the train once a week or so; per mile it might be higher, but yearly it's nothing.

sampling 4y ago

Source: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership/ https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...

adam_arthur 4y ago

That doesn't account for the increased chance of death, unfortunately. I'd ditch 90% of my car use for a bike if I felt safe doing it... but most places in the US you really aren't. A quick google search shows bikers are 2-10x more likely to die per mile, though I didn't delve too deeply into it.

turdprincess 4y ago
I have bike commuted in the following places without near death: * New York City * San Francisco * Portland * Seattle * Raleigh Durham * Chattanooga TN * Salt Lake City For sure there are some cities where biking is terrible, but I am not sure it’s a “majority”. It also takes some awareness to ride your bike safely in a city, but actually, doing anything in a city takes a bit more awareness and caution. Is it possible that you could avoid death while cycling by improving your cycling skills a bit? You could join a group of (still alive) cyclists to learn the ropes.
- bsder 4y ago
  I'm glad you managed to avoid the reaper, but every single person I know who decided to commute using a bike wound up in the hospital within a year (Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego). That's like two dozen+ people without a single exception to the contrary. Yes, it's anecdata, but it's quite a lot of anecdata with a strong signal to noise ratio. Bike infrastructure cannot share with cars given the magnitude of the consequences when the two vehicles interact unintentionally.
WindyMiller 4y ago
Don't forget to include the health benefits when weighing up risks! More chance of being flattened by an SUV now, less chance of a stroke/heart attack later.

lm28469 4y ago

> The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year And then you read stuff like: "The average monthly car payment is $716 for new cars and $526 for used.", which is more than what I pay for my flat in a EU capital https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-monthly-car-payment https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...

Chris2048 4y ago
I live in an EU capital also, and pay 2-3 times that for an apartment.