Is Cycling Free?
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- I often hear that "cycling is free" when talking about the benefits compared to a car. But that isn't really the case is it. I tried to find out just how much I would spend on "Bike Fuel".
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0:00 No, cycling isn't free
0:12 Disclaimer
0:26 Food is bike fuel
0:34 Bike Mileage, Calories per KM
2:06 Cost per KM
2:44 Electric scooter costs
3:02 Gas costs per day
3:22 Driving calories burned
4:06 The final numbers
4:35 The big picture
5:26 Conclusion
Is Cycling Free?
I am not known for my math skills so please forgive me if it doesn't check out. 😬
I think our bodies burn a fair number of calories even doing nothing - are you sure the 519 calories should be added on top? Shouldn't it be 519 minus whatever the body would have burned, say, sitting in a car?
e: ARGH! I should probably finish watching the video before writing a comment. DOH!
@@AardvarkDK You're not the first lol...probably my bad writing a crap script 😬
i get really peeved whenever people talk about food cost as fuel, i don't eat more on days that i ride my bike. the cost of food when driving is the exact same. obesity rates in car dependant countries prove that people still eat a lot when they're not physically active.
Fair point. But it can depend on the bike route itself. I used to have one that was a bit hilly and long, and I definitely had to eat and drink more to compensate. Having said that, it wasn't really significant. It's not like if I didn't bike I was gonna save a ton of money on food or something.
Yes this is so true. In reality you'd have to calculate the food cost into the other modes, too. Unless you're doing high performance sports, being physically active will not make you burn more calories. Instead, being physically-inactive you'll almost certainly eat the same amount of calories which your body will then use by either storing it as fat or by causing chronic inflammation and stress. This is why physical exercise almost always helps against feeling stressed out and depressed; almost all of us are under-exercised.
I definitely have to eat more when I bike. On weeks where I bike heavily, it could actually be $10 or $15 more per week because it's usually snacks 😆
My commute is over an hour going across hills and single track. I absolutely eat more
yes but if youre trying to gain weight then you definitely gotta account for it
You could literally buy a 10k bike, ride it for a year, throw it in the trash just to buy a new one AND STILL come out financially on top compared to buying a new car in America lmao
1kg of oats is $3 CAD, which is about 3,800 calories. $0.00079 per cal, or only 2.7c/km. It all depends on what you fuel yourself with. But good video.
The cost of food as fuel is an odd one to consider, honestly.
Potato chips are often thought of as junk food, but when you're burning calories doing things like cycling those chips will do well to keep you from bonking. 600 calories for less than $1.50 from the dollar store for some chips. As long as someone is eating well to begin with, it's not hard to add some quick cheap calories as cycling fuel.
The cost of fuel is not the only cost of driving though. The average american spends USD$12k a year of car costs (the car itself, insurance, maintenance, gas, parking, etc...)
and stuff like maintenance can be calculated as a cost per distance, as more use results in needing more maintenance.
Exactly, that's why I mentioned it in the video :)
My 22 Honda Civic costs me about $20/day to own it, weather I use it or not. My ebike was paid for up front, incurs no interest, costs about 10 cents to fully charge the battery, I don't need a gym member ship as I get some movement in, and I save on a ton of long term health benefits
Only includes fuel costs? The extraneous costs of an automobile are far higher than the other two modes. Some could argue sunk cost, but most scale with use: insurance (more miles --> higher risk --> higher premium), depreciation, wear & tear, etc. So it's not a sunk cost already owning a vehicle, since most costs are linear and not static (like registration). That's not even including the actual purchase price, which is far higher than for biking or scooting, and also scales linearly (more driving ---> more miles --> need to buy another car sooner/more often). You mention them but don't quantify in comparison. I don't think the ending of "less wear, societal benefits, etc." is really helpful unless quantified.
What about E-Bikes? I believe, it depends on the type of e-bike, but let's try on my example. I'm currently riding e-assisted bike, where roughly 2/3 of the work is done by the battery (that's just my riding style, to commute and exercise at the same time. you can use more assist, if you want to). I live in Tbilisi, Georgia, which is quite a hilly city, about 300m of elevation between lowest and highest settlements. Charging my 300 w/h battery costs about 0.10 GEL / 0.03 USD and it lasts about 50 km, before it needs to be recharged. That's quite cheap for me 🤘
I was curious about the total costs with everything included, and the automotive club of Germany (ADAC) thankfully provided just that for hundreds of different car models.
They estimate typical car ownership cost at around 500-1500€ per month for common models, or roughly 50-150 cents per km (but of course it can go much higher for luxury cars). This includes fuel, maintainance (including oils, tyres etc), value depreciation, insurance, taxes, 250€/year for cleaning, and 200€ for parking and minor expenses.
So this sums up to 6,000-18,000€ per year.
I'd very roughly estimate my expenditures on my own bike at 500-600 km/month like this, trying to err on the higher side:
1. Initial cost: 1200€. I'll assume a lifespan of 12 years until it loses all value.
=> 100€/year
2. Parts that require frequent replacement:
a) Inner tubes: replace both every 4 months (2000 km), so 3x2=6 tubes per year. 6x5€ = 30€/year.
b) Brake pads: replace both every 4 months => 6x20€ = 60€/year
c) Chain: replace every year for 40€ => 40€/year
d) Chain lube and cleaning products => 20€/year
=> 150€/year
3. Parts that only rarely need replacement:
This gets much harder to estimate - some components may survive all 12 years, others not. But I think it's reasonable to put this at around 50% of the bike's original price, so 600€ over 12 years. For example:
1. New pedals for 40€
2. Derailleur replacement for 80€
3. Single wheel replacement for 100€
4. Two sets of LED lights for a total 120€
5. Replacing the outer tyres for 100€
6. A lock for 60€
6. ...and 100€ more for various stuff like cables, paint, hyraulic brake bleed kit etc.
=> 50€/year
Total: 300€/year or 25€ per month.
I would say that the main limitations of this calculation are:
1. It assumes doing all maintainance yourself.
2. It doesn't include tools.
3. It doesn't include additional gear and clothing (like helmets, gloves, backpacks, high vis clothing...)
3. It doesn't include the cost of renting a motor vehicle or using public transit for trips that cannot be done by bike.
4. It doesn't include the possibility of theft.
5. It doesn't include calories. I will consider calories offset with health benefits in this case. And frankly I believe I'd eat almost the same and just be overweight if I didn't cycle.
If I add my expenditures for other transit, tools, gear, and risk of theft, I'd say it's feasible to double that to 600€/year or 50€/month. So that keeps it at 10% of the typical ownership of a fairly cheap car.
So for people who can get by without needing other modes of transit that often, this is super cheap.
Thank you! You hit it on the nose.
I have been trying to convince my wife to sell or car but she's still holding on even if it's only used 2-4 times a month.
@@nicthedoorwe were looking at selling our second car and then my wife hit a deer and totaled it. It's been freeing not having access to a second car. Not having a choice makes things simpler and encourages more cycling automatically. Keeping the other car maintained was also a much bigger burden than we even realized. It's nice to only have to do things like oil changes and winter tire changes on one vehicle. Fuel management is also significantly easier with just one car. If you think you can make it work for your family, you should definitely go for it.
In the USA, we tend to be over-caloried anyway, so it's not a loss, so much as removing excess from the body.
keep up the good work Nic! Love the videos.
fantastic explanation and a fair estimate with all perspectives covered, great video!
It depends on how many calories are in gas
No need to go to the gym due to biking, in the gym you just consume your fuel with no efficiency
Cycling is "Free" in the sense that, in some places, speech is free... religion is free, self defense is free. Very few places regulate bike riding. In the US, one can go almost anywhere... no license, no registration, no insurance required. That's the important kind of free.
I literally traveled for over 40 miles mainly on a clif bar and a gatorade. I probably had another fuel source but all in all, it would've costed me $4-$5.
Though, it would depend on conditioning and what bike one is riding. In my case, it was a road bike.
Forget cost of food for fuel vs fuel. Laval U did a study how much taxpayers subsidize public transit vs private cars vs cycling. Transit was lowest at less than $0.01/km a person. Bike was $0.09/km a person, cars, $9.80/km a person, THATS JUST THE INFRASTRUCTURE TAXPAYERS SUBSIDIZE NOT COST OF OWNING A CAR 😮 it just makes sense financially for a city to encourage cycling.
I actually had an argument about this subject yesterday. I will surely dive in eventually because it cannot be repeated enough. Driving is expensive for everyone, not just drivers.
@@nicthedoor definately something worth argueing given most drivers think their "gas tax" also known by a obvious name of CARBON TAX pays for roads and nothing else 🤦
I now have a good excuse to bake bread more often when I took up cycling 😋
It would be really interesting if any research has been done on how these different modes of commute actually impact food consumption/costs in practice. While it doesn't make sense to completely dismiss the cost of the fuel we use to power a bicycle (calories), it seems far fetched to think that the calorie intake of a car commuter and a bike commuter are in proportion to the # of calories burned. I certainly eat more on days that I ride as an all-day activity, but I'm not cognizant of any change to my diet for normal commute distances.
Where can we get $3 poutine?
At home ;)
Revenue Canada and most companies have done the cost per km driven analysis already to accommodate people why drive their own vehicles for business. Revenue Canada allowance rates:
For 2023, they are:
68¢ per kilometre for the first 5,000 kilometres driven
62¢ per kilometre driven after that
but that rate includes fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and insurance.
Insurance is a topic that you might want to cover. People like to think that there isn't any insurance needed for bikers compared to cars. But what they really mean is that bikers are self insured which has many implications. I am talking about health and property damages that may occur to yourself and to others in an accident. And if you get into an accident with a car, then the car insurance companies and their lawyers are going to go after you.
I think that self insured is fine if you are a casual and recreational biker. If you are a commuters, then you really need insurance which isn't available in general.
This is definitely something on my list and have been considering a while. Friends of mine who are admittedly anti-bike will bring it up and I honestly don't know what the answer there is.
I'd like to see a cost-benefit analysis when red tape is involved in cycling.
Are car drivers not self-insured?
Note to self make video like this where I use the intro seq. similarly but transfer to calculating more hidden costs
The bigger picture is that majority of cyclists still own a car. They may be saving gas when using a bike for some trips, but they still are paying for insurance and maintenance, etc. If you are a parent with tween kids, using a bike isn’t very realistic. You will still use a car for larger grocery runs. You will use the car if the weather is bad. If I have a Honda Civic, should I even consider one of those popular $3000 e-cargo bike and the gear and clothes I need to ride it year round.
Lots of people cycle in SF, CA where I live and work from home, but not enough to make a difference in congestion or road wear and tear from what I’ve observed.
Cheaper to commute on a E-scooter ?
I'd love to delve deep into the numbers. The hardest part to figure out would be the health benefits and reduction in health care costs. But a shot in the dark I would say an electric scooter is cheaper from pure out of pocket expense, at least where I live.
@@nicthedoor also you can ride all year long in Vancouver while I can't in Montréal :(
Wear and tear on a car is the big one. Escooters and ebikes the batteries wont last forever. A $1500 bike will pretty much last forever with very minimal and cheap upkeep.
i calculated my equipment cost for 26 years of riding the bike and it's about 2.4 u.s. cents per kilometre, whereas the equipment cost for driving the same distance would have cost me easily over 20 cents. easily. at ~240 k km travelled this is a savings of over 45 k dollars in equipment costs, and i would be a completely different person with different kinds of friends probably so it's hard to even imagine. i don't ever calculate the cost of the extra calories as eating is a joy. i also calculated shoes costs and it's also more expensive to run than to ride the bike
if anyone is interested i've been running mid-range derailleur bikes all that time, deore-ultegra-xt, brief stint with xtr-fox stuff before it got stolen, otherwise nothing fancy, but not dutch bikes either. those are probably much cheaper to run but they're dog slow
oh and the car estimate is in an east europe, used toyota kind of thing and it considers selling price so it's not even an apples to apples comparison, the difference is even greater
Im not sure about that. Riding a bike bike is not like i have to eat 500cal for that 7km trip. The body stores about 25 grams of glucose, so we always have some fuel for that low intensity ride. Average human can burn at maximal capacity at approximately 60 grams per hour. Yes and average human consumes around 2000cal (including the drivers and others types of transportation)q but not all of them are burned
No matter what you do people need to eat even people that just do nothing need to eat so this point doesn’t matter.
Cycling isn’t free but it is so cheap that feel free. You can buy a cheap bicycle ~150€ , “road tax” zero, insurance zero, “mot” zero, maintenance let’s say 50€/yearl, electric bikes the cheapest is 400€ but most buy the 700€-1200€ ones, ,price of electricity is ~ 0,16kwh so make the maths, electric bicycles also don’t need insurance if they don’t do above 25km/h,no “mot” or “emissions tax” they need a helmet let’s say 30€ ect, electric scooter even more cheaper are.
Because, obviously, when you are not going to commute by bike today then you don't have to eat. This is why car owners don't eat. They use gasoline to move their cars. Gasoline is certainly a more efficient fuel than pizza.
Lets face it; the food costs money and increases the carbon footprint of bicycle as a means of tansportation is kinda bs in most cases, since it is really important for everyone to get daily training for a descent health, and for lots of people cycling to work it os the only excercize they will be getting that day.
Of course, the car isn't going anywhere without a driver, so you have to take into account the fuel needed to power the control unit (i.e. the piece of meat behind the wheel). done.
High fat animal products are more expensive than low-fat/high carb vegan. High fat also bogs down performance while high carb and starches are like jet fuel.
the rider need energy
"The thought of staying paying to stay alive makes me a bit uneasy" .. I know right.. its almost like a truly advanced and civil society would remove this from the equation and not gate living behind a paywall.
There are food banks here where you can get free food. But just in terms of raw calories, you can live on less than $2 per day.
🤣Are you suggesting there is no issue because sometimes there is charity and in your location you can buy enough food to "survive" for less than $2 per day? Because that is how that comment reads. Citizens, stop whining about the cost of living and eat more ramen.. sure you'll be extremely malnourished but at least your alive and all at a low cost.🙄
so youre comparing cycling on the worst most inefficent bike to a pretty economical car?
you need to compare to a heavy 4wd/truck/suv thats been unserived on flattish tyres and an old v8.
but you know...its how you frame things
yes bicycling is free
You didn't include the price of the bike or e scooter. Some people will buy a good used bike, some will not, and e scooter's are pricey.
e scooters are actually very cheap in the micromobility space. A used ninebot max can be found for 2-300USD.
Bike overall still wins imo when calculating the health benefits.
i mean many people are overweight so really they don't need to eat more to do this.
$40,000+ for a car plus insurance tag gas vs $1,000 to $3,000 for a bicycle the bicycle wins every time
On the hippy squeaky food costs, isn't this "average man" spending the exact same amount and probably eating the same quantity regardless of being on a bike or not? I mean three squares a day is simply a given. It's not like I start fasting if I didn't get the milage I wanted to on the bike for a day!
In all likelihood that same person driving is going to the gym and will burn the same amount anyway.
Maybe, but my point was that adding up food as fuel like gas for fuel, assumes the "average man" is eating to be fueled to be on the bike to make certain trips, whereas he's going to be eating whatever he normally does regardless of the exercise. Whereas the gas isn't being consumed by the car necessarily. If the car sits it's not using fuel. Also the man probably isn't eating donuts just because he's riding a bike either. He'd eat the donuts just because he likes donuts.
I think you are a nerd like me 😀
This was silly because we don't consume exactly more calories to compensate for each moment of exercise
Obviously not but calculated over the long term there would be a trend assuming everything else controlled.
Food is renewable and can be grown. Lithium cannot and it is expensive to recycle. Fossil fuels cannot be recycled or renewed.
Thankfully, battery recycling is getting cheaper and better every year.
@@nicthedoor I hope so. That will be a crucial step because lithium mining is quite harmful.
@@lolnyantertsand also there is only fixed amount of lithium on earth, that can be mined and then we are done for good
@@BigCrowsVideos Yup. I come from a village in Portugal and we are protesting a lithium mine project that will ruin our way of life.
2000 cal/day for an average Canadian man is optimistic. For one that bikes….. maybe.
Simply used to get an estimate on calorie cost. I know that I eat more than that easy lol
lol @ people triggered by bike's food fuel cost. we haven't even started calculating the most important thing to humans: TIME.
its free if you steal your bike
In Ohio, driving a hybrid incurs a $200 fine per year and electric $400.
Please don't tell our idiots politicians that bikes are free.
No, cycling needs to be encouraged. Billionaires pay few federal taxes. Tax the rich not the cyclists
i rode 200km on one $1 cofdee. 1x $2 watermelon and a pitabead and banana with peautbutter frm home. maybe $4 all up. vs $45 in my small car.