I use an eBike to commute 2.5 miles to work most days. It is faster than driving and parking, and much cheaper than Uber/Lyft.
A few details:
- Uber/Lyft costs $12 each way, so $5/mile
- Uber/Lyft takes 20 minutes: 10 minutes to arrive, and 10 minute drive
- Driving+parking is about 15-20 minutes, depends
- Driven by my wife costs too many brownie points
- eBike takes 12 minutes (20mph max), no parking hassle (park inside)
- eBike cost $1800 + $300 helmet, and wore out ebike in about 6 years
- eBike costs about 3cents/mile in electricity, so 10 cents each way (I think)
- Bike would be better, but hills… I just didn’t do it.
- I had one bike accident, so now wear face-saving helmet and leather jacket.
So $2100 for eBike = 80 round trips on lyft/uber, or about 4 months.
Faster (12minutes vs 20minutes), cheaper, fun, more dangerous.
Been ebiking to work for over 13 years: I wrote a paper 13 years ago about how it was going then.
I bought my first eBike from the lovely folks at The New Wheel on Bernal Heights, and yes, it makes the hills of SF disappear (I lived on top of Forest Hill at the time). By far the most popular class of electric vehicle worldwide, but the horrendous state of SF roads does make it a risky proposition, as do crazy SF drivers.
SF has become much more bike friendly, and I am glad that eBikes can use the bike accomodations.
but that said, I am mostly in the presidio (fabulous and quite safe) and lake street which is now a “slow street” so I am lucky.
if I had to commute to downtown, I would be more resistant.