“But they’re so expensive, I’m not paying that much for a bike! I’d rather pay 10 times as much for cheap car that’ll sell all my text messages to data scraping companies while polluting the environment and destroying my future.”
Sure, but that doesn’t allow me to bring home a family worth of groceries, or let me drive 4-5 hours away to see family for the holidays, or give me a way to drop my partner off at the airport with three suitcases for work conferences, or a way to get my 110lb dog to the vet.
The bike is not a replacement for a car, not even if it’s an expensive e-bike.
If those are your use cases, then you would probably want to get a Dutch bike (>5k); specifically for a big doggo, groceries and suitcases. Unfortunately there are no North American companies currently making cargo bikes as good at replacing cars as the Dutch ones. Though most people do perfectly fine with North American versions, even with children (but not big doggos lol).
The only good reason to drive a car in the situations you listed is driving it to another city, which would very likely not be feasible with an e-bike. Unless that trip is taken up every weekend, the best (and cheapest) way to accomplish that would be to rent a car.
A good e-bike is certainly a good replacement, unless you focus on certain situations like driving 4-5 hours out of town. Everything else it can do just as well and even make it easier and less stressful.
You could get a decent e-bike?
“But they’re so expensive, I’m not paying that much for a bike! I’d rather pay 10 times as much for cheap car that’ll sell all my text messages to data scraping companies while polluting the environment and destroying my future.”
Bro my car cost $4k, has no radio and manual windows, if this 20 year old civic can sell my data, it’s earned it
Even more reason to get an e-bike lol. Too late I guess since you already decided to pay 4000 dollars for a shitty car. :p
4k for a top of the line e-bike.
3k for a decent e-bike.
Or 5k for the best e-bike in the world.
None of these have radios either. And you don’t have to work up a sweat by rolling down the windows because there’s no windows!
Sure, but that doesn’t allow me to bring home a family worth of groceries, or let me drive 4-5 hours away to see family for the holidays, or give me a way to drop my partner off at the airport with three suitcases for work conferences, or a way to get my 110lb dog to the vet.
The bike is not a replacement for a car, not even if it’s an expensive e-bike.
If those are your use cases, then you would probably want to get a Dutch bike (>5k); specifically for a big doggo, groceries and suitcases. Unfortunately there are no North American companies currently making cargo bikes as good at replacing cars as the Dutch ones. Though most people do perfectly fine with North American versions, even with children (but not big doggos lol).
The only good reason to drive a car in the situations you listed is driving it to another city, which would very likely not be feasible with an e-bike. Unless that trip is taken up every weekend, the best (and cheapest) way to accomplish that would be to rent a car.
A good e-bike is certainly a good replacement, unless you focus on certain situations like driving 4-5 hours out of town. Everything else it can do just as well and even make it easier and less stressful.