ELF pedal electric car on W&OD

[KLizotte]

OneLessCar, are you typing your rants on a completely American-sourced and made PC/laptop/cellphone?

Didn’t think so.

[dplasters]

@KLizotte 128453 wrote:

OneLessCar, are you typing your rants on a completely American-sourced and made PC/laptop/cellphone?

Didn’t think so.

In before: “I am forced to use chinese electronics because of blankity blank policy, communism, consumerist sheep … this is all your fault.”

He is unable to differentiate between not wanting an ELF on a path and not wanting an ELF anywhere else, like the road.. where numerous people have suggested it be driven.

The real question is; how far down the mind game has he gone? Is he really pro ELF? Or is he trying his best to to seem like a complete nimrod to make the ELF look bad (by association) because he actually hates it? If i know, that he knows, that I know….

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[Boo Boo]

[Crickey7]

@OneLessCar 128444 wrote:

you and your lousy overpriced, Chinese Cannodales . . .

Like this one?

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[Vicegrip]

8000 miles of commie-uting for me so far this year.

Off to shave the legs and take my PEDs before my afternoon recovery ride to Starbucks.

[DismalScientist]

Bah… A pox on all of you houses.
Seeing that deranged rants are in order, I’ll have to add one of my own.

It’s hard to tell who is the more effete woosie, he who dons the lycra before mounting his non-metallic steed or he who thinks he is going to save the world by depleting it of its rare earths to make batteries.:rolleyes:

To all my compadres with the unnatural clothing: You know that khakis are the ideal cycling kit. You know that gears can be shifted with levers just as well $100 Rube Goldberg mechanisms, or even worse, electronics. Lastly, you know you won’t have to replace your bike every time you crash is you just get a steel frame.

As for electrified cargo bikes and ELF, you should realize that these will always be niche products and will not displace cars to any great extent. Distances are too great to replace cars for many peoples’ commutes. You say that an enclosed vehicle such as an ELF, people will drive/ride their commutes year round, even through inclement weather. If that were so, I would expect that more people would be commuting by bike when the weather is nice. Face it, 25 mph is too slow to get people out of their cars for their typical commute. Another well-known fact is that 90% of all car trips involve taking kids to soccer practice or games in some distant state.:rolleyes: While they may be fine for childless people or for those addled only with young children, electrified bicycles, of whatever dimension, tend to be inappropriate for carting around larger kids. Lastly, once someone has a car, the marginal costs of doing shopping using it is small. Certainly the money saved not doing shopping by car is not going to justify a cargo bike for the vast percentage of the population.

Batteries, be they in electric cars or electric bikes, are not substitutes for fossil fuels; they merely time shift the consumption of fuel to when the battery is charged. Furthermore, their chemical nature tends not to be environmentally friendly.

As I stated earlier, I’m agnostic regarding the ELF on the trail. Farther to the east, there a plenty of ELF-friendly streets, but out in Western Fairfax and beyond (Yes, you can hear the dulcet sounds of “Dueling Banjos” and where the women are men and the horses are scared), ELF-friendly through routes besides the trail are likely unavailable. In sum, I’ll take whatever position regarding the advisability of electrified bikes on the trail that I feel yanks the most appropriate chains at any particular time.

As for the Chinese problem (and if you know me, it is a problem:rolleyes:), if ELF-like vehicles ever make the mass market, where exactly do you think they will be made? The Chinese don’t control the bike industry; they are simply the low cost manufacturer, even of the ridiculously over-priced bikes. And a lot of the over-pricedness comes from branding, as well as bikes being “oversold” to those purchasers demanding dubious improvements.

OneLessCar, you quote Adam Smith defending a mercantilist position. Puh-lease…

[dasgeh]

@DismalScientist 128463 wrote:

As for electrified cargo bikes and ELF

Whoa, whoa, whoa… Do not lump us in with those crazies!

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 128463 wrote:

B
Batteries, be they in electric cars or electric bikes, are not substitutes for fossil fuels; they merely time shift the consumption of fuel to when the battery is charged.

That is not quite true – at least for cars, IIUC the total BTUs to move a plug in electric car is lower than even for high MPG conventionally fueled vehicles – because internal combustion engines and the fuel to power them are heavy (not sure how that plays out in the powered bike space) So even if all electricity came from oil (but coal is worse than oil in GHGs per BTU) There would be benefits from plug in electrics. Note of course that does not reflect the full life cycle costs, but I don’t think that changes the result. Edit: According to some studies, even including life cycle costs, and assuming all electricity from coal, electrics on the market as of 2012 could match a conventional fuel vehicle with MPG of 30 MPG or so.

In addition plug in electrics can get synergies with renewable power – since one of the drawbacks of renewables is timing, the need for peak power, and the cost of storage – if cars can be charged off peak (variable pricing can encourage that) they can be particularly economical to charge. Note you do not need to go to full zero emissions sources of electricity to give electrics a big edge – going from coal to natural gas does so as well.

[Steve O]

@DismalScientist 128463 wrote:

… or for those addled only with young children,

Best typo of the month!

[DismalScientist]

Time shifting from peak to recharging off-peak results in lots of fuel savings, since you are relying on using exclusively base-load plants at night. IIUC, lowering power output of base-load coal (or nuclear) plants saves little fuel since you have to keep the boilers at the same temperature regardless of steam output. Incremental power is basically “free” when running only base-load plants and this is reflected in time-of-day pricing of electricity for many industrial customers. But, I don’t want to let any actual analysis to get in the way of this rant-fest.

[DismalScientist]

@Steve O 128469 wrote:

Best typo of the month!

I didn’t intend this as a typo.:o

[baiskeli]

@Steve O 128469 wrote:

Best typo of the month!

Are you sure it was a typo?

[dbb]

@DismalScientist 128463 wrote:

or he who thinks he is going to save the world by depleting it of its rare earths to make batteries.:rolleyes:

50 years ago General Jack D. Ripper said “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

Now they are going for our rare earths. We were warned.

[Anonymous]

@KLizotte 128453 wrote:

OneLessCar, are you typing your rants on a completely American-sourced and made PC/laptop/cellphone?

Didn’t think so.

If you’ll recall, I was referring to the last, best, hope to replace cars with pedal travel, the U.S. made ELF. I assembled this P.C. from PRC parts, and I buy lused laptops. If there were a U.S. made options, I would havethem. For those of you riding Chinese Canondales, there ARE U.S. made alternatives for that kind of money, used and otherwise, The ELF being one of them.

What common sense and humanity calls for is permanent most favored trade nation status only for democracies, and manufacturing based employment’s share of our GDP must roughly double, at least, or third world status is inevitable. Permanent trade deficits means the parasitic F.I.R.E. sectors increasingly subsume wealth creation. Look around you, that is what’s happening to your country. We borrow from Communist China’s state owned banks to subsidize our largest employer’s human resource expenses, so that they can outsource to China’s state owned manufacturing complex. We have the largest current account deficit in the world, Communist China has the second largest, after democratic socialist Germany. Little Germany, with only 90 million people, exports more manufactured goods than our country of 320 million, so maintaining a current account surplus CAN be done. We, on the other hand, are committing economic suicide. The overvalued petrodollar must die. We can’t compete. This is insanity.

VICE: “China’s Illegal Organ Harvest Trade is Still Booming”

Watch the above, and just keep reminding yourself that I’m the crazy one. That’ll work

[dkel]

@OneLessCar 128508 wrote:

This is insanity.

The one post of yours that applies, you weirdo.

[Author]

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