For the author, I'm really curious about the section "Economics of owning an E-Bike relative to car". Would you mind sharing your rough math on how you came to those numbers? The IRS rate for expensing milage is $0.54/mile which (in theory) is supposed to cover standard maintenance and fuel.
However mostly it just seems really high for the bike to be $0.14/mile. My back of the envelope calculation for electricity cost is: ~$0.10 per KWHR. The battery pack is sub 1 KW so even with charging inefficiency should cost no more than $0.10 to charge. Divided by roughly 50 mile range means an electricity cost of $0.002 per mile. I could be way off, hence why I'm curious.
I think he gets to that $0.14/mile by including the cost of the complete bike (assuming 500 charge cycles of the battery, which at 30 miles/charge should last him about 4 years with a 15 mile commute).
Over those 4 years, he'll ride 15 miles/day * 253 working days/year, or 4000 miles/year, or 16000 miles.
So.... $1400 / 16000 = $.09/mile
He also included maintenance, so if he spends $200/year in maintenance (not unreasonable if he takes it to a bike shop for maintenance), that gets him up to $0.14/mile.
However mostly it just seems really high for the bike to be $0.14/mile. My back of the envelope calculation for electricity cost is: ~$0.10 per KWHR. The battery pack is sub 1 KW so even with charging inefficiency should cost no more than $0.10 to charge. Divided by roughly 50 mile range means an electricity cost of $0.002 per mile. I could be way off, hence why I'm curious.