It strikes me that (and this will be nothing new to most of you) that the real cost of an e-bike is in the battery. How many do you see on ebay where they have put it in the shed and forgotten about it like any other bike, only to find the battery has no juice when they come back to it - OK blame them for poor maintenance.
A classic case today elsewhere on the forun where even regularly using it it packs up after 4000 miles.
Lets assume you get a good one and manage the fabled 1000 recharges and on average do that every 15 miles, then that's 15000 miles. For a 36V 10 Ah battery assuming only half a charge is required, thats 180 Wh per charge, but also assuming 10% loss in the charging process then thats 198 kWh of mains power used in its lifetime, at say 12p/kWh for 'leccy then thats £24.
Assuming a battery costs between £200 and £400 we can take an average of £300.
This therefore all equates to 2.2 pence per mile. That compares to about 14.5 p/mile for my car for petrol. If however you get only 4000 miles as Tribalecho reported today that cost shoots to 7.7p/mile, or half the cost of running my car !
Please don't take this as a criticism of e-bikes and tear me to bits - I am still hoping to use mine regularly - but are we kidding ourselves about the savings ?
The most depressing message for me is the cost of batteries and the appalling reliability of every kind of rechargable battery I have ever encountered with the exception of my Philips razor which was amazing for a whole 2 years - then it died !
Just pondering!
Alfazzr
A classic case today elsewhere on the forun where even regularly using it it packs up after 4000 miles.
Lets assume you get a good one and manage the fabled 1000 recharges and on average do that every 15 miles, then that's 15000 miles. For a 36V 10 Ah battery assuming only half a charge is required, thats 180 Wh per charge, but also assuming 10% loss in the charging process then thats 198 kWh of mains power used in its lifetime, at say 12p/kWh for 'leccy then thats £24.
Assuming a battery costs between £200 and £400 we can take an average of £300.
This therefore all equates to 2.2 pence per mile. That compares to about 14.5 p/mile for my car for petrol. If however you get only 4000 miles as Tribalecho reported today that cost shoots to 7.7p/mile, or half the cost of running my car !
Please don't take this as a criticism of e-bikes and tear me to bits - I am still hoping to use mine regularly - but are we kidding ourselves about the savings ?
The most depressing message for me is the cost of batteries and the appalling reliability of every kind of rechargable battery I have ever encountered with the exception of my Philips razor which was amazing for a whole 2 years - then it died !
Just pondering!
Alfazzr
