About a year ago, October 2023, I bought an e-bike to replace my 10+ years old regular bike for commuting, as well as to try to use a bike as my primary mode of transport.

I had tried to make bike commuting a regular occurrence several times, but I always dreaded the hills especially on the commute home leading me to use public transport instead.

Did an e-bike change that? Can it work as a primary mode of transport? Is it worth the upfront cost, or do I regret the purchase? I have crunched the numbers, and gathered my notes.

Here are all my thoughts about e-bikes, and the story of how I became a bike commuter, improved my well being, and how I am netting 70 USD per month by buying an e-bike after just one year.

However, to understand my motivation for buying an e-bike, we must first understand why public transport is not a sustainable choice for me.

Table of Contents

• Public transport is not a good experience
• Identifying the problem and solution
• Choosing an e-bike
• The economics of an e-bike vs public transport
• Using an e-bike as my primary mode of transport
• Was an e-bike the right choice?

Public transport is not a good experience

On my daily commute, public transport means taking the bus. As busses go, Copenhagen is well served. I can take a direct bus right to my destination. They leave every 5-10 minutes during the day depending on rush hour demand. Most of the time, the bus is electric making it quieter and more modern, and even the non-electric busses have had a somewhat recent interior update.

But oh do I hate taking the bus.

The busses share the road with cars making them just as susceptible to traffic leaving their schedule and arrival time highly unpredictable. Coupled with frequent detours due to construction along the route, I had to reserve 1 hour each way to make sure I would arrive on time when it really shouldn't take much more than half that.

But this is just the start of my complaints with the bus. The air they use to heat the bus makes me feel a bit ill. I'm not sure why, but I always feel nauseous when entering the bus.

During rush hour, the busses are often so filled that it can be difficult to physically get off at the right stop, and even though I'm taking a route I know very well, I'm always anxious about missing my stop, so I constantly check my location to make sure that I get off at the right stop. This is not helped by the next stop screens being updated quite late especially when the stops are closely spaced. I recognize this is very much a me problem, but it does contribute to the stress I feel when taking the bus.

However, this all pales in comparison with the price. Public transport should be affordable, convenient, and accessible to all. While the latter two are arguably met to some extend, I don't think public transport for daily commuting is affordable for low income people like me. I paid around 120 USD per month for public transport commuting, and while it's very affordable compared to a car, 120 USD per month is a very significant amount of money to me.

And public transport is not getting cheaper. They raised the prices in 2024 by $10.3\%$, and will raise them again in 2025 by around $3.6\%$. Meanwhile, the ridership is struggling to recover to the pre-pandemic levels, and the metro company is threatened with bankruptcy due to failing to meet their projections. These factors can quickly create a feedback loop in which they raise prices to make up for dwindling ridership turning away even more riders especially low income people who need the public transport system the most. But that's for another essay.

Identifying the problem and solution

Public transport is quickly getting more unaffordable, but despite my best efforts I haven't been able to make bike commuting a habit, I haven't made it stick.

With some introspection, I found that the biggest obstacle to bike commuting for me was the anxiety that I might not have the stamina to get to my destination.

Part of it is caused by not being in the greatest shape, but just as much of it is psychological. I'm pretty sure I could always get home if I wanted, but having to get in a good workout and overheat to get over a hill in a reasonable amount of time when tired after a long day is not that appealing to me.

I thought, if I had an e-bike, I could use the assist to help me up the hills without it feeling insurmountable.

This line of reasoning is often a bit dangerous, and something I try to be careful with. Thinking if I just bought this one thing then it would solve all my problems.

Often when I buy that one thing, I find that it didn't solve the problem, or the problem was really something else - typically something internal that cannot be solved by buying something. Many grifts take advantage of this thinking: If you just buy this one thing, you will get fit, be healthy, or look beautiful. Most marketing exploits this as well.

While trying to uncover the real problem, I was set on trying to make bike commuting work with the old regular bike, but I couldn't make it work regularly.

My old bike didn't do me any favors. It is way too small for me, and has way too high gearing. Sometimes, even in the lowest gear and using my entire weight wasn't enough to turn the crank leaving me pulling the bike up steep hills. It's also neither the lightest bike, nor the bike with the lowest crank friction stacking the odds against me even further.

There was no way to make the old bike work for regular bike commuting.

Choosing an e-bike

I started to look for e-bikes. I knew I wanted a used one to contribute less to the production of new things. Bikes are generally quite easy and cheap to repair making them very suitable for buying used. E-bikes have two additional expensive components, the motor which lasts for a long time if you use it correctly, and the battery which is consumable and degrades relatively quickly - maybe around 500 full charges. It's an inherent limitation in battery technology, and just has to be included in the maintenance budget.

Since I expect to keep the bike for 10+ years like the old bike, I thought it would be better to buy a nice bike. By nice, I mean a good quality bike from a well-established brand, using namebrand parts in particular for the battery to make it more likely that I will be able to find replacement parts in the future.

The exact brand and model doesn't matter. I ended up going with one of the cheapest e-bikes from one of the well established brands, but any other good brand would likely have been just as fine.

However, if you want to keep the bike for a long time, I do think it is worth it to buy something nice as opposed to cheap. Not only will it feel better to ride now, but it will also be easier to find replacement parts in the future.

A small note: There has been an uptake in startups making expensive smart e-bikes. I hesitate buying one of those as it seems they care more about the smarts than making a good bike, and by the nature of being startups, I don't know if they will still be there in 10 years.

The economics of an e-bike vs public transport

Looking at my public transport usage, I guessed that I would be able to replace $90\%$ of the trips with a bike - most of it being commuting. This would save me about 100 USD per month. I also estimated that the total maintenance per month including regular service, replacement parts, battery degradation, and electricity cost would be around 16 USD per month. A lot less than 100 USD netting me a good amount of savings.

A reasonable cost for the kind of bike I was looking for on the used market with a healthy battery would be between 1400 and 2000 USD from looking at the advertisements. This would give me a breakeven point of around 18 months. Not too bad.

After some time looking at the used market, I found an ad perfectly matching my criteria. There were a couple of issues with the bike in the ad which either didn't matter to me, or were easy to fix, but gave me leverage to negotiate the price down to less than 900 USD moving the breakeven point to less than 1 year.

After double and triple checking that the bike wasn't stolen, and ensuring that everything worked and was well maintained, I bought the bike.

Now, a year later, I have numbers to report.

I have replaced $92\%$ of my public transport trips, and made a small net savings of 40 USD with a monthly savings rate of around 70 USD compared to before.

I biked 3300 km in the first year which is an average of 9 km per day. The cost per km is now just under 0.3 USD, and will only get lower from here.

In one year, if everything stays the same, the cost per km will be 0.2 USD, and I will have a net saving of almost 850 USD. In 10 years, the cost pr km will be 0.08 USD. That's hard to beat.

Assuming I keep the bike for 10 years, the monthly cost of ownership becomes 24 USD.

I think from an economics perspective, purchasing an e-bike has exceeded any reasonable expectation.

Using an e-bike as my primary mode of transport

There is a special thing that happens the first time you try an electric bike.

You start biking like normal, but something is off. You start to swoosh away effortlessly like you have superpowers feeling the wind in your hair. It's hard to not feel a little bit of childish joy.

The initial feeling does fade over time, but being out in nature feeling the weather seeing the seasons go by never ceases to make the day a little brighter. Coupled with not feeling nauseous in the bus stuck in traffic worrying if I get there in time, my commute has become something I look forward to every day.

Since I am no longer at the mercy of the bus schedule and traffic, I now only need to reserve 30 minutes each way for it as opposed to the full hour before. Not only is my commute shorter and more predictable it's also more flexible as I'm never stuck waiting for the bus. There is also a special kind of smugness that comes from racing the bus I used to take and overtaking cars stuck in traffic.

The bike being both rather expensive and electric makes it a target for bike theft which is a significant and worsening problem. In the beginning, I was very worried parking the bike anywhere, and I didn't like to leave it for long, but I have since relaxed a bit over time. I still park it in a locked area whenever I can, use two locks one of them locking the bike to a stationary object, and bring the battery with me. Since it's insured, the worst case is that I have to deal with the insurance company, but I do think it's one of the biggest drawbacks compared to the old bike which is worth less than the minimum wage of trying to steal it.

Despite what I imagine is a common complaint I do not think that weather is very much a hinderance. Living somewhere where it rains 157 days in a year $(43\%)$, I have only been caught in the rain a handful of times. If you're foresightful, and check the weather forecast, you can usually avoid the rain, or at least the worst of the rain. When rain is unavoidable, a good pair of rain pants and a rain jacket can keep you completely dry making it almost enjoyable to ride in the rain.

Temperature is also not that big of a deal. When it's cold, you can wear gloves, hats and appropriately warm clothes to feel comfortable. I suspect this can be done pretty much anywhere people are permanently settled. When it's warm, e-bikes have a somewhat surprising advantage compared to regular bikes. Where I would usually overheat on a regular bike arriving disgusting and sweaty, on an e-bike, I can increase the assist to avoid overheating while still arriving in a reasonable amount of time. I didn't expect it to work so well, but it has pretty much solved overheating for me.

Speaking of assist, I don't actually use it that much. I use almost exclusively the lowest assist level, having it turned off completely more than I use higher levels. I average speeds around 22 km/h, and in the EU, the assist has to turn off at 25 km/h, so most of the time it's doing nothing mostly helping me accelerate at traffic stops. But the knowledge that it's there if I need it has completely removed the anxiety I had about hills, and not being able to make it to my destination.

Taking the bike has now become the easy default choice instead of a rare outcome after a lengthy negotiation with my better self.

My activity level has also increased significantly, for the past year, I have averaged 1 hour of active time per day putting me comfortably above the WHO's recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity per week. This has only been possible because even in the worst case that I do no extra physical activity, my baseline is now 40 minutes of moderate commuting activity every weekday which is a substantial increase from walking to and from the bus stop.

While a regular bike would offer more exercise per km, what happened to me, and what seems to happen to other people, is that people ride significantly more on an e-bike compared to a regular bike leading to similar if not more total exercise.

I recognize that using a bike as the primary mode of transport becomes much more feasible when there is good bike infrastructure. Copenhagen is pretty good in this regard. It could be better, but there are safe bike lanes pretty much making biking a very safe non-eventful affair.

"But you can't carry groceries with a bike, you need a car" some car owners say. Cargo bikes can easily carry more than you probably need, and are used extensively for last mile delivery in Copenhagen: The postal service, hospitals transporting blood tests, and even some private delivery companies. But leaving cargo bikes aside, regular bikes can also carry quite a bit with the right setup.

By adding front and rear baskets, as well as panniers on both sides, you can significantly increase your bike's capacity. Paired that with a backpack, and you have the capacity of five shopping bags. If you need still more capacity, bike trailers can temporarily convert a regular bike to a cargo bike vastly increasing the capacity. My partner, Isaac, is able to transport all of his photo and video equipment to and from shoots with a bike trailer.

But what if you have to go far? What if the battery range is not sufficient? Even a somewhat modest battery has a range of 50-100 km, but you can pretty easily find bikes that can go 180 km on a charge, or even more if you're willing to look for more exotic options. If you go 25 km/h, the maximum speed at which the assist may be helping, you would have to bike for 7 hours with no interruptions or opportunities for charging. I don't know you, but I imagine most people don't bike for more than 7 hours without a break, but if that's you, you can solve the problem with the power of buying two batteries and switching them midway. I don't think range anxiety is a real problem.

Overall, I think e-bikes can work well as the primary mode of transportation for me, and I also think they could work well for many people who live in cities with good bike infrastructure.

Was an e-bike the right choice?

This leaves us with a final question: did I make the right choice getting an e-bike?

I think compared to using public transport, I have laid out an argument for why it's an improvement. It's cheaper, already netting savings, I'm happier, and feel better on my commute. It has become something I look forward to. I'm healthier and do more exercise because of it.

It seems to be a clear win.

But would it have been better to have bought a nice regular bike. They're cheaper, they provide more exercise pr km, and I would feel less worried about it being stolen.

A big reason why the old bike was unsuitable is because it's small, not of great quality, and the gearing is way to high: factors that all influence how strenuous it is to ride the bike. Could a better regular bike have provided similar or more benefits compared to an e-bike?

Earlier this year, Isaac and I were in Aarhus for a few days. Aarhus is a city that's notorious for it's steep hills. Riding the old bike when I lived there almost killed me.

Alas, we rented bikes to get around. The bikes were regular bikes, but better quality, with appropriate gearing, and the right size.

I used the black one while Isaac used the silver one.

To my surprise, getting around on the regular bikes was not nearly as strenuous as I had anticipated considering that we covered a respectable 18 km per day on average much of it on hills. Maybe a regular bike would have been enough?

Even if a regular bike could have worked as well, I am still happy with an e-bike. I do think that having the assurance of the assist being there if I really need it, and being able to better avoid overheating in the summer makes up for the extra cost, and contributes to me choosing the bike more often, and for longer trips.

Feeling you have superpowers when you use it, and being able to quickly accelerate at traffic stops to get in front of the crowd also don't hurt.

Overall, I think I would recommend e-biking.