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Continuing our comparison of various forms of transport, I thought we'd take a look at postie bikes.  The Honda CT110 is a great little motorbike that is small and agile and easy to handle.  It's perfect for small trips around town, but can also manage 80kph (just) on bigger roads.  Let's look at some figures.

Honda CT110 Postie Bike

Price: $1200 (secondhand)

Running costs: $280/year rego (in Tasmania)

                       $125/year comprehensive insurance (from NRMA, 3rd party isn't much cheaper)

                       $? maintenance

                       $2.15/100km (based on 60km/L)

Emissions: 3.8 kgCO2-eq/100km

If you refer back to our previous post looking at petrol-powered bikes

Today we had a customer who was looking for a petrol-powered bike.  He didn't seem concerned with the environmental cost of a petrol bike (much better than a car, though!) but it got me thinking as to how an it would stack up against an electric bike on purely economic terms.

Rotary Bicycles in Brisbane sells what appear to be good quality road-legal petrol-powered bikes.  Let's compare their Sport model against our eZee Torq.

Rotary Bicycles Sport

Top speed: 25 kph

Range: 123.5 km

Weight: 30 kg

Running cost: $2/100km

Emissions: 3.5 kgCO2-eq/100km

Price: $2200

eZee Torq

Top speed: 30 kph

Range: 50 km

Weight: 25 kg

Running cost: $0.15/100km

Emissions: 0.53 kgCO2-eq/100km (using Victorian brown coal, the dirtiest in Aus)

Price: $2300

So for much the same initial outlay, the petrol-powered bike has a significantly better range, but is a bit slower and heavier.  But the big difference is that it costs over 10 times as much to run, and is at least 7 times more polluting.

Bottom line: an electric bike is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to run.

The first ride on the A2B Metro was a ball. I learned a lot about how a light electric vehicle works for urban commuting.