Comment by ehnto

Comment by ehnto 3 days ago

12 replies

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I think that you got it right, expectations for cylcing are different. Even avid cyclists could never hit the kilometres travelled by your average car user in a year. Being a lot more expensive as well cars need to last longer for the cost benefit math to make sense. If your car broke every in 10,000kms you'd be livid, out of action constantly. If your bike breaks down, you can probably fix it that afternoon if not on the spot. Worst case you can probably walk it the rest of the trip.

That's where the e-bike is crossing barriers a bit. People will ride them much further, and getting the e-drivetrain repaired can be a real time and money sink. So you want it to be reliable, more reliable than the rest of your bike even.

wiether 3 days ago

> Even avid cyclists could never hit the kilometres travelled by your average car user in a year.

According to different sources, the average kilometers travelled by motorists are under 25k km/year (including Europe & US).

You'd be surprised by how many amateur cyclists ride more than that each year.

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  • azepoi 3 days ago

    25000km is 250 100km days per year. That's a lot.

    In France for example the average yearly distance travelled by car is closer to 12000km not 25000. More achievable but still a lot.

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  • prmoustache 3 days ago

    What a strange way of counting 25 k km ;) shouldn't you say 25000km or 24Mm?

    25000km/year is ultracycling territory for amateur cyclist. Yes some people do it, a lot definitely not and I don't think many of them have a full time job.

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    • wiether 3 days ago

      I wrote first "25k" because that's how I usually write on other platforms, and then I remembered that I'm on a US website, so I felt the need to add a unit.

      Sorry!

      And if I had written 25000, I would have been afraid of people telling me that it should be 25,000 or 25 000

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  • urban_winter 3 days ago

    > You'd be surprised by how many amateur cyclists ride more than that each year.

    You wouldn't.

    As an 8k km/yr cyclist with a lot of cycling friends, I can tell you that 12.5k/yr is extremely high for an amateur. Sure, there are some, but a truly tiny proportion.

    8k/year eats bikes, BTW. I used to wear out rims regularly before I switched to disks and chains/sprockets didn't even last a year (on a fixed gear bike).

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    • wiether 3 days ago

      First, this is what OP said:

      > Even avid cyclists could never hit the kilometres travelled by your average car user in a year.

      And you tell it yourself:

      > Sure, there are some

      So, if OP really thinks that no cyclist can ride more than what an average motorists drive a year, then even "but a truly tiny proportion" would appear as a surprise to them.

      Also, just looking at my Strava right now, amongst the 30 friends that I follow (I'm picky on my follows), more than a third are on their way to ride more than 25k this year. The most advanced is going to reach 23k by the end of the day based on his current numbers and habbits.

      How, where and when you ride your bike will be a huge factor in how much wear it gets. For instance, my commuter' chain usually get less than half the mileage that my road bike' chain get because city is dirty, I ride no matter the weather, don't clean the chain after each ride and keep putting strong torque since I constantly have to stop and start. Same goes for brake pads: when I commute I hardly do 200m without having to brake, whereas I can go for 20km without having to touch my brakes on my road bike.

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      • ehnto 3 days ago

        > So, if OP really thinks that no cyclist can ride more than what an average motorists drive a year, then even "but a truly tiny proportion" would appear as a surprise to them.

        I said an avid cyclist, which is quite undefined so fair enough. What I meant was an enthusiast still, not a sport rider or someone you could consider an amateur athlete (many road riders).

        Road riding gets you a lot of KMs and hours in the saddle too, like you said in quite a specific wear pattern. I ride for hours on my MTB and my commuter but would never come close to the hours and KMs of road riding, and I will be replacing my MTB sprocket and brake pads much sooner than my commuter.

        I think we're more or less on the same page though, and since all cities and cultures are a bit different we could be talking past eachother without specifics at which point my general comments go out the window anyway.

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        • wiether 3 days ago

          Yeah if you do mainly MTB, I can definitely see why we had a hard time understanding each other!

          That's partly why when people talk to me about "how many km do you ride each year?" I respond in hours on the saddle.

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  • analog31 3 days ago

    Just for the sake of disclosure, and to provide one data point, I ride 8 miles per day, 5 days a week, year-round, on two bikes (summer and winter). That's about 2600 km/y. Maybe add a few hundred km for occasional weekend recreational rides, and getting around town.

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