- Electric Bikes Overview
- Battery Care
- Battery Types
- Benefits of a Krys e-Bike
- Bike lifetime expectations
- Climate Change
- Delivery
- Eco-friendly
- Gears
- Health
- How far can I ride?
- Law
- Maximise your range
- Motors
- Pedal assistance / PEDELEC
- Pricing
- Quality
- Running costs
- Shaft Drive
- Weight
- What are "Watt hours"?
Ride Krys, Save the world and have fun
Running costs
What is the cost of running an electric bike?
Tiny!
Electricity cost - A 36Vx10AH is about 0.3 KWh (360 Wh), and your electricity supplier sells you 1 KWh for about 17c (in NSW). A full recharge taking you about 50 to 60kms is therefore about 6 cents or about 0.1c/km. Assuming your battery charger is 70% efficient, this gives approximately 0.17c/km, or about 1 Aussie cent per 5 to 10 kms.
People often forget about the battery cost - Typically, lithium nano phosphate batteries last approximately 1000 to 2000 charges. Let's take the lower range of 1000 charges and a pessimistic range, given varying rider abilities, loads and terrains, of about 40 km per charge. That should give us about 40,000 km per battery which, at most is about $400. So $400 / 40,000kms about 1c/km. The actual price of the current batteries is around $350 which gives about 0.875 c/km. This is a typical worst case scenario. You should get better results than this in practice, but even this is so much better than:
- the cost of running a car to the shops or local commuting
- the poor fuel consumption on inefficient short trips
- cost of depreciation
- cost of registration
- cost of insurance
- ever increasing cost of petrol/diesel
- cost of maintenance and servicing - new oil and fluids, spare parts, disposal of old oil and fluids
- the environmental cost of producing the vehicle - the aluminium and plastics in cars have a huge environmental cost compared to making bicycle frames and tyres
- the environmental cost of disposing of the vehicle and its parts and fluids such as brake fluid and oil
- human and capital cost of accidents and injuries caused by accidents with pedestrians and other vehicles