Commuting By Bike Saves American $7900 a year!

What would you spend an extra $7900 us a year on?


An American blogger has sat down with a calculator and worked out he cost/ benefit of biking for a commute vs using a car.

Here are the numbers:

• The average cost of petrol is worked out at $2.931 a US gallon
• My commute by car is 8.1 miles.
• My commute by bike is 7.4 miles (a bit shorter as biikes can go place that cars can't)
• My nearest bus stop is 1.1 miles away
• The bus fare is $1.05.
• I burn circa 66 calories /mile on my bike
• My car emits .932 pounds of CO2 per mile.

The fixed annual costs for my car are: (based on my 2002 year Volkswagen GTI, owned outright):

• Vehicle Registration: $32
• Property Tax: $137
• State Vehicle Inspection: $30
• Regular Maintenance: $204 (at Volkswagen dealership)
• Car Insurance: $400 (We have two cars on our policy and this is the difference if one were removed)
• Depreciation: $1646 (straight line depreciation from my car's purchase price to it’s current bottom book market price).

Assuming I commute 220 days per year, these fixed costs work out at about $0.78  per mile.
In two months I have had the following impact:

• I’ve saved $47 in petrol expenses and the equivalent of $457 in fixed costs for a total cost saving of $471.49 when accounting for bus fares.
• Burned 22,356 calories which if I had been eating a normal diet is the equivalent of 6.4 pounds of fat!
• I have kept 543 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
• Simply multiplying these numbers for the year would equal 3260 pounds of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere, $2542 dollars saved, 134,000 calories burned, and 38.3 pounds of fat. 

If I had a car loan payment for a $20,000 the savings jumps to $7900!


$7900 US is about 5000 quid - that's some saving. Now - can someone translate these figures for electric bike usage? I reckon the saving would be at least 4,000 quid a year plus you don't arrive at work hot and sweaty - unless you want a work out. The choice is yours.

I'm going to talk to my local UK electric bike dealer EBCO and see if they can run the numbers for the UK. $7900 is a few decent holidays!