turbo1889

Did a post about electric in sub-zero cold and brought up the IC alternative and then I realized I can only talk about that in this dedicated thread so I'm editing my post and moving that info here and then linking to this post from that post:




Go with a small good quality, high efficiency 4-cycle internal combustion engine such as a 35cc Robin-Subaru or Honda micro-engine that meets California level emission standards for small power equipment and mount that up to a dedicated quality, low cost, but kind of heavy bike (with bikes its: low cost, low weight, decent quality = Pick two of the three) using a gear and chain drive arrangement (Staton-Inc.com for kits, parts, or ideas to build your own) and use that during the cold weather periods preferably with bike studded snow tires. Yes, it is a gasoline burning internal combustion engine but with a modern clean burning 4-cycle engine emissions especially CO2 is directly related to how much fuel you are burning. If you are driving a motorized bicycle that gets 100 to 150 miles per gallon instead of a car that gets 20 to 30 miles per gallon you are significantly reducing your ecological footprint by several orders of magnatude. Even with the very best most efficient car you aren't going to get much more then 50 mpg so you would even then still be putting out at least twice the junk out of the tailpipe driving that car compared to such a high efficiency motorized bike set-up that gets at least 100 mpg even if you don't pedal at all if you build it right so you are still way ahead of the curve on reducing your footprint (and your fuel expedeture) especially considering that going electric doesn't eliminate your footprint since that electricity has to be generated somehow (mainly natural gas burning plants built right near the wells in my area don't know about yours). They work best in the cold if you use fully synthetic 0-40 weight "european sports car" grade oil in their little crank-case. Yes it's expensive oil but a single quart will last you at least four oil changes or more. Just give them about three minutes of warm up time at idle and you are off and running.

Don't get me wrong I really like the low noise of an electric drive and the ability to "go stealth" with it if done correctly but don't discount the possibility of going with an high-efficiency IC build as well which is still way ahead of driving a car. Although larger vehicles do have their place as well. If it's a terrible blizzard with snow-plows out on the road and you have a ways to go then on that particular day you might want to take the car. Snow plows are very dangerous to bicyclists motorized or otherwise on the road in the middle of a snow storm because they can't see you until its too late and probably aren't expecting a bicyclist to be out in that weather anyway and aren't looking for you and you can get clobbered by a snow plow from behind and scopped up with the snow in the plow and blown out the side right along with the snow ~ believe me I know.