Are you powered by muscles, public transportation, electricity or fossils?

I live in a small Czech town near Prague. Whenever it’s possible, I just walk, ride a scooter, or take a train. But I also own a gasoline car, which is just much more convenient when traveling with an infant and a dog, especially over longer distances. :slight_smile:

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I live on the outskirts of a city and still have good access to public transport, and I walk to the countryside by foot.
I have no desire for a car

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Thank you all for sharing your story.

Here´s mine:

I live in a small town in Germany and have to use a car to get to my workplace; 34km one way. I bought my first electric car in April 2020 and never regret it. Not a single prejudice I can confirm. I want to say that I used to be a racing driver and a petrol head in my youth time, which highlights my last sentence. In my experience there is no doubt, that electric cars are already capable to replace combustion cars. And I do agree that the future needs less cars.
I am very lucky, as my employer allows me to charge my car for free with sustainable energy. So at least my everyday move to work is no longer a CO2 desaster, which makes me very happy.
Nevertheless I would prefer public transportation, as it would not be a waste of time as sitting in my car, not be able to start working mobile and save time that I could spend on fixing bottom modules :wink:
Sadly Germanys politicans patting its automobile Industry as much as they can, so public transportation in rurual areas is nearly not happening.
At home in my small town I live close enough to the city center with some shops to grap some groceries by foot.
I do like biking (non electric), hiking and camping, often in combination with road trips. I used to own a camper van, but decided to sell it for the benefit of an electric car.

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During the Covid pandemic I actually wished I had a car and license. Its much more safe than public transport. I walk/hike/train(/bus/metro) to work but I avoid Amsterdam metro since Covid pandemic (though we might be reaching end of it, finally). Most of our family live easily reachable with bike or public transport but my wife’s sister lives in a small remote town and some of our friends moved away from Amsterdam area. With young kids I don’t fancy public transport.

We have a couple of different bikes (one of my normal bikes is at a train station to go to work). We have a normal bike, two parent bikes with two seats, a transportation bike (bakfiets), my kids got two bikes and a step to learn biking at young age, and I recently got sport skates to learn to use (our oldest is going to learn that as well). The transportation bike is sloooowww and heavy.

No driver’s license but my wife is now training to get hers and I am next. We’ll get a second hand normal car, don’t think electric is affordable for us.

I would love to get an electric transportation bike to replace the manual one. It would replace 3 bikes in one (all of 3 are second hand btw) but they are quite costly. We order our groceries online. I’d like to think that’s more Covid-proof but its otherwise a really nice service with young kids. I see more and more electric Amazon busses these days, makes me happy (except for seeing brand hehe).

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Personally that is true, but whatever transportation is used it is an imminent and future danger and liability for every other creature and plant :slight_smile:

Using electric may well ease the street pollution and higher atmosphere gas intrusions but the making of Li-ion batteries just moves the liability to other shores, away from our busy streets.

There’s a limited amount of primary energy, the sun, and more so the earth elements.

The only gain is from the sun all others just repurposing the Earth, away from plants and wildlife. Li-ion is just the new take on exploitation.

It’s use is more a sign of how desperate we are to maintain our indulgences than a sign that we care for other aspects of our environment.

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Super cool question!!! Wow!
I’m powered by muscles. I’ll walk anywhere. People think I’m crazy (I am). If the distance is longer than 3 hours via walking, that’s when I might think the journey is “too far to walk” and I’ll take a train or another means.

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I have a drivers license, too, but hardly ever drive a car as we don’t own one (and never had one). Maybe twice a year we rent one to get to “difficult to reach by public transport”-areas or because we want to transport something but other than that we’re fine with trains for longer distances. When picking up the rented car I usually take a scooter (without E) as it fits into every car easily in contrast to a bike - we sold our folding bike a few years ago for a number of reasons. For the typical daily distances I walk or take the bike, rarely the unicycle. For the mid distances (~100km) I sometimes take the recumbent bike if the family doesn’t need my support for carrying stuff in the train with them. Before we had the kids the bike was much more used for these mid distances but with them it’s too exhausting and takes too long unfortunately. We live in a city and could even reach the next intercity train station by foot.
The relation to my Fairphone is that often I charge it via the dynamo hub while cycling. So in addition to my personal health this gives my training rides an additional purpose.

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I have to say I am quite impressed by the lengths to which some of you (literally) go to travel by foot or bike – even in rural areas :+1: I used to think I was hardcore! :grin:

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Statement about safety was in context of Covid. Being physically around less people is less risky for contagion (both spreading and obtaining). Physical presence has its use, for sure, but the one with regards to public transport is has little to no social value.

With regards to electric, it is going to depend on what the source of electricity is in your country or your electricity provider. There’s a lot of different sources: gas, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, bio, etc. At least here, bio is kinda BS though, as they cut woods in some former Eastern European country to fuel it (stadsverwarming). I call that greenwashing. I’m a proponent of nuclear, as wind/solar/water cannot sustain a fragmented Earth (as the conflict with Russia shows, a sovereign country wants to be independent with their electricity and power demands). So I’m very happy the Dutch government is going to build more nuclear reactors (ideally, we want fission, but that is difficult technology and research only as of now). On top of that with regards to renewables they require batteries, ie. local batteries. Because without batteries you get global bursts of power (the power network in The Netherlands is already overburdened). And the problem with batteries is… (apart from their eco impact) degradation.

I forgot to mention I got solar power on my house, but my house is rented.

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Yes I got that. :slight_smile:
My solution is decades old, develop a lifestyle that doesn’t require a car etc.

So I use the excuse of having to wear a mask not to go on public transport giving me more time to focus on all the other demands I put on the environment.

No not really. Fossil fuels, wind and bio are all sourced from the sun.

Nuclear isn’t :rofl: and that is more limited than solar, just another temp resource to indulge our planet transformation.

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Aren’t there electricity providers which guarantee that they provide wind/solar/biogas-generated electricity only? I mean, you will not get the solar-driven electrons yourself, but somebody else will, and the net effect should be that there’s less demand for nuclear.

Here in Germany, we’re on what they call “Ökostrom” since years.

And to complete the answer - I’m cycling since I was a kid, but with 4 kids in a village you can’t get away without a car :frowning: There’s no bus at all during weekends, although this is just a village near a city - I wouldn’t call it rural at all, and the situation is really a shame. Waiting for the next company car cycle to get an electric, or better, H2-powered car. We make our own electricity, so that should be possible, if legal :expressionless:

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Yeap! Didn’t send my kids to school do didn’t require any transport. In the UK school is not compulsory.
:infinity:

Yes of course there are. There’s also a law in France that provides for certification. I just wonder whether anyone has checked whether the total supplied is within the limit of the total produced … euh, I’ll try and find out.

And how do kerbside charging points procure supplies? I’d be heavily dependent on them.

To my mind the only way to be sure is to buy direct from the producer. That’s not an option for a lot of people. So we have to push government policy.

My apologies this is verging off-topic so I’ll leave it there.

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Unless you are on a closed grid, then no.

Maybe a bit off topic as OldRoutard said but not irrelevant to the issue of ‘electricity’ and it’s perceived benefits.

Electricity comes via a grid which takes it ‘power’ from any and every source so

  • You cannot be selective about what you use. Similar to the use of Fairtrade gold in ‘these’ phones ~ the Fairtrade gold goes into a big pot and everyone gets a bit.

  • However in a similar fashion to Fairphone a company can invest in alternatives.

There’s a company in the UK that spends every penny of it’s income building wind generators etc.

They had to borrow to start the company in order to buy the ‘mixed’ source electricity.

What they contribute is a little more ‘alternatively’ generated electricity.

Will drive my old Diesel until it breaks down, then I’ll get an electric car. I live remote, no public transport around. The old Diesel is pretty clean and doesn’t consume a lot, and, while I think electric powered mobility is great, I am not convinced; the production of batteries is (environmentally) problematic, as it is for the Fairphone, so I am quite pleased that the battery of my 2+ year old FP3 works as if it is new :+1:

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Hi dode and welcome to the forum.

Yes the production of Li-ion batteries is appalling and recycling isn’t up to much, but not much choice with a phone or an electric car.

Old milk floats used to use lead acid :slight_smile:

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Interesting to see the large amount of people without cars. In North America that’s almost unheard of, even in cities. I don’t have a license or car, which is fine because I live in the city. During the summer I try to bike as much as possible, but during the winter I have to use public transit for the majority of my transportation needs.

I’m sort of entertaining the idea of moving to somewhere with better public transport (and milder winters), but that mainly depends on if my job will allow it.

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We are looking at a niche group of people here, not what I would call a large amount, a very relative word :slight_smile:

I have more than a handful of children, all brought up vegan and no school, all but one have standard jobs and cars, though two have or have had a Fairphone. Only two are still vegan

As you note, it’s the job than is often a deciding factor, and getting kids to school on time :slight_smile:

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I live in a big city. So I mostly use my bike (fahrrad Manufaktur, amazing brand) found on a flea market, my feet and public transportation (free during weekends, I guess to make people go buy stuff in the city).

I use my bike everyday to go see some friends, buy local food and go to places where I am a volunteer. I love my bike <3 so pretty so convenient!

Because I lack the money but I have a lot of time to spare, I recently joined a bike repair collective to learn things and repair it by myself. I can meet people and make new friends. This would never have happened if I had given my bike in a repair shop.

I am unemployed, so I have a lot of time to spare. I really love to take my time and find better opportunity to move, live and eat.

I love to take the train to travel to far locations (I wish there would be more train station though). Since I am looking for a job, my country provided me a card that makes it cheaper to travel with.

I used to have a car that I did not use at all, or sometimes to go on the seaside or visit my family (which are both not that far by the way, 100kms). It costed me way too much each month (insurance, oil, repair…). So a year ago I decided to give it to a garage for free and I now never intend to buy one anymore!

I sometimes need a car to go play music and move my instrument for instance. I ask my friends if I can borrow one or I rent one on the internet.
I think it would be better if friends, family, neighbors… shared a same car.

Cheers

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