http://www.elmoto-cycles.com/

Inventors from Stuttgart in Germany have crossed a mountain bike with an electric scooter. Looks great and should be the ideal thing for Kiwis. Goes 45km/h and has a radius of over 60km. Costs about a $1 per 100km. This is something I could see myself on. Probably even good for off the road. Have a look at the pictures and videos on the site. The concept is sound by the looks of it. Currently still a bit pricey at $8500+ but that’s bound to drop.

The constructors seem to have really splurged on good quality parts and got the design right. Remains to be seen what kind of vehicle class this would be in NZ. Could be all you need is a cycle helmet…

Long story short…no worse than before!

As before we’re still using walking, buses and taxi as our main source of movement. We use the bus every working day and have about 2-4 up-the-hill taxi trips a week which is mainly dependent on weather. In the winter it’s bound to be more.

About once a month we’re using Cityhop to get around. One thing about that that I’m noticing is that this is either on a weekend or after hours during the week (utilising the 6PM-8AM $30 special). But I do see that we’re using Citihop not quite as intended. We’re usually booking it for more than a few hours i.e. using it more like a day-rental. For that it seems to be a bit expensive. Maybe there’s better solutions out there… I’d definitely like to see a service where the car does not need to be brought back to the originating place after use. Mercedes is doing that successfully with Smart cars in a few towns in Germany.  The point of origin issue is certainly the most annoying with Cityhop or any other rental car shop.

As for missing a car…I drive to Petone a lot less now (although it has a good bus connection). But that also saves a bit on food expenses . From a money/saving perspectiveit looks like we’re starting to feel the benefits. There’s more of it left at the end of a fortnight. Which is a good thing in this time.

We’ve also got a scooter for those small trips that no other form of transport will do cost effectively. But we have noticed that it’s use is also less than once a week. It might get a bit more in summer but from a use perspective it’s not really necessary. At some point we might contemplate getting rid of it again.

From what we’ve experienced we would now appreciate:

1. More buses on weekend that have the odd service up to midnight
2. Buses that travel between suburbs not only to the city center
3. Cycle lanes
4. More Cityhop cars at several stations with returns wherever
5. Wellington bus-tunnel fare for 50ct or $1
6. A tunnel through Mt Vic for pedestrians that has no car fumes
7. Conversion of more Wellington central streets into malls
8. Less cars i.e. stop all planned roading extensions and subsidise public transport as an option

One thing I do probably have to admit is that a car is practicable what you have a child. I do know what I’d like to have when that becomes the case. I’d like to have an all electric vehicle that has two passenger seats and a small boot, can go about 100km/h, have a guaranteed radius of 70-90km per charge and cost no more than $20.000-$25.000 new.  Four seats is fine too but not really necessary at least in the first years (don’t forget I have no kiddie-experience so I might be totally wrong about this!). Oh I think I just described a Smart-4-2. Or this thing… http://tinyurl.com/pvyflb.

The site seems cleanly designed and easy to use. Only personal caveat I have ist that it doesn’t use the Government Logon Service. Would have been a nicer option one logon ‘n all.

Now we only need better public transport and we’re set to save some serious CO2.

Since 1999 I’ve been more or less actively trying to reduce the power consumption where I live. At that time not so much out of ecological aspects but plain saving money. So things like energy saving lamps were a given. (By the way, I still use those lamps today! Out of the about 20 I bought over the last years only two have failed and one I destroyed by accident. That means these energy lamps have saved me heaps of $ and caused quite a bit less CO2 and still continue doing so.) I also rigged PCs that had to run non-stop to use less power by removing any unneeded parts. Even removing single chips from mainboards.

In 2007 I became interested in the ecological side of things. Being bombarded with climate change ‘n all left it’s mark. So I decided to re-look at where I got my energy from. I used Genisis and well….let’s say they are about as clean as a coal miners hands after a double shift. So I did a 180 degree turn and went to Meridian. As a sidenote I didn’t see a change in the energy costs I was paying each month and this is 100% renewable energy (I won’t go into the debate here whether and how that is true or not). Anyway I really felt better doing that. Made all my energy saving lamps even more CO2 friendly.

But I also thought I owe Genisys an explanation. So I did send their staff a longish email on the reasons I changed. Explicitly stating I didn’t see any move from Genisis to become more environmentally friendly. After a while I got a nice email back stating how Genisis is proud to be embarking on a mission to become more environmentally friendly etc. I wrote back that I’d contemplate coming back if they ever did.

About 6 weeks later there was an article in the press about how Genisis was searching for more coal to scrape off this earth (against the wishes of quite a few people). So I got quite enraged. The dear woman from Genisis blatantly lied to me. So I wanted to make a formal complaint but after scouring the web page I couldn’t find one email address or anything that allowed me to escalate the issue. So I wrote an inflammatory email to the woman from before and CC’d it to our then PM Helen Clark. I was hoping at least the CC would give something to mull about. Anyway nothing happened for a few weeks. Nothing at all from Genisis and I wasn’t expecting anything back from Helen. I must admit I probably did that just for the theatrical effect. But…. then I did get a letter from Mr. Mallard (at that time he was Minister of Energy). Seven pages mind you. Going into the details about what the energy startegy of NZ is. I was very impressed but not really appeased since it really didn’t condemn Genisis at all.

I think this experience festered for a while. I got more involved with ecological topics (that includes all food related topics too) and started to think about pros and cons. I looked at what I’m buying more closely and recently joined the Greens in an effort to drive more action in the direction I wanted to go. Now don’t get me wrong I am definitely not a CO2 minimalist wonder or anything but I try and do what I can. Hence actions like the post below, where we’re trying to get about without a car. Public and private transport seems to be one of my key focus points that I tend to go on about. I’ve actively taken part in discussions with local council and Stagecoach or seen to it that I participate in petitions against more roads. I am also actively trying to buy an electric car (to no avail). The effect I have is small but at least something. When the election came I was happy to see the Greens do well but still came out short.

The National party has been quieter in their first 100 days than I would have thought but it seems that now they are really turning up the heat. Never mind the ungraspable shortsightedness of stopping tax breaks for all R&D work that had just been introduced (how can (at least 45% of) New Zealanders actively throw away their future like that?). But I’ll stick tho the current unfathomable newest brainchild (or should I say dud?).

6c petrol tax increase. Alright Johnny! This is a cool thing to do. It will bring more people to public transport and give you money to make public transport better. But  then I read the fine-print. They need to raise 1bn to build more roads. Hold on! MORE ROADS???? That’s like buying horse carriages today because “they’ll never go out of style”. Cars are the transportation of the past. Can’t we all just accept that? Do we need $2.50+ petrol prices to prove that? So why 1bn for roads that we can scrap 20 years from now? But it doesn’t stop here.

The 6c petrol increase only covers about $260m so another $420m are coming from cutbacks in public transport. ???!!! OK, now I’m lost. Not only are we failing to invest in public transport but we’re also now taking money away from public transport?! Could it be that Johnny just can’t say the word Kyoto? Do you know how much this decision will cost YOU? Kyoto will be a huge burden for each and every one of us if we can’t get our act (no pun intended) together.

Just imagine what 1bn in public transport could mean. That is $250 per person in NZ. We could even build a high speed train link between Wellington-Palmerston North-Auckland. Never mind buses, light rail and trains till kingdom come. And roading is supposed to cost us $10bn+ in the next 10 years. Just imagine the possibilities (that includes the Overlander with true 24ct gold faucets).

I know Kiwis love their cars and I admit I have a weakness for them too but we all have to switch to public transport on the long term. At least we should do it for the haul to and from work. If we did that now we might even be able to keep our cars for quite some time to enjoy our weekends. But I also understand that nobody will do that without a little nudge. So I’ve been saying for years you need to up petrol taxes, RUCs and taxes on cars and at the SAME TIME introduce good, flexible and cheap public transport. The additional taxes should be contributed 100% towards building the public transport infrastructure. Even if you’re a National government you should see the short & long term benefits of that. And I can promise all Kiwis they will enjoy good public transport. It’s not as bad as it’s made out to be.

So *yay* to the 6c increase. That will help but an absolute failure at the 1bn thing.Nats get with it.

Someone pinch me please I’ve got the strange feeling I’m in America and it’s 20.01.2001.

I did some calculations and it turns out I pay about $6000 a year for driving a car (car depreciation, petrol, repairs, WOF, registration, insurance, fines,…). Depending on the car value either depreciation or repairs are higher. So the $6000 are pretty independent on the type of car for cars up to $20,000.

We don’t drive more than 5000kms a year anyway and use the bus and sometimes taxi for most of our work-week commuting. In an average week we use the car 1-2 times only. So we are really don’t need a car at all. What I’d really like though is an electric car but no-one will sell me one and I don’t have the time to build my own. I really don’t want another gas guzzler. For the time being I decided with Rebecca that we’d try and go no-car.

What does no-car mean for us? We’ll take $5000 as the calculation basis. That is the money we can spend on any means of transportation. Not included in those are 1 taxi ride a week and bus fares to and from work as we do that if we have a car or not. After some research we have found that we can do the following:

1. Walk and use the bicycle (free)
2. Ride buses ($2.25 per ride)
3. Use taxis for all trips where buses don’t drive ($15-30 per ride)
4. Use www.cityhop.co.nz. ($75 yearly, $13.50 – $15/hour for a car)
5. Use rented cars for longer trips/holidays. (about $60 a day)
6. Get a scooter (electric/petrol) for everything that doesn’t fit the above ($2000-$3000 for a scooter + $40 petrol & insurance/month)

So… then $5000 gives you 2,222 bus rides, 166-333 taxi rides, 333-370hrs of cityhop cars, 83 days of rental cars (petrol excluded). The scooter (point 6) is excluded here for now. Maybe it also motivates us to walk a little more as this directly saves money on our bottom line (there are no fixed costs to speak of). That’s a LOT of transport and it sounds quite good from a financial perspective. And(!) we can switch back to a car at any point in time without having lost any money to speak of. From an environmental perspective this is probably the lowest CO2 rating you could have in our situation (not including working from home as that is not a viable option for us at the moment).

So we’re going to give it a shot. The budget will be $100/week for all commuting expenses excluding bus rides to and from work but including all taxi rides (i.e. the one taxi ride per week is included here). Let’s see how that turns out for us. I’ll definitely post some updates on how we are going.