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Comment by theultdev

4 hours ago

I think we have different grocery habits.

Food, beer, and cat litter would be too heavy for a bike.

Are you sure? https://www.r-m.de/en-us/bikes/load5-75/

  • How many of those have you seen in the US?

    None, because noone wants to bike 5 miles for 3 bags of groceries.

    • I see loads of those around my neighborhood, usually ferrying kids.

      At the same time, I don't need to go 5 miles for groceries, so you might be picturing using a cargo bike in sparse suburbs. If your built environment is car centric then almost definitionally using any other mode of locomotion is going to be subpar.

    • We’ve moved the goalposts from “Food, beer, and cat litter would be too heavy for a bike.”

      Also, my grocery stores are 0.7, 1.1, and 1.6 miles away, not that it matters. 5 miles is just not very much time at 20-28 mph. I think theft and weather/comfort are bigger obstacles to most people than distance.

You don't think a family of four buys 'food' ? I also get beer occasionally, although sometimes I get it from the corner store a few blocks away.

I do get kitty litter with the car on the occasional trip to Costco because I'm not set on using the bike for every last thing. Just that the eBike makes a lot of things a lot more convenient.

  • The "food" was a catch-all. Pretty sure that was clear.

    Beer and cat litter alone are the heavy items, and don't fit stable in a bike, especially in bad weather.

    Plus 2 weeks of groceries, depending on what you need can really add up.

    On a bike? Fah-get-a-bout-it. Guess I'd be biking my ass to the store every day.

    Or I could live in the present and drive an actual car.

    Clearly GP buys 1 day worth of food if he can bike groceries for a family of four.

    I had Uber drivers struggle to bike 1 MEAL for my family.

    • I can get three or four days of food for my family of four on my regular bike with no problem (I also have a cat). I live somewhere where I ride past half a dozen super markets on my regular commute, so stopping at the shop is no big inconvenience.