That’s where I approach it from a prepper perspective as much as a left-urbanist one. A supply-side oil crisis is uniquely disruptive in a way that most of us haven’t experienced. When I had a long car commute, I at least had the physical safety of knowing that I could get fuel at any point I needed it along the route. I was destroying that car and barely making enough money to cover the wear and tear on it, but I could use it reliably. When it’s no longer reliable my lifestyle has to bend or break with that. If this crisis worsens, driving isn’t practically sustainable. Even if I made the EV switch today I’d be competing for the two chargers at most fuel stations, dependent on more complex overseas supply chains to even deliver or service those. For me that’s too many variables to feel confident. An ebike as collapse insurance is just giving me an option that I know will work six months from now no matter how bad things get. That’s pretty much the singular point of confidence I can have in this economy.
edit: Though I will say that even for that long car commute, 45 minutes on the highway each way to work tech support for rural boomers with dialup-equivalent internet, it uniquely sabotaged the rest of my day. My brain was flooded with stress hormones within the first hour of waking up and that conditioned me to have a bad start. When I was getting off work and full of stress hormones from that, I’d spend 45 minutes white-knuckling the steering wheel trying to keep from having road rage and then need to decompress from that on top of the work stress. That’s so much additional time lost to that job, all of it unpaid and held against me if I showed up to work angry. Now it’s a lot more pleasant when I show up to work refreshed from gentle exercise and arrive home having put a few good experiences between myself and whatever happened that day. It serves the same role as a morning coffee or evening beer.
Even if I made the EV switch today I’d be competing for the two chargers at most fuel stations
This is the part where I say I live in a rural city, the number of chargers in the whole town is… two that I know of, and they’re pretty well hidden so you wouldn’t know about them unless you just decided to randomly go down the alley on the city block where they just happened to be behind a row of mixed use buildings in the city center. Aka, where nobody would actually go unless the street parking is entirely full, which has only happened once to me sometime last year.
it uniquely sabotaged the rest of my day.
I will add that my commute to that factory was honestly relaxing for me, since it was a going to work at night, and coming home in the morning, hardly anyone was ever in front of me or behind me. I would also have music blasting away, be completely alone for 30min each way, nobody bothering me one bit. It also helped a little that I would occasionally go down some twisty back roads I knew of… Okay look I actually do enjoy driving, I heavily played the gran turismo series growing up, I also did a lot of helping my dad do the oil change (or one time help with changing out a starter, changing a tire, ect, ect.) on the family car growing up too.
That’s where I approach it from a prepper perspective as much as a left-urbanist one. A supply-side oil crisis is uniquely disruptive in a way that most of us haven’t experienced. When I had a long car commute, I at least had the physical safety of knowing that I could get fuel at any point I needed it along the route. I was destroying that car and barely making enough money to cover the wear and tear on it, but I could use it reliably. When it’s no longer reliable my lifestyle has to bend or break with that. If this crisis worsens, driving isn’t practically sustainable. Even if I made the EV switch today I’d be competing for the two chargers at most fuel stations, dependent on more complex overseas supply chains to even deliver or service those. For me that’s too many variables to feel confident. An ebike as collapse insurance is just giving me an option that I know will work six months from now no matter how bad things get. That’s pretty much the singular point of confidence I can have in this economy.
edit: Though I will say that even for that long car commute, 45 minutes on the highway each way to work tech support for rural boomers with dialup-equivalent internet, it uniquely sabotaged the rest of my day. My brain was flooded with stress hormones within the first hour of waking up and that conditioned me to have a bad start. When I was getting off work and full of stress hormones from that, I’d spend 45 minutes white-knuckling the steering wheel trying to keep from having road rage and then need to decompress from that on top of the work stress. That’s so much additional time lost to that job, all of it unpaid and held against me if I showed up to work angry. Now it’s a lot more pleasant when I show up to work refreshed from gentle exercise and arrive home having put a few good experiences between myself and whatever happened that day. It serves the same role as a morning coffee or evening beer.
This is the part where I say I live in a rural city, the number of chargers in the whole town is… two that I know of, and they’re pretty well hidden so you wouldn’t know about them unless you just decided to randomly go down the alley on the city block where they just happened to be behind a row of mixed use buildings in the city center. Aka, where nobody would actually go unless the street parking is entirely full, which has only happened once to me sometime last year.
I will add that my commute to that factory was honestly relaxing for me, since it was a going to work at night, and coming home in the morning, hardly anyone was ever in front of me or behind me. I would also have music blasting away, be completely alone for 30min each way, nobody bothering me one bit. It also helped a little that I would occasionally go down some twisty back roads I knew of… Okay look I actually do enjoy driving, I heavily played the gran turismo series growing up, I also did a lot of helping my dad do the oil change (or one time help with changing out a starter, changing a tire, ect, ect.) on the family car growing up too.