I've been riding my motorcycle (Suzuki Gz250) to work nearly every day since I stared in late July. With fall upon us I'll be riding less and less but thus far I've ridden it over 3500 miles. When gas was over $4 per gallon I saved nearly $10 per day by taking the motorcycle over my Subaru.
The Subaru gets about 27 mpg on the highway whereas my motorcycle gets between 70 and 82 mpg. When I use premium I average 77.5 but when I use regular I average 75 mpg. Since premium costs about 20¢ more I save money by using regular - but the money saved is actually pretty trivial. I caclulated my cost per mile and for premium it's 4.77¢ per mile while regular is 4.67¢ per mile so after 10,000 miles the savings would only be $10 using regular. Publish Post
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How much would you save if you rode your bicycle to work? Please take into account the cost of energy bars and other fuel sources.
Well. According to the Interwebs you burn 912 calories per hour cycleing at 16-19 mph. It's 45 miles to work so at 17.5 mph it would take 2.57 hours and that is 2343 calories. A Clif Bar contains 240 calories and costs around $1.35. So that is 9.8 Clif Bars at $1.35 each is $13.18. That brings our cost per mile to 29.3¢. I'm sure you could get some calories a lot cheaper. For example I could just carry a tub-o-butter but it would probably melt :)
So, of course that begs the questions:
Has all this savings actually paid for the cost of the bike, insurance, and all those other legal costs you posted about awhile back? You could make the case that riding a bike has some intrinsic benefits (wind in hair, excitement, etc.), but we're talking money here.
And where is the break even point?
Either way, I'm sure Jason C. would love to know your results.
I've already figured this out, sort of. Assuming my only expense for a motorcycle is gas it will take about 35,000 miles of driving (this number is nearly halved if you only take into consideration the purchase price of the motorcycle). Obviously this is neither the only expense and is not the only monetary benefit. For example, a motorcycle tire doesn't last over 10k miles but there are only two of them. Also, the above miles were calculated without taking in consideration for the cost of the car ($17,000). And if gas prices rise the number of miles goes down dramatically. Further, if I can stay out of the courtroom the number of miles needed won't skyrocket.
No wonder I energy crash after my 3 hour 60 mile ride. 150 calorie intake vs. 3k calorie expenditure.
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