Gull or pigeon?

Wasn't there a quote about bicycles and fish?

one of the most revoked brains

?

Maintenance cost? It's negligible. The cost of part and maintenance in a year, assuming you buy Decathlon stuff and do it yourself, will likely cost less than your fuel for your car in a month. Electric car might cost less with the maintenance, but the tire itself will also eat up the cost sooner or later.

Both type of car is also expensive to purchase, while on the other hand you can get a $300 Chinese bike, optimise it a bit, and it will go for years before you need to replace anything.

I doubt maintenance costs make much difference to the number of calories burned, although it might depend on how physical the job is that pays for maintenance.

Probably negligible though.

The big difference is wear and tear. Some other article posted here a few days ago talked about this difference on road attrition. It takes one bicycle to go over a road 160 thousand times to cause the same damage to a road than a single car passing once.

So, building a smooth road for bicycles, which were lobbied for and constructed first for bikes waaaay before the first car was ever invented, has a lower cost and much better ROI than the same road being used by cars. Even in rough weather conditions. Also, I'm much more efficient on a mountain trail in a bike than any 4x4 truck.

This is about energy expenditure while moving. So unless you are doing maintainance while on the bike, it doesn't factor into the number.

Compared to other things that walk, yes. Muscle efficiency is gutter tier shit in general. Internal combustion engines look good in comparison, and no, I'm not joking.

This is why e-bikes are the most efficient form of travel in terms of calories burned per km. Batteries and electric motors are about as efficient as anything can be, and it's better when they're not pushing around a large metal box.

In terms of lifetime CO2 output, though, they never quite catch up to regular bikes due to the extra manufacturing needs. It's not a huge difference, though; if an e-bike is what gets people out of a car, that's a massive win.

That's like comparing only to a person on a bike downhill

Maybe compare to birds tracking upwards air currents to move while hovering, as they actually maintain a low average energy expenditure while moving

The background doesn't really bother me, but where on earth did the axis labels go?

Even a dry trail is pretty efficient on a bike

Gravel roads aren't bad if you have thick and knobby tires.

And keep an eye out for really big chunks of gravel. And ruts. And puddles. And erosion. But other than that! It's fine.

Mountain and gravel bikes beg to differ