The financial benefit of cycling vs driving?

I was involved in a discussion on Facebook recently where it was suggested that cycling saves money. Now on the face of it, this would appear to be a fair comment. After all, when you're using pedal power instead of the car you save money on fuel...obviously! When you actually start to "do the math" however, it's perhaps not quite so clear cut. As a casual cyclist on my mountain bike during the summer, I was doing a couple of hundred miles a year at the most, I was wearing baggy shorts and an old football top, the bike would be

Now where did I put the pump...?

serviced occasionally, and so yes the odd journey to work was effectively free.  When however you start to take cycling more seriously, the cost savings don't always add up as you expect.  First of all, the more you use the bike, the more wear and tear you have to pay to sort out.  I had 2 flat tyres in 2013, and although they can be fixed with a repair kit, I ended up buying spare inner tubes anyway.  Then of course I got my hybrid road bike, which was through the government backed Cycle2Work scheme, but still costs me money from my wages each month.  With that bike came various accessories, a new stem to make the handlebars more comfy, a new bottle and holder, a new frame-mounted pump, and then as winter came I needed better lights, warmer clothing, that sort of thing.  Of course this stuff should in theory last me for a few years, and if I'm doing around 1800 miles a year on the bike and the cost of all the stuff I've already paid for, plus ongoing costs of a decent service each year, plus a bit more which may be needed over this time too for additional clothes, etc. is then stretched over say 5 years, then I reckon I'm looking at around £200 a year, which is just under 11p per mile.  That doesn't include the cost of the roof rack I bought recently either, at around £150, as it's not essential for the sort of cycling I'm talking about here, but that would put a bit extra on the costs.

However you travel it's not cheap!

At the moment our Auris Hybrid is costing around 12p per mile in petrol, and I'm expecting this to drop a bit when averaging out winter and summer, hopefully to around 11p as well, so I suppose really there is no obvious cost benefit to cycling.  You may of course say that I'm comparing the costs of just fuel against the cost of a bike and all the trimmings.  That's true, if I include the costs of the car loan, insurance, servicing, etc. then the car costs between about 31p per mile (based on 14000 miles a year) and 39p per mile (if that creeps down to around 10000 miles per year), much more expensive of course, but seeing as there are a certain amount of journeys which can only be done by car, then it's there anyway and from a purely financial point of view, it would be better to use that and not bother using a bike. In fact, the more miles done in the car the cheaper the cost per mile is, so by cycling instead of driving I'm actually increasing the per mile cost of the driving I do.
Savings and benefits though shouldn't just be measured in terms of money spent.  Cycling is fun & of course healthy, it's much more rewarding to the body and the soul than driving is.  For that reason, I'd say that everyone should really invest in a bike and reap the benefits.  If you don't drive at all then ditch some of your public transport journeys and get on your bike instead, you really will save money.  If however you've already got a car, then just get a bike anyway and reap the non-financial benefits instead.

The Bridge

Amy & I have love the Danish/Swedish crime drama "The Bridge" (or Bron/Broen), currently on BBC4, where the police forces of Copenhagen and Malmo have to work together to solve a murder case which happens in the middle of the cross-border Oresund Bridge which links the two cities together.  Its haunting

Left turn Clyde...

theme tune runs through my head as I cross over our local bridge, the Erskine Bridge, the lowest and therefore last crossing of the River Clyde before it becomes a wide and dangerous firth (estuary for those unfamiliar with Scottish words!)  The Erskine Bridge is a busy dual carriageway, a vital link for long distance traffic wanting to get to Argyle and the West Highlands of Scotland without having to drive through the urban sprawl of the West End of Glasgow.  It's also a vital local link for the communities of West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire.  Before the bridge was built in 1971 there was a car ferry, and if the bridge is ever shut due to high winds then the diversion can be 25 miles or more via the Clyde Tunnel in the West End or the Kingston Bridge in the City Centre.  I use the Erskine Bridge for at least 7 return

The old ferry slipway with the bridge towering above

journeys every week, both in the car and on the bike.  My work is on the other side of the bridge from our flat, we go on it to get to the southside of Glasgow via the M8, basically it's a hugely important bridge for us. Early last summer roadworks started which caused slight disruption, and then in September major roadworks started which according to the various signs dotted around adjoining roads will finish in Summer 2014.  These roadworks have dropped the bridge down to one lane only in each direction, with traffic light controls at one end and long queues at both ends.  A slip road onto the bridge from the town of Erskine has been closed - not literally, but the road is restricted to buses and emergency vehicles only, meaning that as well as a drive to work taking 5-10mins longer since the works started, a return journey home from work takes 15-20mins longer and involves at least an additional 4 mile diversion.  As well as this, just recently on late-night drives home, other slip roads have also been closed from the M8 which have meant 5-6 miles of additional driving.  It's really not fun at the moment, and yet in some ways these roadworks have been part of the motivation for my increase in cycling to work.  There are pedestrian paths and cycle tracks alongside the bridge which have

This way it's all mountains, golf courses and distilleries...

had minimal disruption compared to that suffered by other road traffic.  Quite often I can cycle home from work marginally quicker than I can driving, which is definitely a novelty.  The bridge is quite steep, both in the paths leading to the bridge plus the actual gradient of the deck itself, so it's always a good work-out on the bike.  There are often strong winds to overcome, plus nasty patches of black ice, spray from lorries, etc. That in some ways is all part of the fun though, it's an impressive structure, a focal point for the area, and the views on a clear day are terrific.  It's also great going over when a big ship, sometimes even a proper naval ship, passes underneath.  Whether I'll continue to brave the conditions quite as often once the roadworks are finished I'm not sure.  I hope so, but you couldn't blame me for slumping back to my old easy car driving days could you?!  But then there are still Strava times to beat aren't there.  OK fair enough, you got me, last one to the other side is a sissy!

2 wheels and 3 stone lighter

As you may have guessed from the title of this blog, it's not just about our car.  2013 was a good year for me as far as cycling goes.  I've been into it for a while.  Now of course I was into it as a kid (I think most people have memories of bikes as Christmas presents when they are young don't they?) but generally cars win out once you reach your late teens and your bike ends up rusting away in your parents' garden shed.  My love affair was rekindled after an unfortunate/irresponsible brush with the South Wales traffic police in 2002, when I was forced back onto 2 wheels during a 28-day driving ban.  When I realised that wasn't too painful I kept the bike in use and then a few years later did some off-road mountain biking with friends at Cannock Chase, something which eventually encouraged me to splash out on a nice shiny 30th birthday present for myself, a Specialized Rockhopper.  That got some good use, both on the roads and the mud, but it was a purely seasonal affair.  On the few occasions that I tried cycling in the winter I quickly decided it was far too cold and wet to be a regular thing.  I briefly flirted with a road bike but storage issues once I moved up to Glasgow ended that, and I kept with only the mountain bike.  Unfortunately though, the rider was becoming a mountain himself.  A few long rides in the summer often ended in premature asthmatic crawls home and

"The results have been increbidle"

off-roading was particularly embarrassing.  I was seriously overweight and unfit, and something needed to change.  In early March 2013 I dusted the bike off and did a short ride, 2 or 3 slow miles, and enough was enough.  Amy & I had both decided we needed to lose weight, her Slimming World book was dug out, we pledged to eat healthily for as long as was necessary, and once I'd lost a few pounds I got back on the bike to try and improve my fitness too.  My the end of May I'd cycled 120 miles and lost a stone, by the end of August it was nearly 2 stone, and I'd upped my cycling to about 550 miles.  One of the catalysts for really racking up the miles was that I'd starting using a phone app called Strava, which tracks how far you cycle and works out your average speed as well as timing you over certain popular sections of your route.  This makes every cycle ride very competitive, you're

always trying to better times and eek out more miles each week and month, comparing your rides to those of your friends.  Around that time, buoyed up by the addictiveness of Strava, I'd started cycling to work fairly regularly and my mountain bike was proving to be less than ideal for the amount of road riding I was doing, not to mention it also being quite slow, so my work's Cycle to work scheme came in handy to get myself a hybrid road bike (mountain bike shape but with thinner road tyres).  So I got myself the very funky Charge Grater.  This meant that my mountain bike was reserved for off-roading only, which suits me fine, seeing as there are a number of excellent places to get muddy within a couple of hours drive of Glasgow.  With the combination of on and off-road cycling I was able to push on to 3 stone of weight lost by Christmas, with over 1200 miles cycled, despite the fact that the light and warmth of summer had long gone.  I guess now I'm prepared (although not always happy) to cycle in the wind, rain and cold, and of course dark.  Ice brings its problems, but luckily the snow hasn't hit yet though.  I'm commuting 2-3 times a week, 6.6 miles each way.  If I wasn't able to get a shower at work then this wouldn't of course be as attractive an option, but as it stands I reckon I've lost my "fair-weather cyclist" tag.  My aim is to get to the year mark, early March 2014, having reached a weight and size I'm happy with, and at that point I should hopefully have reached 1600 miles (which sounds more impressive as 2500km!)

Charge Grater hybrid bike at Draycote Water, Warwickshire

Lean mean winter rider (with embarrassing but v sensible clothing)

Specialized Rockhopper MTB at the Cathkin Braes trails near Glasgow

First impressions

As you may have guessed from the initial blog post, we did end up buying a Toyota Auris Hybrid (or HSD as Toyota like to call it), and so this post is our first impressions of what life is like owning a hybrid car.

For those of you who've never driven an automatic, they are ridiculously simple but can ironically take a bit of getting used to after driving manuals. For a while you plunge your left foot into the footwell where the clutch should be at every junction, but eventually you get used to the pure laziness of it all. After driving the Golf DSG, the Auris is again a little strange to get used to. It is an auto in that it doesn't have a clutch pedal and you select Drive, Neutral,

Park, etc., but other than that this is completely different.  Whereas an auto is just a normal car that knows when to change gear for you, a hybrid has got 2 engines and a cone-like gear drive called CVT (continuously variable transmission) which has a pretty much infinite number of gears available to choose from, so much so that the only way you can detect a change of ratio is that you'll be changing speed and the petrol engine will stay at the same revs or the revs will drop or rise whilst you're maintaining a particular speed, depending on the gradient you're on. The clever part though is that as well as the petrol engine giving power, there is also an electric motor giving power too.  In fact, as long as it isn't too cold when you first start your journey, you will pull away without the petrol engine being needed at all.  The electric motor is powered from some batteries which sit under the boot floor, but you don't need to charge them manually, they get charged either by the petrol motor or by regenerative braking, so when you lift off the accelerator a sort of dynamo device draws power from your momentum and uses that to top up the batteries.  The batteries then power the motor which supplements the engine power when you need extra horsepower, but when you're driving slowly in town or in a jam, it will for short periods of time run only with the electric motor running.  You can manually select EV mode (Electric Vehicle) to put it in electric only mode and as long as you have enough charge and are driving less than 30mph then it will run just on electrics.  Of course selecting this manually may drain the battery more than the car's own computer would ideally want so it's best to allow the car to decide when to do this for itself.

You get a digital display in the dash showing what the car is currently doing, with arrows coming from the battery and/or the electric motor to the wheels, or the arrow points from the wheels to the battery if it is charging, and the battery shows how well charged it is too.  It's one of my favourite features in the car, and it becomes a bit of a game to see how much you can use just the electric motor rather than using the petrol engine.  Also instead of a rev counter, there is a dial showing how much power the car is using from the engines, and it helps you to try to avoid being too heavy on the right foot to keep it out of the white "power zone" and instead keep it in the green "normal zone" or the blue "charge zone".  If we'd gone for a Golf Bluemotion then I feel that I wouldn't have taken the idea of saving fuel quite as seriously.  This makes it into a fun game of watching the dials and displays to try and keep your mpg as high as possible.  It may not be as much fun as driving fast but it's a lot cheaper and more relaxing.

In terms of actually driving then, this thing is very smooth.  If it wasn't for the digital display you wouldn't know when electric power gives way to petrol, at least until the engine audibly revs anyway, when it can become quite raucous. The handling is very predictable rather than particularly exciting, but I found

that with the Golf too if I'm honest. The steering is quite lifeless but the wheels feel well planted, although being 17" with low profile tyres you definitely feel the bumps in the often terrible road surfaces we get in the UK. But never mind that I hear you say, what about costs. You bought it to save money, so are you saving money? Well obviously we're still early on in the experience, but I've seen 60mpg+ on the computer after short drives, and am currently averaging about 52mpg.  That may not sound amazing compared to the Golf Bluemotion, but remember that petrol is cheaper than diesel and it's also cold. Everyone who owns hybrids says that you can expect at least 10mpg more outside of the winter time, which is very

encouraging. I've started logging fill ups with fuelly.com so I'll let you know once the data starts coming back from that.  Also the tax disc is completely free, which is always nice.  That's because of its low co2 emissions, which also makes it exempt from the London congestion charge, so should I ever want to be congested in London then it won't cost me anything other than a small one-off admin charge. What a nice man Boris is eh? OK don't answer that one! Tyres should also be cheaper, and in terms of general faults and repairs, Toyotas are supposed to be bombproof. We shall see...

The decision

So we went and bought a hybrid car...  Me, Speedy Gonzales, Jehu, Nigel Mansell (sans Moustache now though I'm afraid) is going green and frugal.  Anyone who knows me must wonder what is going on!  This is I guess the main reason for starting the blog.  A few years ago I was on a MINI adventure, as the old adverts used to say.  I got myself banned for 28 days for driving 112mph back in 2003 - it was on an empty dual carriageway before you chastise me too much.  I once managed 100mph out of my first car, a 45bhp Fiat Panda.  That was scary!

I guess my first experience of needing to save money was when I started driving regularly up to see Amy in Glasgow from my original home in Coventry. A 300 mile drive in that car, with the desire to always have fun, was never going to be cheap, so I eventually traded it in for a Diesel - first of all an Audi A3 which turned out to be in need of some expensive repairs, and so that was followed by a Seat Ibiza which I had chipped to 170bhp and so became a pocket rocket which also saved me money, and I did somewhere in the region of 100'000 miles in it over the course of the next 5 or 6 years.  You might ask why I didn't just stick with Diesels, but when I eventually made the move to Glasgow, I instantly wanted a MINI again, having less need to do the long journey quite so often, and so I got a second adventure, but the cost of living and the need to support a wife and bills caught up with me so it had to go.  That left us with our Golf, Amy's car on the Motability car lease scheme.  Due to Amy's long-standing (if you pardon the pun) hip condition, it was an automatic, and due to my hatred of automatics I only wanted the DSG, VW's dual-clutch auto box, which proved to be a reasonable compromise, although due to the initial costs of getting this car on the scheme at the time we ended up getting the 1.4TSI petrol engine instead of a Diesel.  Now this engine and gearbox combo was supposed to be reasonably good on fuel, but I suspect that because the combo was also very good in terms of performance, decent mpg was never on the cards, and we probably averaged somewhere in the region of 38mpg over the time we had it.  Also we had a serious problem with the DSG box about 18 months ago which would have cost the best part of two grand to fix had it not been covered by warranty.  Although that problem was fixed, we lost a lot of faith in the gearbox after that point unfortunately.  It had periods of being really slow, struggling to find the right gear (on several occasions I was stranded for several seconds on a fast moving roundabout whilst it decided which gear to put me in) and often being very jerky at low speeds.

Anyway, we'd decided now that Amy was in a much better state after 2 hip replacements over the last 18 months and the government's change of strategy (ie. funding cut) of the disability living allowance that we'd better not get another Motability car and we instead decided to get back into car ownership again.  Over the past few months I've been weighing up the options and had pretty much decided on several occasions that we'd get a 3-4 year old Golf 1.6 TDI Bluemotion DSG.  This was the smart choice, with a promise of 60+mpg, an option to chip the engine up to 150bhp, and a diesel engine which would probably do several hundred thousand miles without causing us to lose much sleep.  There were always a few leftfield options out there though, particularly with an out-of-warranty DSG box causing me concerns for long term second hand ownership.  Also, with out limited budget, there weren't many bluemotions available apart from high mileage Golf estates, which although wouldn't have been the end of the world, were in effect a facelifted mk5 rather than a proper mk6 Golf, and had the look of a repmobile about them.  The roof bars were nice though.

Other diesels were considered, but the wretched automatic box ruled out most of them.  Fiat and Toyota did automated manuals but they are apparently slow, clunky and unreliable.  Proper auto boxes are much better but you lose out on most of the fuel saving benefits of getting a diesel engine in the first place, but I kept going back to a VW, but then whilst looking at Toyotas I stumbled upon their Hybrid range.  Hybrid...hang on, those are the cars which get laughed to scorn by Top Gear presenters aren't they?  Slow cars which promise amazing mpg but mostly don't deliver.  But whilst most would be put off by this, I kept googling away, trying to peel away the bull to reveal the truth about Toyota's HSD (Hybrid Synergy Drive) system.  Lo and behold, some people liked these things, they did actually return decent fuel economy if you cared enough to actually drive them properly, they were quiet, very clean, cheap to maintain and free from road tax*  Also of course all Hybrids are by their nature automatics**

 

*yes I know there is no such thing as road tax, I AM a cyclist too remember, but for the sake of making things simple, I'm calling it road tax!

**stricting speaking they don't have a gearbox at all, but I'll maybe going into technical detail when I feel like properly geeking out at a later date.

So anyway, I quickly ruled out the Prius, because they are kinda ugly and that episode of South Park with the outbreak of smug says everything about what people think of Prius drivers, and I ruled out the Yaris Hybrid because it is too new and instead concentrated on the old shape Auris Hybrid, built in Britain, not too bad looking and within our price range - were we on to a winner?  Watch this space and I'll let you know...