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288 lines
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[1]Skip to content
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[50]More From Planet
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More From Planet
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[51]Explore This Series
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• [52]A person holds an umbrella in the wet and snowy city
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The Threshold at Which Snow Starts Irreversibly Disappearing
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[53]Zoë Schlanger
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• [54]Color photo of an arctic vole resting on small tundra plants
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A Major Climate Force Has Been Ignored for Decades
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[55]Bathsheba Demuth
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• [56]Photos of flooding, as well as of family Polaroids and heirlooms,
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arranged in a 3 x 4 grid and washed blue, against a blue background
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Pack Your Memories Into Your Disaster Bag
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[57]Ayurella Horn-Muller
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• [58]A man works on an electric car
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Electric Cars Are Already Upending America
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[59]Saahil Desai
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[60]Health
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The Real Reason You Should Get an E-bike
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It’ll cut your emissions. It’ll also make you happier.
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By [61]Michael Thomas
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A collage of 12 photographs of e-bikes against a light-pink background
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
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October 20, 2023
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Share
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Save
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Today’s happiness and personal-finance gurus have no shortage of advice for
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living a good life. Meditate daily. Sleep for eight hours a night. Don’t forget
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to save for retirement. They’re not wrong, but few of these experts will tell
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you one of the best ways to improve your life: Ditch your car.
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A year ago, my wife and I sold one of our cars and replaced it with an e-bike.
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As someone who writes about climate change, I knew that I was doing something
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good for the planet. I knew that passenger vehicles are responsible for much of
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our greenhouse-gas emissions—[64]16 percent in the U.S., to be exact—and that
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the pollution spewing from gas-powered cars doesn’t just heat up the planet; it
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could increase the risk of [65]premature death. I also knew that electric cars
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were an imperfect fix: Though they’re responsible for less carbon pollution
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than gas cars, even when powered by today’s dirty electric grid, their supply
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chain is carbon intensive, and many of the materials needed to produce their
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batteries are, in some cases, mined via a process that [66]brutally exploits
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workers and harms [67]ecosystems and sacred Indigenous lands. An e-bike’s
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comparatively tiny battery means less electricity, fewer emissions, fewer
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resources. They are clearly better for the planet than cars of any kind.
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[68]Read: America is missing out on the biggest EV boom of all
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I knew all of this. But I also viewed getting rid of my car as a
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sacrifice—something for the militant and reckless, something that Greenpeace
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volunteers did to make the world better. I live in Colorado; e-biking would
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mean freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer. It was the right thing
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to do, I thought, but it was not going to be fun.
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I was very wrong. The first thing I noticed was the savings. Between car
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payments, insurance, maintenance, and gas, a car-centered lifestyle is
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expensive. According to AAA, after fuel, maintenance, insurance, taxes, and the
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like, owning and driving a new car in America costs[69] $10,728 a year. My
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e-bike, by comparison, cost $2,000 off the rack and has near-negligible
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recurring charges. After factoring in maintenance and a few bucks a month in
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electricity costs, I estimate that we’ll save about $50,000 over the next five
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years by ditching our car.
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The actual experience of riding to work each day over the past year has been
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equally surprising. Before selling our car, I worried most about riding in the
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cold winter months. But I quickly learned that, as the saying goes, there is
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[70]no bad weather, only bad gear. I wear gloves, warm socks, a balaclava, and
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a ski jacket when I ride, and am almost never too cold.
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Sara Hastings-Simon is a professor at the University of Calgary, where she
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studies low-carbon transportation systems. She’s also a native Californian who
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now bikes to work in a city where temperatures tend to hover around freezing
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from December through March. She told me that with the right equipment, she’s
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able to do it on all but the snowiest days—days when she wouldn’t want to be in
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a car, either. “Those days are honestly a mess even on the roads,” she said.
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And though I, like [71]many would-be cyclists, was worried about arriving at
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the office sweaty in hotter months, the e-bike solved my problem. Even when it
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was 90 degrees outside, I didn’t break a sweat, thanks to my bike’s
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pedal-assist mode. If I’m honest, sometimes I didn’t even pedal; I just used
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the throttle, sat back, and enjoyed my ride.
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Indeed, a big part of the appeal here is in the e part of the bike: “E-bikes
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aren’t just a traditional bike with a motor. They are an entirely new
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technology,” Hastings-Simon told me. Riding them is a radically different
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experience from riding a normal bike, at least when it comes to the hard parts
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of cycling. “It’s so much easier to take a bike over a bridge or in a hilly
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neighborhood,” Laura Fox, the former general manager of New York City’s
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bike-share program, told me. “I’ve had countless people come up to me and say,
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‘I never thought that I could bike to work before, and now that I have an
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option where you don’t have to show up sweaty, it’s possible.’” (When New York
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introduced e-bikes to its fleet, ridership tripled, she told me, from 500,000
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to 1.5 million people.)
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[72]Read: How to get fewer people to commute in cars
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But biking to work wasn’t just not unpleasant—it was downright enjoyable. It
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made me feel happier and healthier; I arrived to work a little more buoyant for
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having spent the morning in fresh air rather than traffic. [73]Study after [74]
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study shows that people with longer car commutes are more likely to experience
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poor health outcomes and lower personal well-being—and that cyclists are the
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[75]happiest commuters. One day, shortly after selling our car, I hopped on my
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bike after a stressful day at work and rode home down a street edged with
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changing fall leaves. I felt more connected to the physical environment around
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me than I had when I’d traveled the same route surrounded by metal and glass. I
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breathed in the air, my muscles relaxed, and I grinned like a giddy
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schoolchild.
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“E-bikes are like a miracle drug,” David Zipper, a transportation expert and
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Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, told me. “They provide so much
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upside, not just for the riders, but for the people who are living around them
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too.”
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Of course, e-bikes aren’t going to replace every car on every trip. In a
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country where sprawling suburbs and strip malls, not protected bike lanes, are
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the norm, it’s unrealistic to expect e-bikes to replace cars in the way that
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the Model T replaced horses. But we don’t need everyone to ride an e-bike to
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work to make a big dent in our carbon-pollution problem. [76]A recent study
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found that if 5 percent of commuters were to switch to e-bikes as their mode of
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transportation, emissions would fall by 4 percent. As an individual, you don’t
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even need to sell your car to reduce your carbon footprint significantly. In
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2021, half of all trips in the United States were less than three miles,
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according to [77]the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Making those short
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trips on an e-bike instead of in a car would likely save people money, cut
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their emissions, and improve their health and happiness.
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E-bikes are such a no-brainer for individuals, and for the collective, that
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state and local governments [78]are now subsidizing them. In May, I asked Will
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Toor, the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, to explain the
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state’s rationale for [79]a newly passed incentive that offers residents $450
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to get an e-bike. He dutifully ticked through the environmental benefits and
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potential cost savings for low-income people. Then he surprised me: The
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legislation, he added, was also about “putting more joy into the world.”
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This story is part of the Atlantic Planet series supported by HHMI’s Science
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and Educational Media Group.
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References:
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[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/10/reasons-to-get-e-bike-emissions-climate-change-benefits/675716/#main-content
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[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/
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[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/most-popular/
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[6] https://www.theatlantic.com/latest/
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[7] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/
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[8] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/
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[9] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/
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[10] https://www.theatlantic.com/category/fiction/
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[11] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/
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[12] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/
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[13] https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/
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[14] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/
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[15] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/
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[23] https://www.theatlantic.com/category/features/
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[24] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/
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[25] https://www.theatlantic.com/events/
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[26] https://www.theatlantic.com/category/washington-week-atlantic/
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[27] https://www.theatlantic.com/progress/
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[28] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/
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[29] https://www.theatlantic.com/archive/
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[30] https://www.theatlantic.com/free-daily-crossword-puzzle/
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[31] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
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[32] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
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[33] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/backissues/
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[34] https://accounts.theatlantic.com/products/gift
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[38] https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/dear-therapist/
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[39] https://www.theatlantic.com/free-daily-crossword-puzzle/
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[43] https://www.theatlantic.com/most-popular/
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[46] https://www.theatlantic.com/
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[47] https://www.theatlantic.com/
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[48] https://accounts.theatlantic.com/login/
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[49] https://www.theatlantic.com/subscribe/navbar/
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[50] https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/planet/
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[51] https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/planet/
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[52] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/winter-snow-loss-climate-change/677078/
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[53] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/zoe-schlanger/
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[54] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/alaska-arctic-voles-carbon-source-climate-change/677014/
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[55] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/bathsheba-demuth/
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[56] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/12/disaster-kit-loss-memories-mental-health/676961/
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[57] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ayurella-horn-muller/
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[58] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/12/tesla-chatgpt-most-important-technology/676980/
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[59] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/saahil-desai/
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[60] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/
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[61] https://www.theatlantic.com/author/michael-thomas/
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[64] https://energy.mit.edu/news/us-passenger-cars/
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[65] https://qz.com/135509/more-americans-die-from-car-pollution-than-car-accidents
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[66] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara
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[67] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithium-mining-leaving-chiles-indigenous-communities-high-and-dry-literally
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[68] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/04/electric-ev-rickshaw-sales-climate-change/673629/
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[69] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/
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[70] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/01/how-socialize-outside-winter/617520/
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[71] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140518306054
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[72] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/seattle-car-commute/553589/
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[73] https://travelbehaviour.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/caw-summaryreport-onlineedition.pdf
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[74] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commuting/long-commutes-may-be-bad-for-health-study-idUKBRE8470U520120508
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[75] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140518305255
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[76] https://peopleforbikes.cdn.prismic.io/peopleforbikes/e3dad6f7-d81b-4e59-9208-b012406ffa8e_E-bike-Potential-Paper-05_15_19-Final.pdf
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[77] https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-march-21-2022-more-half-all-daily-trips-were-less-three-miles-2021#:~:text=A%20research%20study%20for%20the,were%20greater%20than%2050%20miles.
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[78] https://electrek.co/2023/02/19/free-electric-bikes-rebates-us-cities-and-states/
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[79] https://www.cpr.org/2023/08/10/colorado-ebike-rebates-how-to-qualify/
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