Justin Lemire-Elmore thinks so, and I finally got around to reading his paper. Bicycles in general are very good: wheels, minimal non-cargo weight, and relatively low speed minimize rolling and aero losses. One might think that adding a motor would only make things worse. However, a bicycle pedalled by a human still requires energy, but that energy comes from the food they eat, and food is not produced very efficiently. So the question is whether the energy costs of making and charging the battery etc. are more or less than the energy costs of making the food the bicyclist needs to eat.

The bottom line is that all battery types outperform food, because so much energy goes into food production in modern Western farming. Food production is so inefficient, producing 1 calorie of food per 7 calories of fossil fuels consumed, that I wonder whether conventional bicyclists even beat cars! Lithium, due to its light weight and high charge efficiency, is best. Lead acid is worst, despite having the lowest energy costs of production, due to relatively low cycle life and transportation costs. One can quibble here. He uses a "real-life" cycle life for lead acid, but a manufacturer's spec for lithium ion. Worse, for transportation costs, he assumes air freight from the far east: reasonable for expensive lithium batteries, but implausible for heavy lead-acid batteries. In this analysis, initial transportation accounts for a substantial majority of the total lifecycle energy cost of lead-acid, so this isn't trivial. Finally, and he does discuss this, nothing forces the bicyclist to eat conventional, high-energy input food. Bicyclists on a strict organic vegetarian diet can equal or beat the electric bike. But that's what it takes.

Here's a nice little EV conversion, John Wayland's 1972 Datsun 1200. The range isn't so good, only a quarter mile, but it gets there pretty quick. Under 13 s at over 100 mph makes it the fastest street-legal EV, and it beat a built 375hp modern Camaro V8 to get there. The story makes, um, interesting reading. Drag racing breaks stuff, and high power electrical equipment, unlike ICEs, has an annoying tendency to break into a shorted, full power condition.

Anyone interested in this stuff who's near Las Vegas could go to Wicked Watts, the first event in the 2005 NEDRA season, this Saturday at the LV Motor Speedway.