There are lot of environmental benefits of electric bikes. Every time you choose to tackle an errand with an ebike rather than a car, you’re making a choice that cuts down on your carbon footprint. And when you start to do that regularly, it adds up to a big win for the environment.

But what does that actually look like? To help give our riders a sense of the impact they’re making, we put together an emissions calculator. Just plug in how many car replacement miles you’re racking up each week to see how much CO₂ you might be saving.

We want to know how many car replacement miles riders like you rack-up each week. Will you share your results with us?  

So how'd you do? It might be kind of hard to tell based on those numbers alone, so let's put them into context. 

For starters, CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that builds in the atmosphere and wreaks havoc on the climate. Every time you drive a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle, you release about 404 grams of it each mile. Throughout the course of a year, this adds up to around 4.6 metric tons on average.

In comparison, let's look at electric bikes. They don't directly release emissions into the environment, but they do require energy to charge the battery. How that energy is generated depends on the power grid in your area, but based on where most Rad riders live*, we determined that roughly 173 grams of CO₂ are released on average for every full battery charge.

How many miles each rider gets per full charge depends on the amount of pedal assist they use, the amount of cargo they're hauling, and how often they rely on the throttle.

So let's say you're really putting your motor to work and are getting about 40 miles for each charge. This would break down to just over 4 grams of CO₂ per mile, which means you're saving a net total of about 400 grams of CO₂ for every car replacement mile!

That sounds pretty good on its own, right? Well, think about this:

What's even more exciting is that you're not doing this alone. With over 400,000 Rad riders joining you from across 30 countries, things start to get really exciting. 

If every rider replaced just five miles each week, this would save over 800,000,000 grams of CO₂, or 800 metric tons ... every week!