Buying an e-bike for your business will save money compared to buying a car, van, light truck, even a scooter. How much can your business or organization save? The Pro-E-Bike SIM Tool calculates the amount of savings you will have by replacing cars, vans, scooters with e-bikes.

"Businesses save 10,000 euros Moving goods by cycle" workshop takes place just before Velo-city at La Cite 2015 in Nantes. You can register here Places are available. When: Tuesday 2 June 2015 13:30 to 17:30 Where: Nantes, FR, Velo-city 2015, La Cité Event Center room «GH»

“We’re showcasing this great tool at Velo-city in Nantes this Tuesday afternoon,” announced Dr Randy Rzewnicki, ECF project manager. “We’ve had great feedback already. People from all over Europe have registered and will be the first to hear how it works.

This tool shows you how much you save replacing car or van with an e-bike. It lets you to look at total costs, starting with purchase price, including fixed and variable running costs, like insurance, maintenance & fuel. It is developed for the European project PRO-E-BIKE by a highly reputed agency over a long period of time and it works off-line, so the data used as input is and remains proprietary (i.e. yours and yours alone).

Ms Lara Moura is from OCCAM, which developed the Pro-E-Bike SIM Tool explained that “One of our objectives was to develop a simple and easy-to-use E-bike simulation tool for companies and public bodies that have a fleet of vehicles. This enables potential E-bike users to simulate the impact of the use of E-bikes. It analyse the potential benefits in terms of costs and emissions by using E-bikes in their business.”

The tool compares different technologies, cars, vans, scooters, versus bicycles and e-bikes. The data is provided by the users including the number of trips.

DATA PROTECTION

“This Pro-E-Bike Simulation Tool does not collect any data. All information used for the calculations remains private and confidential,” said Ms Moura.  

The tool is designed to be used in all EU countries. Pro-E-Bike Consortium partners provided their input to the tool.

“This saves users some time and effort,” said Rzewnicki. “It means there are standard values for many countries, including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Netherlands.”

The calculations can be customised to different situations and other data can be inserted by the user.

“This is important because costs are variable. The cost of diesel or petrol may be relatively low in 2015. With the Pro-E-Bike SIM tool, you can see how much you’ll save with an ebike even if petrol prices dropped further,” explained Rzewnicki.

The authors thank Mr Gary Armstrong from Outspoken Delivery and Mr Richard Armitage from Richard Armitage Transport Consultancy Ltd, for provision of expertise, knowledge and experience, in the development of the simulation tool. We would also like to acknowledge Martin Kaspar from Innovationmanufaktur GmbH, for feedback and suggestions after testing the tool. OCCAM seeks feedback on this Pro-E-Bike SIM tool. Please take a few minutes telling us what you think about it: http://goo.gl/forms/Y79K0vTcVG.  

For questions please contact: lara.moura[AT]occam.pt  

PRO-E-BIKE: Promoting electric bike mobility PRO-E-BIKE project promotes clean and energy efficient vehicles, electric bicycles and electric scooters (common name “E – bikes”), for delivery of goods and passenger transport among private and public bodies such as delivery companies, public administration and citizens in European urban areas, as an alternative to “conventionally fossil fuelled” vehicles.

For more information on PRO-E-BIKE subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter (@IEE_PROEBIKE)