You misunderstand, what you said was rude enough on its own to warrant animosity. You fundamentally do not understand what you are talking about because you lack the basic empathy and systemic knowledge to even identify the problem; you have presumed that by the grace of god you have divine answers and never questioned why you think what you think. Who benefits from such a shallow narrative?

“Personally I think an hour long commute by bike would be much more pleasant.”

I know that may come as a shock to you, people are not just dumber than you. Most people do in fact make good decisions based on what resources they have available to them, and time is extremely limited for us poor peasants who have to work for a living. It does not matter if you think infrastructure is the only reasonable barrier and most people are just big lazy dumdums, because infrastructure is not getting fixed in most places in this country. As with many Canadians, I do not live in a place where it is safe or practical to use a bike regularly, that is a fact. The closest grocery stores to me are about forty minutes round trip by bike and would require me to traverse a six lane highway to access, that is not acceptable when it is a ten minute drive with nearly zero risk to my body. Yes, that is too much time because again, this may be shocking to you, people with work and responsibilities also have significantly limited energy in their day that would be expended not only by the biking itself, but the stress of risking your life to make the trip. People who work fucking forty to sixty hours a week on swing shifts with kids are not obligated give up whatever time and energy they have to maintain their health and home to force the use of a bicycle to make up for being forced to have a car. It is pointless.

Your comfort is irrelevant, I do not give a shit if this reality makes the world more incomprehensible to you. Grow up, not everyone has your resources and you’ve been privileged enough to get what you’ve had.

Unreal level of pompous douchebag energy here, I will not be paying attention to you and I will not read whatever bullshit response you cobble together.

I’m not sure if you just couldn’t understand my statement and attempted sarcasm here or if this is a genuinely bad response that unironically blames the bike. I’m clearly pointing to culture as the root cause of this, particularly the predominance of neoliberal politics and settler-colonial relationships with the land, so I assume it’s the former but that doesn’t apply.

What? You don’t have $7,000 to spend on a bakfiets that couldn’t even fit all your stuff anyway?

The only person making assumptions her is you who seems to believe im some wealthy city-dwelling socialite who doesn’t work for a living. I ride my bike because its less stressful and cheaper than owning a car. I could hardly afford a car if I even wanted to.

You give all these reasons why you cant ride a bike and that’s fine, those are your reasons. But you act like everyone else is in the exact same position as you and everyone just simply is not able to ride a bike even if they wanted to. That simply is not true, lots of people are in a position where they can bike but choose not to. Im tired of people acting like the reason they make these decisions is because they have no choice. Maybe thats true sometimes, but most of the times I think its just that people dont want to and we would all be better off if people were up front about it.

OP suggested we focus on bicycles instead of cars and a bunch of people come out saying “well bicycles dont work for me or anybody else” and I have been saying they can work for a lot of people if they just made the effort. This is apparently a privileged position? I didn’t realize living in the most populated city in the country makes me a privileged elite but apparently that’s all it takes.

Panniers? Baskets? Trailers? E-bikes? You already said you have a bike so unless you cant ride it, there are plenty of solutions to that problem

You have no idea how much groceries I purchase.

This whole thread you’ve been telling me all about what I should be doing with my time, my resources, my life. You know nothing about it but you’re keen to tell me how I should live it. Have I told anyone “no, you should ditch your bike and use a car instead?” No. People should use whatever form of transportation works best for them, based on their own needs and opinions.

Didn’t Lion Electric go bankrupt?

You’ve just been listing reasons why you cant ride a bike for anything. Just say you dont want to ride a bike.

Here’s the comment where I acknowledge that yes, I physically could ride a bike. I could spend hours out of my day pumping pedals to haul cargo around. It would be exhausting and waste a ton of time but I could theoretically do it.

What else do you want me to do? You seem very free to tell me what I should be doing with my time and effort, what else am I doing wrong with my life that you know better about?

Or maybe my time and comfort is worth more to me than satisfying you, and that’s fine because different people have different priorities. Go ahead and pedal everywhere, let neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stop you. It stops me. If you want me to bike everywhere then you’ll need to offer some kind of solution to those things, the way that cars already solve them for me.

Then it doesn’t make sense as an industry for us.

As for Chinese autos…is the media willfully ignorant at how close the Chinese EV industry is to implosion? BYD is months behind paying suppliers. All this is moot, in a year, most Chinese EV makers will be broke and the EVs will be in the world’s landfills within 5 years.

Are we sure about this? because the rumour mill had China imploding because of construction for the past 5 years…

Buy a bike. Electric cars are not the answer.

yeah right… bikes are awesome in the 6 months winter most of us have to survive yearly in Canada

in Winter?

We do manufacturer some cars

The government justified its “tariff fortress” by pointing to China’s extensive industrial policy, such as subsidies, that artificially lower production costs. The tariffs were claimed to protect domestic producers by offsetting the cost advantage enjoyed by Chinese EV manufacturers.

we are never going to build our own ev industry in time for it make any difference, the only places doing it are incredibly niche small companies making “kei trucks” and buses for public transit, or parts and assembly for foreign companies. and it would take decades for us to achieve a similar quality product that china has right now, if ever, and never at an affordable price in comparison.

the reason everyone isnt driving electric is because we dont have the availability, infrastructure, and pricing that makes it worthwhile.

we can 100% still make batteries and offer alternate solutions with said batteries rather than using them to create our “own ev line” we could make drop in battery/motor conversion kits for instance. for bikes, cars, trucks, buses, whatever you can imagine.

also we could use them to create and maintain municipal public transit, like torontos/vancouvers rental ebikes, except not privately owned. buses are already being converted as well. (looking at you winnipeg)

having locally made batteries will never not be valuable. having additional options and RnD cant hurt.

realistically speaking. theres zero chance we will be able to ever offer a more affordable and similar quality all canadian EV vehicle line up in the next several decades. thats a pipe dream.

but batteries, and the stuff to make them, will only go up in demand. and its possible that domestic batteries some day might be cheaper, if we play our cards right.

Canada has a fascist eyeing up on its ass while a pseudo-communist, quasi-state capitalist is giving him the sultry look from across the waters. Not exactly a good position to be in.

Fuck china and their spy hardware on wheels.

Yes. With snow tires.

bikes are awesome in the 6 months winter most of us have to survive yearly in Canada

I agree. They are pretty awesome in the winter, especially with snow tires on.

Yeah, good job at not-debating.

He did not say he was not here to judge