Forget about your dumb Toyota Prius, the king of transportation efficiency was invented in 1885 and it runs on whatever you had for breakfast. According to Scientific American’s newly updated report, based on consumption of calories to transport one gram of mass one kilometer, the most efficient mode of transport on the planet is a human riding a bicycle. Using simple mechanical systems to augment our weird bipedal human body’s ability to move more efficiently, bikes make us significantly more efficient than even the most agile swimming salmon or floating bird. We kinda knocked it out of the park with bikes, didn’t we?
The two main expenses of energy while traveling are gravity and forward motion, and biking all but eliminates the force needed to fight both.