Really not keen on the advertised "app-based anti-theft, vehicle movement alert, geo-fencing, GPS tracking." Inevitably, this will be used to track the user and sell the data to insurance companies, like car manufacturers already do. Also, it's entirely possible that the app won't work at all on free Android builds (dependencies on Google libraries). Other than the obvious range anxiety problem (80 miles just isn't enough especially if you ride it hard and that becomes 50 or less), I wouldn't buy any "connected" bike without knowing for sure that it can be fully disconnected by nuking the onboard modem.
When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery. In China, electric motorcycle support the extremely large food delivery market, and in most cities, the streets are lined with delivery riders’ e-motorcycle and bicycles. Later, I heard that China’s Meituan has also started food delivery services in Dubai. I expect this model to expand to global markets as electric motorcycle become more widespread.
>When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery.
Many of those delivery workers are much poorer than even Chinese delivery workers, so are less able to afford ebikes. Because they come from countries with significantly lower GDP per capita than China.
Many countries with gig economies where the individual can't afford to own the actual method of transport, a rental market pops up to enable people to be able fulfill orders.
This usually does mean they're the first ones to get squeezed. But lesser known who gets squeezed is the rental operator/provider as well. Because many times they don't own their own fleet. They can't charge higher prices like normal car rentals and own the fleet because the individual gig driver is very price sensitive.
It doesn't take too many vehicle losses to really upset the delicate math.
In San Francisco, I noticed that many of the delivery drivers' e-bikes and e-scooters were labeled HMP. The natural structure for these is that you rent the bike from the provider and you keep net earnings post rent. And sure enough, when I came home and Googled there is precisely such a structure: https://www.hmpbikes.com/pages/rental-page
Indeed. I’ve noticed a large number of Pakistani taxi drivers and Southeast Asian service workers. But considering the income of food delivery riders(most of the time > avg salary in the city china. not sure in UAE, but the service like Uber is pretty expensive), buying a not-too-expensive electric scooter seems to be a fairly good investment.
These guys are a bit of a problem in Edinburgh, but not an EV-specific one; before they were using trail bikes, which were an additional nuisance with the noise.
Not sure what level of intrusive surveillance would be needed to deal with this.
This is actually an area I am incredibly interested in, an area that I have pretty deep technical knowledge of (power electronics, my day job), and and area where I would _love_ to make products in. I'm a total ebike evangelist just ask anyone who has ever commented anything to me when I am on my ebike.
But I sadly know enough to know that doing hardware in the USA is nightmare level expensive and difficult. I could pull every string and empty every account into making an eBike with twice the cost and half the performance of it's Chinese counterpart. I'd much rather just make an app that takes a cut for connecting people with eBikes that fit their needs/desires.
My quick searching is finding that 3% of US vehicles are motorcycles.
Sure, more competition is good, but given their safety profile (terrible!) I suspect motorcycles are a secondary mode of transportation rather than a primary. Mopeds for intra city usage seems more high demand than highway speed vehicles that have to drive alongside SUVs.
I feel like there's kind of a cycle of unsafety with motorcycles on the social level in the U.S.
There's a societal understanding in the U.S. that motorcycles are unsafe, which results in an increased number of people purchasing motorcycles with the intention of showing off how unsafe (dangerous) they can be. And the cycle perpetuates.
Obviously, motorcycles are inherently less safe in certain ways, like your body is going to fly if you get into a high-speed collision, and that's pretty much unavoidable. But when I visit European countries, it seems motorcycle culture is _so_ much healthier. They are mostly seen as simple transportation tools, a far cry from what I regularly see in the U.S.
I suspect at least part of this has to do with the fact that, relative to four wheeled vehicles, you can buy "impressive" motorcycles for relatively little cash compared to say, buying a truly performant sports car. Combine this low cost with an unrelentingly social pressure to show off, mix in one part social media and two parts a belief that you are invincible and I believe you'll have your cocktail of poor outcomes on fast two-wheeled vehicles.
But also, car drivers have this unfortunate tendency "to not see" motorcycles. Technical means like headlight interrupters can improve noticeability but are prohibited in some jurisdictions.
The US would rather pay off to tarriffs the competition than properly compete. Even the Ford CEO drove A Chinese EV for 6 months and he didn't want to give it up. Also indirectly he didn't think Ford could compete, calling it an "existential threat"
It's really stupid because Xiaomi isn't making anything truly revolutionary. It's just a lot of consumer thoughtful ideas, not ones that try to shove ads and subscriptions in your dang car. And this is our "existential threat" to a century of manufacturing. Wonder how Henry would feel.
(and the tarriffs stuff isn't just 2025. That's been there through all of Biden's admin. Good idea... If they used those 5 years to actually ramp up production).
Full agree on these auto maker comments. The US makers for decades have dug in their heels on any new features: look how long it took to get basic safety features like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. Then delay wipers. Then it took decades to add a $1 part like an aux input for the stereo. And of course all the super poor EV gestures.
But I was talking about motorcycles. There are some new brands like Zero and some old ones like Harley (the "live wire" disaster). They need a fire lit to make real bikes at real prices.
It's not a characteristic of US automakers but of the status quo in any competition. The status quo power wants to keep things the same - that's how they got there, that's how they are making money, and any change destabilizes things and 'wastes' money: you're already (selling cars), what will you gain by innovating?
The revisionist power wants to become status quo. They need to beat the status quo power and they won't do it following the status quo's rulebook. They look for anything that might differentiate them, make them appealing to even narrow groups - they are trying to get a foothold and grow from there. They are cool, innovative, and disruptive, people think.
As soon as the revisionist becomes status quo, they adopt the status quo behaviors. Look at formerly revisionist SV.
There is no way we can compete in a global free market while paying 4x as much for labor. At a comparable level of technology and organizational skill the Chinese will win every competition, labor costs are that important. They have already caught up.
“ The first archetype, Euro premiums, has an average labor cost of $2,232 per vehicle and includes premium brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, and Audi. This group is characterized by high production costs, complex design and advanced manufacturing processes, and strong labor unions. Within the category, German manufacturers face among the highest labor costs of $3,307 due to stringent regulations and high wage rates.
The second archetype, electric vehicle-only manufacturers, includes startups as well as more established players like Tesla, which do not operate under organized labor contracts. Their average labor costs range from $1,502 to $13,291, and they face high per vehicle production costs due to low manufacturing volumes. EV-only manufacturers also have been heavily reliant on government subsidies, which are now being cut back by the new administration.
The third archetype, mainstream model manufacturers, has an average labor cost of $880 per vehicle and includes traditional high-volume automakers from various countries. Japanese manufacturers enjoy lower labor costs per vehicle, with an average of $769, compared with manufacturers in the United States, where the average is $1,341 — a labor cost per vehicle that reflects recent historic union gains.
The fourth archetype, Chinese car manufacturers, has an average labor cost of $585 per vehicle, characterized by low wages and high efficiency. The group maintains the lowest overall conversion costs in the industry by leveraging its newer factories, efficient supply chains, and high production volumes” - https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2025/apr/...
The idea that hourly labor cost is the overriding issue or cost is generally false, a story told by companies to get corporate welfare (including protectionism) and play the victim. They aren't sewing t-shirts; there is far more to the balance sheet than hourly cost; even focusing only on labor, there is productivity.
Surely the most important area of innovation is not the end product itself but how it is manufactured at scale. That is what made Henry and what will make Chinese manufacturers win.
With bicycles weight and refinement is a huge issue so to get something nice you do have to use more premium materials and production techniques. If you forego low weight and refinement, there are plenty of Alibaba specials both in kit and kickstarter brand form, but if you want a 40lb middrive with 300-400w of power, 0.3-0.4kwh and a natural feeling torque sensing control, you need to open you wallet to the tune of $4k.
Motorcycles are also interesting because they're at most 1.5-2x as efficient as cars, especially on the highway (poor aerodynamics). They're small so people assume they're gas-sippers, but at 80mph a sportsbike is not giving you much more than 45mpg. A typical bike carries 3-ish gallons for an effective range of 150 miles. To give an ev motorcycle a comparable range, you're looking at close to 20kwh of battery. In China a kwh of NMC battery is said to be $120-ish, so you're looking at $2k in just battery, excluding drive unit, inverter/charger, thermal management. Conversely a motorcycle engine and transmission is typically a single unit, all bathed in the same oil and amortized over huge production runs, for a simple 80hp drivetrain, I wouldn't be surprised if the marginal cost of production is $2k for the whole thing.
My Vespa Sprint 150 gets ~100mpg around town. It cost ~$5000, much of which is a brand premium. 150cc scooters from other brands (Genuine, etc) are much less.
right, EV city scooters are arguably already doable, modulo annoying charging, since in places where you'd feel compelled to ride a scooter you'd be less likely to have dedicating parking with charging for it. Motorcycles though require more range to be useful, it's pretty typical to fill up at least once on every ride.
How realistic timewise is plugging e-bikes into plain old wall power ? Is it any improvement over trying to charge a e-car from wall power (i.e. all-night plus) ?
Depends on the battery size (which depends on bike weight).
For a pedelec (actual e-bike meant to be pedaled), wall charging with a brick/wall-wart works fine. That's how they all work, at least any that I've seen. Some have removable batteries to make that easier, but the high-end models tend to have the battery wedged into the down tube and not removable (with complete disassembly of the bike).
For an e-scooter or light e-moto, wall charging should work fine, but it won't be fast. YOu're looking at 3+ hours to charge. Fine for most commuters and running errands, but not suitable for a delivery vehicle - they'd have to hot-swap batteries (or complete bikes).
Not sure about large electric motorcycles - there aren't that many out there right now. I'd guess similar to e-scooters, just with an even longer 10-80 or 0-100 charge period.
Nobody can compete against China today: almost zero regulation, massive subsidies, integrated supply chain (also subsidized), a lot of credit, and millions of cheap engineers (no unions!). And some companies can just pay suppliers with bonds/IOUs on future earnings (like BYD).
The US, broadly speaking, does not make a distinction between step-over and step-through two wheeled motor vehicles in any category.
Again, broadly speaking, over 30mph is a motorcycle, under 30mph is a moped (unless it's an ebike with pedal assist, but only in some states). It's complicated.
You used to see a lot of scooters (step-through motorcycles or mopeds) in California college towns but ebikes have decimated that market.
It's a lot more reasonable to use a motorcycle or scooter as your main form of transport when the max speed you are likely to encounter on the roads is 40MPH. In the US you will be sharing freeways with people going 80+MPH in SUVs daily.
As someone who always avoids four-wheeled cages if possible, I can say highways are more or less safe if you have a fast enough motorcycle, compared to slow lane filtering with big vehicles on the road. Tiny spaces, poor visibility, and things that crush you on a slighest mistake is a dangerous combination.
If you look at the "motorcycling countries" (SEA, India/Pakistan, Africa, Latin America, etc.), most terrible accidents happen because trucks share the road with an army of scooters. I've been to a few of them on a motorcycle and it's a nightmare. For the same reason, big cities in China introduced dedicated scooter lanes separated by concrete barriers.
Legally, they’re all motorcycle. Unless they’re mopeds (50cc, speed limited).
But colloquially, if it’s a step-through, it’s called a scooter. Most of which have a CVT transmission, where most motorcycles have a 6-speed manual (toe shift) transmission.
EV motorcycles are a huge struggle! I have been riding motorcycles pretty much my whole adult life, but after trying electric bikes a few times while in the EU, I felt they were like toys. Honestly, how can you ride a motorcycle that sounds like a kitchen blender?
FYI: I understand they are more efficient and faster, but a motorcycle is not about efficiency; it's more about a hobby, fun. In the EU market, it is mostly deliveries because cities are built for them.
The Venn Diagram of people who ride motorcycles purely for entertainment, and people who like to annoy others by being loud and obnoxious is just a circle.
First, that is wrong because Venn diagrams don't work the way you think they do.
Second, even if they did work they way they think they do it would still be wrong. :-)
Venn diagrams show all possible inclusion/exclusion relations between the sets they are showing. A Venn diagram of two sets is always two circles that partly overlap.
Even if the way they worked is that you could omit regions that are empty and redraw the remaining regions to be circular, it doesn't help because ending up with a single circle with both sets in it would mean you are asserting the the two sets are equal.
That is clearly false because pretty much everyone can name someone who likes to annoy people by being loud and obnoxious but does not ride a motorcycle.
In Brazil it's for deliveries but also to avoid traffic, and a cheaper way to get around in more remote areas (people traded their horses for motorcycles!). Only rich people buy motorcycles because it's fun.
That's a response to any innovation - it's not like the old thing. There are always trade-offs that someone can point to. At the slowest adoption rate, over time people will grow up using the new thing, which becomes their old thing (until they say the same thing about something else 30 years from now).
One the primary reasons I have a vespa is that in my big city you are allowed to park them for free on the sidewalk as long as you are not blocking the main flow of traffic. Never having to worry about parking gets me out and about when I never would have due to the headache before. It is so convenient and the gas mileage is nuts.
On the other hand, I would never ever consider a traditional motocycle (partly becuase they are so noisy). But an EV one is very appealing. Exactly because it's more efficient and practical.
On the other hand, I would never ever consider a traditional motocycle (partly because they are so noisy).
They don’t come that way, jackasses modify them. My large displacement BMW is louder than our ICE car, sure, but you probably won’t notice it sitting next to you at a stoplight. And yet it still has enough power to smoke just about any car that doesn’t cost deep in six figures.
Are they faster? I guess at some point it comes down to gearing, but a liter bike is hitting 300km/h and has more than enough torque to loop you from standing still. I'm not sure what an electric motor adds here for hobbyists or speed demons.
They aren't faster in the cases I know of. As an example, the Isle of Man TT Zero was discontinued partially because 2008 predictions of electric bikes reaching parity with gas by 2025 didn't pan out.
Even for small stuff, a minibike with a 212cc 4-stroke can have comparable performance to something like a Cake or Surron and is a fraction of the cost.
Personally I think the electric motorcycle market should try and max performance versus weight. Perhaps something pedal assisted that could hit 60 mph without too much fuss but light enough that it could be shouldered up a few flights of stairs. Range can be low, as in 10-15 miles per charge max but balanced by swappable battery packs.
Little point to owning a bike like that if you only ever go to 90mph. Transmissions with correctly calibrated gear ratios to the normal use case are useful things for ICE engines.
The fast ones can which is the only thing that matters in this comparison. Just as there are plenty of slow ICE bikes, but again they aren’t part of this comparison either, this is about 200+MPH bikes like the Lightning LS-218 vs Ducati Panigale R etc.
Hmm. That’s not “the fast ones”, that’s specifically and purposefully built for the purpose of hitting a high speed. Can’t seem to find 0-218 time to see how it would compare with a geared ICE motorcycle. I’m not convinced it’s getting to the top fast enough for gear shifting to matter.
They shine best I think as alternatives to the 50cc segment; 60kph max with round trip taking 5km to 10km. At that point the limitations aren't a big deal. Anything beyond that's... iffy.
Really not keen on the advertised "app-based anti-theft, vehicle movement alert, geo-fencing, GPS tracking." Inevitably, this will be used to track the user and sell the data to insurance companies, like car manufacturers already do. Also, it's entirely possible that the app won't work at all on free Android builds (dependencies on Google libraries). Other than the obvious range anxiety problem (80 miles just isn't enough especially if you ride it hard and that becomes 50 or less), I wouldn't buy any "connected" bike without knowing for sure that it can be fully disconnected by nuking the onboard modem.
And if you drop your phone, you walk back home.
When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery. In China, electric motorcycle support the extremely large food delivery market, and in most cities, the streets are lined with delivery riders’ e-motorcycle and bicycles. Later, I heard that China’s Meituan has also started food delivery services in Dubai. I expect this model to expand to global markets as electric motorcycle become more widespread.
>When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery.
Many of those delivery workers are much poorer than even Chinese delivery workers, so are less able to afford ebikes. Because they come from countries with significantly lower GDP per capita than China.
> so are less able to afford ebikes
Many countries with gig economies where the individual can't afford to own the actual method of transport, a rental market pops up to enable people to be able fulfill orders.
This usually does mean they're the first ones to get squeezed. But lesser known who gets squeezed is the rental operator/provider as well. Because many times they don't own their own fleet. They can't charge higher prices like normal car rentals and own the fleet because the individual gig driver is very price sensitive.
It doesn't take too many vehicle losses to really upset the delicate math.
It's just rentals all the way down.
In San Francisco, I noticed that many of the delivery drivers' e-bikes and e-scooters were labeled HMP. The natural structure for these is that you rent the bike from the provider and you keep net earnings post rent. And sure enough, when I came home and Googled there is precisely such a structure: https://www.hmpbikes.com/pages/rental-page
Indeed. I’ve noticed a large number of Pakistani taxi drivers and Southeast Asian service workers. But considering the income of food delivery riders(most of the time > avg salary in the city china. not sure in UAE, but the service like Uber is pretty expensive), buying a not-too-expensive electric scooter seems to be a fairly good investment.
Pretty standard in europe. Easier to manouver, to park and you get away with more. Also cheaper.
EV motorbikes are already very popular with criminals in the UK. They make the perfect getaway vehicle as they are so quick and stealthy.
It’s very intimidating to see a group riding these things on the pavement and pulling wheelies, all wearing balaclavas.
These guys are a bit of a problem in Edinburgh, but not an EV-specific one; before they were using trail bikes, which were an additional nuisance with the noise.
Not sure what level of intrusive surveillance would be needed to deal with this.
The US desperately needs some competition in the EV motorcycle space.
There are several players but they still seem boutique and and way over what the price should be.
This is actually an area I am incredibly interested in, an area that I have pretty deep technical knowledge of (power electronics, my day job), and and area where I would _love_ to make products in. I'm a total ebike evangelist just ask anyone who has ever commented anything to me when I am on my ebike.
But I sadly know enough to know that doing hardware in the USA is nightmare level expensive and difficult. I could pull every string and empty every account into making an eBike with twice the cost and half the performance of it's Chinese counterpart. I'd much rather just make an app that takes a cut for connecting people with eBikes that fit their needs/desires.
My quick searching is finding that 3% of US vehicles are motorcycles.
Sure, more competition is good, but given their safety profile (terrible!) I suspect motorcycles are a secondary mode of transportation rather than a primary. Mopeds for intra city usage seems more high demand than highway speed vehicles that have to drive alongside SUVs.
> but given their safety profile (terrible!)
I feel like there's kind of a cycle of unsafety with motorcycles on the social level in the U.S.
There's a societal understanding in the U.S. that motorcycles are unsafe, which results in an increased number of people purchasing motorcycles with the intention of showing off how unsafe (dangerous) they can be. And the cycle perpetuates.
Obviously, motorcycles are inherently less safe in certain ways, like your body is going to fly if you get into a high-speed collision, and that's pretty much unavoidable. But when I visit European countries, it seems motorcycle culture is _so_ much healthier. They are mostly seen as simple transportation tools, a far cry from what I regularly see in the U.S.
I suspect at least part of this has to do with the fact that, relative to four wheeled vehicles, you can buy "impressive" motorcycles for relatively little cash compared to say, buying a truly performant sports car. Combine this low cost with an unrelentingly social pressure to show off, mix in one part social media and two parts a belief that you are invincible and I believe you'll have your cocktail of poor outcomes on fast two-wheeled vehicles.
But also, car drivers have this unfortunate tendency "to not see" motorcycles. Technical means like headlight interrupters can improve noticeability but are prohibited in some jurisdictions.
Mopeds are at least as dangerous to operate as motorcycles.
The US would rather pay off to tarriffs the competition than properly compete. Even the Ford CEO drove A Chinese EV for 6 months and he didn't want to give it up. Also indirectly he didn't think Ford could compete, calling it an "existential threat"
https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-ceo-driving-xiaomi-su7-...
It's really stupid because Xiaomi isn't making anything truly revolutionary. It's just a lot of consumer thoughtful ideas, not ones that try to shove ads and subscriptions in your dang car. And this is our "existential threat" to a century of manufacturing. Wonder how Henry would feel.
(and the tarriffs stuff isn't just 2025. That's been there through all of Biden's admin. Good idea... If they used those 5 years to actually ramp up production).
Full agree on these auto maker comments. The US makers for decades have dug in their heels on any new features: look how long it took to get basic safety features like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. Then delay wipers. Then it took decades to add a $1 part like an aux input for the stereo. And of course all the super poor EV gestures.
But I was talking about motorcycles. There are some new brands like Zero and some old ones like Harley (the "live wire" disaster). They need a fire lit to make real bikes at real prices.
It's not a characteristic of US automakers but of the status quo in any competition. The status quo power wants to keep things the same - that's how they got there, that's how they are making money, and any change destabilizes things and 'wastes' money: you're already (selling cars), what will you gain by innovating?
The revisionist power wants to become status quo. They need to beat the status quo power and they won't do it following the status quo's rulebook. They look for anything that might differentiate them, make them appealing to even narrow groups - they are trying to get a foothold and grow from there. They are cool, innovative, and disruptive, people think.
As soon as the revisionist becomes status quo, they adopt the status quo behaviors. Look at formerly revisionist SV.
There is no way we can compete in a global free market while paying 4x as much for labor. At a comparable level of technology and organizational skill the Chinese will win every competition, labor costs are that important. They have already caught up.
“ The first archetype, Euro premiums, has an average labor cost of $2,232 per vehicle and includes premium brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, and Audi. This group is characterized by high production costs, complex design and advanced manufacturing processes, and strong labor unions. Within the category, German manufacturers face among the highest labor costs of $3,307 due to stringent regulations and high wage rates.
The second archetype, electric vehicle-only manufacturers, includes startups as well as more established players like Tesla, which do not operate under organized labor contracts. Their average labor costs range from $1,502 to $13,291, and they face high per vehicle production costs due to low manufacturing volumes. EV-only manufacturers also have been heavily reliant on government subsidies, which are now being cut back by the new administration.
The third archetype, mainstream model manufacturers, has an average labor cost of $880 per vehicle and includes traditional high-volume automakers from various countries. Japanese manufacturers enjoy lower labor costs per vehicle, with an average of $769, compared with manufacturers in the United States, where the average is $1,341 — a labor cost per vehicle that reflects recent historic union gains.
The fourth archetype, Chinese car manufacturers, has an average labor cost of $585 per vehicle, characterized by low wages and high efficiency. The group maintains the lowest overall conversion costs in the industry by leveraging its newer factories, efficient supply chains, and high production volumes” - https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2025/apr/...
The idea that hourly labor cost is the overriding issue or cost is generally false, a story told by companies to get corporate welfare (including protectionism) and play the victim. They aren't sewing t-shirts; there is far more to the balance sheet than hourly cost; even focusing only on labor, there is productivity.
Surely the most important area of innovation is not the end product itself but how it is manufactured at scale. That is what made Henry and what will make Chinese manufacturers win.
An aussie player slowly building https://www.savicmotorcycles.com/
I'd argue the competition is already here: e-bikes. Regulation and safety concerns mean motorcycles will always be niche.
It is amazing the premium on EV in both bikes and motorcycles. I mean a honda Navi motorcycle is only $2000 somehow.
With bicycles weight and refinement is a huge issue so to get something nice you do have to use more premium materials and production techniques. If you forego low weight and refinement, there are plenty of Alibaba specials both in kit and kickstarter brand form, but if you want a 40lb middrive with 300-400w of power, 0.3-0.4kwh and a natural feeling torque sensing control, you need to open you wallet to the tune of $4k.
Motorcycles are also interesting because they're at most 1.5-2x as efficient as cars, especially on the highway (poor aerodynamics). They're small so people assume they're gas-sippers, but at 80mph a sportsbike is not giving you much more than 45mpg. A typical bike carries 3-ish gallons for an effective range of 150 miles. To give an ev motorcycle a comparable range, you're looking at close to 20kwh of battery. In China a kwh of NMC battery is said to be $120-ish, so you're looking at $2k in just battery, excluding drive unit, inverter/charger, thermal management. Conversely a motorcycle engine and transmission is typically a single unit, all bathed in the same oil and amortized over huge production runs, for a simple 80hp drivetrain, I wouldn't be surprised if the marginal cost of production is $2k for the whole thing.
My Vespa Sprint 150 gets ~100mpg around town. It cost ~$5000, much of which is a brand premium. 150cc scooters from other brands (Genuine, etc) are much less.
right, EV city scooters are arguably already doable, modulo annoying charging, since in places where you'd feel compelled to ride a scooter you'd be less likely to have dedicating parking with charging for it. Motorcycles though require more range to be useful, it's pretty typical to fill up at least once on every ride.
How realistic timewise is plugging e-bikes into plain old wall power ? Is it any improvement over trying to charge a e-car from wall power (i.e. all-night plus) ?
Depends on the battery size (which depends on bike weight).
For a pedelec (actual e-bike meant to be pedaled), wall charging with a brick/wall-wart works fine. That's how they all work, at least any that I've seen. Some have removable batteries to make that easier, but the high-end models tend to have the battery wedged into the down tube and not removable (with complete disassembly of the bike).
For an e-scooter or light e-moto, wall charging should work fine, but it won't be fast. YOu're looking at 3+ hours to charge. Fine for most commuters and running errands, but not suitable for a delivery vehicle - they'd have to hot-swap batteries (or complete bikes).
Not sure about large electric motorcycles - there aren't that many out there right now. I'd guess similar to e-scooters, just with an even longer 10-80 or 0-100 charge period.
Ebikes from wall power works well. Also at ebike size, batteries are swappable, so you just get two and charge one while you're using the other one.
there's not that much of a US motorcycle market in general.
As for electric, I would guess it's zero? (maybe harley?)
It's interesting that japanese motorcycles have always been on the cutting edge... but not on the cutting edge as far as electric.
> As for electric, I would guess it's zero?
Yes, exactly [0].
[0] https://zeromotorcycles.com/
Nobody can compete against China today: almost zero regulation, massive subsidies, integrated supply chain (also subsidized), a lot of credit, and millions of cheap engineers (no unions!). And some companies can just pay suppliers with bonds/IOUs on future earnings (like BYD).
This is two-wheelers, not cars.
Motorcycles. Or perhaps scooters - they are form we rarely see in the US so I'm not sure exactly what to call them.
The US, broadly speaking, does not make a distinction between step-over and step-through two wheeled motor vehicles in any category.
Again, broadly speaking, over 30mph is a motorcycle, under 30mph is a moped (unless it's an ebike with pedal assist, but only in some states). It's complicated.
You used to see a lot of scooters (step-through motorcycles or mopeds) in California college towns but ebikes have decimated that market.
It's a lot more reasonable to use a motorcycle or scooter as your main form of transport when the max speed you are likely to encounter on the roads is 40MPH. In the US you will be sharing freeways with people going 80+MPH in SUVs daily.
As someone who always avoids four-wheeled cages if possible, I can say highways are more or less safe if you have a fast enough motorcycle, compared to slow lane filtering with big vehicles on the road. Tiny spaces, poor visibility, and things that crush you on a slighest mistake is a dangerous combination.
If you look at the "motorcycling countries" (SEA, India/Pakistan, Africa, Latin America, etc.), most terrible accidents happen because trucks share the road with an army of scooters. I've been to a few of them on a motorcycle and it's a nightmare. For the same reason, big cities in China introduced dedicated scooter lanes separated by concrete barriers.
Legally, they’re all motorcycle. Unless they’re mopeds (50cc, speed limited).
But colloquially, if it’s a step-through, it’s called a scooter. Most of which have a CVT transmission, where most motorcycles have a 6-speed manual (toe shift) transmission.
I usually call the scooter ones mopeds, even though they lack pedals. Or sometimes Vespas, even when they're not made by Piaggio.
https://archive.md/otude
I would swear that, at least the "e-mopeds", are being already imported down here...
Fingers crossed we’ll get some more EV cars too.
More competition is always good for consumers.
"Western market" does not (yet) mean United States in this case. By that definition BYD is already in the "Western market".
> So far, there’s no word on a potential US entry.
EV motorcycles are a huge struggle! I have been riding motorcycles pretty much my whole adult life, but after trying electric bikes a few times while in the EU, I felt they were like toys. Honestly, how can you ride a motorcycle that sounds like a kitchen blender? FYI: I understand they are more efficient and faster, but a motorcycle is not about efficiency; it's more about a hobby, fun. In the EU market, it is mostly deliveries because cities are built for them.
EBikes are quiet and awesome. People who like loud bikes and loud cars are, thankfully an extreme minority where I live.
The Venn Diagram of people who ride motorcycles purely for entertainment, and people who like to annoy others by being loud and obnoxious is just a circle.
First, that is wrong because Venn diagrams don't work the way you think they do.
Second, even if they did work they way they think they do it would still be wrong. :-)
Venn diagrams show all possible inclusion/exclusion relations between the sets they are showing. A Venn diagram of two sets is always two circles that partly overlap.
Even if the way they worked is that you could omit regions that are empty and redraw the remaining regions to be circular, it doesn't help because ending up with a single circle with both sets in it would mean you are asserting the the two sets are equal.
That is clearly false because pretty much everyone can name someone who likes to annoy people by being loud and obnoxious but does not ride a motorcycle.
That was a lot of exposition to refute what was clearly a joke.
> ...after trying electric bikes... I felt they were like toys.
> ...a motorcycle...it's more about a hobby, fun.
I don't think you have successfully articulated why EV motorcycles are a struggle. If anything you've created further confusion.
> a motorcycle is not about efficiency; it's more about a hobby, fun.
It's also about fun, but for me, it's definitely about efficiency. My 600cc gets 50mpg versus 31 for my Honda Fit.
98% of my 30k+ miles on my bike are commuting miles. Bonus efficiencies: better parking, HOV lanes.
In Brazil it's for deliveries but also to avoid traffic, and a cheaper way to get around in more remote areas (people traded their horses for motorcycles!). Only rich people buy motorcycles because it's fun.
I like when my vehicles take me from A to B safely. If they are also quiet, offer a smooth ride, and are easy to refill/recharge, then even better.
That's a response to any innovation - it's not like the old thing. There are always trade-offs that someone can point to. At the slowest adoption rate, over time people will grow up using the new thing, which becomes their old thing (until they say the same thing about something else 30 years from now).
For many it's about traffic and parking. At least for the moped / scooter riders.
One the primary reasons I have a vespa is that in my big city you are allowed to park them for free on the sidewalk as long as you are not blocking the main flow of traffic. Never having to worry about parking gets me out and about when I never would have due to the headache before. It is so convenient and the gas mileage is nuts.
> Honestly, how can you ride a motorcycle that sounds like a kitchen blender?
All the more reason to aggressively ban gas motorcycles.
FWIW: Harley designed a "loud" drivetrain for electric motorcycles so they can have a distinctive sound when they switch over.
On the other hand, I would never ever consider a traditional motocycle (partly becuase they are so noisy). But an EV one is very appealing. Exactly because it's more efficient and practical.
On the other hand, I would never ever consider a traditional motocycle (partly because they are so noisy).
They don’t come that way, jackasses modify them. My large displacement BMW is louder than our ICE car, sure, but you probably won’t notice it sitting next to you at a stoplight. And yet it still has enough power to smoke just about any car that doesn’t cost deep in six figures.
Are they faster? I guess at some point it comes down to gearing, but a liter bike is hitting 300km/h and has more than enough torque to loop you from standing still. I'm not sure what an electric motor adds here for hobbyists or speed demons.
They aren't faster in the cases I know of. As an example, the Isle of Man TT Zero was discontinued partially because 2008 predictions of electric bikes reaching parity with gas by 2025 didn't pan out.
Even for small stuff, a minibike with a 212cc 4-stroke can have comparable performance to something like a Cake or Surron and is a fraction of the cost.
Personally I think the electric motorcycle market should try and max performance versus weight. Perhaps something pedal assisted that could hit 60 mph without too much fuss but light enough that it could be shouldered up a few flights of stairs. Range can be low, as in 10-15 miles per charge max but balanced by swappable battery packs.
ICE engines lose power when changing gears, so they aren’t strictly grip limited.
Sure, but when you can get to 90mph in first gear, does that matter?
Little point to owning a bike like that if you only ever go to 90mph. Transmissions with correctly calibrated gear ratios to the normal use case are useful things for ICE engines.
But how many EV bikes can even hit 90?
The fast ones can which is the only thing that matters in this comparison. Just as there are plenty of slow ICE bikes, but again they aren’t part of this comparison either, this is about 200+MPH bikes like the Lightning LS-218 vs Ducati Panigale R etc.
Hmm. That’s not “the fast ones”, that’s specifically and purposefully built for the purpose of hitting a high speed. Can’t seem to find 0-218 time to see how it would compare with a geared ICE motorcycle. I’m not convinced it’s getting to the top fast enough for gear shifting to matter.
The restrictions on top speed runs to 200+MPH are so extreme they are essentially irrelevant, people do use those bikes to hit 150mph though.
They shine best I think as alternatives to the 50cc segment; 60kph max with round trip taking 5km to 10km. At that point the limitations aren't a big deal. Anything beyond that's... iffy.
> but a motorcycle is not about efficiency; it's more about a hobby, fun.
Torque is fun