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this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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Eh, a motorbike isn't going to be as comfy as a car with an AC regardless of whether it's electric or gas powered. Vented gear and lighter colors can help a lot in the summer, but they don't look as cool and people would rather scorch in black gear and be almost invisible at night apparently.
I've seen a much greater adoption of EVs in my area once the range started becoming decent enough, along with the prices and the greater availability of charging stations. And I figure the same will happen with motorbikes. Electric scooters are already super popular in the city. They're cheap, they allow you to skip traffic, and the range is decent enough for short commutes. Once there's bigger motorbikes with a decent enough range and decent prices, people will buy them as well.
There's something that bothers me about the whole EV transition thing which is how polluting the transition itself is - if I have a newish gas powered car, that took a lot of resources to build, am I really saving the environment by buying a new EV, which will cost even more resources? Ideally, it would be people with really old very polluting cars switching to EVs - but because of the cost of EVs, I notice it's mostly people with bigger purchasing power switching to EVs - people who often already had fairly new and efficient gas vehicles which could keep running for a little longer without as much harm to the environment. I have a not that old medium CC four-stroke motorbike, with a low fuel consumption and supposedly fairly low pollutant output. Even if a decent alternative EV exists and I switch to it, how long do I have to ride the EV before the polution benefits of the EV in comparison to my current bike outweigh the pollution cost of building it in the first place?
To answer your question, the purchasing power people's old car isn't destroyed, it is bought by the people with older cars updating. The more ev's bought, the more supply in the 2nd hand market and cheaper 2nd hand cars to move further away from older polluting cars. This is one time where trickle down works.
That makes sense. Though I would like to see stats on number of cars going into the used car because of EV purchases. Judging on conversations with work colleagues, there's still a lot of people keeping their old cars around because of "autonomy fear" - in other words, people convincing themselves they need a 400Km autonomy for that one time a year they might use their car on a vacation. Which is stupid, IMO, as they'd benefit more from selling their cars and renting on the rare occasion they need to do a really long distance, but it's apparently fairly common. Though I'm sure that will change once people realize they are mostly not touching their old cars.
That's true, I see people around me keeping cars when there is no need. There sure is a lot of uncertainty atm though.
That's partly why I'm trying to keep my little 80s Suzuki running, which I commute on. The raw material going into a new bike, as well as energy in the processing, is tremendous.
But without a catalytic converter etc, the suzi is undoubtedly working against my daily job at a green energy research company, not to mention that moto tech has evolved very much in the past 40+ years.
I'm going to go electric, but I've unfortunately gotta save a bit, and wait till this bike breaks. Till then, moderate amount of maintenance and a low-quality bike experience in comparison to what's out there now.
Motorcycles are greener than cars anyway. Less wear on the road, less traffic jam influence, fewer parking spaces, fewer materials to produce and maintain, etc. Am fairly confident you 40 year old motorcycle is far greener than a new EV. Sure, EV will eventually offset its own manufacturing and material cost, but it will take a while, especially if we take into consideration where the electricity comes from.
Shit, the 80s were 40 years ago weren't they? Damn man... I didn't expect to feel old in a post about electric motorcycles.
Sorry bro. I'm getting up in years myself. So long as we live a meaningful life, no regrets eh?
I was WOT on the highway the other day, this electric blue Hayabusa pulls up next to me, we wave and then he peels off, fucking stunningly fast and he's on the horizon... Still happy with my bike, she's mine and I customized her just right.
There have been a bunch of studies on this over the years, with different conclusions depending on the bounds of the question. For example, does the car you get rid of actually leave the market, are you replacing a beater or a decent car, what sort of car is replacing it (hybrid, plug-in hybrid, standard range EV, long range EV). I think (without double checking the actual studies) that the answer is that if you replace an ICE car with a standard range EV, and keep it for like 10 years, you are better off.
The shame is that the studies always force a particular perspective onto the question: should you replace one car with another? I would bet that the best solution is to keep the ICE car, but get an electric motorcycle or moped, and use that for every situation possible, and save the ICE car for rare situations that actually need the range or size.
EV manufacturers love to promote their vehicles as "better for the environment", but they are really only "better" than ICE cars.
The unfortunate thing in your case is that apparently motorcycles are worse than cars in terms of emissions. Yes, the fuel efficiency is higher, but cars have better combustion and catalytic converters, so they produce less of the really potent greenhouse gases than motorcycles. I only learned that recently.
You raise some good points. I find that it's hard to find information on the topic as a whole because a lot of sources have fairly big biases - either pro or anti EVs - which often times aren't very transparent. And also because you usually have to dig deep to find an example that fits your situation. For example, on the topic of your last paragraph, when comparing cars to motorcycles, what's a "car"? Are we talking about a two seat Clio or a four seat family wagon? It gets even worse with motorcycles given the big variety of engine configurations.
Some years ago I read something similar to your last point - that in general, motorcycles produce a fair amount more greenhouse gases than an average car. More recently I've come upon an article that tested different motorcycles with different CCs and engine configurations and the results were a lot more nuanced. They mentioned that 2 stroke motorcycles were basically awful in terms of how much greenhouse gases they released. 4 stroke motorcycles, on the other hand, were comparable to a small car. Small and medium CC 4 stroke motorcycles would win out against the average car in terms of emissions, whereas bigger CC 4 stroke motorcycles would emit slightly more greenhouse gases than the average car.