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Electric two-wheelers are set to scoot past EVs in road race:
Video Visit Asia's emerging megacities and you'll quickly notice that scooters and motorbikes vastly outnumber cars. Before long these fleets of two-wheelers will become battery-powered, always-connected, semi-autonomous machines that offer an even more potent alternative to their four-wheeled rivals.
The reasons powered two-wheelers dominate nations such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam – with a combined population over 1.75 billion – are simple: cars are unaffordable on local wages, few urban homes have space to store them, and warm climates make two-wheelers viable year-round. Plus, many of them sell for less than the equivalent of $1,000 apiece.
The industry has decided many will soon be electric and it looks like drivers will buy them.
"Electrification of micromobility can be adopted at a faster pace than cars, mainly because the motor and batteries are much smaller," Fook Fah Yap, a director at Singapore's Nanyang Technical University's Transport Research Centre told The Register.
Evidence of the shift is not hard to find. Earlier this year Honda announced it will start to sell 10 battery-powered bikes in 2025. Yamaha expects 90 percent of its sales will be electrified by 2050 and Toyota is expected to announce an electric two-wheeler this year.
[...] Two—wheelers, by contrast, are all about getting from A to B, quickly and at low cost. Digital technology's role in a two-wheeler is therefore all about information related to navigation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday May 20, @03:21PM (3 children)
There's a demographic effect much like plain old muscle powered bicycles, my kids or I can lay a plain old bike up against a tree and it'll still be there days later in my non-diverse subdivision, but I don't think a $1000 electric scooter will survive long 'downtown' in the more 'vibrant' areas. Which ironically are the poorest and would benefit the most from cheap transport.
Its unfortunate that the people who would benefit the most have a crime rate too high for the technology to 'work' for them.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday May 20, @08:25PM
Good thing about that is that lithium-ion batteries can come with their own electrical, or maybe even explosive deterrent [youtu.be].
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Saturday May 20, @08:34PM
A padlock and chain works great here stateside. I imagine it would work in Asia as well. The tropical heat? Not so much.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 22, @04:36PM
Apple to the rescue!
Imagine these bikes stop working as soon as you report them stolen via your phone app. Or what if you must have a phone in order to unlock them?
Imagine an Apple like solution where every part on the bike is tied to the serial number of the bike and once reported stolen is pretty much useless. It's a good way to help keep landfills full instead of getting them serviced.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...