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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20, @04:11PM (2 children)
Warm? Has the writer ever been to those places? Many of those warm climates are actually hot and also have very wet seasons... During a thunderstorm it's more comfortable to be in a car than on a bike. During very hot weather it's also more comfortable to be in an air-conditioned car than on a bike.
FWIW I've cycled in colder climates (not the super cold ones) and the cold (with gloves etc) is still better than thunderstorm or very hot weather - you end up soaked in rain and/or sweat. As for danger, yes icy roads are dangerous but in many Asian countries many of the roads have potholes in them, but it's harder to notice them when those potholes are filled with rainwater - you just see a wet road... Hitting a pothole with a car hurts too but hitting a pothole on a bike and falling and getting rolled over tends to be worse...
So take it from me, most of them are using those two wheelers because it's cheaper. The hot climates don't actually make them more viable compared to other climates. Those places with cool/cold dry climates are FAR BETTER for two wheelers.
And if you are slightly richer you still aren't going to enjoy wearing those more protective leather suits and full face helmets in hot humid weather - you better be rich enough to get the ones with cooling... You want those cooled helmets too - unless you like hot smelly sweaty helmets.
p.s. High temperatures aren't that great for batteries either. Those bikes better be designed to be parked out in the blazing sun...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Saturday May 20, @06:51PM (1 child)
And a lot faster in traffic, which is also very common in those places.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22, @12:48AM
That it's faster than other vehicles in traffic jams is just a bonus.