Before we know it our ICE (internal combustion engine) motorcycles will be replaced by electrics. And not specifically because the bikes we currently buy only slightly contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, but more because they are too costly to make, too difficult to ride and too tedious to maintain. Even today’s most fabulous and desirable bikes will meet the same fate as old-fashioned steam locomotives. They’ll be appreciated mostly as inspiring historical relics which required too much cost and effort for so little power and result.
Many younger people already view older long-time riders as "the last of a breed" (gearheads/petrol-heads or whatever…) and consider our beloved ICE machines too costly and requiring too much of an ownership and maintenance commitment. Future riders will aspire to own and ride electrics partly because of their far lower maintenance requirements*, magic-carpet smooth silence, and no gear shifting. Some of the future electrics will be a lot faster than the latest and fastest ICE bikes now available, too.
Speed, acceleration, efficiency, and synaptic-level nimbleness are all core reasons for the enduring appeal of motorcycles and scooters. It’s just hard to believe that the accompanying sweet tunable exhaust noise, along with all the vibrations and acoustical harmonics which have always been such an integral part of motorcycle experiences, are about to fade into history just as the romantic and inspiring sounds of a steam locomotive’s ‘choo-choo-choo’ hissing and chuffing, and the piercing shriek of their steam whistles has.
I’m already nostalgic whenever I hear (and smell) a passing two-stroke ICE bike “on the pipe” -- the narrow near-wide-open-throttle RPM range when the engine’s carefully engineered tuned exhaust scavenging hits its perfect harmonic, and the bike crisply leans itself out just a tiny amount more as it produces maximum power. In some ways I’m not quite ready to feel that way about the sound of a four-stroke ICE engine coming onto its cam, but it probably won’t be too long. After it’s mostly gone I’m gonna miss that music, but future generations of riders won’t.
Two general ‘news’ moments during my lifetime stand above the rest: I’ll always remember with a kind of granular clarity exactly where I was when I first watched astronaut Neil Armstrong step onto the moon live (though delayed 1.25 seconds by the distance), and similarly I will always remember where I was when I turned on a television and first watched the terrible attack that destroyed the World Trade Center buildings in NYC. Seeing repeats of those two news videos will always stop me cold.
Though not comparable in significance or emotional impact, two motorcycle-business ‘news’ moments have also stood out. About fifteen years ago I read a press release from Honda (of Japan, not their USA distributor American Honda) announcing they were going to put fuel injection, anti-lock brakes and catalytic converters on every bike they made. EVERY model, including all sizes and types. As the years have passed, they’ve done this. From their cute ‘Monkey bikes’ to their best-selling-motor-vehicle-in-the-world, the C-50 Cub (now both are 125’s) to the luxurious Gold Wings, everything they produce on two wheels has, or will soon have, these technologies. That long-ago media release was Honda saying there would always be motorcycling, for at least for as far into the future as they could see. Some of the very smartest people in motorcycling and ICE engineering telling everyone they believed it was worth the huge investment to redesign their long-ago-paid-for and highly profitable products like the Cub. It was Honda telling the world there would be motorcycles for as long as there were people, and they intended to always have some of this business. This news could not have made me happier unless they’d have also added they’ll be giving these updated bikes away free.
Then there was the day several years ago when the late movie star Peter Fonda announced he’d hired the famous Sotheby’s (or Christies?) auction company to sell off all the props and memorabilia he’d kept from the movie ‘Easy Rider’. His ‘Captain America’ leather jacket and everything. This told me the market for Harleys was about to turn downward and that after their truly phenomenal thirty year run of success, from a struggling and near-bankrupt company to a $2 billion dollar plus ultra-profitable company which along the way became a global fashion-darling, that this growth, and the coolness of this brand, was about to start to decline. Which it has.
The actual tipping point from ICE to electric bikes has not happened yet, but it is coming. The elements of riding which are the most fun and important are not all the cultural constructs, fashions and socializations surrounding riding. Rather it’s the physiological, neurological, and psychological experiences of actively balancing and guiding the machine. Riding feels as great at 5 mph/8kph as it does at much higher speeds, and most importantly, the benefits to riders -- and to the society which surrounds all of us -- remain the same, too, regardless of what technology makes the machine go. So even though someday not all that far off it may be unfashionable and impractical to ride an ICE bike for transport, leisure or sport, there are certain to be multiple super-fast and/or super-great electrics available for doing just such riding. They’ll be more affordable, more reliable, easier to ride and require less maintenance than the best bikes of today. And even faster, too.
Many of tomorrow’s e-motorcycle riders will come into riding as a natural transition upward from a pedal e-bike just as they’d earlier moved upward to those pedal e-bikes as a move beyond their pedal-only bicycles. When they decide to become licensed motorcyclists, the transition from pedal e-bikes to electric motorcycles will have been notably smoother and easier than what most of today’s ICE bike riders experienced. Pedal bikes have always been a gateway drug to motorcycles. Soon pedal E-bikes will be the gateway drug-of-choice to you-know-what.
And the rest is history.
- Mr. Subjective, Sept 2021
PS – There’s irony in the fact that earlier technologies which are relatively more challenging to operate and maintain are often (and maybe perversely?) more strongly loved by their users and caretakers. In a paradoxical way people seem programmed to balance more difficult physical, mental, and emotional challenges unconsciously yet rationally with correspondingly greater emotional attachments and satisfactions. It’s inversely proportional -- The more difficult something is, the more its seemingly valued. There’s a humorous eternal truth in the classic question: “Why do you keep banging your head against a wall?” and its inescapable answer: “Because it feels so good when I stop.” Future riders of electrics may not bond quite as strongly with those bikes as we do with our ridiculously and wonderfully antediluvian ICE bikes. Which I think will be ok. It will still be more than enough.
*I’m far from a good mechanic, but still find the process of working on an ICE bike an enjoyable challenge, and the results extremely satisfying. Setting valves, changing tires, balancing wheels, changing fluids, bleeding brakes, replacing or mending broken parts, tuning, farkeling, setting adjustments for best operation and much more. I’ve accumulated a mixed assortment of the necessary tools and have always been able to arrange a small acceptable space to do this work. I get into trouble occasionally and must rely on shop manuals, friends and YouTube videos for support. It’s always too much work, and not for everyone, but with the luxury of time (though not enough is available sometimes) it generally feels nice to be able to take care of my two-wheeled friend.
Forgot to mention. I don’t and never will ride a bmw. Have a nice day.
I understand electric is the future but there’s some things I don’t t understand. Nobody celebrates the fact that a motorbike, an ICE motorbike, takes like less than 10% of the natural resources to produce vs any modern electric car. Over a 5 year span a motorbike must be 1000s of times less harmful to the planet than literally any current electric vehicle. This is ignored because people don’t actually care about the environment. People care about being smug.
The other thing I don’t understand is why someone would want something silent. That’s ridiculous to me.
In Response to Dan D.: Dan D. Funny. Not reading the actual scientific prediction papers makes believing that “your ilk told us we were scraping the ‘last bit of oil’ from the ground…in the ‘70’s!” what was actually being said, likewise for the ice age predictions. Fox doesn’t condense those papers particularly accurately or even honestly, so you’re not likely to understand much of what is happening with your input sources. Even Dicky Cheney was onboard with the Peak Oil prediction (https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-05-11/dick-cheney-peak-oil-and-final-count-down/) in 2004 and we have definitely met and passed that mark, but the mark isn’t what you think it is. In the late 80’s, I recorded a speech from an oil geologist who predicted that the moment we were desperate enough to siphon oil “two miles down, and two miles across,” would be when serious people would know we have given up on oil as an actual energy resource and were just papering over the fact that we were spending more money on protecting and subsidizing the oil business than it is worth. He was taking about the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Likewise, the costs of drilling below thousands of feet of ocean at the risk of all sorts of environmental disasters proves the point rather than defeats it.
As an old fart who is becoming more convinced that humans are not a sustainable species, your misunderstanding of the predicted global cooling reinforces my cynicism. We are technically still in an ice age, but carbon-generated global warming is holding heat while poisoning the atmosphere. Pretty much we’ve cranked up the heat inside an sealed insulated container and we’re comfortably warm while we’re ripping through that container’s breathable atmosphere. If you are “old enough” not to have to worry about the consequences, it’s not a bad plan. We’re not going to “destroy the planet” as many uninformed wanna-be environmentalists screech. The planet will be fine. Like dozens of primary species before us, the Earth will shrug us off like an irritating mosquito and, in a few million years, crank out one more attempt at an intelligent (or, in our case, almost intelligent) life form. Or another even bigger asteroid will give the planet a whack and none of this will matter at all. I worry about my kids’ future, but I’m not worried about the planet.
This kind of change and resistance to change is going on all around us. As the US settles into its declining empire contractive phase, more people (unfortunately but typically of all ages) fall into the belief that “da gubament” is causing all of this change, rather than reacting to the inevitable and obvious shifts in resources, technology, and demand. Of course, some of that demand is created by corporations who own about as much of the nation’s government and resources as was predicted in the original “Rollerball” story and they create the reality they next want to sell. No amount of wishful Flat Earther thinking is going to effect the Peak Oil problem, though. Thanks to the oil companies, the US has failed to invest in modernizing the electrical grid from the point of energy generation to the delivery systems and that will, eventually, crest to a massive systems failure and the areas of the country that respond to that first will be the winners when it all shakes out. Baring natural disasters, it’s safe to say the West Coast will be among the winners and the southeast will flounder. The kind of passive mindset that made “MAGA” so popular among the beloved and easily programmable “uneducated” won’t be of much use in the long run.
Having sample-ridden electric motorcycles and eBikes from the early lead acid powered days to the Zero bikes of the late 20-teens and current eBikes, it’s pretty obvious to me that the technology is advancing on a Moore’s Law curve. I haven’t driven an electric car since my 80’s experiments with a battery-laden Karmann Ghia, but I plan to own one if I live long enough to find a decent buy in a used 2018-or-newer Leaf. (I never buy new anything if I can avoid it.) Toyota’s brilliant Prius raised the bar so high for simple ICE vehicles that young people are unlikely to ever look back at current ICE-only vehicles as anything buy the limping along of an obsolete technology on its last legs. Every technology and its advocates that I’ve witnessed at the end of its run has behaved as we’re experiencing with ICE machines. The old guard is belligerent about the value and strength of the old technology, engineers tweak the last bits of efficiency and performance producing the finest examples of obsolescence possible, and users quickly move over to the New Kid leaving the last people holding on to the obsolete equipment to play among themselves in a diminishing sandbox.
Motorcyclists, if the vehicle is to continue to be popular and street legal, will have to either adapt or get out of the way. No one is going to have to “pry your.[name the ICE toy] out of my dead fingers,” they’ll just price you out of the game as is already happening across the western nations. Insurance, fuel, licensing, and inspection (yes, inspection is likely to make a big comeback) costs will be out of reach for everyone but Jay Leno and his crowd. As everyone with sense and a choice chooses quieter vehicles, neighborhoods and cities are going to be a lot less tolerant of biker noisemakers and other childish behaviors. It could easily turn out to be a moment when motorcyclists become grownups on their own or “da gubament” and 99.9% of the public grows them up and off of public streets.
I’m sure the storm swell from this electric revolution will one day wash over me. Whether that comes as a result of market forces, government fiat, or papal bull, I don’t know. When it does come…if I’m still even able to ride a motorcycle…I will decide to go electric or not. Until then, the vibration, smell, noise, the sheer “mechanicalness” of a motorcycle engine is too much a part of the experience for me to consider an electric motorcycle. Most of the “downsides” mentioned – maintenance, grease and oil and gas, shifting gears, the exhaust pulse, the rattle and beat of a mechanical heart – all of those things are part of what I love about riding motorcycles. Take those away and I can’t imagine anything but a pale imitation of the real experience.
Lest you think I’m against all things electric and that I hold those who choose electric transport in gross contempt, that is not the case. I can understand why an electric motorcycle would appeal to someone. Its just that I’m not that someone. Truth be told, I’m actually a little jealous of people who don’t feel the way I do. It seems like life would be such an easier road to travel if I could go with the prevailing cultural wind. I’m not there. Till then, when we meet on the road, I’ll still wave to you. I hope you still wave back.
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