I love motorcycles. They are the smallest, lightest, most agile tool possible to move a human around from place to place. Where I live (California), lane splitting is legal, which means traffic doesn’t apply. Neither, I might add, do parking regulations. The right motorcycle will be a fun experience 80 percent of the time, which is more than you can say about most cars. And they are generally very fuel efficient; even incredibly high-performance machines generally return over 30 mpg, while scooters and mopeds can see as much as 60 mpg.
But efficiency and emissions aren’t the same thing, and bikes are, actually, dirty little birdies. CARB estimates that although motorcycles cover less than 1 percent of passenger vehicle miles traveled in California, they account for 13 percent of the state’s hydrocarbon emissions in the same category.
One can understand why a tech bro might think electrification—enviro-capitalism, if you will—is an appealing business plan.
I’ve now borrowed four different EV motorcycles for a few weeks each. A pattern is rapidly emerging: The week starts with curiosity, which turns to optimism after the first ride. It’s fun! Then I do a lot of math after a few rides and half a charge to find out how far I can actually go and still get home.
Sadly, in order to go anywhere of consequence, I have to be very light on the throttle, and very heavy in the regen. Essentially, I have to hypermile.
Within the group of people who choose to ride a motorcycle, I assume there is some sub-group who enjoys hypermiling, just like those nerds (I say it with love) who tape up their Honda Insights and go a thousand miles. But I don't believe an entire product class is catering to it.
Hang on, I’m being too negative. We’ll come back to range.
Let’s start with some good things about electric motorcycles: they are incredibly fun. Blasting away from a freshly-turned green light, silently, politely as your speedometer registers a number that a cop would consider criminal, if they bothered to notice you at all, which they will not. The smoothness of a single gear from zero to VMAX, and without any perception of strain is something unique, different, and frankly, very pleasant. If riding a sport bike is like flying a fighter plane on the road, then riding an electric bike is like flying a glider.
Motorcycle people typically like a variety of experiences, more so than car folks who get rutted into certain specific brands or genres. And motorcyclists can more easily have a “quiver,”—bikes are a quarter of the size and a quarter or less of the price of a decent recreational car. It makes sense to have multiple, and to rotate through them more often than one might with a car, or use specific bikes for specific activities.
This begs the question: Are electric bikes just a novelty in the rotation? Who is an EV motorcycle actually for?
The Road Tripper: Certainly not. You’d have to stop for 60-90 minutes for every 30-40 minutes of freeway riding on most motorcycles, and probably bail on the whole thing by the end of the first day.
The Canyon Carver: Unless you happen to literally live in Maryville, Tennessee, Ojai, or La Canada Flintridge, CA, or somewhere else that is right at the edge of the good roads, you will never get there and back. If you’re riding an EV in a sporty manner and weigh as much as an adult male weighs, you probably get 20 to 30 miles total fun riding before needing to charge. Do the good roads often have Level 2 chargers on them? (No.)
The Commuter: Most likely, this is the ideal target for an EV bike. And in many ways, I can’t argue. If you are doing less than 20 miles each way and have access to a Level 2 charger at home or work, an electric motorcycle really does beat a gas one. But we’ll come back to this, as I pretty much am the commuter, and there are other issues.
The Weekend Cruiser: Again, unlikely here. This also describes me, although don’t picture a bearded bald man on a big steel hog. No, no, no, picture an oversized dork in high-vis gear on an upright, sporty-adjacent bike, just enjoying being outside, and, mostly, obeying the rules.
It is exactly 22 miles from my house in L.A. to the Malibu Country Mart, a very popular destination for shopping, dining, and the excellent Malibu Farmer’s Market. It spent six months cut off from the rest of L.A. after the fires, and so I try to support it by going out there a couple times a week. From my house, it’s about 2 miles on surface streets, followed by 10 miles on the freeway, and the remainder on Pacific Coast Highway, then the reverse. It’s virtually flat with less than a hundred feet of elevation change across the entire drive. In a car, it can range from 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on traffic, and is never more than 40 minutes on a bike.
We have to agree that a basic, short, flat ride to Malibu and back, 44 miles round trip, should not be the kind of distance that makes one consider range, right?
(Locals will be all up in my DMs right now because not only does the Country Mart have Level 2 and DC Fast Chargers, it also has a Livewire dealership, and therefore I do not need to do the round trip. I could charge there. I don’t care.)
Every single electric bike I’ve ridden has been able to make this trip, but only just. And frankly, I think the PCH’s post-fire, heavily enforced 35-mph speed limit is being very kind to range. At a steady 35 mph, my 255-lb weight is no longer a detriment in accelerating, but it’s slow enough that my oversized aerodynamics haven’t become a parachute.
You want anxiety? Watch your range gauge drop by 2 or 3 miles for every mile traveled when cruising on the highway at 70 mph. In order to make it home, you then sit at 62 in the slow lane, praying. I don’t know a lot of people who buy motorcycles to ride like that. You’re even told during Motorcycle Safety Foundation training courses to move on the highway at slightly above the speed of cars. I always thought going very fast on a bike would be scary. Going very slow is scarier.
I spent two weeks on the Pulse, a very fun electric bike, making 47 horsepower that tops out at 85 miles an hour. It’s advertised with a 100-mile range. I’m sure under a very specific set of circumstances, that is possible: A rider small enough to barely qualify as an adult, a glass smooth surface, and a constant speed that never dips below or exceeds neighborhood cruise pace, and near exclusive use of regenerative braking.
I rode the 44 miles to Malibu and back from a full charge, and parked in my driveway with 25 percent/14 miles remaining. That’s not a ton of room for last-minute changes of plan.
I don’t like talking about the range of EV cars anymore. For the vast majority of folks, myself included, anything over 200 miles is just fine. The infrastructure is pretty good now, particularly around interstates, even if you’re not in a Tesla. Most folks charge at home and aren’t doing huge distances very often. But when the range of your vehicle isn’t enough to go across a large major city and back, from full, without stopping to charge, the discussion becomes unavoidable. And you can’t just be on PlugShare looking for the nearest charger while riding the motorcycle, can you?
So it’s really only for the commuters with predictable, short, urban rides. I commute regularly around Los Angeles on a motorcycle, specifically a Metallic Lime Green Vespa GTS 300. The 300 has about a 10 percent larger frame than the 50 and 150, which, when you’re my size, means you look normal on it, not like a lost, trained Gorilla. It has bigger, better brakes with ABS, heavier-duty suspension, and a 26 hp, water-cooled engine. It does 80 mph, returns 50 mpg, and based on a recent perusal of the classifieds, has depreciated approximately zero dollars in the five years and 5,000 miles I’ve ridden it. With the under-seat storage and matching cargo box, it will hold three large bags of groceries, or one bag of groceries and a 12-pack of Pacifico bottles, or a case of wine. It costs me less than a dime a day to insure and probably the same to maintain. It ties with Rolex watches as the single greatest consumer item I have ever purchased in my 43 years. That’s my benchmark for commuting motorcycles. It’s high.
Dynamically, these EV bikes beat the Vespa. They are only marginally more powerful, but with instant, silent torque, they just rip away from a red light to safety. The larger wheels and brakes mean a better ride and safer stopping distances. Many of the EV bikes offer wireless Apple CarPlay connectivity through their tablets, which can be great for using Google Maps or Waze without exposing your phone to the elements.
But in two crucial ways, the Vespa wins: lockable storage that matches the bike and doesn’t take away from rider space, and value. Motorcycles—if you overlook the fact that you’re exposed to the elements and therefore in far more danger than in a car—offer amazing value. They are very quick for the money. They are very efficient for the money. They depreciate slower than cars. They don’t take up much space, parking is generally free, and maintenance is usually reasonable. The more miles you do, the more value they generate.
The Can-Am Pulse is $13,889. An entry-level Ducati Monster is a thousand bucks cheaper with a lot more power and a lot less weight. The Livewire One starts at $15,999. A Harley Nightster? Just $9,999.
The Vespa Primavera Elettrica 70 is $8,299. Vespa’s own Primavera 150, which makes more than double the power and returns over 60 mpg, is $5,749.
Electric bikes are fun, but offer little value, something universal across nearly all aspects of the rest of modern motorcycling. They are inconvenient, heavily dependent on your size and shape to deliver the range promises, and priced well above what competitive gas-powered models sell for, but without any Federal Tax Credits to incentivize the switch. One final kick in the teeth? Depreciation. Just like cars, EV bikes depreciate faster than their petrol-powered alternatives. Used Livewire Ones can be found with three-digit mileage at half price.
All this is kind of a shame because I really would love to ride around L.A. on an electric motorcycle. If you haven’t tried one, you really should. It’s a totally unique experience, and in my opinion, more fun than electric cars. Believe me, the folks selling these things love to offer test rides, so just go. I want the industry to innovate. If they can deliver a real-world 100-mile experience, so I can go about my day, have some fun, maybe even ride up a mountain once or twice? I’m one hundred percent in. But I struggle to see how we get there with today’s battery technology, or how we avoid the obvious problems I’ve pointed out here.
Enthusiasts might not want to hear this, but if motorcycles are overrepresented in terms of emissions, maybe it’s time we start catalyzing them and testing them. It worked for cars, and with today’s technology, OEMs could easily clean up tailpipe emissions without losing performance... if they were forced to do so by literally anybody. Nearly any motorcycle is vastly more efficient at moving one or two humans around than nearly any car is. This is not a system that needs complete reinvention. Solutions for this problem exist; we just need the will to implement them.
But without offering value to the consumer, it’s hard to see the point of an electric motorcycle right now. There are too many sacrifices, too many variables, and not enough reward. And considering motorcycles are already very fuel efficient, the current offering of EV bikes seems like the wrong answer to a question nobody even asked.
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