For any of you that read my twitter posts (twitter.com/eatsleepride) you’ll know that I keep talking about electric motorcycles. In the interests of full disclosure, I do not own one and nor do I own shares in anyone making them but I also do believe that in a few years, it’s pretty much going to be your only choice.

Now, I’m not suggesting that gasoline powered bikes are going to go away any time soon but it’s also undeniable that fossil fuels will run out at some point. Depending on who you read, Peak oil is anywhere from 25 years in the future to 5 years ago. Either way, so, it’s going to cost more to fill your RC45 than it is to buy it.

As a society, we have options. Firstly, we could change gasoline engines to run on ethanol. This has been amply demonstrated by Bike magazine in the UK who recently took a stock Triumph Daytona 675 and converted it to use ethanol made from Apples. The downside to this is it takes a lot of apples to make enough ethanol to power the bike and sadly, humans like apples too. Sure, we can use various other plants. Corn is popular in the US and other places. Brazil has used sugar cane for years to create an ethanol based transport system. The downside of course is that all that biomass we need decreases our food production. I don’t wish to come over all Malthusian, but the human race is going to need all the food it can get, if not now then soon. While governments (and industry) seem to like this idea a lot, it looks to be another short term fix unless we take to managing the size of the human race.

There’s hydrogen. The single biggest benefit of hydrogen is it is incredibly abundant. After all, two thirds of the earths surface is water and that is two-thirds hydrogen. The downside is hydrogen is very reactive and that means we need a good energy source to make it usable as a fuel. In practice that means a mixture of advanced catalysts and electric power (hydrolysis, where electricity splits the water apart, is still the simplest way of getting at it). There are however many downsides to hydrogen. it’s volatility means storing and transporting it is more dangerous than gasoline. It will react when exposed to air (and by that I mean explode) so ruptured tanks are far worse than spilled gasoline. That in turn means heavier fuel storage systems, which puts the weight up… That’s not to mention the fact they we’d also need a national distribution system to move it.

Of course, if we’re creating all that energy for hydrogen, wouldn’t we be better off using it in electric vehicles anyway? Electricity is after all very easy to transport – all it takes is some wires and let’s face it, they are already in place in just about every single home. It’s also quite easy to make, with most “alternate” fuels really being used to create electricity anyway. The downside for vehicles is performance. While converting electric power to movement is pretty efficient, batteries don’t hold a lot of power, at least not today. It’s one of the reasons the Zero and other motorcycles performance figures aren’t exactly illuminating. However, the recent TTxgp showed that as we start to apply incentivized innovation to the problem (or competitive motorsport to give it another word), things will get better quickly. Not all the entries did well, but a few did very well. The Agni bike got up to 102mph on the straights and clocked an average lap of 85mph over the circuit. Granted, it probably needed a full charging when it got back in to the pits, but it worked. Batteries will get better. Constructions will be lighter (Ducati-style carbon frame anyone?) Systems will get more efficient and processes, such as exchanging batteries wholesale at a “gas-station” rather than plugging in to charge mean fill-ups should be reasonably easy. Of course, with such a huge market to fill, it’s entirely probably we’ll find a material that can charge almost instantly, given the right application of power and be good for 200 miles.

There will of course always be objections. Firstly, electric bikes are mostly silent and that’s a danger. For cagers that barely see us as it is, loud pipes can save lives so we’ll have to replace them. There’s no gears either or engine breaking, so some of the fun could also leave. However, silence could also be an asset – no more cops with noise meters and off-roaders should definitely stand to benefit. We might even end up with more motorsports tracks as they objections they bring are somewhat reduced. We could also have bikes with downloadable “exhaust” notes, just like we get ringtones on cell-phones today. Or maybe they’d just play music? Chances are, cars would ultimately be fitted with proximity alarms and be “driven” automatically meaning bikes might become the only form of freedom.

No matter what happens, it’s clear that change is coming and we would do well to embrace it soon. I figure in five years, it will really start to become viable. However, even after that, I’ll still be hanging onto at least one gasoline machine, if only to place in my living room to remind me of a bygone era.

Tags:   alternativefuels · electric7 Comments