For years, the conventional wisdom surrounding electric motorcycles has been fairly straightforward: Build an electric motorcycle that’s just as good as a gasoline-powered motorcycle, make it affordable enough, and eventually riders will switch.
It’s essentially the same playbook that electric cars have followed. Make the electric version competitive enough, and eventually the market will move in that direction.
But I think we’ve been looking at electric motorcycles all wrong. Because the future of electric motorcycles isn’t necessarily about convincing today’s gasoline motorcycle riders to switch. It’s about the next generation of riders who won’t have any reason to start with gasoline in the first place.
And that’s a much bigger deal than it might sound. In fact, it’s the entire key to the puzzle. Because make no mistake, the future of motorcycling is electric. It just won’t happen the way most people think.
Motorcycles aren’t cars
The problem with applying the electric car playbook to motorcycles is that motorcycles aren’t cars.
For most people, a car is a tool. It’s transportation. Sure, some drivers are deeply passionate about their cars, but they are a minority. The vast majority simply want something comfortable, reliable, affordable, and convenient to get them from point A to point B.
Motorcycles, especially in markets like the US and Europe, are different. In fact, it’s the complete opposite of the car situation. For a minority of Western riders, and especially American riders, a motorcycle is a tool. For the vast majority, it’s a passion. People generally buy motorcycles because they love motorcycles. And for many riders, that love is deeply intertwined with the gasoline engine itself.
The sound, the vibration, the shifting, the mechanical character. These aren’t necessarily flaws to be engineered away. They’re part of the experience for traditional riders.
You can show someone like that an electric motorcycle with better acceleration, lower maintenance costs, cheaper operating expenses, and the convenience of charging at home, and they still won’t want it.
Not because the electric motorcycle isn’t good enough, but because it isn’t what they love.
And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with loving gasoline motorcycles if that’s your thing. But it means that trying to convert those riders may be a losing battle, at least on any meaningful timeline.
Unfortunately though, it seems many years were wasted on that approach. Take Harley-Davidson, for example.
The brand started building its first electric motorcycle over a decade ago – commendable among all the other legacy motorcycle manufacturers that turned their noses up at the thought of going electric. When it was released in 2018, the Harley-Davidson LiveWire received rave reviews, but it just didn’t sell well. For one, it was insanely expensive at $30,000. But the other major reason was that no matter how amazing it was, it wasn’t going to scratch that gasoline itch that most riders still had.
That motorcycle still exists in small-scale production as the LiveWire One through H-D’s electric spinoff, but now LiveWire has wisened up to the real pathway to moving higher numbers of electric motorcycles with its S4 Honcho line. And this brings us to how electric motorcycles will really replace their gasoline counterparts.
The next generation doesn’t have that baggage
Now consider what’s happening with younger riders today.
Millions of people are growing up riding electric bicycles, electric scooters, and increasingly powerful e-motos. For them, electric two-wheelers aren’t some strange new alternative to the real thing. They are the real thing.
They’ve grown accustomed to instant torque, quiet operation, and the simplicity of twisting a throttle and going. To these riders, a gasoline-powered motorcycle is laughably primitive. It’d be like me handing you a gasoline-powered drill or blender. Yeah, exactly. Now look who’s suddenly on team battery, eh?
So now we have a whole new generation of riders getting ready to come of age. And eventually, many of those riders are going to want something more.
Maybe they’ve spent years riding a 28 mph electric bike, or a 40 mph electric moto. Now they’re young adults, they want to ride on faster roads, and they want something capable of 70 or 80 mph that’s actually street legal. They’ve gone from a sixteen-year-old in a hoodie to a twenty-six-year-old in a collared shirt. Instead of getting to high school, now they’re getting to work. But they haven’t lost that desire to ride.
So what’s the natural next step?
An electric motorcycle.
It’s not because they’ve carefully compared electric and gasoline motorcycles and decided that electric is superior. It’s not because they’re trying to save the planet or reduce their maintenance costs. It’s simply because they grew up with electric two-wheelers as the norm.
It’s simply the next logical step in the type of riding they’ve already been doing for years.
Will a few of them transition over to gasoline-powered motorcycles? Sure. But for most, gasoline motorcycles will never even enter the equation.
Gasoline motorcycles won’t go out with a bang
Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t seen the last of gasoline motorcycles.
And I don’t even think electric motorcycles are going to suddenly outsell gasoline motorcycles because they become objectively better machines. At least not in the traditional recreational motorcycle markets we’re talking about here.
Instead, I think we’re going to see a somewhat more gradual generational transition.
Today’s gasoline motorcycle enthusiasts will largely keep riding gasoline motorcycles. They’ll keep buying them, maintaining them, and enjoying them for as long as they can.
But as those riders age out of motorcycling, the next generation won’t replace them with another generation of gasoline motorcycle buyers. In other words, gasoline motorcycles will die out with their riders.
Increasingly, those younger riders will have already entered the world of powered two-wheelers through electric bikes and e-motos. When they’re ready to move up, electric motorcycles will be waiting for them.
And over those next few years, the technology will only become better. The only remaining Achilles’ heel of electric motorcycles – their run time – will get better and better as battery technology improves and we move towards solid-state batteries.
Suddenly they’ll be on par with gasoline motorcycles for range and ‘fueling’ time, yet will beat those combustion bikes elsewhere. But at that point, “better” won’t even matter anymore as electrics will be the only comfortable option for the vast majority of new riders. Again, you wouldn’t buy a power drill that runs on a gasoline engine when you’ve seen how convenient and effective a lithium-ion power drill has been your whole life.
Over time, the traditional gasoline motorcycle market will simply shrink as its existing customer base gets older, while electric motorcycles build an entirely new customer base alongside it.
And again, there will be exceptions in both directions. Some lifelong gasoline riders will enthusiastically embrace electric motorcycles, and some younger riders will still discover the appeal of combustion engines and running through the gears.
But the broader trend will be driven less by conversion and more by generational replacement.
That’s why electric motorcycles will eventually become the standard, even if they never manage to convince most of today’s gasoline motorcycle enthusiasts to switch.
Gasoline motorcycles won’t necessarily disappear because electric motorcycles finally beat them at their own game. They’ll fade because the next generation of riders will be playing a different game entirely.
In other words, and to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, gasoline motorcycles won’t go out with a bang, but with a whimper.
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