Together in electric dreams?
With the government announcement of a ban on petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040, Paul considers the plug-in future…
It’s difficult to say what will happen to scooter values for these reasons, they may drop as demand to ride them drops…
Like it or not, electric powered vehicles are the future – a fact confirmed by the government pledge to ban internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040. Right now, 23 years seems a long time away, but it will soon be here. Although there has been no official word on motorcycles and scooters, it’s logical that they will be included. In some quarters people are already asking: could we go ‘all electric’ earlier? The scootering world has two considerations here – what we do with existing retro scooters, and what machines do we have going forward?
Well let’s take existing machines first – it seems extremely unlikely that riding them would become illegal, but it may become harder to ride them for several reasons. Firstly, fuel will gradually become more expensive as the world’s supply of oil gets used up. There is actually quite a lot of oil left but it is getting harder to extract economically. Couple this with the fact that demand will definitely drop, thus causing the cost to produce more expensive, as the quantities required decrease. And don’t even get me started on the ethanol and other additives which are bound to escalate!
It will also become harder to buy fuel, as there will be less demand for fossil fuel stations. Many will be replaced by charging stations. Furthermore, it’s quite likely that more cities will become low emission zones making it either legally impossible or extremely expensive to ride a smoke spluttering noisy two-stroke. I personally think that as communities get used to virtually silent electric vehicles, people will actually appreciate the quietness and it may even become socially unacceptable to ride around on noisy bikes or scooters. It’s difficult to say what will happen to scooter values for these reasons, they may drop as demand to ride them drops… or equally it may continue to rise as models really do become collectors’ items.
If we look to future machines, well, I think there is actually a massive potential of a boom time for manufacturers who come up with the right designs and make best use of the new electric technology. I think there could be a real market for retro-styled scooters which use electric motors to provide clean (and very powerful) drive systems which actually have a good range. If you think about it, the original scooters were never seen as something that would be ridden hundreds of miles, so if you think future electric scooters would have low ranges perhaps you should think again.
A fast charge on a Nissan Leaf car gives well over 100 miles in half an hour right now, so in the future an electric scooter may cover 200+ miles after a 20 minute charge while you have a fag and coffee break. And those 200 miles may cost a quid or less in electric. In the future there will need to be loads of quick and easy public use chargers, and as our cities become cleaner it could actually be a real boost to switch more people from car to scooter power as they would be quick and easy to charge.
But for me a really exciting thing would be if a forward-thinking manufacturer- or dealer-engineered electric power unit that could be a straight swap for something like a Lambretta or Vespa engine. With a smart design, it could use the same mountings and an electric motor with wheel could certainly be a very similar size and shape to those of a petrol scooter but could be way more powerful with immediate torque and raw power available. Personally, I find that quite an exciting thought… the best of both worlds.
Yes we would miss that raucous two-stroke roar of a tuned engine, as well as the pop-pop of a standard design, as well as the lovely two-stroke smell. But filling up by plugging in a lead while I had a coffee would be fabulous, and smelling of petrol, and carrying bottles of oil is something I would not miss (until I put on my rose tinted glasses). Tuning might be a case of just swapping engines – plug in a different motor for different purposes?
Actually yes… that could be an exciting future. ( Ed: Sounds like my idea of hell. I’m with Mad Max and the last of the V8s!)